I’ve finished my Ghana writeup, and you get privileged first showing. Let me know your comments, whether spelling mistakes, factual errors, or your thoughts and feelings about it.

Special bonus bit that didn’t fit in anywhere on the page, another exclusive to this blog:

In Ghana, we were a bit puzzled because whenever we introduced ourselves everyone would stumble over Stu-art and Gray-ham’s names, but when I said I was called Francis this was very exciting to them. Quite a few of our taxi drivers were called Francis as well, and it turns out to be a very popular name in Ghana.

The reason they know Francis as a name is because it is a Christian name, named after a saint. Stuart and Graham are both Scottish, and hence unknown and unpronounceable to them. The irony was that out of the three of us, it was the non-Christian who had the Christian name!

The phrase “Christian name” probably used to mean the same thing in the UK, but it has since lost that meaning and now just means “first name”. In Ghana people would sometimes have a local name and a separate Christian name, which they changed to upon conversion.

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I went to London on Tuesday to apply for my visa for Myanmar, and meet up with a couple of people. Today I’ve been working on my Ghana writeup, which is making some progress. I also took my analogue camera to the Oxfam shop, so I’m now totally digital. This evening I spent learning about neural networks with my friend Dave – I help him with the maths, and he helps me with the artificial intelligence. It’s a nice change studying something academic and new again, and I get dinner cooked for me as well!

I’ve got inert Japanese encephalitus B coursing through my veins. I’m enjoying it some much I’m going to go back for some more next week.

To give you a flavour of my trip to Ghana, and to try out image posting, this is one of my photos. It’s taken out the back of Major’s truck, at a school in Wa where we stopped for an errand. The kids were so excited to see us, so I asked them if I could take a photograph.

The least laid plans escalate the easiest.

I’m going to go to Maynamar (Burma) with my friend Phil, and I’m leaving in two weeks time. Just going there as a tourist is ethically controversial – see Tourism Concern and Lonely Planet for both sides of the story. I have been persuaded that it is OK to go for two main reasons:

• Aung San Suu Kyi, the charasmatic pro-democracy leader, told tourists not to go to Myanmar a few years ago. However, other members of her party the NLD have said that they think travel there is good, as it opens up communications lines with the outside world.
• Nowdays you can travel in Myanmar, but spend very little money at government-owned places.

Since deciding to go, my plans have escalated somewhat. First I decided that whilst I’m in the area, I may as well go to Vietnam as well. By that point I was planning to go for two months, so I figured I may as well give up my room here in Cambridge, leaving myself free to travel for longer if I’m enjoying myself. I’d like to make it to China.

So, I’m leaving in two weeks time. There feels like remarkably little to get ready, although I do have to pack up my room, and somehow squeeze it in the attic here.

If you know anybody in SE Asia, in particular if you have any contacts with development (international, not software, although software too!) projects in the area, please do let me know. It’s good to visit things when travelling, and I’d be grateful of any suggestions.

Been busy this week catching up with things. Done some work on the Think Twice conference website. You can now find transcripts of the talks from the last conference.

On Monday I made a CD with a Windows installer for Mozilla on and a local copy of the Cambridge Oxfam Group website. Chris, one of the group members, is taking on the website from me. Actually, I stopped updating the site, and when you give things up, if they are important other people do come along to take them on. On Monday evening I showed him how to use Mozilla composer, so now he can update the site. Hopefully he’ll become adventurous and put a bit more imagination into it than I have!

Working out how to write up Ghana. Can’t find a good “story” to make it into an article; I have lots of interesting things to say but they are quite bitty, and it takes time to cohese them into something that isn’t too boring to read.

There’s no more work for me to do at Ravenbrook at the moment. On Friday I’m going to finally sort out a backup system for the Harambee centre…

Pete, the excellent Half-head challenge chief poobah and bean counter, has finally got to the end of working out how much money we made in September by shaving our heads in half down the middle.

Pete says… “In the end, we raised a rather large �1333.73 to split between the Big Issue Foundation and Jimmy’s NightShelter, so sincere thanks to everyone who either sponsored myself, Guy,Francis or Pete, or donated online, or donated on the day, or generally helped out with any of the organising bits and pieces. Even better – after Gift Aid (which allows the charities involved to recoup from the government 28.5% of money donated if the person donating the money gave their permission), the total rockets up to over �1600! Excellent stuff!“

Thank you to everyone who sponsored us!

And congratulations to Pete for organising such an original and successful event. It was his first charity fundraising, and I don’t know about you but I’m looking forward to seeing what he manages to do when he’s a wizened veteran. Storming!

Hello! I’m in a cool, chilled internet cafe in Accra (capital of Ghana) at the moment, catching up on the news from the BBC website. It’s the end of the trip, and I don’t feel too physically exhausted, mainly because we’ve managed to get plenty of sleep. I’m sipping Mirinda, a fizzy backcurrant drink.

Even though phyiscally I’m not too tired, mentally I’m exhausted. We’ve travelled all over Ghana, from the colonial slave forts on the coast, to the remote village of Funsi in the Upper West Region, and back. My digital camera is bursting with over 200 photos, and my mind is full of lots of new things. If I can work out how to organise it all I’ll write a separate trip account next week…

This afternoon I’m going to visit an NGO called CODAC; I met someone from their London office last month at a Harambee centre event. It’ll be interesting to see their Ghana office, and find out more about what they do. Then I’m going to try going to the cinema to see an African film, a real treat that you can only do in an anglophone country.

We fly back very late tomorrow night, arriving home Sunday afternoon.

Well, I’ve spent all week in a mild state of packing stress, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything now, and it’s all packed. It’s noticeable that the only things I’ve got which I like were recommended to me by someone. So in return…

Some items that I would recommend: Travel towel (they’re much smaller, and seem really good), Teva sandals (Terra Firma, recommended to me by Ben, thanks Ben!), shaving oil (it rules, a tiny bottle lasts forever, and I think it’s a nicer shave than overly-visible, but underly-useful foam).

What travel kit would you recommend?

The coach to the airport leaves at 5am tomorrow…