After a few days in Ghana’s capital, Accra, we’ve made it to our new home, Owere Mine, Konongo. Everyone is happy and settling in well.

First impressions from the kids include…hot, friendly, dusty, green, lots of people everywhere, exciting, interesting, fantabulous, mad traffic, dirty, smelly and beautiful.

We are living on a mine site which has existed for over 100 years, so it is very well established, with a lot of houses (I’m guessing built in the 1950s) surrounded by vegetation, including large trees, and a stunning broad open grassed area, which was once a golf course (albeit a small one), which leads down to the Senior staff club. All senior staff from the mine are welcome there, the majority of which are Ghanaian, and the few (7-10, and that includes all of us!) expats. While living on a mine site conjures visions of barbed wire compounds, and there is a lot of security on the site, it is to protect the machinery (and the gold!) much more than us. We are close enough to the village of Konongo, that last night I heard the Muslim call to prayer, the Christian churches singing this morning, and as I write this on a Sunday afternoon, disco beats of the ‘spot’ bars.

We are currently living in half our house. We will be taking over the second half early next week. After living in our 4 storey house, with tiny backyard, we are now quickly growing accustomed to a very large, single storey house, raised on stilts like a Queenslander. Hilariously the house also come with a small ‘farm’, with an enormous vegetable garden, 2 sheep, tons of chickens, guinea fowl, west african mini-goats, and a tiny orphan deer/antelope, which Lill has adopted.

Newcastle seems a million miles away, but we are very keen to hear everyone’s news. Please keep in touch, and if you want to keep up with our news, please just press the ‘Follow blog via email’ link in the top right.

love Chrissie, Bill, Cecie, Lill and Jock

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