Hello,
In today’s blog, I would like to tell you about my experiences at the beginning of the year and give you a little insight into my work.
At the beginning of the year, I was already looking forward to the first very nice experience. Doreen, Erika, Anokye and a few other friends from the church and I went to Kumasi because we were invited to Dr. Eddy’s wedding.
The special thing about this wedding visit was that we were not only invited as guests, but were also allowed to sing at the donations. A little background information: many of Dr. Eddy’s friends are in the First Service Choir, and the choir had been given the task of singing at the wedding during the donations.
As I am also part of the choir, I was also asked if I would like to sing. I was incredibly happy about the opportunity. But it was actually a bit of a challenge, as most of the songs were sung in Twi. So for a week before the wedding, I had to learn Twi songs every day. Fortunately, Erika taught me a lot of songs and helped me a lot to learn them. On the day of the wedding, I was able to sing along to almost all the songs.
In general, however, it was a very overwhelming feeling to stand on a stage with your friends at a wedding and sing. I have to admit that I did briefly ask myself how I ended up on stage here with my friends. Singing was definitely a very nice experience.
The main part of the wedding was definitely the service in which the marriage was solemnized. This service also included the singing.
Unlike in Germany, the service here was very long, four hours to be precise. One of the reasons for this is that at this wedding, parts of the celebration afterwards (which in Germany counts as the party afterwards) were included in the service. For example, the cake was cut during the service. It is also important to note that I have only experienced one wedding and that I therefore cannot describe wedding celebrations in general terms. This means that every wedding is still individual and I cannot say from one wedding “this is how weddings are celebrated here”.
Overall, the wedding was beautiful and I was very happy to have been invited.
Between the eventful weekends, which included a visit to the wedding, a visit or two to Rachel’s or a games evening with friends, it was then time to work on the children’s ward during the week. As I haven’t really written much about my work at my placement yet, I thought I’d post it here.
At the beginning of my time here in Ghana, I worked five times a week in the Children’s Ward. My work mainly involves doing something creative with the children, such as painting or playing games. The amount of painting or playing in the playroom depends on how much the children want to do and how fit they are.
So sometimes there are times when more children want to play and paint in the playroom and times when there are fewer. Nevertheless, I’ve now also adjusted so that I sometimes bring the painting materials to the beds, or card games are played at the bedside if, for example, the bed cannot be left due to an infusion.
When the children come into the playroom, there are no limits to their creativity. They either play with the toys from the play cupboard in the room. Or they paint and play a card game or two. Sometimes they even make music. This also involves building a drum kit out of various toys. I can still remember playing music with a child. The child played the drums and I was supposed to sing Christmas carols (the child’s wish). It was still October at the time, but it was still a lot of fun. The only question is how funny the nurses and doctors thought it was. In the meantime, the number of days I work in the Children’s Ward has been reduced and I work two days a week in the hospital’s kindergarten.
The interim seminar in Koforidua took place towards the end of January. The mid-term seminar was definitely a lot of fun and I was also very pleased to see and get to know the other volunteers again. As well as reflecting on the past months, there was also an excursion on the agenda. We went to FairAfric together with the South-North volunteers.
A few brief facts about FairAfric. FairAfric is a company that produces organic chocolate in Ghana in order to keep the added value in the country of origin and create well-paid jobs. At the production facility, we were first given a tour of the production halls. During the tour, we were told which steps are important for chocolate production. Afterwards, we were actually allowed to create our own chocolate. Finally, we were given a presentation on the harvesting of cocoa and the steps required for the cocoa bean to be used for chocolate. The day was then literally sweetened with chocolate, as we were allowed to taste individual chocolates. The excursion, as well as the whole intermediate seminar, was really nice and also a good change from work.
To sum up, I can definitely confirm that I had many unforgettable and very enjoyable experiences.
Now you have a little insight into my work and my experiences at the beginning of the year.
I hope you enjoyed it until next time.
Akyire!
Mirjam
This text was automatically translated using an AI-powered translation system.
