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Where we do it > The Ghana Volunteer Experience: 10 Fascinating Facts

When you volunteer with VSO, as well as sharing your skills, you get an insider understanding of the country you work in, an experience you’d never have as a tourist.

It’s rude to arrive at work in the morning or leave in the evening without greeting every single person present
The national motto is: “No hurry in life, this be Ghana”
If you take a taxi in Ghana, you share it with four other people
If you go past people working and say “ikoo”, they will say “yaa yea”
You will be given a nickname in Ghana according to the day of the week on which you were born, for example the Kofi in the name of UN secretary general Kofi Anan means he was born on a Friday. If you want to check out which one yours will be they are:
- Monday: Kojo for a man, Adjoa for a woman
- Tuesday: Kwabena, Abenaa
- Wednesday: Kwaku, Ekuwa
- Thursday: Ekow, Yaaba
- Friday: Kofi, Efua
- Saturday: Kwame, Aba
- Sunday: Kwesi, Esi
Coffins in Ghana are crafted and painted to reflect the life of the dead person, ie a seamen will be buried in a boat-shaped coffin, a seamstress will be buried in a sewing machine-machine shaped one
Ghanaians wear white at a funeral and celebrate the life of the dead person with a party
The national dish is groundnut soup, (spicy peanut chicken or fish soup) with fufu (plaintain and cassava pounded into a paste)
Christianity is very popular in Ghana and it is not uncommon for your local shop to be called: Only God Knows Provisions and Cosmetics or Thy Will be Done Snacks
Ghana was one of the only countries that sent troops to stop the Rwandan genocide

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We urgently need headteachers and education managers to volunteer in Ghana now
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