Africa for beginners – Ghana

My previous experience on African continent (you can read also about here) showed me different aspects of African life (I didn’t include in those articles my experience in North Africa which I separate it because of so many cultural and historical aspects).

The sign: “Africa for beginners” on Ghana travel guides made me smile ;) and by saying this “promotion motto” to all the Ghanaians I met for sure they all smiled even more but in the same agreeing with it-myself as well after spending some time over there!

First time in Africa? – You can start with Ghana! Is a very easy going country, with peaceful and very friendly people, where you feel secure and not so much in the “zoo syndrome”. People are quite used with white people and have a very open and calm attitude towards life and other cultures.

Some of the reasons for what stated before are the following points

Ghana is the country of NGO-s and international volunteers! You will be surprised how big is the level of knowledge and awareness of regular Ghanaian people about volunteers (there already see them as a different category of people that are in their country: "are you a tourist or a volunteer?"). In every city and region of Ghana are hundredths and thousands of NGO-s and most of them are working with international volunteers. At the moment i can just dream to make people in Romania or even Turkey (where I lived so long) so aware and acknowledged about the civil society and international volunteering.

Of course to volunteer there means mostly to pay from your own money for accommodation and food and maybe some taxes to the people that are managing your local project but you can choose a very broad area or work : from helping build a school to deliver workshops for children or adults!

I even met some American friends that travelled and explored 14 African countries before deciding to develop a branch of an international NGO in Ghana – because is the most easy going country in terms as well of paper work.

I meet some of these NGO , some of them planed, some of them just in the bus , or on the beach (because I told you they are at every corner) and some of them exist only through international volunteering, sometimes with no local volunteers at all and in my perspective this is not sustainable at all and also not valuable for the local community.

For sure on such a good public opinion and huge network many things can be build – a base exists – the will is missing at the moment!

Ghana is the country of churches! Yes it is! And not only of churches, I think is the country of love for GOD! First , at every corner of every city you will find a different church (Pentecostal, Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Evangelical, Presbyterian, Anglican, Protestant, Baptist, Lutheran, Muslims, Charismatic Church, New Age, etc – and I am really sorry for not recalling all but for sure are much much more). I think for every 50 people is another church? I was in a village of 1000 people and they had 8 different types of churches .

Every Sunday everybody is on the roads going to various churches for the mass (some of them starting in the middle of the night in fact with the services)

As I said is not only about the churches, is about the love for GOD, almost every shop has a title related to some divinity actor: Jesus loves shoes! GOD loves you shop! Clothes from Jesus! Etc. etc. (I think i didn’t see any shop that didn’t have a divine title!

Obroni! Means "white" in some of the local languages and people will address to you by using this title : something like: YOU , white one ......! It can be fun at times, and annoying at other times , especially when you realize that for some people you are just a colour and not more ; they do address each other with friends, sister, brother (without even knowing each other) but they will not address to you like that! Maybe the most disturbing thing is that children learn that from small age, shouting to the white people on the streets: obroni, obroni, obroni! And their take cares are not explaining, telling anything to them! Is a different experience when you go in villages, where sometimes children will be terrified by you because you are white, speechless and curious – as a difference from cities where they have a lot of “superficial” contact with white people.

Non-formal education! I experienced and play with various methods with some NGO leaders and with some girls from a girl high school! None of these groups were familiar with non-formal methods, they were expecting lectures and one way information giving. For some of them was strange to ask them to involve in various games and exercises.

I had a very interesting and fascinating experience , and indeed growing for me as a trainer. Using the circle of stereotypes (where everybody has to show with they body – as statues various concepts and words) proved to be a very different experience then in Europe. With the groups I worked with in Ghana the concrete thinking was prevalent and the abstract one was a lower level. I tried to use same words like i do in Europe (some of them concrete: man, women, volunteers, American, villager, etc or more abstract: change, power, will, etc) and the results were most of them showing the concreteness of their first thoughts on those concepts.

Another interesting part was when i asked 4 groups of girls to create a small sketch where to show an ideal school. And all of them performed violence made by the teachers, strong discipline towards the students and between them. All the groups said that this indeed how they imagine an ideal school : with even more discipline and firm and tough teachers!!! Once again I was reflecting on the fact that I am just facilitating a process and not their results. Their lesson in that day from my workshop was that each of them are responsible for the discipline in their class!

Don’t imagine socking beautiful nature or safari opportunities ...Ghana doesn’t have to much of that ...the beauty and easiness of travelling around is coming from its people!

Tool Kit on Street Animation for Social Change

Almost a year ago, when EVS my project in Turkey finished I was mentioning about the fact that I will work on a tool kit based on my experience in Turkey and not only.

Well, the work for this manual finished some time ago, there are still some free copies for the people that are interested in having one (so feel free to contact me) but you can have a look or even download it from here.

You should know from the beginning that this type of guide is the first one to be realized in the English language and what is making it unique is the fact that it offers every reader the chance to go through a variety of street animation methods, to open their curiosity and appetite towards them, and more than that to offer an alternative that maybe was not in your mind: to practice street animation in order to make a social change in your community!

More information, details, and articles about this Tool kit you can find here:

• An article on a Local Philanthropy Community Web Site
• On a Salto website (Tools section)
• DEEP Times (newsletter January 2011)
• TRIALOG Information Service (January 2011)
• An article on the Turkish Host Organization (Community Volunteers)
• In 2008 a Romanian tool kit on Street Animation I developed was mentioned and introduced here

Enjoy this tool kit and I truly hope you will find it useful for your work!

Please feel free to add your comments, questions or if you want the material, the comments section is open!

Other Realities Therapy

How many times it didn’t happened to you to see a movie, episode of a series, read a book, hear a news and so on and to, either find yourself in the life of the hero or to be happy you are not the hero (and implicit to feel good with your own life)?

Doesn’t matter if the characters or the people we encounter this way are losing everything and then taking it all back, being miserable, lonely, popular, ugly, beautiful, ignorant, very intelligent, extremely lucky or unlucky, with great relations or the worst relations , being in the right moment in the right place or opposite, rich or poor, hating or loving their lives, etc ....all this looks different on TV then in our own lives! The colours, the music, the actors, the lights and angle of view, etc all this make them look more impressive and more touching sometimes...

If you are the bottom of your life and see a movie that kind of reflects somebody else bottom of life, on one side you don’t feel alone in this feeling and on other side (because during the action of the movie the person kind of manages to lifts up) is inoculating some kind of hope for you and a perspective for you potential lift up!

And is not only for this: if you are poor maybe you will be reach, if you are unlucky maybe this will change, if don’t have success you will have, if you are fat and ugly this can change or at least some people will appear that don’t care, if you are alone you will not be at some point, if you don’t have a good relation or not at all it will appear at some point, if you didn’t manage to do something you will do, if it didn’t came to you it will come, ....all can happened , by chance and mystery , like it happened to that character that looks or reminds you of yourself- is giving or increasing a feeling of hope or acceptance!

Even if in your own life you think that something is not realistically possible, is too late, too much time passed, you forgot, somebody else forgot.... then a movie or a book comes and gives you a perspective that you didn’t thought of!!! Or, if everything goes like shit in your life , don’t forget there is that real (or not) person that had the same life but was a genius in the end...so maybe you too are a genius or some very important person that has to be like that in order to do its missions....and there are endless possibilities or situations...just think of yourself and your own life!

This piece of art that resembles so much reality is amazing ....either is a movie, a episode, a book, a story , it looks real and you find yourself (either now , or in the past or if its going to happen to you also in the future and you will make the connection) in it! Is a kind of alternative "unknown" therapy that is feeding us with fake hope that for some of us maybe works or maybe makes us feel even more miserable ...or maybe not! It’s all depending how they are telling the story that seems that is your own story!

One thing is clear if your life is shit why not loosing yourself with the help of these tools in other "people" lives and realities ....maybe at some point your life will became a book or a movie about somebody that was watching manny movies and living in a paralel life - for sure it will look much better on the screen then what your lifes looks now!!!!

Ode to you

This post is for you...the one who is passing through some horrible times at the moment....let face it: in fact they are hell on earth and are THE most horrible times for you!!!

You are lost, confused, hurt, disappointed, alone, sad, depressed, useless, tired, wasted........you will prefer to disappear or to wake up and understand it was all a bad dream. Yet this is not happening, you are not waking up because ironically this is the reality and you don’t disappear, you are not in the hell even if maybe will be better to be dead but you can’t make it!

The past is hunting you...the happiness you had and that all of a sudden vanished! You don’t know why, why you had to live what you lived, why everything happened they way it did, why he could do all those horrible torturing things! You were the happiest in your whole life, you had started a new life in a new place with new plans, you trusted and loved with all your hurt, you invested all your emotions and dreams....and you felt that he did the same..... the past is hunting you but what a tragedy, he is not 2 people but only 1 that maybe didn’t actually loved you the way you believed....or maybe he did ...nobody knows, or at least you don’t know....the facts are that your heart is bleeding and dying and somebody in other part of the world doesn’t even realise it and doesn’t have any signs of regret ...can love do this? Can life do this? Can life or love betray you just like that???? Stupid questions....they already did...fuck your live, it doesn’t deserve you! How can you become from somebody's angel a devil in one night???? How come?

The empty words of the people around you that are claiming that everything will be ok, everything is happening with a reason, just wait and see are USELESS and not only that, are empty, heart less- there is no sense now isn’t? So fuck all the sense and the good that will come...is no going to make you feel better now, no?

Fuck all of those that are scared to face a bad time of their “friends”, that are coming automatically with solutions that are not requested (get a new job, travel, work, go to therapy, don’t stay alone, bla, bla, bla) and that are having the impression that if you don’t cry every second that means you are handling everything quite ok!!! Get away from them, from all those advices and solutions....run away from them and just live what you feel like, cry all the day, don’t call anybody, don’t speak with anybody, watch all the day movies, eat junk food, drink until you forget all, stay at home all the day, don’t go out, again cry specially when you hear all those love songs that had a different meaning for you, talk with people that seems to get you, cry to them as well, write it down, GET EVERYTHING OUT!!! Otherwise it will hunt you anyway in a way or another!!! Don’t hide anything inside, live all that pain that you feel even if hurting like hell....live the pain and don’t focus on the meaning!!! When you are in pains there is no meaning for that except the fact that is another sign that life sucks big time!!!!

This post is for you, I will get all your tears out of you so you can’t sink in them!!!

Image Theatre-World Youth Congress

This summer I had the chance to participate in 5^th World Youth Congress and I also delivered a workshop on Image Theatre.

It was for the first time I worked with a group of participants from almost all the continents and the most challenging aspect was to work specifically on social problems because the perspectives , opinions on them are so various and different– especially if we were trying to find solution and to speak about their realism and possibility to be applied in their reality – when we talk about state, NGO, or even people role in the society here my participants came with so many different realities that made the discussions so hot and so lively and with no specific conclusion that fits each of them. (we approached problems of discrimination, corruption and domestic violence).

I don’t have pictures or material form that specific workshop but I have from second day where I had to present the method of Image Theatre to others educator in the field.

Here is a short movie about it.