Monday, August 25, 2008

Patience isn't just a popular card game


It embodies everything when one is preparing to volunteer, travel, move house, amongst an abundance of other stressful yet exciting transitions. We're still waiting to find out if we will be able to share accommodation through Dorota's organisation. If not, there are contigency plans, but it doesn't help ease the stress factor.

On a positive note though, I found out on Wednesday from Thomas Cook travel agents that British Midland fly Dublin-London-Accra return for €813. That's €70 lower than the previous cheapest quote of €874 we had received with Lufthansa. Dorota heads back to Poland this Thursday so I will be all on my own in overcast Dublin. Let's hope I get relief work in homeless shelters asap for the last month before I head off. Question now is whether to leave early October around the same time as Dorota, or wait, let her settle in, and head over a few weeks later.

Lots of questions, not so many answers at this stage.

I will also have to make do with a 6 month holiday visa initially unless I get an invitation letter from a host organisation. That would grant me the possibility of a 1 year work/volunteering visa.

Anyhow, I'll get the jabs over and done with soon to have that out of the way. One hurdle off the list will help in the long run.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Costs of vaccines for Ghana

Got a good phone call from Banagher health clinic the other day. It seems like I will only need yellow fever and typhoid vaccines as I am protected from Polio, Tetanus, Diphteria and Hepaitis A up to 2011 (due to going to Haiti in 2001). So instead of lashing out up to €250 the costs have now fallen to:

Administration - €28
Typhoid - €30
yellow fever - € 35

I have yet to find out what anti-malarial tablets I should take, but all in good time.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Only the rich need apply (Part 1)


Yesterday was quite eventful as regards my search for a placement in Ghana. Dorota suggested the great idea that I should directly contact the Kumasi based organisations on Idealist.org(a global volunteer portal) and see what replies I'd get. At first, I didn't hold much hope for this avenue. Why?

Well, despite the fact that most local organisations claim they are non-profit, some have offices in Washington, London, etc. and require hugely inflated fees to cover one's administration, accommodation, feeding costs. Even if the HQ of the NGO is locally based, there seems to be an attitude - 'these white folks are rich so let's bleed them dry!'

Could you blame them? Absolutely not. After all, many struggle to run their projects on limited resources, so if somebody with a wallet full of cash from the US or Europe wants the experience of a lifetime then, so be it.

It kind of reminds me of the irony surrounding LiveAid and it's Make Poverty History successor during the Gleneagles G8 summit 2 years ago. Rich popstars flying in from all over, singing to combat mass poverty, but with little or no consultation involving grassroots pan-African social movements about change from below.
Time to be humble. I recently read on Larry James's blog (He works with the 'marginalised' in Dallas) that he carries business cards with an asterisk * directing people to the following warning - "Beware: this man doesn't know what he is doing!" So if you think what I'm saying here is utterly wrong, then feel free to attack.

My problem does not really lie with what seems to be the Poverty Industry's maxim: 'Only the rich need apply'. My problem lies with the fact that many organisations in Ghana and elsewhere just don't want a volunteer who won't cost them a cent. There are always strings attached.

It seems impossible to opt out of offers of having to pay $100 a week for 3 meals a day - this is Kumasi in Ghana, not Galway, Chicago or Warsaw. Food, even taking into consideration recent price increases, preparation time and effort, etc. comes nowhere near that cost in Ghana.

Dorota and I spend a maximum of $100 a week on food for both of us. That would include water, electricity charges. And I'm talking about living in Dublin, Ireland - one of the most expensive cities to live in throughout Europe.

So charging one $3-5,000 for 6 months feeding, accommodation, airport pickup and some other minor accessories seems totally inflated. I've asked around and former volunteers, even people from Ghana and the general region, tend to agree.

The best option I have seen to date is 6 months accommodation and food with a host family for $1,150. This seems to be quite a reasonable price. Am I tight? No! I just don't want to be used and don't see how been used benefits anybody. So I look forward to keeping in touch with the Special Need Children Center and see if we can work something out.


Only the rich need apply (Part 2)

I am not going to whine or name any organisations here. That would be unfair. Suffice to say I developed a healthy scepticism about how NGO's utilise money after hearing about Concern workers dining on lobster in 5 star hotels in Sri Lanka whilst post-tsunami victims picked up the pieces of their lives. Concern workers on the ground, like most NGO relief agenices, do amazing work. The problem lies with their high-living hierarchs.

After following the issues around Dorota's Masters thesis earlier this year (on the motivations of volunteers who go to the golbal south, both those who pay huge amounts of money and those who receive some sponsorship), as well as my own research for volunteer placements over the past few years, one certainly does see the highs and lows of the Poverty Industry.

It's no different here in Dublin. Huge amounts of money for homeless and immigrant services are wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy, branding, huge wages for the CEO and his/her playmates (who from experience rarely call into homeless shelters or hostels for asylum seekers). The have assimilated the stereotypical modern corporate structure - hook, line and sinker.

So where next for me? Well, I'm still hoping that my contacts with the African Centre here in Dublin will come up trumps. I'm also awaiting news from the Spiritans (Holy Ghost Fathers) in Ghana to see if they have any contacts. I'm trying to get in contact with a Ghanaian who I lived with when I was studying to be a priest in Kimmage. Dorota has contacted her organisation to see if they can facilitate our request to be accommodated in the same volunteer house. So singers crossed, or as they say in Polish: Trzymaj kcziuki (Hold your thumbs)!

Monday, August 11, 2008

It's vaccination time


Hepatitis A (€47); Typhoid(€35); Yellow fever(€35); Meningococcus(€55); Polio/Tetanus/Diphteria(€30); Hepatitis B(€32); Rabies(€26); Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR - €?) and Tetanus-diphtheria; Malaria(€?)

Uh oh - looks like I'm going to get a lot of jabbing very soon.

I rang home today to my local health clinic in Banagher, as I need a bit of a reminder about what exactly I received prior to travelling to Haiti in 2001. I'll find out exactly tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I can strike Yellow fever, Polio/ Tetanus/Diphteria. I may need a few boosters for the others. I plan to head home on Friday, roll up my sleeve, squeeze shut my eyes, put a sock in my mouth and get some serious doses of bacteria under my epidermis.

It's a sharp jab in the wallet as well. The rates in Ireland, including consultation fee, amount to at least €260. Gulp! But I'm hoping that the previous jabs will cut a good chunk out of it.

And I'm also hoping the local GP, nurse doesn't take too many chunks out of me on Friday!

Friday, August 8, 2008

Preparing to volunteer in Ghana

My name is Damien Moran. I am a teacher from Banagher, Co. Offaly, in the heart of Ireland. Currently I am planning on volunteering in Kumasi, Ghana, from early October, 2008. My hope is to find a non-profit placement for 9 months, followed by visiting social activists in North West Africa for 3 months, then returning to Ireland to share my experiences.

My Polish girlfriend currently has a placement to work with disabled adults through a European Voluntary Service programme hosted by the Edwenase Rehabilitation Centre in Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region of Ghana. She begins in October and I plan to spend the time volunteering with her.

Dorota and I on my birthday, at The Thatch restaurant in Birr, Co. Offaly

I have decided to set up this blog as a medium for friends, family and interested cyber-visitors to tune into how these preparations and the volunteering experience itself unfold. No mortgage, car, kids - yet, yet, yet (kids are the only 1 out of this trio that I ever want) - my most valued possession at the moment is a rusting raleigh racer.

So if you consider your pockets as bulging, you feel weighed down by all them €500 notes and credit cards in your wallet, you have one to many apartments in Budapest, have decided to give up the drink for November and the cigarettes for December, please consider donating a small token sum of money to help alleviate the substantial costs I will incur in order to work for free and share my skills as an English, Geography and EFL teacher.

Next stop, Ghana!

To get to know me a little bit better and ensure that I am not just another scam artist who is in fact the son-in-law of the former president of Nigeria, please have a look at my personal blog: www.peacenikhurler.blogspot.com

Having previously worked in an Irish bar in Gran Canaria, volunteered in Haiti, worked with a plumber in New York, worked with homeless alcoholics and drug addicts in Dublin, taught English in Poland, and most recently volunteered in Palestine, I should, perhaps, hang up my carbon over-loaded boots and start planting trees for the rest of my life.

But it seems to me that we are so disengaged in the prosperous regions of the global north from the daily grind of life in the vast majority of the global south. To combat counter this it is important to continue developing strong personal friendships and networks amongst those who infinitely toil to meek out a subsistence living. This provides deeper opportunities for us to connect with and positively influence our societies about global responsibilities in a spirit of mutual aid.

From the school classroom to the pub on a Friday night (well, actually, I don't drink, so you may not meet me at your local), we can break down prejudices and help others work towards social justice for all.

So, from our current struggles with the Ghanaian (just one of them) language, Twi, the vaccinations, visas, work placements, travel, preparatory self-defence training to combat affectionate mosquitoes, this blog promises to be a mish-mash of anxieties, hopes, fears, revelations, cultural faux-pas's, successes and failures, friendship-building and inter-cultural learning, struggles and dehydration, and of course, more lethal fights with mosquitoes.



Tune in, stay tuned, spread the frequency amongst the masses, add comments, criticisms, tips, blank cheques and whatever else you feel like.

To conclude, I will try integrate some Twi wisdom, words, phrases every now and then on this blog - partly so I remember them, and partly for you to experience what a beautiful language it is:

'Obi a ɔyɛ basabasa ntumi nyɛ Onyankopɔn adamfo'

In English: 'A violent person cannot be God’s friend'