'The World Tonight'

Sunday morning. Phone call from Dan. He has in turn just had a phone call from VSO. The BBC will be in Koforidua the following day to interview Dan. After the initial panic that this might be a TV interview, we relax a little when we find it is radio, a brief piece for broadcast on the Radio 4’s The World Tonight on Good Friday, marking 50 years of VSO in Ghana. The BBC want to interview somebody outside Accra and VSO Ghana are insisting that it should be a British volunteer. Unable to think of an alternative, Dan agrees to meet the man from the BBC. He is unable to open the workshop he supports, but rounds up some of his work colleagues. The World Service’s West Africa correspondent arrives. He interviews everybody including me. We all talk, fluently but fairly unintelligibly. Dan takes Will around the market and he records some suitable background noises. The interview is broadcast on Good Friday. We hear it the following week on the internet. To our horror we find that the item is followed by an interview with the Chief Executive of VSO and a Ghanaian who believes that organisations like VSO are wasting their time by sending volunteers to Africa.
I do feature very briefly, and as the final part of the report, I am followed by Robin Lustig saying, “Richard Atkinson, ending that report from...”.