The move to Prampram

After 2 months of training, and a relatively hand-held introduction to Ghana we’ve struck out on our own. Lydia and I now live in Prampram.

‘Living’ however is a relative term. We moved in on Wednesday last week, with no power, and no water. Thankfully we’d come earlier and sprayed insecticide everywhere so bugs were not a problem.

The chalets have been empty for the past 6 months and to say the sea breeze has damaged them is an understatement. Sockets are rusted, door locks are frozen and (most irritatingly for anyone who does DIY) every screw snaps off as you try to remove it, making repair work a nightmare.

Did I mention the hole in the roof and the three missing shutters? Thankfully it didn’t rain; for the first two days. Then a night-time storm hit us, and it poured. Upstairs and downstairs flooded, and having saved what we could we got back into bed and tried to ignore the intermittent drops landing on our faces.

The storm also knocked out our recently reconnected electricity (literally, someone had nicked the copper wires before we moved in.) The local area was affected, no one had power. We then worked out it was actually us who had taken out the power, some very shoddy underground cabling and a 6" deep water covering of the drive had resulted in a short circuit. Of course because of the ever present rust our main trip switch had failed to turn. We're keeping our heads down and hoping the electricity company doesn't come our way.

Indeed, ‘living’ in the West, and ‘living’ in rural Ghana are very different things. But that’s why we’re here, and to be honest, we love it.