Day 3 - Museum, market, beach day

Today we visited the museum for the memorial of the late president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah.  The grounds were beautiful, with fountains and statues and lots of people were having their wedding photos as Sunday is a popular day to get married in Ghana.   We were so lucky to have been able to get so close to all the pictures and memorabilia and had a tour guide who taught us all about Ghana’s fight for independence. Kevin and John were specially selected to feature in one wedding photo by a very proud groom. Coincidentally it happened to be the anniversary of the declaration of independence and it felt special to be there on an important day!

We then headed off to do a bit of shopping in a nearby market place.  It was so overwhelming, with traders surrounding us showing all their beautiful goods before we were even able to get off the mini bus.  Harry bought a traditional African shirt whilst Sean and Rhys took advantage of the jewellery stalls…Sean’s haggling skills were not up to much!  Mr Street, Miss Juszczyk, James and Stephen all bought some beautiful paintings from an artist on the beach.

Next stop was the beach.  Due to the bank holiday weekend the beach was packed full of people.  There was such a party atmosphere with lots of music, stalls of food and people dancing around!  We saw this as a perfect opportunity to throw a rugby ball around and before we knew it we were playing duck duck goose and touch rugby with some friends we made on the beach.  Many of the boys had a paddle in the sea and with strict instructions not to swim in the sea, it was very funny to see Dieter trying to wash himself in ankle deep water! Everyone got heavily involved including clinical finishing from the Dombrandt himself.  

We got the rugby ball out and played around for a bit, with Amazulu and the BIG body guard (aka The Tank), which was very amusing, especially seeing David run away from The Tank and getting munched! Also when Ray decided to ‘liberate’ the entire beach by becoming the first person to (accidently) remove some clothing…

In the evening we had a real treat, we were so disappointed to miss out on another night of chicken and chips. However, we made up for this with a brilliant Chinese! The staff table decided to alter the mystery fish dish for a chicken sweet and sour. However, the boys did not and were taken aback when a shark was brought out and placed in the middle of the table. Went down well!

We are now off to Kumasi to start the second leg of the journey. There we will be visiting the cocoa farmers and Kuapa Kokoo community to get an understanding of the process a chocolate bar takes.

We also found out today that we didn’t win the Margarat Demidecka award for the second year running, BUT…We did get a specially invented award which gives us ‘special commendation’ for our work!! An award and some freebies are on their way! Very excited!! COME ON FAIRTRADE!!! Woop woop…