Inspections continue

This past week was filled with inspections with CHRAJ and late nights at the Abusua office. With CHRAJ, we did an inspection of a school in Moree and a psychiatric hospital near Elmina. Both were fascinating, but quite difficult emotionally. Most of the time I kept my mouth shut, and took lots of pictures while my boss asked questions and filled out the Commission issued questionnaire.

School in Moree

I have to say the psychiatric hospital knocked the wind out of me. It's not just that the conditions were terrible, which they were, but that the staff and patients were so isolated, so alone. No one seems to care about the plight of the patients because they are 'crazy', and therefore not society's problem. Some of the patients in the hospital have actually been discharged, but prefer to come back to the hospital because their family and community no longer want them. It's probably quite similar in Europe and the US, but the difference here was that I saw it first hand.

At back of school

The school in the poor fishing community of Moree left me a bit more upbeat, but the challenges they face are very real; there is a lack of funding and resources, and most of the kids drop out to help their parents earn a living by the time they are 12-13. The condition of the school was fair overall, but overcrowded.

At Abusua things are heating up with Youth Alive! The production team is really coming together; the only problem is that the editors aren't giving us enough articles, and the articles they do are mostly op-ed pieces written by the same person.  Not really what we want for our first issue, so we're having a meeting this evening with the Editor and other management staff to discuss how to move forward. At the end of the day my team has done their job, we've typeset the articles given to us, but I want the first issue to show off all that we have worked the past few months for.

Cute student

At home Rita laid her first eggs. She was squawking like a maniac most of Saturday morning and then quiet settled over her and an egg appeared. She laid a second one on Sunday, so I ate the first one for breakfast this morning. Seriously the best egg I think I've ever eaten. Other than that it was a quiet weekend. I'm on a course of antibiotics and can't drink so I relegated myself to cleaning my room and finishing my book, the Purple Hibiscus. Now it's back to work.

Foster Ward

Tro Tro stop to Takoradi

Me telling someone off?

Sossah and Koji at lunch