Tanzania to Ghana and back - volunteering.

Tanzania to Ghana overland would be difficult. You are talking about an incredible distance. There is no rail to speak of that would cover such a route and by bus it would be a long series of exhausting journeys. Nairobi as a flight hub in e. africa is probably your best bet and you may be able to find an ethiopian airlines flight that goes nairobi>addis>accra. Other options would even include nairobi>london>accra - as crazy as that sounds, that's the reality in many cases because of low demand for intra africa flights. I would search skyscanner.com, farecompare.com, dohop.com and whichbudget.com to start with. Also take a look at ethiopian air directly. Another possible itinerary is nairobi>lagos>accra.

For volunteering info, I would definitely check out Gayle Pescud and Godwin Yidana's G lish foundation. They have written an extensive free ebook about volunteering responsibly in Ghana. As you probably know, there are a lot of volunteer orgs. that do more harm than good. Check them out here: http://g-lishfoundation.org/

Good luck

Kenyan airways flies from Nairobi to Accra - www.kenya-airways.com. Not the cheapest but easy to get a connection to Nairobi from Tanzania

Ahh, great to know that. Thanks for sharing info on KA route nairobi>accra. Cool.

There are loads of independant volunteering options in Tanz. In Arusha, check out Ujamaa hostel, they assist guests with links to local volunteer placements. Hostel Hoff in Moshi do the some for their local area. Both have connections with a range of different projects. There is also a org called Hope Foundation just outside Marangu. They run a nursery/primary school and orphanage. They are pretty isolated, you will stay on their compound with the option of coming into Moshi once a week (it takes around 2 hrs by public transport to get to moshi from Hope). pm me if you want to email address of the co-ordinator there.

Leif

Unfortunately travel between Tanz and Ghana is not that easy from what you have seen from the other posters. There are a few inter-African flights but they tend to be very expensive. Flights are somewhere where you can still very much see the colonial divisions in Africa, with flights from those European countries being the easiest and most economical options. Often it is cheaper to fly to Europe and then back to Africa again.

As for volunteer organizations in Ghana that offer free volunteering, I am not sure. I had done a lot of homework about this when looking to find a partner for offering voluntourism opportunities. I have found a great organization in the Volta region that does amazing bottom up development work with the help of volunteers. It is not free but our rates are very fare, check them out at the bottom of this page http://www.greenbugadventures.com/adventures/country/ghana

Good luck,
Leif

I have found a place in Ghana to volunteer for free. They don't provide anything in the way of accommodation and they have an informal approach to volunteering where they expect you to get stuck in -ie there's no formal volunteer programme. The place is the Rescue Centre for Orphans Ghana - I'm blogging my travels so if you want to find out what it's like you can find out at via the Global Youth Video Project . If I find any other projects I'll be posting them here as well.
Good luck with everything.
Kat

Edited by: katlouis

http://independentvolunteer.org

I was looking at Independent volunteering on this website and I think I saw some projects in Tanzania, worth having a look anyway.

Thank you very much for your replies everyone! Havent logged in here for a long while. Very informative stuff. Does anyone know how I can get a visa to stay in Tanzania for 5 months? Im told that a tourist visa is 3 months. Do I renew it or leave the country and come back in?

Cheers and asante :)