Yewlands FoS : Global

Now back in the UK, the last couple of days of our visit weren’t quite so hectic as the previous days.

After our ‘rest’ day in Accra, we decided to let our drivers have a day off and based ourselves at our accomodation for Sunday. After a later start for some of us, we used this day for processing ideas and thoughts, reflecting and gathering ideas of how we can feedback and progress all that we have found out during our stay in Ghana.

We knew that we would all be busy upon our return so thought it prudent to do the majority of the planning for the Yewlands Family of Schools Carnival before we returned home and whilst we were still together as a group.

I did a draft edit of a short film of the Blue Skies factory which will be shown to assemblies and school staff once Blue Skies have given me the green light.

Derek and Morag have planned several elements of our stall for the Carnival so we can get straight onto putting it together on our return.

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Blue Skies Newsletter May 2008

Dr Julia Piper was interviewed on the BBC Radio Leicester programme ‘Into Africa’

Talking about both their foundation and our involvement on this trip Julia was on the programme two weeks running.

You can hear her first broadcast here: julia-piper-on-into-africa-wk1

and her second broadcast, this time from Ghana here julia_on_radio_wk2

ps: We have checked, and Julia does know what continent she is on, she blames a slip of the tongue!

The next morning all our party bar one reported an incredible storm which had woken them at 3:00am. Torrential rain and almost continuous thunder and lightening continued for about an hour. Morag had wanted to observe the storm but was afraid her bathroom lodger (the bat!) would spring into action. She decided her best course of action would be to armour herself with her sheet! Toby tried unsuccessfully to capture the event on video. Meanwhile in the adjoining room Mr Dawson remained sound asleep and dreamt of the forthcoming eviction of Morag’s bat.

Day six had been assigned as a rest day and a chance for us to visit the capital Accra. We were accompanied by Gloria (Anthony Pile’s Personal Assistant) and a couple of other employees of Blue Skies who made us very welcome and proved to be great company. After a late lunch a visit to the town beach allowed Toby the opportunity to rent a surf board and catch some waves whilst the rest of the group opted for the more leisurely British pursuit of paddling in the sea. Read the rest of this entry »

• Reflection
• Contrast
• Accra Mall
• Friends
• Relaxation
• Surf
• Storm
• Powerful
• Gulf of Guinea
• Colonial
• Barter
• Meadowhall
• Sea Monster
• Death

Blue Skies April Newsletter

We apologise for the lateness of this blog. This can be put down to the following:

1. Day five, the longest and most exhausing day
2. We arrived back to our accomodation at 10:00pm having survived a journey which can only be likened to ‘The Wacky Races’

Our mission was to travel to the ‘Central Region’ which is central in terms of East to West, but actually very near the south coast. David Piper had spent the previous 12 months researching the needs of four villages. These villages have commercial links with Blue Skies and one of the needs for some of the villages was a new school.

We met up with Issac who had done much of the research with David Piper. He was to prove a fundamental and invaluable ambassador for the day.

In the village of Abro we were invited to have an audience with the chief in his ‘Palace’ as it is customary to gain the chiefs permission to have access to the village. Read the rest of this entry »

School for the deaf

First impressions as we arrived was that the journey from the village to the residential school made it quite remote and almost hidden from sight.

The children were very excited to see 2 jeeps of white faces, as we got out of the cars we were surrounded with many little hands trying to communicate as they scribbled on their arms with their fingers to write their names.

We had to think really quickly of how to manage the situation as the excitement had the potential to cause some conflict between the children as their enthusiasm and lack of verbal communication skills but more importantly our lack of non-verbal skills could potentially turn our best intentions into a disaster.

This was a visit which really tested our interpersonal skills.

A teaching assistant (who we later found our to be an ex-pupil) showed us to the head teacher, Agnus’ office. Many eager faces looked through the open door, the more physical pupils pushing their way to the front.

Agnus held her arm out, the children immediately calming down.

She introduced us to a sample of different pupils with multiple needs and explained what the school did to help. Some of these disabilities were caused through diseases such as meningitis or accidents. 

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