I arrived in Accra at 11:00 pm on the 12th of July. It was extremely warm and humid and the airport was buzzing with activity, even though it was really midnight. Early the next morning I got on a coach to Kumasi, and 5 and a half hours later I arrived at my host family in the centre of Kumasi. I was staying with a number of other vets.
Tuesday the 16th of July was my first day at the Vets and we were on outreach. We visited a farm to vaccinate cows against a strain of pneumonia. Around 60 cows were due to be vaccinated. I thought that this was going to be quick, however, this was Ghana and they do everything differently. Each of the cows had to be lassoed individually by a man running around like a cowboy. Then each of the cows had to be tied down securely so that they couldn't swing their heads and spear us with their horns. One of us would then run over with the automatic syringe and inject them. The whole process took a lot longer than it would have in England - there were not crush crates or strong metal fence posts.
The next day we were back on Outreach and visiting another farm. This farm was one of the biggest farms in Ghana. It was a huge poultry farm containing over 250,000 'battery farm' chickens. although they had 9 chickens per square metres, they did seem to be some room to roam around. They were not true battery farm chickens as they were not kept in small individual boxes. We may have headed to one of the largest chicken farms in Ghana, we were actually at the farm to vaccinate the 5 cattle that they had. This farm was no better equipped than the last farm so as soon as the man attempted to lasso the first cow the others ran away and we spent the next couple of hours searching for 5 cows. In the end we gave up the search and left the farm having only vaccinated two cows. 
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