Welcome

Welcome to the obruni files! My name is Zoe and I'm a journalism/international studies student at the University of South Australia. I'm currently a Hawke Ambassador for the Hawke Ambassador International Volunteer Experience program at the university, which allows me to spend a semester abroad volunteering or undertaking an internship. I chose to come to Ghana with volunteering organization Projects Abroad, who organize my placement and accommodation. 
I have spent 8 weeks so far in Ghana, with 5 still to go. My first month I lived in the Eastern Region, just outside a town called Mamfe in the Akuapem Hills. Everyday I participated in volunteer building of 2 new classrooms at a Projects Abroad-run school for disadvantaged children called Wonderful Love Daycare, nestled in the tropical forests between Kwamoso and Koforidua. Before the classrooms were completed, a class of young children had their classes sitting under a tree in the school yard. The volunteers helped mix cement, make mud bricks, plaster walls, and paint pictures on the walls, among other things (including playing with the super cute children on the their breaks).
My second month has been spent living in the coastal suburb of South Labadi in Ghana's capital, Accra. Accra is a big, dirty, smelly, busy and thrilling city. Here I am working at the national state owned newspaper, the Daily Graphic. As an  intern I spent my first couple of weeks learning the ropes in the office and shadowing other journalists. Now I go on joint and individual assignments. In my spare time at the office (of which there is plenty) I write features on both current issues and my experiences in Ghana. I will be posting any stories that I write or help write, whether they are published or not. I would like to point out that if I was the editor, I probably wouldn't publish some of these stories due to lack of newsworthiness, but i don't have a say in what stories I'm sent to and whether it is 'news'. I would also like observe that most stories in which I have collaborated with other journalists, I have not been 100% happy with the writing style and language. But as I am just the intern,  I am often reminded that the techniques I have learnt in journalism in Australia are not the same as the house style at the Daily Graphic. Just something that I have to live with.
Along with 'Abinah' (my Ghanaian name), I quickly came to realize that I would be known to most ghanaians and even by myself at times, as simply 'obruni'. Obruni means 'foreigner' in local language Twi, and is used to refer to anyone who obviously is not native to the country. There is not a street I can walk down, tro tro station I can walk through or path I can take where I can avoid the cries of 'Obruni! How are you?What is your name? Where are you going?'. I have come to accept my status as an obruni here in ghana, and even embrace it, hence the name of this blog.
Enjoy!