Good evening Ghana and friends,
A few weeks ago I came to Ghana for the first time to volunteer as a farming assistant and social media manager at Kumi Perma Ecovillage Ghana near Asankragua in Western Region. Never have I been to Africa before and this experience means a lot to me. People here are very polite, friendly and a bit curious.
Around christmas we took some time to make plans about how we continue planting and making the world a better place.
Mr. Kumi wanted to do another 90 day tree planting challenge like he did last year and we already planted a lot. We are on the farm almost every day. Right now our main farmer just came back from a long day of hard work like weeding and cutting trees. And although he worked very hard he has a big smile on his face. Next to us there are several small children who might have never seen anybody from Europe before. Some call me chinese as there are several chinese here who do gold mining and they might thing everybody who is more pale than them must be chinese. No idea if they have ever seen somebody from Europe or outside Ghana or Africa.
Today we planted several kitchen herbs and salads for us to eat and hopefully we can also reproduce them and sell the crop, seeds and plants.- The sun here is perfect for growing many things but most people grow the same stuff and the variety of food is very limited. Hopefully we can change that and bring a little bit more taste and color into the world and on the markets.
My first days in Ghana have been very exhausting. I have never been to a place with such a traffic and also so much trash. In the smaller village it seems like there are no trash cans and either you throw your trash on the streets, in the wild or in the river or youi burn it. In the afternoon you often have to inhale lots of smell of the burnt plastic. While I am not sure if it´s worse to burn it or to throw it just in the wild.
Except of the nice people it is amazing to have lots of different ripe fresh fruit. Yesterday I tried my first Soursop and recently I could try fresh peanuts or groundnuts and tiger nuts. Mr. Kumi wants to eat only fruit the whole germany and become a fruitarian. I am not so strict but I will try do eat similar and not distract him with cooking a lot of unhealthy food.
Every day I see and learn something new and meet new people. The sunshine is amazing and I am very curious to try more local food like Jollof and Fufu very soon. I am very happy that I came here to Ghana and maybe I will be able to start my own business and move here. I already met several people who I will help with social media.
Happy new year to all of you
Plant trees, save the planet