Building furniture for the school

Here's the latest blog from Cheshire Fire Cadets, who are currently out in Ghana, Africa. This blog has been written by Amy Wain and Will Munson.

Another early morning

As Sue noted, enthusiasm for the 6.30 wakeup call was definitely on the wane this morning, and the first signs of Ghanaian belly were beginning to make themselves known to some of the cadets!

We went for breakfast at 7:30 where Kev and Richard happened to meet the German Ambassador to Ghana who seemed very interested in our project.

After breakfast we set off for the Ghanaian version of B&Q to buy nails, screws, screwdrivers and a hammer, so we could get on with building furniture.

More painting...

After picking up our supplies, we headed to the village where the cadets were split off to do various jobs such as mural painting, gable end, refurbishing, painting inside both the kindergarten and the previous school.

We enjoyed lunch in the shade, gladly out of the blistering heat on one of what seems like the hottest days so far.

Building furniture

Throughout the day, more and more people gathered around the working cadets, some laughing at the girls painting (girls don’t paint in Ghana), some eager to hammer bits of wood together. By the end of the day, the villagers were much quicker and adept at screwing table parts together, and Kevin’s apprentice far surpassed the skills of us cadets!

We ended up coming back from the village later than expected due to Francis the bus driver having to rebuild his engine with help from a local mechanic.

We had to bring back all our polystyrene lunch containers with us as we left, as last night there was a pitched battle amongst the village children to secure one of the containers to take home. We were shocked and the incident caused a lot of discussion on the bus about the differences in life.

To round off the day once again, we had a delicious meal at the Sky Hotel, before eventually stumbling into the shower and off to bed.