MY FIRST DAY AT RAINS OFFICE

I had so much engrossed with social activities I hadn’t thought about going to start work on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday). I woke up earlier t

han my alarm and did a few minutes’ personal devotion, reflection and planning for the day. I had not ironed all these while. I quickly called my landlord who had promised me of his iron and went for it as soon as he responded. I did my ironing for the week and returned the iron. As I got back to start taking my bath, I realized everyone else had finished and waiting for the bus. Omg. I had to rush through with what was left for me. At about 7:50am I was done and a lil bit confident to make breakfast for myself before leaving to work, so I did.

Hannah exclaimed a few minutes after I was done eating and I knew the bus was here. We were all excited to be picked from home, especially the Nationals (you know this is rare)

In less than ten minutes we got to the office (it’s not too far from the neighbourhood and not like Accra (the traffic)). Again we were very happy to see ourselves entering the building. It’s a cream painted building (it looks like a home from afar) with the inscription ‘RAINS’ boldly painted on top of the door. We were welcomed by the smiley receptionist (I latter on found that her name’s Ayisha) and another gentleman who was standing by her, who asked us to record some details (our names, reporting time and signature) in a notebook.

Right after that my eye flipped straight to the notice board that has a large format ‘flexy’ print portrait of Nelson Mandela, of blessed memory(shhhhhhhhh, I almost forgot… on top of the ‘RAINS’ inscription at the door post is ‘MANDELA DEVELOPMENT CENTRE’. I’m not sure he did put up the building but I think the founders of RAINS took some sort of inspirations from him; articles about RAINS and community development in general. One of the post that has the picture of a good looking young man caught my attention, I went ahead to read the story and it’s a sad one. Apparently, he was a project officer at rains and he’s been missing since 2011. My heart bled whilst reading the story. I went to the office to start the day, but went back to the receptionist, Ayisha (please don’t forget the name and her position b’cos, I’m sure I’ll be using her quite often in my story) to ask a few more questions about this young man and his ‘mysterious’ disappearance.

We got in to the office, it’s a very big and spacious room with 4 big tables packed together with a number of chairs (I didn’t count them because its basic algebra, I need to work some calculus, not that). The guys with their laptops there had already brought them out trying to connect to the Wi-Fi (they couldn’t until one of their staff came with the correct passcode. I connected too with my phone (my internet had not been working throughout the weekend, so I had hundreds of notifications as soon as I connected). Shortly, Natasha (my team leader) called to inform me (and to pass to the other group members) that, the taxi driver to pick them up is delaying so she’ll be late. That was fine. I had time to read all the messages that had flooded through my whatsapp inbox. I missed a lot of exciting live conversations especially the ones from the Singles’ Ministry from my home church.

In about twenty minutes, Natasha was here and work’s about starting. She first apologized for being late and next, she took us around the offices. Unfortunately we couldn’t meet a lot of the staff so we went back to our office and began our duty for the day. We started by reviewing the reports compiled by the previous cohorts on all the projects in groups. We went for lunch break and came back to brainstorm what our objectives for the projects should be. After several debates we came out with mission statements for all the projects (vis Safe Choices, School for Schooling and Farm for Futures).

BRAINSTORMING SESSION...FUN!

We then drew our activity time frame.

Just 3:40 Natasha received a mail from Emily (International Service programs manager) about the security plans for the program which we discussed briefly. 4:00 pm at the point all cables had been unplugged and the driver was waiting to take us home. I waited for about 3 minutes to discuss something else with Natasha and off to the wagon.

It was an exciting day and wishing it was a permanent placement. In less than 10 minutes we got home and I decided to write this at the expense of a movie I wanted to see ‘The Best Man Holiday’. I think I will see it later, or maybe never ‘cause, I’m enjoying this and may be doing it every day. Hope you enjoyed it too…

Ops… I didn’t talk about my lunch time, I ate one ball of Kenkey and freshened my breath with tom tom.