If there's one person I could do with getting on well with in Ghana, it's Prince. He's my closest colleague, my Ghanaian counterpart, between the two of us we need to look after all the volunteers and we also need to live together. Preferably happily.
When I first met him, I was quite concerned that we would never bond. As inconveniences go this was massive! We seemed to have nothing in common. He likes football and has almost no other interests. He’s not fussy about how he gets involved with the sport whether it be playing it, watching it (TV or live), training for it or playing football video games. This is difficult for me because no matter how hard I try (and I have) I can't make myself care about whether 11 people who I don't even know have won the game they just played and even if I did care I still wouldn't want to indulge in the same sport for 2 consecutive weekends, let alone every day of every week, variety is the spice of life! (Or at least, the spice of my life).
Anyway, I decided that I would find some common ground by joining in his workout sessions in the mornings (he’s under the impression that if only I do the same amount of exercise as him I could have a 6 pack within a matter of weeks, as he does. He seems to have no idea that, for me at least, I'll need to loose some significant weight before you can see any 6 pack that may lurk underneath. For all I know, there might be one there already! This is a significant disconnect, since he’ll eat up to 4 meals a day if he can get his hands on it and carbohydrates are the done thing here). Despite my good intentions and the (admittedly questionable) incentive of my rippling 6 pack, I was soon getting bored of workouts in the morning. It’s not top of my list of home comforts before breakfast (actually I don’t have a list of things I like to do before breakfast, upon waking up, eating is the ONLY thing I'm interested in). However, since he was very good at exercise and I was very bad, I felt that it helped to even up our relationship since I was more confident in the classroom. As things have progressed and we’ve got to know each other better, things have got rapidly easier. He’s been teaching me Ewe (the local language); I’ve been teaching him to swim; he’s been teaching me to twerk (if only I was sure what twerking was I’m sure I’d learn much faster!), and he recently bought me home a giant slice of watermelon because he knows how much I’ve been missing my balanced British diet. He knows what my favourite local meal is (‘redred’) and we’re going to go for a run together tomorrow morning (at 6am because Ghanaians love getting up early, even on Sundays).
Part way through
their first week in training, the volunteers were given 24 hours to go and do a challenge, so their teacher, Prince and I went off to a swimming pool at a local hotel. It was lovely; the hottest outdoor pool you've ever been in. The
hotel was built on a hilltop, so from the poolside we could look back down over
the town of Ho. Swimming was particularly nice because it’s so hot and humid
here that no matter how much you sweat, it can’t evaporate fast enough to keep
you cool or dry. Prince can’t swim so I set about teaching him: he has good
arms, but not good legs, they sink. I tried to get him to float face up, on top of the water, at one point
but there was abject panic. One thing he does like, is running races with me
through the water, so that at least is one thing we can share. We’ve said I’m
going to teach him to swim if he teaches me to dance. Personally I feel like
I’ve got the more difficult task here, but maybe he feels the same.
On the following weekend we took the whole team back there to swim again. This was challenging for some,
because Ghanaians typically can’t swim. True to this stereotype, only 1 of our Ghanaian team members could swim and even then his style
was described by a non-swimmer to be “horrible”. He nearly drowned trying to
win a bet that required him to swim a whole length (although 50GHC
was on the line – that’s about £10, a lot of money!) I’m very happy to say that
a quick thinking UK volunteer rescued him when it started to look like he was
in trouble and his head went under at about 4/5 of the way there.
Prince obviously had
the advantage of having had the one swimming lesson I'd already given him earlier that week. I’d been trying to teach him breast stroke – his arms were good
but his legs were like windmills. It’s fair to say that he still couldn’t swim.
The key barrier is that Prince sinks in water. I think that when you spend
enough time in the pool, you develop a kind of instinct for what keeps you up,
what moves you left, what speeds you about etc and so it’s an alien landscape to
Prince, who hasn’t had the benefit of a lifetime of pool experiences. I’ve
walked to and fro with him, holding him up to the surface so that he can
practice doing widths, legs thrashing wildly. Then on Saturday we had a
breakthrough. I am delighted to announce that Prince has now swam a width of
the pool…UNDERWATER. This is perfect, because if you’re already underwater you
can’t sink any further. He is like a little submarine! Breast stroke arms,
kicking legs. At first it came about by accident when we were having a gliding
competition but then we realised we were onto a good thing and practiced over
and over. I was ecstatic. We’re going to work on surfacing and breathing next
time, who knows, he may even be the first Ghanaian in the team to swim a length
of the pool.
He'd better get busy with my dance lessons!
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