Teshie School Project – Volunteer Diary - Day 1

A report by ESB & ESBI Volunteers on-site this week at the Ghana School Project

24 Volunteers arrived into Accra last night at about 8.30pm local time (9.30 GMT). Three members of the team were already ahead ensuring preparations were made before the larger group arrived – Brian Cronly, Project Manager, Gerard McCarthy Elect. Supervisor from Cork and Martin O’Brien from Dublin, who is the painter in charge.

An Early Start
An early start for everyone on Sunday morning, and a long flight from Dublin via Heathrow, meant an early night for everyone. Bonding had begun at Dublin Airport so when we were met at Accra by Brian and the boys it was one big team of ESBI, CS & GS, CC, PG and ESB Networks! The volunteers came from locations from Donegal to Cork and everything in between. Clever move on our part was to have Liam Doyle on board – straight from Cowen Country. Weather warm and humid and we were very tired was on first thought.

A early start and down to a breakfast of fruit, pastries and the Ghanaian version of the ‘full Irish’ before we boarded the bus to the Teshie site. On our journey we got a glimpse of the poverty stricken suburbs – many of the children at the school come from areas such as these.

The Scale of Work
The first reaction on arrival at the site was the scale of the work. There are 7 clusters (schools) on the site and quite a bit of progress has been made already on the civil end. Brian and his team had organised bottled water etc. for the day – temperature today was 30oC.

After the initial induction course, a safety pep. talk and a quick tour of the site, we donned our PPE and immediately sprung into action. By lunchtime – which consisted of sandwiches or meat pies supplied by our hotel – cleaning and bonding had begun on the walls in preparation for painting and the electricians had begun the wiring of two areas – Cluster 1 and the Resource Centre.

Most of us, to be honest, would have to admit it was a tough start. Not used to such heat and exercising muscles we hadn’t used for a bit!

After the break we stocked up on water and headed back to commence the bonding and painting of the walls. Today some of us mustered the knack of sweeping with local brooms – a bunch of twigs tied together by a band! By evening time the first coat of paint had begun in some of the rooms and wiring is well advanced in the two areas.