First Time Blog, First Post

Well, it's the first time that I've written a blog and next Tuesday will be the first time that I'll have set off from St Pancras looking forward not just to Pan au Chocolate but also to Couscous, the national dishes of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and ultimately Kenkey & Fufu. Kenkey & Fufu being the dishes of my ultimate destination of Ghana rather than glove puppets from Saturday morning children's television.

The first requirement before writing a blog is to come up with a suitable title. The first call is to look for cheesy puns or plays on song titles. Obviously.

I’ve rejected, "Morocco Bound" partly because not everyone is familiar with the film "Road to Morocco" (where, like Webster’s’ Dictionary, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were Morocco Bound) and also, somewhat more relevantly, because I’ll only be bound for Morocco for a week of the next 8 and after that Marrakech will be but a distant memory. Also decided against a title formed by replacing the word "gonna" in various song titles with the word "Ghana" e.g. "I’m Ghana sit right down and write myself a letter/blog". As you will by now know, I chose instead the alluring alliteration that is "Gomshall to Ghana".

Anyway, the gist of my trip is that I shall be working with the good people of the "Sabre Charitable Trust" who are at this moment filling a second hand mini bus with donated school books, teddy bears and sports kit. The Sabre Trust works with local people to implement Ghana’s education strategy. I shall be meeting the bus in Marrakech for the 3 week trip to Ghana. The bus is then donated to a community so that the students can go on geography field trips to study oxbow lakes or challenge the next school at conkers or whatever. I’ll then be staying in Ghana to design or (at the very least) comment on improvements to surface water and other infrastructure for a community there. I hope to be able to devise something, infrastructure wise, so that there are reduced instances of children being sick because of insect carried infections – the insects currently making whoopee in the standing water.

I’ve tried not to research my trip too thoroughly, I’ll see whatever I see when I get there. However I’ve picked up snippets through conversation: I’ve been disappointed to learn that Timbuktu has got an international airport – a similar disappointment to learning that Outer Mongolia is on the Circle Line. I’ve learnt that African bureaucracy is inefficient: indeed the nice man at the Ghana High Commission told me that I’d get my visa in 4 working days but it actually took 3. The Sahara is apparently very cold at night and Ghana very hot at night; we shall see.