Team for the motion

Team against the motion

Thursday brought with it the eagerly awaited inter-university debate between LU Ghana, the University of Ghana, and Lancaster University. The two debating teams had one representative from each of the universities, whose task was to debate whether or not Africa should receive reparations from the West on account of the slave trade. Sharn and Anthony had been working hard to prepare their arguments over the course of the week, and we were seriously impressed with the rhetoric and conviction of both teams. After questions were posed from the audience, it was ultimately decided that the team debating in favour of reparations were the overall winners.

As both teams had worked so hard to prepare their contributions to the debate, it seemed only fair to take the rest of the day off and go to the beach en masse. We discovered on arrival that were to be spending our afternoon in paradise, as we piled into a wooden boat to be transported to a private island. The ensuing hours were spent swimming, eating kebabs, keeping the bar in business, drowning our sunglasses (Ollie!) and topping up on our fiery sunburn. It’s a hard life. The only minor downside to this glorious beach was its toilet facilities… The available portaloos rivaled those at notable British music festivals in the sanitation department and the alternative was the intriguingly named ‘Ladies’ Urinal’, which turned out to just be a cordoned off square on the beach where you could go as nature intended…

I was dismayed later that evening when the impressive tan I had mysteriously only developed on my feet disappeared down the drain in the bath. Turns out I was just disgustingly dirty from wearing sandals for the day.

Many of the group were so tired from the day’s serious over-exertion at the beach that they headed straight to bed after another eye-wateringly hot dinner. The rest of us stayed up to greet our LU Ghana friends who came to catch up by the pool, conveniently forgetting about our inhumanely early start in the morning.

Wednesday took on a slower pace, which, after three days of early starts and late nights, was greatly appreciated. Feeling slightly worse for wear, with Bohemian Rhapsody tuned tinnitus resounding in our ears, we arrived at LU Ghana, where each faculty would be presented with specialised lectures. The English language lecture was given by Grace Diabah from the University of Ghana, who had studied at Lancaster University herself. She provided us with a fascinating insight into the presentation of male sexual power in Ghanaian radio adverts. While the term ‘thought provoking’ is bandied about a lot, the number of questions and depth of discussion following the lecture were demonstrative of how much Grace had taught us in the hour long talk. Following our subject specific lectures, the Law society presented some talks for us. These were more interactive than our lectures back home, which was facilitated by the considerably smaller lecture sizes – comparable to our seminars. The afternoon was to be filled with school visits, so those of us who were less well read on legal jargon used the lecture time to prepare a powerpoint about our Lancaster experience.

My talk was clearly enthralling

Lunch was eaten in a tutorial room, and comprised a selection of Ghanaian dishes…and spaghetti bolognese. Our palates were still adjusting to the spiciness of the local food, and we had learnt over the course of the week that vegetarian dishes are somewhat of a rarity in Ghana. The vegetable curry for instance, contained a healthy portion of chicken to ensure our veggie friends didn’t miss out on their protein.

Post-superhotlunch, we split into groups and went to two local schools. The group that went to Corpus Christi school were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the pupils, who, after their talk, requested all their contact details so that they could find out more about the university experience. The pupils at the international school that the Linguistics and some Law students visited were slightly older, and clearly ready to go home by the time we arrived to give them our talk. As student ambassadors, we explained Lancaster University’s collegiate system, talked about the available extra curricular activities, gave an insight into the local area, and ensured they were left in no doubt as to Lancaster’s depressing meteorological conditions.

Jess chatting to Corpus Christi students

Our evening activity today was a visit to a church service, held in a hotel. It was honestly like nothing I have ever experienced. As we were now well-rehearsed at karaoke, we joined in enthusiastically with the sing-along screen displaying all the words to the hymns. Despite having no faith myself, it was clear to see how important these services were to the members of the congregation, and how genuine and enthusiastic their faith was. Within no time we were dancing and clapping along, and at one point there seemed to be some sort of mosh pit forming at the front of the room – thankfully for everyone else in the room I decided to refrain from busting out some of my best Sugarhouse moves in time to the hymns. After a considerable amount of singing came the sermon, during which I am assured all of us stayed wide awake and alert. After being there for over an hour we made our getaway when the congregation began talking in tongues, and were greeted by the priest as we tried to leave surreptitiously through the carpark. Exhausted by our enthusiastic participation in the Ghanaian church experience, we headed back to the hotel.

Charlotte Davey

For many of us, Tuesday was an exhaustingly long day. Having left the hotel at 7.30, the group split into two faculty-based sections. Joined by members of the LU Ghana Law Society, the law students and Catherine departed for Nsawam prison. Accompanied by Anderson, Claire, and some of our friends from LU Ghana, the PPR and Linguistics students were driven out into the sticks to a pineapple farm.

It is difficult to convey something experiential through words and pictures alone, but I shall do my best. On arrival at the farm, we left the comforting breeze of the air conditioned bus and stepped into a heat that engulfed us like some sort of fiery, sweaty hug that clinged to the pores of your skin and followed you relentlessly. The farm manager introduced himself and explained that his 4X4 pick-up truck was the only vehicle that would be capable of transporting us across the farm. By my count, eighteen of us crammed into the truck, praying that our insurance would cover the coccyx damage incurred as we flew merrily over potholes whilst seated in the bed of the trailer, tilted sideways at 30°. Some of the farm workers were fertilizing the pineapples when we made our first stop, and we learnt that in a single day they could fertilize as many as 10,000 plants! The workers planted the pineapples with such speed and precision they made it look easy, so we decided to try have a go at it. Feeling invincible after our off-roading experience, and wielding scythes and plant tops, we risked life and limb to try planting too. It turns out that it wasn’t actually easy, the farmers were just considerably more skilled than us and could plant the pineapples with 10X as much speed and accuracy as we could. Then again, they were wearing gloves…

Health and Safety?! Health and Schmafety

The farm has massive international export demands, planting and exporting hundreds of thousands of pineapples every month after they have been fertilized and forcibly ripened over short periods of time. The quality demands are fiercely strict, but thankfully, many of the pineapples that do not meet supermarket’s qualitative or aesthetic demands are made into juice or tinned, as opposed to wasted. When we were in Ghana, the exchange rate from cedis to pounds was around 5-1, and at the farm a standard worker may earn just 8 cedis per day! While living costs in Ghana may be cheaper, this still seemed seriously low considering the intense heat, high quotas, and long hours in which the farmers are expected to work. The hawks that had been circling ahead of us seemed to be eyeing us up as we slowly roasted in the lunchtime heat of the equatorial sunshine, so after a tour of the factory, we piled back into our van, relishing the leg-room, and headed off for the Village of Hope.

The views of rural Ghana were phenomenal, as we drove through the leafy green countryside that contrasted so vividly with the hot red soil and monolithic termite mounds. The Village of Hope is a charitably run organisation housing pre-, primary, and secondary schools, a boarding sixth form, a children’s home, farm, clinic and hospital on a vast and beautiful campus. In Accra itself, the Village also runs a vocational training centre for former street children who may want to go into more practical professions instead of Higher Education. The pupils produce excellent results, and it seems this may be due to the warm (figuratively and literally) and caring environment in which they learn. The orphans who live on campus all attend the school there, alongside children from the surrounding communities. Those who live in the orphanage are cared for by husband and wife partners who act as parents to a house of twenty children. The Village was so tranquil and calm (presumably because the children were still at school) and it was a real shame to leave behind such a strong, caring community.

We were seriously hungry by this point, and made an emergency pit stop for pizza on the way back to the hotel. One of my favourite things about Ghana was the continual supply of snacks available when sat in a hot vehicle in slow traffic. There are hundreds of street sellers on the main roads selling a multitude of goods including food and drink, so our favourite plantain chips were always readily at hand for a fraction of the price of a packet of crisps back home! When we arrived back at the hotel we discovered that in our absence, the Law students had been working seriously hard…on their tans…by the pool. In their defense (geddit?!) it turns out their morning had been more traumatic than our stunt driving experience. They had visited Nsawam Prison, a Medium-Security prison whose conditions sounded horrific.

After supper at the hotel we headed out to meet our friends from LU Ghana at a karaoke bar and grill called Republic. We all flatly refused to join in with the karaoke, but the local shots proved to be surprisingly persuasive… Before long, a selection of the group – who for the preservation of their dignity shall remain nameless – were treating the surrounding area to loud, enthusiastic renditions of songs that they shall never want to listen to again…