27. January 2025 – Our last day of this Ghana trip
The day starts early. Our “film maker” Sven is picked up at 6:00 a.m. for field trips in Accra and the surrounding area. Daniel has to prepare and set up 2 laptops for our new project partner, the Akili Foundation, and Thomas has to finalize and print out the MOU for this new partnership. At 9:00 a.m. we have an appointment with Godwin France, the originator and founder of this foundation. We were somewhat surprised when we went to breakfast at around 7:15 and Godwin was already there. To avoid the traffic in Accra, he had set off on public transport at around 5:00 a.m. in order to be on time. Now we had to improvise to work through the unfinished business at the same time. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long, so we were able to have a working breakfast together at around 8:30 am.
We are particularly looking forward to working with the Akili Foundation. In this project, we want to give children who are receiving chemotherapy in three of Ghana’s leading hospitals the opportunity to continue learning during their long hospital stays. We also want to maintain contact with their school and classmates via video conferencing. Members of the Foundation, usually teachers, offer lessons in these facilities.
The two donated laptops are used on the one hand to teach learning content and on the other to keep in touch with classmates via video conferencing. We are all familiar with the initially selected hospitals, the KorleBu Teaching Hospital and the Ridge Hospital, both in Accra, and the KATH Hospital in Accra. We at HITA e.V. have been in contact with these hospitals for years. All three have large oncology departments in common. Only a few hospitals in Ghana offer chemotherapeutic procedures.
One thing we love in Ghana is coconuts. Soft or hard, we are asked. Today we opt for “hard”, which means that the coconut meat is already hard, as we know it from exported nuts. Soft means that the flesh is still very soft. It is peeled out of the nut with a kind of scraper. This scraper is a piece of nutshell, which is knocked out of the nut with a machete. Not everyone eats the nut meat after drinking the coconut water. We, on the other hand, love it and are delighted every time the coconut seller finally splits the nut with a few practiced blows with the machete so that we can get to the nut meat. Like so many other things, we will miss our daily coconut in the coming months.
After a nice dinner at “Roundabout”, a restaurant with authentic local cuisine, we will be taken to the airport at around 9:00 pm. At 1:30 am we will fly via Istanbul to Frankfurt, where we expect to land at around 2:00 pm.
What a trip! Although we also had some negative experiences in terms of our beds, one highlight followed another. We deepened existing partnerships with various institutions, schools and organizations and entered into two promising new partnerships. We are already looking forward to seeing what will happen in our various projects over the coming months. Are you too? Then visit us on these pages in the future. We look forward to seeing you!