Traveling to Kumasi

May 25, 2015

Today was a long kinda rough day. We had to get up at 5AM to drive up to Kumasi, both to beat the traffic in Accra but also to hopefully get some work done at the school. Unfortunately for me, I didnt really like anything for breakfast in the car, but I still had to take my malaria medicine. The medicine on an empty stomach gave me a stomach ache, which was compounded by the very bumpy roads we were traveling on. Combining that with not having any coffee, I started to get a headache. When we did finally make it to the school, I wasn’t in the greatest of shape.

We did introductions and gave them the supplies that we brought with us. Just like last time, the supplies were received by the head of the school with a full presentation of the gifts. The bad news was that we were then piling into the van again to drive to the hotel. It is about an hour away with the traffic at that time of day. With no food still, I really just wanted to get to the hotel. Luckily, the hotel is very nice. It is a guest house that the Methodist Church runs, 7 stories tall and each of us in our own room if we wanted. I have a balcony that overlooks part of the city even.

We then piled back in the van to go get lunch. I gobbled down what I could while also trying not to make my stomach worse. We were back in the van to get to the school and get some work done. We broke into two groups, one to help build desks and one to help prep the walls for painting. Since I have so much expertise in the painting from last time I was in that group. Of course, the first step is to sand and scrape the walls, so dust was everywhere.

After just a little time of work, we had two buildings pretty much prepped for painting and the other group had 8 desks built, so we were already making good progress. It was getting towards sundown, so we headed back to the hotel, played some Uno while we waited for dinner and just relaxed some.

I did call the family too, but with my physical state being what it was today, my emotional state wasnt great, so I was a bit of a blubbering mess. Hopefully rest and some good work tomorrow will help that out some.