Ghana Game Changers — Part 6: The last week-end
Our last week-end was about volunteering, shopping, work and chilling out !
Day #20: Volunteering, Shopping and a French taste :)
On Saturday morning, this time I DID wake up thanks to my alarm clock correctly configured ahah ! So I had enough time to take a shower and have breakfast. We almost left on time and we arrived by 8.45 am to our volunteering location. All of us volunteered for Tech Need Girls organization to help young girls build something through coding. The coding workshop was supposed to begin by 9am but it began at 11am, another example of GMT but this time we were waiting for girls mouahahah !
So, we participated in a coding workshop: there were 4 groups of 6 girls, 3 SAP members and 1 trainer. The problem statement was to create an HTML page to help students who can’t go to school have an online access. Our role was to help them make up their mind and come up with ideas to solve this problem. The trainer was supposed to teach them how to code but it turned out that I had to drive the coding session since our IT trainer did not really lead the session. It doesn’t matter, I drove the workshop on the technical side, and big thanks to Joerg and Ilse for taking care of the rest: help girls get ideas ! We had great ideas: main page with a few tiles, links to get access online tutorials as well as content for all subjects, a community area to interact with teachers.. We had 2 laptops for 6 girls, so we decided to use only one that would be used for presentation. I’m very happy that each girl wrote down one line of coding and checked out the result: inserting an image, adding a title, increasing size of the title etc.. They all enjoyed it as they had the opportunity to create their own stuff :).
Once again, I have to say that it is VERY tough for them to perform instructions WITHOUT mouse !! I was not very surprised again that they don’t know when they should do a left click, double left click or right click. I tried to learn them the basics and made sure that each girl had written at least a coding line. One after one, they inserted an image, a text, increases the size of a text etc.. One of the girls presented our web page very well!! They were so happy to create something and instantly see the result.
The rest of the day was used for shopping excursions. We went first to the outdoors craft market: souvenirs, t-shirts, sculptures etc. after 5 minutes walking around in the market, I felt very tired because of insistent sellers. We then moved to an art market. Paintings were nice.
We did not have lunch so we decided to move to a French Restaurant called “la Chaumière” by 6pm after 1h rest in our rooms. I felt home: French design, menu written in French with typical meals. I suggested the “boeuf bourguignon” (marinated beef with carrots and mushrooms) to my American friends, they loved it !!! I ordered a beef fillet with Gorgonzola and caramelized onions in a Porto sauce, with potatoes gratin as side dish hummmmm it was so yummy !!!! And obviously, we ordered 2 bottles of white wine (Chardonnay) to accompany our meals. The others had fish so white wine was appropriate.
Day #21: Work, a little shopping and relaxing time
Busy morning with work and then we walked down to Oxford Street to do shopping again. We all found stuff: gifts, paintings, clothes.. While walking, I hurt the sole of my foot. I had to stop walking and look at my flip-flops. Guess what hurt me: there were 3 tacks under my flip-flops !!! OMG !!!
Busy afternoon to make progress on our final deliverables.
It’s time to go to be and start this last week in Ghana.. I can’t believe that it’s gonna end in a few days. Rush for our final presentations: here we gooooooooo
