Experiences: Lotus

by Ine Blancke from Belgium who volunteered in 2003 & 2004

Not really knowing what to expect, I left my safe little country to do something useful with my school holidays and experience something new. I can say that I had a wonderful experience in The Lotus Children Centre in Accra. I had already been in Africa before, so I didn’t really have a culture shock, but every country is different. The first few days I just fell from one positive amazement into the other.

After a few days of discovering the city, acclimatising and getting to know the girls of the centre, I started teaching arts and crafts in the Ananda Marga International Nursery school. I soon realised that it was going to be difficult to do everything I planned to do with the children. Not only because of the shortage of materials, but also because these children have a completely different educational background then most Western kids. Their enthusiasm on the other hand compensated for all this. These kids were just happy to see you showing up, to see something new, to get colouring pencils, to learn new games and just to be able to come to school.

Every day I had lunch at the Lotus Children Centre after teaching at the nursery school in the morning. In the afternoons I went back to the school with my bicycle to go and play basketball with the brothers of the organisation and anyone else who wanted to play. Very soon the story went round in the neighbourhood that there was a white girl who could play basketball, which meant that there were always people who wanted to come and play. It was nice to finish our games in true African style with a refreshing coconut drink to get some energy to bike back home and have a nice shower.

Once back home I helped some of the girls with their homework and every Thursday it was my turn to cook. I made it easy for myself and prepared vegetarian spaghetti every week, luckily I had two little helpers. But every day was different - sometimes Didi A. Shanta took me to one of the villages where Amurtel has a clinic, or we went to visit the water project or sometimes we even went to the harbour to see if we could get some food from the ships... we were succesful, I might add. I just had a great time!

I’m so happy that the organisation took such great care of me and found it important to show me lots of nice places in Ghana. The girls in the centre were just great and always extremely helpful. They had a great laugh watching me handwashing my clothes for the first time, but the next time they just did it for me. And they were always happy to answer my questions about Ghana, which they thought must have been pretty obvious. I don’t know if I taught them as much as they taught me.

British Volunteers Martin & Kate, with Devaraj, Paul and Ine Volunteering in Ghana for 7 weeks with Amurtel was just a great decision, which made me think about a lot of things. I even changed my course at university. I chose to do remedial education studies, so I hope that when I have graduated I will be able to help some people and come back to Africa one day.

Once again, thank you to all the people from the organisation, I will always carry this beautiful experience with me.

Ine Blancke - 19 years old
Volunteered at Lotus for two months in 2003 and again in 2004.