As we shall be staying with Kate, Luke and Hannah over the weekend of 31^st January / 1^st February we are asking that if any of you have any of the following items please bring them along on Sunday so that we can take them out to Nkanfoa, Ghana when we fly out on 19^th March. Expect all items to be second hand so please do not buy new things as it would be cheaper out there.

• Story books suitable for children of 8 – 12.
• Children’s summer clothing.
• Men’s shirts & trousers but no jeans please as too heavy to carry!
• Ladies’ summer blouses / skirts / trousers.
• Children’s spectacles (only children’s as we have a link with NGO that are providing school pupils)
• Ballpoints / pencils (Not coloured pencils)
• Old but working Mobiles and Laptops if you had a better one for Christmas! Mobiles can be unlocked there.

Thanking you for reading this,
Ian and Diana [Bosman]

Being after Christmas, if anyone has been given a mobile phone or laptop and has an older one to dispose of then we would be interested in having them to take to Ghana when we return for about a month in April.

Any good condition men’s shirts, lightweight trousers, t-shirts and children’s summer weight clothing, non-fiction books or toys would also be useful.

Please either give such items to Kate or Luke in mid-February or give them your details so we can collect when we are around between 18^th and 22^nd February.
Many thanks,

Ian and Diana Bosman, ex-Mission Partners in Ghana

Finally I, Diana, was told on 30^th June that I could fly on 1^st July which made that Friday very busy. I was pleased though fearful about my return to Ghana as knew I had improved healthwise yet still had a long way to go. By 5pm I had both the e-tickets for the flight and coach in my hand so was up at 4am the following day to start my journey.

The fearfulness was fully justified as Continue reading Nkanfoa: Going home but…

March 10^th 2006: Lucky or unlucky 13!

The holidays were great but unfortunately at the end both Michael and Diana ended up with severe stomach bugs which meant a seven day course of antibiotics for both of them which then resulted in a bad ME flare-up for Diana from which she is still trying to recover. In temperatures of 33°C, high humidity and in a country where ME is unknown folks cannot understand why Diana cannot just take something and be fine. She knows she will get through this but rather it was sooner, not later.

Recent highlights

Work has actually started on the Pre-Vocational and Pre-Technical workshops Continue reading News from Nkanfoa #13

At the end of the year I am pleased to say that the church has sent the following donations:

• Niger, Sub-Saharan Africa Famine Appeal £384.10
• Harvest, eco-farming in Nepal £500
• Pakistan Earthquake Appeal £451.90

These include £210 in Gift Aid recovered.

We have also made the following donations from the Benevolent Fund:

• Childline £100
• Galloways Society for the Blind (particularly for reading the Methodist Recorder on to tape) £50
• Methodist Church in Bulgaria £200, towards £650 to fit out a kitchen to provide food for the poor in their local community (this work is through a personal connection with Councillor Albert Richardson, a member at Ribbleton Avenue Methodist Church).

The continuing story of Luke’s parents in Ghana

The new term was due to start on Tuesday, September 13th so I, Diana, was told to go, with Joseph who wanted to move to JSS, to the Regional Manager’s office to meet the new JSS staff. In the event Joseph was there and Dorothy Obeng who had a five week old baby and would be on maternity leave until the end of November. She was to teach sewing. Oh well! Term does not start until the day after and I was given the names of 3 other JSS teachers and promised a French teacher.

Tuesday: The queue outside the office was exceedingly long with folks wanting places for their wards. In Primary no child can be refused as, to encourage parents to send their children to school, there are now no fees. The theory is great, but all children, whatever their age up to 16, should be admitted into BS1 but we already had 45 in BS1 who had had at least two years schooling and in many cases four years so how is one teacher supposed to cope with all those who know nothing and those who know numbers in order up to 20, the whole alphabet with the sounds of the letters and reading 3 letter words? The Municipal Director told us that in Rwanda one class had one teacher and 102 children learning under a tree so we must just take them in. Continue reading Nkanfoa: The first four weeks of term

Many sincere thanks to those who contributed to the sum of £38 (over £45 with Gift Aid) as a result of my walk along Blackpool Prom from Bispham, for Galloways Society for the Blind, in September.

I thoroughly enjoyed baking and selling my Fairtrade cakes and pies last month. I appreciated all the compliments received and I’m pleased to announce that I made £39 profit for our next Church Charity Project, St Catherine’s Hospice, and starts us towards our £1,000.

Alison Stevens

The latest Nkanfoa newsletter brings the story up to February 2005 and is now online.

A proportion of all money raised as part of the church’s Building Together project is donated to funds outside of Fulwood. Our latest project is:

Rev. Alex Jones Memorial Methodist Primary School, Nkanfoa, Ghana

The map comes courtesy of calle.com.

The latest news and requests from Nkanfoa bring the story up to February 2005. Older news is contained in the following PDF format editions of NftP:

• 12 Oct 2003
• 16 Nov 2003
• 01 Feb 2004
• 27 Jun 2004
• 01 Aug 2004
• 19 Sep 2004

Images of Nkanfoa

A few pictures of Nkanfoa can be found below. More are available on Luke’s .mac pages.