We had a visitor!

At the end of last week we travelled from Kumasi in the Ashanti Region back down to our base in Accra, and yesterday we then moved west to work in Cape Coast, which I will talk about later.





The reason for returning back to Accra was that last Sunday we were joined by Lisa from the Ulysses team. Lisa is our team coach, and she came out to work with us ensure we are making the most of the learning opportunities that this programme provides. Here is a picture of us after dinner:



This is principally a partner leadership development programme, which means that although we are working for Basic Needs and trying to help them, we are also using this experience to work on our own personal development. Lisa’s job is to ensure that we strike the right balance between what we do for Basic Needs and what we achieve for ourselves, and therefore, PwC. I reminded myself about something I had read some months ago about why the firm runs this programme: if the future of the firm is going to see more, and not less, work across borders, across cultures and considering a broader range of issues (which increasingly include the social and environmental impact of what we do), you cannot just learn this in a classroom. We are doing this by changing our environment from our day-to-day world in the office, and therefore this involves changing the country, the work involving mental illness, working with a non-governmental organisation (rather than a commercial business), and living with extreme poverty at our doorstep. The environment is changed further by bringing three partners from opposite sides of the world together, where we have to live and work together for almost 2½ months with minimal contact with our families and friends.

If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, I am sure there have been Ulysses teams in the past that could not stand each other by the end of the programme, but so far the three of us are getting on very well. Lisa’s challenge to us, both individually and as a team, is to maximise the learning over the remainder of the trip and to think about how we take what we have learned back to the office.

To help Lisa understand what we have been up to, we took her to Accra Psychiatric Hospital and also on a visit to the homes of some mentally ill people living in the community. We first went to meet a woman called ‘Billykiss’ (I can’t believe that is her real name!) who suffered from panic attacks and depression. She is the woman on the left:



She was living in a rented room in a dreadful slum in Accra, where life is very tough: no running water, shared toilet, open sewers. She sold drinks at the side of the road, which meant when the weather was poor, her money dried up. As a mentally ill person, she suffers the same stigma in her community that I have talked about before, which meant that one time when she was late with her rent, her landlord attacked her. She showed us this picture, which I took a photo of (so it is poor quality), but you can make out the blood covering her clothes:



We then moved on through the slums, crossing a bridge over the open sewer and a rubbish dump. The bridge was a bit wobbly and slippery – I’m just glad we got across ok!



And another picture of the conditions in which people live – here is a path between the houses littered with rubbish and water from the recent rain.



We arrived at the house of two epileptic young men (one was my age – so he is still young!). One used to suffer four fits in a day, one had up to seven fits a day. During an epileptic fit, part of the brain is damaged, so you can imagine the impact this has on their condition.



Although we were in a very poor area, people still take so much pride in how they look and dress. Here is the mother of one of the men, together with a community worker and another epileptic, as they listen to the stories of the two men.



After Lisa left on Wednesday evening, we travelled west on Thursday to Cape Coast. This is the home of Ghana’s third psychiatric hospital called Ankaful.



We had arranged a meeting with one of the doctors, but when we arrived it turned out there had been a mix up and he was on leave! Nevertheless we went round the hospital and went to some of wards. When we were there the hospital had 312 patients, despite its capacity of around 250. Those who didn’t have a bed slept on foam mattresses. Those who did not get a mattress simply had to sleep on a mat on the floor. It was very useful comparing Ankaful with the two other psychiatric hospitals that we have visited (Accra and Pantang), and we spent much of our time explaining to the staff what Basic Needs does and how it works with the mentally ill in the community, rather than in a large mental institution, as is the case with Ankaful. It was also the first time we were shown electro-convulsive therapy. This is given as a last resort (and is governed by law) as a way of helping those who suffer from chronic depression or schizophrenia, and involves delivering electric shocks to the brain. Very scary…

Finally, as ever on our travels, we continue to see things which make me laugh. I cannot get over the number of lorries that are broken down by the side of the road (although we experienced this earlier in the week when someone filled diesel into our petrol car…). Preventative maintenance seems to have escaped many Ghanaian lorry drivers, although if they didn’t overfill their trucks I’m sure it would help – this one was carrying coal, although I'm not sure for how much longer:



And quote of the week goes to the driver of this tro-tro (they are the local busses) who seems to be exhibiting mild schizophrenia himself given the way he is talking to himself...



Next week we are back in Accra preparing for our final workshop – more in the next blog.