26 January 2025 – 1:00 am: Packing; 5:00 am: “Return journey” to Accra
This report begins with a dinner on Saturday evening at the home of our long-standing project partner Rex Mensah. For the second time, we had a wonderful evening at his place with great Ghanaian dishes such as fried yam (fried yam roots, RedRed – a dish made from red beans), spinach beef stew, rice and fried plantains. After quenching our thirst with delicious club beer, this time the wine lover offered us Argentinian wine, dry for the men and sweet for the ladies.
In a way, this is a wonderful end to our time in Sunyani. It’s good to have Rex there as a partner and friend. He helps us tirelessly with the many different problems we have to solve.
Dinner lasted until the early morning. Our problem was that we still had to pack because we were picked up at 5:00 a.m. to avoid the traffic.
Although we left so early, it took us just over 8 hours to drive the 360 km from Sunyani to Accra. The week in and around Sunyani was incredible. We hardly had any time to relax or simply document our work. We’ll have to do that tomorrow and on Monday .
In addition to the workshop, which we conducted with the ICT department of the Catholic University and partly with the university’s management board, we also focused on visiting 6 hospitals in Sunyani and the surrounding area. We wanted to see with our own eyes how the beds supplied are being used and what the consequences are for the facilities that have now been waiting for the remaining beds for two years.
We visited a seventh hospital in Berekum, where we agreed to cooperate on the maintenance of the hospital beds already delivered and those still to come. Another highlight for us was the establishment of an NGO as part of our activities under the “WhatsApp4PregnantWomen+YoungMothers” project. In this way, we aim to provide long-term and sustainable support for this initiative. 4 visits to members of these groups to see the work of our project partners on the ground confirmed our enthusiasm for this initiative and reinforced the decision to create a reliable legal framework for it.
Pretty tired, we set off on the journey to Accra at 5:00 a.m.. We thought that the traffic would be a little less on Sunday morning. That was a complete misjudgement. It was unbelievable how many cars and trucks were already on the road so early.
There was a simple explanation for the long-distance truck traffic: the road we were driving on, the so-called “western corridor”, is the main connection to Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and there is simply no quieter phase on this road. It’s unbelievable how many heavily loaded 40-60 ton trucks struggle along this road day in, day out. A second reason was the transportation of excavators, raiders and other heavy equipment for new gold mines near Sunyani. Countless vehicles loaded, with green-painted open-cast mining machines came towards us.
Our driver Richard also had a simple explanation for the car traffic. Monday is the last registration day for students at colleges and universities. Everyone has to arrive at their places of study by this weekend at the latest. For example, one passenger told us that he would be traveling from Sunyani to Ho. For him, this means that he first has to travel 8 hours to Accra and from there another 4 hours to Ho, “depening on the traffic” as they say in Ghana. At least 12 hours for about 480km. There is no direct connection that could shorten the journey.
After we had rested a bit, we still had to prepare for Monday. We still have several meetings ahead of us before heading home at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning.