10th – 12th of November, final sessions in Agroyesum
Day 19, 20 and 21 Thursday 10th of November was going to be the most important day of our stay at the St. Martins Hospital in Agroyesum. We planned a big conference with the hospital staff to adress the biggest challenges: preventive maintenance and waste disposal. In consens with the administration we planned to start at 1 pm. So of course (!) the announcement for the staff was for 12 o’clock. We finally started our presentation after everyone arrived at the conference room at 1:30 pm. If you are German this scheduling might sound a bit confusing, but it worked really good :D. That means we also have to get used to it. As we arrived nobody was there. We started to worry about the success of our presentation. Have the others already been here at 12 and went back to work? Probably some did. I am not sure if Ghanaians have a sixth sense for knowing when people actually meet but anyway until half past one every chair of the room was occupied. So I started the presentation with introducing ourselves continued by Timo and Annika with the concept of preventive maintenance and realisation of waste separation and disposal in the hospital. Our focus was to tell the reason why it is so important to care about these topics. After our presentation the audience seemed to be very satisfied with us. But I was still wondering if we (with our different culture, different way of communicating, …) had really reached the users of the devices and waste bins. This concern was unjustified because now we got to see the very impressing Ghanaian way of communication. What I already had noticed before is that Ghanaians in general can speak impressingly. Not just talk a lot, but using the voice, the tone and the emphasis to underline what they are saying. Ralph the administrator started to conclude our presentation in Twi and added his point of view in English and Twi to complete our intentions. After him started Sister Mary, the matron, her speech. Even this was in the local language Twi we had the feeling to understand what she was talking about. Her facial and gestures expressions radiated so much motivation, optimism and energy that in my opinion everybody in the room left the meeting with another view about what we are developing here in Agroyesum. Yesterday was the final meeting with the administration. We brought our MoU and the report we wrote for Ralph in which we summarised the challenges for the hospital we see according to our impressions during our stay here. Also we handed over some suggestions how to improve the documentation system. The Administrator thanked us for our effort and invited us to keep in contact after we will have left on Sunday. As we also wanted to use today effectively we convinced Oxy and Kwame to come to work on Saturday. Yesterday evening we were just about to go to bed Oxy phoned Annika and asked us if we want to meet today at 6:30am for playing volleyball. Ok playing volleyball sounded very good. But 6:30 in the morning? Our answer was: yes sure, but not bevore 8 😉 . Now I know why he sugested such a early time. It is getting hot afterwards! Anyway playing volleyball was quite a lot of fun. As we met the others at 9 everybody was in weekend feeling. So we focused on the important tasks to have a good conpletion of our stay here like the feedback session with Eric the estate manager, Oxy and Kwame. After the finishing the official tasks here in Agroyesum there is a farewell party planned for tonight. I am curiuos about how our evening will look like. Because one thing I have learned so far: You never know what is expecting you. Just let surprise you!Text: Annika-Weiß