Tsanko Dimov is spending two months volunteering in Ghana and is keeping us updated whilst he is there – we hope you enjoy his first blog post!
In the summer of 2014, I had the good fortune to meet Lawrence Mensah, Sabre’s Construction Projects Manager, for their Building Better Schools programme. I was on an internship with Arup and he was visiting the Arup office in London and we spent a few days working closely together. I had previously heard of Sabre and specifically the work they had done with Arup in designing an award winning sustainable kindergarten but never imagined I would actually have the opportunity to work with the team themselves!
I really enjoyed the time I spent working with Lawrence, and was fascinated by his stories about Ghana and on his final day in the office he mentioned I should drop him an email one day if I would be interesting in volunteering with Sabre. Fast forward a year I’m walking out of the busy Accra airport, surrounded by unfamiliar sights and smells, hoping to see a sign with Tsanko Dimov written on it. I was inspired to volunteer in Ghana by the prospect of new experiences and from the moment I stepped out of the airport I knew I’d entered a new world.
Having never been to Ghana before, or any African country for that matter, all I had to go on was the comments I’d had from people who had been here themselves. I expected a colourful, exciting place, bursting with life and energy and that’s exactly what awaited me. The locals are very friendly and everyone is always encouraging you to try new things so there are many new experiences every day. To name a few I have hand fed monkeys, stroked a crocodile, seen baboons and fruit bats, swam beneath the tallest waterfall in West Africa and visited Togo!
In my first two weeks my work was focused around doing infrastructure screenings of some of the local kindergartens. This involved visiting the sites and taking measurements, then using that information to make architectural drawings of each school so factors such as ventilation, natural lighting and thermal comfort may be compared and understood. The chance to visit the schools while the children were learning gave me a good insight into how the spaces were used and by speaking to teachers I was able to understand some of the issues which were present in Ghana’s schools. I also had the opportunity to work on site for one of the Sabre schools currently being built. Seeing a kindergarten in the construction stage meant I now had a good idea of what happened at all 7 stages of the plan of work and I could take part in discussions reflecting on design and possible improvements.
In the next two weeks I will be taking part in stakeholder consultations with the aim of receiving feedback on how the kindergartens are used and also hear the thoughts of the teachers, parents and pupils. Additionally there is the Bakatue Festival happening in Elmina which is sure to bring a few fun stories.
