MONDAY 7th April 2008

OK, waking up to the palm trees outside and beans on toast with omlette for breakfast puts the hotel in a completely different light! It's funny how things have changed after a good night sleep. Tim says he will bring his group at 8am.
At 9am-ish (this is 'Ghana time!') they all arrive and perform a wonderful welcoming ceremony on the front patio/bar area of the hotel. Complete with djembes, other african drums and african singing, the whole experience left us speechless. Tim made a huge speech, welcoming us as part of their family for the next two weeks, we introduced ourselves and talked about what we all did.
Then we saw them dance. WOW - ok so they are professional dancers but WOW. It's obvious that we are not up to their standard, but we soon start to rise to the challenge and I think they are pleased with our progress.

We also got the minibus into one of the market places, this was insane as there were people everywhere, the roads are completely crazy - people just drive! They use horns to communicate what they want to do, no indicators, they just cut in front of each other and there are so many traffic jams allof the time - people with baskets of goods are all over the road trying to sell you things through the windows, but they are not pushy.
We went looking for some fabric so that we could make some puppets and some costumes, Tim and Derek (the choreographer), supervise any of our purchases. This is because 'whites' get charged more unless our guides tell the vender to give us discount, so they look after us every step of the way and make sure we are charged the proper amount for things. The people are so friendly, unbelievably so and this is not because they are trying to sell things to us! We are very interesting to them as we are the only white faces for miles around, we get stared at a LOT! Terri is particularly popular, especially with the bigger ladies - 'Big Mama!' they all cry and gather around her to chat.
The children look at us and point 'Obroni!', which means 'whiteman!' in Twi, one of the 40 languages spoken in Ghana. The minibus experience is amazing, just like you see on TV and films, you get to see so much of Africa as you travel around.
When we got back to the hotel, we rehearsed again in the large courtyard with the company. It started to rain but we carried on, sheltered partly by a large tree. So we are rolling around in puddles and jumping through the heavy, hot rain thats falling around us and it is AMAZING for the whole group, no one wanted to stop, it was a fantastic experience. I fell that I may use those words quite a lot. We get a handshake and a hug from each member of 'TimAfrik' as they leave us for the evening to have dinner and go to bed.