Easter diversions

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are the most important days in the Christian calendar. The Christian communities in my current home town, Zebilla and in Bolga, where I have spent the holiday period, for the most part active worshippers, have packed the churches, praised loud and long, with those who have the means dressed in fine new clothes. Sharing bought snacks outside or joining organized church picnics on Easter Monday add to the social dimension of attending worship, important and not to be trivialised in small communities where alternative social diversions are few.

I had come to Bolga to meet with VSO and other volunteer and to seek out social diversions, partly to celebrate my forthcoming 56^th birthday. Friday night took a small group of us to the Soul Train Nite Club, in a building as charmless as a UK concrete sports’ centre, and as dark as a scary pedestrian underpass. However, once inside, the non-stop play of decent Ghanaian/West African hi-life, reggae, and hip hop (I think), a surprising lack of alcohol casualties by UK standards, and a universal love of dancing all made for a friendly atmosphere and several happy hours flew by until that point was reached when the many unattached males suddenly began to seek out among the much fewer women “that certain one” and it was time to split.

I decided to be an observer at the Pool Party, in the compound of the as yet unopened Tuode Hotel. The smallish pool was “standing room only” but still the men insisted on somersaulting into the water amid the chaos of a ball game and non- swimmers trying to navigate around the perimeter in large rubber rings. A mix of loud music, soft drinks and some alcohol, chairs around the pool and general hilarity all round made for a holiday mood. And again, the crowd was 80% male- where were the women?

A more serious visit, and one that has made an impact, was to the venue of Operation Mango Tree, one of the projects run by Bolga and UK based charity, AfriKids. ( http://www.afrikids.org/operation-mango-tree) The orphanage- for that is what Operation Mango Tree is,- had an air of friendliness, warmth but also calm, with children playing outside on some playground equipment and older ones preparing the communal meal of jollof rice and meat over a charcoal fire.

Mama Laadi

The AfriKids website describes Mama Laadi and her work:

The goal of Operation Mango Tree is to give the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children in Bolgatanga’s community a fair start in life.

Operation Mango Tree is the development of one remarkable woman’s work with children; Mama Laadi. Mama Laadi is a trained community nurse and from her own time as a street child she has constantly been helping the most vulnerable children she meets, often when they have been written off for dead because of their state of health, because they are orphaned or believed to be spirit children. AfriKids first started working with Mama Laadi in 2004 when we met her living in a tiny nurses room with 12 children, caring from them by stretching her own small income and begging, borrowing and appealing to people she knew locally for support. AfriKids quickly rented her accommodation and as she proved her ability to care for larger number of children with complex cases with the same level of love and care, we built her a large permanent home.

Mama Laadi’s Foster home is a family home to 35 children who care for each other through a buddy system, overseen by Mama Laadi and her small support staff. It is a unique home for the small percentage of children who cannot be resettled with family and require permanent high quality residential care. As the children grow up they are helped through to independent life by the Young Entrepreneurs Programme.

Operation Mango Tree has a strongly supportive and active local management team which is working with AfriKids Ghana to develop businesses that will help the project become independently sustained. These include 'Mama's Place' a popular guest house which opened in Bolgatanga in 2009 and generates a profit to help pay for the running costs of the foster home.

AfriKids aims to be self sustaining by 2018.- photo, showing London underground adverts- AfriKids website.

While there I noted one young boy, Peter, aged about 10, with learning difficulties. Finding that he does not attend a school, I offered to return with some simple low-tech equipment and give a training package/follow up to staff on using motor skills, which would enable a simple therapy and learning programme to be developed for Peter.