Winding down
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2004
1
14
18
Trip End
Sep 15, 2004
The Olympic Stadium ATHENS / Ghana,
Ghana
Thursday, September 2, 2004
The last few days have been something along the lines of a whirlwind, saying goodbye to people, saying goodbye to the SOS Children, attending a party at the SOS Village, and inevitably drinking far too much beer and waking up with that feeling I normally asociate with University. My moods have also been on something of a rollercoaster, something I dont really want to bore you with but It was fairly hard to say goodbye to the 30 children I have got to know so well especially as as I was walking out of the gate for the last time a little girl came up to me grabbed my hand through the gate and kissed it; as one of my firends said there comes a point where you just have to go!!!
But the last 2 days where very exciting, firslty you may remember I was giving the little oy Jerimy walking lessons, well these have een going on ever since and they made him a little wooden buggey thing, but I ha all but given in on him walking as he is mostly interested in eating, but then on the second last day I showed a friedn around in the morning, came back after lunch and.....low and behold Jerimy was sitting in a group of very excited children, when they saw me they helped him up and he stumbled/walked towards me going "Joooonnnaaaaaaadon"
That Night I was sitting at home listening to the BBC World Service who where broadcasting the closing ceremony of the Olympic games, some of you may have seen it /listend to it, anyway the long and short of it was this, as they put the big flame out and transferred the olympic flame to a little flame to symbolise something about passing the olympics on to Beijing two people where revelaed, an athelte and a chld, the athelte took the torch and passed it to the child who then, in front of the entire stadium and I dont know how many millions of people on TV walked the torch down and passed it onto someone else. This chile was from one of the SOS Childrens Villages In Greece. WHen they said this I pretty much dropped the radio and was awre struck then got very excited, thats such an amazing oppurtunity for the child as they said " SOS CHildren are children who have no one else" yet this one got to hold the olympic tourch in front of millions of people, when i saw british "celebirty (??)" Tin Henman holding the olympic tourch this year he didnt even get more than 1000 people watching him!!
So Theres a lot I could say about the differecrnes jut between Ghana and Togo just from the differences in the capitals (Accra and Lome) firslty from what Ive seen most of the roads here are tarmac, as opposed to red sand in Lome (not good in the rain!) on the way here after getting through the police road blocks (in Ghana we had nice polite bored police men asking things such as " where are you from, can i see our passport" which is in stark contrast to Togolise Soldiers "Pappiers Messieur" as they hold their machine gun..., anyway on the way here I foiund myself gaping at the rather tall buildings in Accra, there probably about 10 stories and shiny, I then relaised how flat Lome was and how comparitivly poorer it is. Lome has plastic rubbish pretty much all over the place, so its nice to see a city that cares more about its environment/appearence.
The most baltent difference is that when you walk over the border the language spoken to white men goes from French to English but the language spoken aongst locals is the same "Eve" strikes me as rather strange that, its all due to the colnial carving up of Africa as Britain got Ghana and France got/still has Togo, but it has confused my rather simple brain no end and I keep on talking french where upon everyone just looks at me and smiles, thats faily similar to what happened in Togo actually but atleast sometimes they understood me there!! I say France still has Togo as they are one of the only countries that still supports Togo so they have it in something of a stranglehold as one taxi driver said "When they give us 5$ to help they take 100$ for them" Its intersting although France is the friendliest European country with Togo that the general population always moan about themm and talk well about the English and Americans, not being funny but when Ive travelled before the UK and USA arent always the most popular countries in the world are they!!
I am honestly going to travel in Ghana now and I will leave tomorrow (or the day after)so Ill let you know how that goes, I cant wait to get home, some things Im really missing, but basically I was thinking of comparison for what Ive done and basically if you look as the world as a Ski Slope! The most develpoed countris are at the top and the least developed at the bottem, I went from somehwere near the top down a fair old way to Ghana and then a fair bit further to Togo, so now Im working my way back up, and one of the most important things ive noticed here i...their is a much better choice of beer here in Ghana!!
Below are some links sent to me by a friend(Thanks Sarah) about child Traficking, theirs also something about a Nigerian Priest allegedly involved in Child Traficking on the BBC news today
More info on child traficking in West Africa - From Human Rights Watch
An example of child traficking by NGO workers!!! - From BBC
