Volunteering for SCEF in Ghana

Hello, my name is Franziska and I am a volunteer from Germany working with SCEF. I am doing a voluntary service called “weltwärts” and I will be staying in Ghana for 11 months. I am  living with a host family for this time. I arrived on the 7th September 2018, which means that I am here for almost two months now.  

Working with SCEF and staying in another country for such a long time is a completely new experience for me. In the first weeks me and the other volunteers had time to get to know the place, some of the children and of course the people I am going to work with for almost one year. They introduced us to everything SCEF does for the children and their parents and I was surprised by the amount of work SCEF does for them.

My first weeks in Ghana were very stressful because I have never been to an African country before and everything is different from the country I come from, so I had to adapt and get used to my new surrounding and a new way of living. At the beginning I was very confused by the Trotro-System and I had difficulties to find my way but now it feels very normal to sit in a Trotro. One thing that is still annoying is the traffic you are stuck in everyday.

Furthermore I experienced that almost everyone I talked to is so helpful, if you lose your orientation you just have to ask someone and they will show you the way or walk it with you. A lot of people are very open minded  and look out more for each other than people in my country do.

About my work with SCEF I can say that it has been very stressful at the beginning because it was not easy for me to control the children and to make them listen to me but with the more days I work here it gets better and I feel more comfortable about working with them.

After four weeks I went to the first school to start the monitoring. At my first day of monitoring I was very nervous because It was the first time that I was doing something like that and I did not really know how it will work out or if I will be able to get a connection to the children. When I walked into the school all the children started shouting “Obroni”, they run towards me and hugged me. I have never experienced something like that so on the one side it was very funny to me but on the other side it just felt a little strange because I just wanted to walk inside to talk to some of the children. The more conversations I had with the children the more comfortable I felt while talking to them.

We are now preparing the children for our Christmas event. I am part of the team who organizes a play, some dancing and a little bit of singing. At the moment I meet the choir group every Monday to practise some songs with them and it is a lot of work but also a lot of fun singing with them.

It  is very interesting and diverse working in this place and I am grateful to get the opportunity to spend my time in Ghana working together with SCEF because for me I feel like I am learning more about the culture of Ghana while working with children. I am looking forward to the next months and especially our Christmas event.

This has been my experiences so far ,I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Greetings from Ghana