Social Events

First of all, the internet connection has been a bit of a problem lately, so I apologize for the lapse in posting.

Thursday was Ghana’s Independence Day. 51 years of independence. Very exciting! We went to the town square to watch the festivities, and play 'spot the obruni' (white person)...you can spot one a mile away! Amanda has a nice write up about the day so check out her blog link at the top right.

This holiday also happens to be the same time that the forestry university organized its annual Faculty Week.

The forestry campus here in Sunyani is a satellite campus from Kumasi (a large city about 1 ½ hours away). Each year as part of Faculty Week, the three faculties from the two campuses, the Forestry Faculty here in Sunyani, and the Natural Resources and the Agroculture Faculties from Kumasi, get together for a day of sporting competitions. The winning Faculty of each event gets a trophy and bragging rights over the other two for the next year. This year the event took place here on Friday in Sunyani at the community football stadium. There were three sporting events; men’s football (or soccer as it’s known at home), women’s football, and men’s volleyball, with one team for each from each of the faculties. The teams and their fans from Kumasi were bussed in to Sunyani for the festivities.

It was an all day event at the stadium full of drumming, cheering, singing, and of course the games themselves. Even if you’re not a football fan, I think most people know about the type of fans that this sport has…very passionate, and very dedicated to the sport. This type of fan is definitely alive and well here in Ghana! Perhaps you can imagine the excitement and noise that happened when our own Forestry Faculty took the trophy in ALL THREE events! It was so much fun to witness and be a part of congratulating all the teams and players, although I think my ears are still ringing from all the noise! Definitely a cultural experience!

The Project team got together last Wednesday evening for a social get together. We realized that due to the fact that Amanda and I are living on the forestry campus, we’ve had lots of opportunities to socialize with those students. We haven’t had as much opportunity to get to know the students at the S.Poly campus, so we decided it was high time.

We arranged for snacks and beverages for the evening, and invited everyone on the team to the office (which is quite a large room) at 7pm for a games evening. The early part of the evening was spent listening to music and just milling about chatting, and then Amanda led us all through a game of ‘Telephone Pictionary,’ a very fun game which just as you would think, is a blend of ‘Telephone’ and ‘Pictionary.’ We then split into smaller groups and played some Canadian and Ghanaian games. I think everyone thought the evening was a great success, and we will make a bigger effort to have more social time with all the team members in the future.