Sunday 25 August 2013

Ghana - Outreach again

I was up early in the morning to wash the rest of my clothes. I was getting the hang of hand washing but getting all of the soap out was not always easy.

We were back on outreach today, visiting more sheep and goats. They were being vaccinated against foot rot and being dewormed. I seemed to be getting the hang of the drench deworming, although some of the animals were not very happy with the whole procedure. Thankfully there were a lot of people to help hold down the animals.

After the first sheep and goat farm, we went on to another farm, called Kumah Farms. Whilst we were there, we were introduced to the Chief of the local area and owner of the farm. He was second in the national agricultural award for Ghana. His farm was a mixed farm, having a variety of animals, ranging from alligators to rats to grass cutters to deer. They also had all of the common animals such as sheep, goats, fish, rabbits and guinea pigs. (I later found out that the guinea pigs and rabbits were bred for eating rather than as pets, and the rats were fed to the alligators). The fish were biologically kept as the populations were controlled naturally - the population of Tilapia was controlled by the catfish. At this farm we were also deworming the herd of sheep and goats.

The third and final farm that we visited was more of a small community than a farm. The sheep and goats were kept in the villagers houses so that we didn't had to chase after them and then released to roam around the village. I had no idea how they knew whose sheep and goats belonged to who. The small community was very run down and the smell was pretty horrific. Many of the local children followed us as we walked between houses to the animals. They were all poorly dressed and it was clear that they were not going to school.

We tried to teach some of the children how to play hopscotch and joined in with a couple of skipping games. They were all very friendly and seemed to enjoy having us to play with. This village was a far cry from the area that I was staying in just the other side of town.








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