A Day in the Life

By popular request - well, Apeksha tells all the volunteers to write one of these, so here it is.  Warning - contains accountancy stuff.

I normally get up around 7.30-8.00.  Breakfast, like the other meals I get here is huge.  It usually consists of some scrambled eggs, several pieces of fried toast, 2-3 cups of tea and usually some kind of porridge or rice pudding or similar.  I wasn't entirely sure at first what the porridge things were made from.  One, I found out is rice water - basically boiled rice with a small amount of starchy liquid that gives it a gloopy, porridge like consistency - I've often accidentally cooked this for myself at home.  Another one tastes like semolina except it goes solid if you let it go cold.  It is, I am told, a Ghanaian dish called 'Egh Ogh Ugh' (I think I misspelled it although the pronunciation is close enough) - they laugh when I try and say the name. Once I asked what one of the other porridge concoctions was made of.   'Actually,' said Shantell, 'It's Quaker Oats.' That traditional African staple.

I normally start work round about 9 - 9.30.  On typical day, I'll go in to the office (just across the yard from the house) open up my emails and look at the plans etc that I prepared during the first week or so.  I've set myself some targets based around understanding / auditing the finances of the organisation, providing training in Excel reporting and setting up some clear guidelines on how I think the finance set up should be organised.

A lot of the time I'll be working on my own, as nearly all the YPWC volunteers (including George the finance man) have full time jobs.  While this means that my actual contact time with the team is often limited and progress is slower, it also means I can concentrate on the work I'm doing, and write some REALLY BIG training manuals.  So far, aside from writing out plans and submitting them to the others, I've audited the cash vouchers and receipts, completed a reporting template for the cash vouchers with a basic expenditure report linked in (George has filled it all in and brought the books up to date), got half way through some training manuals for Excel (with loads of screen shots and things) and have also been through a set of accounts that is due to be submitted to a donor.  The basic report was good, but needed a few corrections made to formulas and calculations.  I talked through with George as we did this, and was pleased that he then sent it back to Koomson explaining what we had changed and recommended for future reports.

Documenting the work you do is hugely important.  Even on a slightly longer placement like this (some of AfID's assignments are as short as two weeks) you need to be sure that you are building capacity rather than dependency - whatever you do, you have to be sure it can carry on when you've left.  'Sustainability' said Shantell when I told her this.  Though I didn't like to say at the time, that is a management buzzword, and like all management buzzwords, it can irritate to the point of distraction.  But, like most management buzzwords, it can also describe very accurately what you're trying to achieve.

So, I carry on like this through most of the day.  At some point I normally go out for a walk to see what's going on in the neighbourhood and say hello to all the local children (schoold here seem to be on constant breaktime).  I don't normally eat lunch - too hot and the rest of the meals aren't exactly small.  As you may have noticed, excursions like this also provide most of my bloggable material.

Later on the afternoon, some of the other volunteers will come to the office.  This gives us all a chance to catch up on what's been happening and is particularly important for me as I can use some of this time to take George through what work I've been doing.

In the evening, I'll usually eat around 7 pm (typically fried fish or chicken with sauce and some sort of rice, noodles or yam chips and salad, with papaya or pineapple after).  Then, I might go back to the office if there's people still there and things I can still do, or read, listen to my music or watch the news.  Bedtime is generally about 9.30 - 10.00.