Volunteer Feedback on their Sports Placements

SPORTS FEEDBACK	Return to the Ghana Home Page and the list of all our projects in Ghana TO APPLY FOR THIS PROJECT, PLEASE CLICK HERE
NAME: Jonathan Childs and Chris Vaughan AGE: 18 PLACEMENT: Coaching Cricket COUNTRY: Accra, Ghana
Hello Travellers!!
Well, we've been here 6 weeks now, coaching, hopefully, the next Ghana cricket team!
The schools have been fantastic to teach at. We've had a lot of help from the sports teachers to calm the kids down! We had the tournament on the 14th March, which saw our four schools battle it out for the Traveller's U12's Cricket Tourney 2008. We saw a lot of good cricket being played and the improvements they made from their first day of learning was evident.
The coaching has, generally, been very good, with only a few problems occurring during our project, which I have informed Aloysius about. Aloysius has been fantastic help to us. Although we haven't seen him much, he has tried to keep in contact with us and sorted out the cricket tournament very well so all Chris and I had to think about was the cricket, which was very helpful.
The family for the past 6 weeks, the Opuku family, have been very warming to us staying there. They've cooked up some fabulous meals and have been very helpful to us when we have needed some help finding our way around. The children at the house are fantastic! They're very keen to explore your room, and sweets seems to be very high on the list. However, they haven't been scared of two white men staying with them at all.
Walking to Sambel is probably one of the most amazing things ever! You walk up from the house on Mosuku Road and people from everywhere are shouting out "Obruni" but you just give them a smile, ask them how they are and they feel respected. I mean, at home, people wouldn't give you a second look but you don't mind the curiosity of the kids, who come rushing to your feet and grap at your arms and just continuously tug or pinch your skin... you truly feel as though you are doing something fantastic for the kids we have taught.
Now, we are off travelling to see the marvels of what Ghana has to show!!
Jon
NAME: Chris Brindley AGE: 23 PLACEMENT: Coaching Cricket COUNTRY: Accra, Ghana
In the summer of 2006 I went to Ghana where I coached cricket to boys and girls under the age of 13. I coached cricket at two local schools St Mathews and Royal Diadum. I always tried to coach the boys and girls separately because I found it easier. Sometimes that was a problem because of the school time table.
From the minute I started to coach cricket, the boys and girls really enjoyed playing a sport they did not know much about. For example, the children were always willing to carry the cricket equipment. Before beginning, I wrote all the children's names down so that I could mark their bowling, fielding and batting. I also used to coach the basics, such as catching, and after a short period of time, taught them how to run in between the wickets and to bowl over-arm.
Watching the children improve their cricket skills was a brilliant experience.
After a month of coaching cricket, I organised the Travellers Cricket Tournament with the help of the Travellers staff, between the two schools where I was coaching as part of my placement, Royal Diadum and St Matthews. The tournament was a good opportunity for the children to play a game of cricket competitively, which they hardly ever get the opportunity to do. I selected 2 teams of boys and girls from the two schools that I coached.
The cricket tournament was held at the only cricket ground in Ghana where the Ghana National Cricket team train. The boys and girls had ten over’s of batting and bowling. If the bowling side got a wicket, the batting side lost five runs. Every four over’s new batters and bowlers started to bowl and bat. If a bowler got a wicket, the batter was not out, he just lost his side five runs. The reason why we did this was to give the children more of a chance to practice their batting and bowling. I was the umpire during the game and the other volunteers helped me with the scoring of the game from the cricket pavilion.
The tournament was the highlight of my cricket placement in Ghana as I could see that all the hard work that I had done during the coaching placement had paid off for the children.
Overall, going to Ghana to live with a Ghanaian family and to coach cricket in the local schools was an experience of a lifetime. The children were so grateful of the coaching and it was something that I will never forget.
Going travelling at the weekend with other volunteers was another amazing experience. *Chris Brindley*
NAME: Tom Thorley AGE: 23 PLACEMENT: Coaching Cricket COUNTRY: Accra, Ghana
It was a dry clear and bright morning in late July, it was the morning of my Travellers Cricket Tournament. The dust rose from my feet as I walked down the road from Kwabenya to atomic. I was early; I think Aloysius nervousness had rubbed off slightly on me. It was already bustling when I reached the junction, the fan ice men were out in force and the ladies were just beginning to fry their yams and boil cook their corn.
I swung my bag on to a tro ahead of me and tried to concentrate on my route, I had to change at the new tro station, little more that a cleared dust bowl with a hut in the middle, in the next village to get to Achimota. It was never an easy task, but I’d got to know one or two of the drivers and there was usually a friendly face to point me in the right direction.
Once I arrived at the school, there was a long walk through the grounds to the cricket pitch on the far side of the site. It took me along a well-maintained tarmac road, past white buildings, churches, schoolrooms and dorms. Then a left turn onto the cricket ground's road, a dirt track, boggy in places despite the heat, which was now increasing rapidly. Aloysius was there already proudly showing off the tournament banner.
I did a few jobs to help Aloysius, climbed a tree for a branch that he wanted for something and then settled down to drawing up score sheets, having failed to print them off the day before at busy internet. Various members of the national team arrive in typical Ghanaian fashion, slowly with out hurry.
It was 10, the tournament was supposed to start, the ground was ready, the umpires were ready and the teams were still not here. I wasn't worried yet; I had been here two months. I knew that it would be a first if anyone turned up on time, let alone a bus full of school children. We had a quick warm up on the square some of the Ghana team bowling me batting and a really helpful guy from the Ghana Cricket Association Filming it all. Forty minutes later, I was a little more concerned, then relieved as a bus carrying the first team arrived and a flock of small yellow t-shirted children poured out. Most of the rest of the day is a blur.
I remember very little of the cricket. My day was very busy. I had instructed the umpires, two guys from the national squad, on the rules of pairs and they were amazing good at helping the kids get through the games. I kept score and tried to organise the next teams from the side while the games were going on. The most striking memory I have is the smiling faces of the players as they came off the pitch. Even the teams that lost weren't disheartened. Those not playing were the best crowd I could have hope for. One little lad brought his trumpet and blasted away on it all day.
Lunch was both well deserved and well received. Aloysius had surpassed himself organising bottles of minerals and chicken and rice for everyone. The smell of Maggie shrimp was everywhere as the jollof rice disappeared quickly down gleaming faces of players and spectators.
The result was a little predictable, Achimota school won easily but they had the oldest, some would say too old, and best practiced squad. The other schools were close on their heels, never giving up. They all had bags of natural talent; a good eye for the ball and no one could have been more enthusiastic.
The day ended with me giving out a cold drink to the best players in each team, as a token for their efforts, and a cup to the victors. And the buses left, full of tired and happy players. I travelled home squeezed in the tro with Sambel Academy. I think they finished last, but despite that they had the best spirit and sang all the way home, a full hour at the tops of their voices.
The level of cricket may not have been high, but it was one of the most enjoyable days I have spent on a cricket pitch. I've watched and played cricket all over the world, at all levels and only on rare occasions have I felt like I did after the tournament was over. The rush of pleasure from seeing how much the children enjoyed it was for me unrivalled. Tom Thorley

NAME: Louis Rutherford AGE: 18 PLACEMENT: Coaching Football COUNTRY: Accra, Ghana
Question: What experience do you feel you are gaining?
Answer: Ghana is a very different country to England and when I landed I felt pretty overwhelmed as I drove through Accra on a Saturday night!! However I soon acclimatised to Ghanaian life after meeting my roommate and fantastic host and found everyone to be genuinely friendly. The children and adults we’ve been coaching have all worked hard and seem to appreciate the sense of fun we are trying to inject into their technical development. I’ve already learnt so much from the people I’ve met in Ghana, in regards to how we should treat each other and ourselves, in life.
Question: So far what is the best thing about your placement?
Answer: Football is a major passion in Ghana and its been infectious, not just in our coaching sessions, but also when we ourselves have joined in local games or watched champions league matches in the next-door bar. As a huge football fan myself its great to be living in this kind of environment. I would therefore have to say that the Travellers Football Tournament we have just completed, pitting the U12 teams from the schools where we coach, together in a day of festivities was a joy to watch. At times passions ran high and I doubt tournament organisers in England would appreciate 3 pitch invasions!!! But it epitomised the celebratory nature of the day, which was a pleasure to be part of.
Question: Would you recommend this placement to anyone else?
Answer: Ghana’s a great country and I’d recommend to anyone that they should come here but in relation to my placement specifically, I would say what sets Travellers aside from other gap year organisers in the country is that the experience they provide is of an authentic Ghana. We aren’t just staying with a Ghanaian family; we eat and drink with them in the evenings and meet their friends and join in their celebrations and football matches. We have been immersed in the culture and the larger organisations can’t offer such an individual experience.
Question: What type of person do you think this placement would suit?
Answer: Travellers programmes are for travellers basically!! If you love travelling are curious to explore different cultures and met different people then try one of the programs. If you find a program that appeals to you and you feel you can give a helping hand to the recipients involved then you should enjoy yourself and help make a difference to whoever your helping.
Question: Can you describe a typical day?
Answer: Our day would start early, usually involving getting up between 5.45 and 6.30 which was an effort for my roommate and I as we can hardly be described as morning people, but a combination of an insistent alarm clock and a freezing cold bucket shower (you grow to love them!!) and the knowledge that breakfast was waiting for us on the table, usually ensured we didn’t have to rush… (usually!!). Breakfast varied in what was served but everything was lovely. Porridge, strangely popular in such a hot country, but never the less tasty was interchanged with bread and hot chocolate, fried egg toasted sandwiches and rice-water. Rice-water is exactly what it sounds like but hot and sloppy with salt and is really nice. You sweat a lot in Ghana and whilst this makes it very important to drink lots of water, it also means you’ll be requiring a lot of salt and this breakfast is fantastic at replenishing supplies. (I recommend taking Vitamin C tablets that you can add to water - wards off flu, settles stomach, etc and something like Marmite to add to bread.) Then, slap on a bit of sun-cream, don your travellers t-shirt and lug the balls over your shoulder out to the road to grab a tro-tro (minibuses)
Our location, on a road with tro-tro’s passing every 30 seconds, all going in our direction, meant that you couldn’t think of a more ideal mode of transport if you tried. Well, this is a slight exaggeration, tro-tro’s are cramped and you may hear a few horror stories, but we found them to be great and soooo cheap. Arriving at our first school of the morning after a 15 minute tro-tro trip, we entered the school gates to varying degrees of friendly pandemonium depending on the school you happen to be at. You’ll soon get into a different routine with each school, but most tended to invite you to sit down with the teachers and have a morning chat whilst the children got ready. We got really friendly with many of the teachers this way and it was one of the best things about living in ‘Ghanaian time’ (which is a much hazier and laid-back version of normal time!!) Many schools may offer you a much needed ‘pure-water,’ which is a sachet of water about the size of the palm of your hand which you rip the corner off, with your teeth and suck on. They’re fine to drink and heaven chilled. I recommend buying a pack of 30 for your room as they’re only around 8,000 cedis whilst coaching. Once the children are ready, (‘Ghanaian time’ dictating, and this can get a bit annoying so either have a brief chat with the teachers about it, or try to leave a good gap between each session) take them out to the pitch and either wait for them to get changed or, if they’re changed already, dive straight into starting your session.
The pitches you coach on are usually a good size, though with some exceptions, and are hard and sandy, with no grass and unfortunately sometimes a fair bit of empty ‘pure-water’ sachets lying about. Dribbling and long passes are therefore difficult to execute on this surface due to the bumpy hard ground making it hard to have the ball completely under-control. Ghanaians tend to compensate for this by keeping the ball on the ground, using short passes and trying to take a touch before moving it on. Once you’ve introduced yourself to the excited children and talked a bit about fair-play, how long you’ll be there and what you’re looking to teach with them, you can begin your first drill. When I was coaching there was two of us which meant that you can split up the children and take half each but if you’re on your own, it shouldn’t matter as you can still split them up and take it in turns to supervise each half. Our first lessons simply consisted of creating 2/4 circles, with a ball for each circle and the players spaced around the outside. As the player with the ball dribbles into the middle s/he calls out the name of another player and passes to him/her and follows the pass taking their place as s/he dribbles out into the middle and makes his/her pass etc. It gives you a chance to know a few players names and also gauge the general standard of the children you’re playing with. A drawback with this game is that its not guaranteed that every player gets a touch of the ball so as soon as the children have grasped it, move on to stating that players that have been in the middle, squat down once they are back on the outside of the circle, leaving only players that haven’t touched the ball, still standing. You can progress again onto doing a turn in the middle (inside turn (instep), outside turn (outside of foot), drag-back (sole) and a cryuff turn (inside turn through legs)) and then having two players in the middle and instructing the players, whilst stressing that they stay in a circle, to pass it around the defenders in the middle (swapping places with them if the defender makes a tackle/interception.) This tended to fill our first hour, so we then assembled in the middle of the pitch, asking the children to bring in the balls, and had another quick talk about technique, what we saw that was good/bad and also just friendly chat about… whatever! before taking them back into the school.
For the most part, the kids were infectiously enthusiastic, friendly and genuinely talented at every school we worked at. We generally did 3 or 4 sessions a day, usually around an hour in length and found this to be pleasantly exhausting!! To be honest, the most important thing in making sure you’re not completely knackered at the end of each day is to arrange your timetable really carefully. Achimota, the one school that we were teaching at that wasn’t within 20 minutes of our home, (it was actually an hour away) we gave a whole day of sessions to, so that we were just travelling at the start and end of each day. The other day’s we managed to arrange so that Achimota’s sessions were the last in the day so that we could go via one school to another school and so on. Obviously the school’s needs is the number one concern and its their timetables you are going to be working to, but you have a large degree of flexibility with some of the schools, so use this to your advantage. You might be lucky enough to have lunch provided for you by some of the schools if you arrive at lunch time, which is a really welcome gesture and much appreciated, but if not, you can always pick up some great food at street stalls, or from street vendors.
The fruit in Ghana is amazing, with fruit-stalls dotting most streets, selling mangoes, bananas, oranges, pineapples, avocados and the odd watermelon. They’re really cheap and provide the perfect healthy snack. If you fancy something a bit sweeter though, you won’t be disappointed. ‘Fan-ice’ ice-cream vendors, with a box attached to the front of their bike and a horn tooting wildly, can be found everywhere and sell the best vanilla ice-cream in the world (no joke). Ask for fan-ice vanilla and enjoy… Also available is the nice frozen strawberry yoghurt (fan-yogo), frozen chocolate milk called fan-choco and Tampico (a bit like orange calypo). I lived off all of these religiously but wasn’t able to sample every fan ice-cream as my search for orange flavoured ‘fan-pop’ was fruitless (pun intended!). Once your sessions for the day are completed, slump down on a tro-tro and make your way back home for a well earned nap or, if you’ve still got some energy, join in a local football game before trooping home for a shower and then dinner.
Ghanaians eat early in the evening (around 6) so our timetables meant that we invariably ate separately from the family in the dining room inside, rather than with them outside in the yard, which was a shame, but I’m sure you’ll be able to arrange whatever arrangement suits you best with your hosts. I’d better mention now that my host family were absolutely amazing. There were around 8 adults though friends and relatives popping around, ensured that this number was normally more like 14! with 4 children adding to the total. Everyone’s first consideration was our happiness and our host especially, strove at all occasions to involve us in all aspects of Ghanaian life and it was this welcoming, friendly atmosphere that really helped make my stay in Ghana so enjoyable. We lived day-to-day absorbed in the Ghanaian culture and the food we ate in the evening was no exception.
We sample each Ghanaian staple including banku, kenke, fufu and red-red. To be honest I can’t tell the difference between a few of them but banku/fufu/kenke consists of a thick gloopy ball of maize/rice, in a tomatoey sauce with meat or fish. It’s pretty nice, especially fufu, and they all fill you up so after a long day, its just what you need. Red-red is really nice, and is plantain with a black-eyed peas spicy sauce and chicken/fish. You’ll also get served rice or pasta occasionally, again with a tomatoey sauce with meat/fish and yam’s which taste a bit like roast potatoes and are tasty with a tomato and onion dip. Once you’ve eaten, make sure you put on some repellent and don’t wear dark clothes, (apparently the mossies love them!!) and you can go out for some ‘sips’ at a bar sampling Ghanaian beers, which are pretty good, and local spirits which are well worth a try (look out for Lime and Ginger).
I was going to say, “If you’re a football fan…” but I presume you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, so instead I’ll say, For all volunteers, I recommend watching live Champions League or some premiership matches (usually not live but replayed the next day) at your local bar and the atmosphere, especially when watching a Chelsea match (Boo!!!) is unbelievable so make sure you experience the big games there. Depending on your vicinity to Accra you can head to any number of the clubs there but my recommendation for a wicked night out would have to be along Kokrobite beach where there’s a reggae night every Saturday (also check out Bojo beach 10 mins away where there is a small beach charge (10K) but you can go for a canoe trip across a lagoon to a cocktail bar and beach!! Also check out the monkey sanctuary half way in between the two, best time to go is 9/9.30am, ask around when you get to the little village beginning with D (sorry can’t remember the name but there’s a poster in Big Milly’s and its in the Bradt Ghana guide.)
You might have to stay the night but the trip to the monkey sanctuary in the morning (I presume its open Sunday’s but check) makes it worth it and I recommend the seafood at the African Academy for Music and Language Restaurant (on the beach!) After the evening out, whether to entertainment on your doorstep or further-a-field, you return home (inform hosts if you’re going to be late) and crash, ready for another day…
Also I would just like to thank Andrew Kemp, Katie Simmons and Richard Cowley for all their help on the project and Aloysius Agbavittor and especially Joe Opoku from my host family for making my stay in Ghana so enjoyable. Thank you Travellers!!
TRAVELLERS FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT - a report from Travellers Organiser in Ghana, Aloysius.
As part of Travellers Worldwide commitment to developing sports we run regular football tournaments in Ghana through our volunteers which will allow the children that our volunteers coach the opportunity to play in a football tournament for the Travellers Trophy. This is the only opportunity the children have of playing in a football tournament for there school. Through out volunteers fees we provide all the food, transport and prizes for the schools involved in the tournament.
The Travellers Football volunteers recently held a under 14s football tournament on the 2nd of July 2007 for the 4 schools that they work with, here is a report based on the tournament.
The under 14 football tournament was held at the Atomic football pitch and the participating schools were Achimoto Primary School, Sambel Academy, St Matthews School and Royal Diadem School.
The tournament started at 9 am. The tournament was played using the round robin system with each team playing one another and it started with an opening ceremony. In all, each team played three games each. By 2 pm, there was a break for lunch for all teams to eat and have their refreshment which was provided by Travellers through the volunteers funding of their placements.
At the end of the whole tournament, St Matthews and Achimota School were tied at the top with four points. At the bottom of the table Royal Diadem and Sambel Academy were tied at two points each. To determine the first, second place team the top two schools had to have a final match against each other.
The final match was really exciting as both teams desperately tried to score and win the game. After the usual 25 minutes of play for each half, St. Matthews emerged victors with a 2 – 1 win over Achimota School and became the first Travellers Worldwide trophy holders.
The prize giving and closing session started at 5 pm. The volunteers, namely Joseph, Moritz, David, Simon, Rebecca, Sinead, Rebekah and Jennifer were very instrumental in giving out awards and trophies to the players. The awards given by the volunteers included the best goal of the tournament which went to Achimota School. The best player of the tournament which went to the goal keeper of St. Matthews and the overall winning team of the tournament going to St. Matthews who received the Travellers Trophy which they will need to defend for the next tournament.
A big well done to all the volunteers for organising the tournament without them the children at the school would not have the opportunity to play in a tournament like this as for many of them it was their first opportunity to play in a proper football tournament.
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