Saturday [21 March], was a FANTASTIC DAY. Two of my housemates and I woke up early and walked the 45 minute walk to the mall. I needed to buy a few more balls for soccer...
[Meg coaches a soccer team at school.]
We all needed to stock up on groceries, to purchase shelves for our rooms, and to get some exercise. We headed off on our walk, fully slathered in sunscreen. Amanda, Elyse and I have become so comfortable with each other that we enjoy just trekking in silence. Our first stop was the banana lady 10 minutes up the road. We continued while unpacking our change to tip the two civilians with red cloth who volunteer to stand at either end of the one-lane tunnel and direct traffic. We walked through at a quick pace just inches away from the cars that sped by as if we weren't there at all. On the other side of the tunnel a line of traffic waited for their turn to pass through. As we walked by, the common, "Obruni, mu koing?" questions were thrown at us. Where are we going? We're walking...LEAVE US ALONE FOR ONCE! is all we wanted to say, but ignoring and enjoying each others company seems to work just fine. A few hundred more yards and it's up the never ending hill. Good news though, up this hill, on either side, there are the shelves we've been looking for! Wicker baskets and chairs, entertainment units, intricately and uniquely African-carved bed frames, and the ever-present animal shaped wood carvings were all waiting on the side of the road with their respective creators and the promise of a "quick" polish before you take away this beautiful piece of craftsmanship. After a few stops, we found precisely what we were looking for and promised to come within the hour to pick up and pay for our items after our shopping mall trip had commenced.
Finally we were up the never ending hill. We had passed areas selling garden-needs, auto-accessories, home-made honey, stone pillars, a Kente-weaving spot (popular Ghanaian cloth=very expensive), more wood carving shops, an artist who sells painted portraits of celebrities, a parked truck with stickers of every Ghanaian gospel singer plastered to its sides and gigantic speakers in the bed, blasting the current favorite, a line of cars/semi-trucks/tro-tros building up as the mall and the round-about neared, plenty of roadside walkers with anything from plantain chips to hubcaps balanced on their head for sale, a line of stalls selling fruit, juices, spices, rice and beans and fixings, new and used footwear, rows and rows of football jerseys, anything else you might be in need of, and none of it with price tags, but just about everyone knowing exactly how much it all should cost.
We picked up a water sachet
that we finished in seconds and made our way up the stairs to the entrance. Our first stop was Game, which is a South African chain store and is basically like an overpriced Target without a lot of what Target has. We picked up some soccer balls, receiving plenty of laughs because of our gender, a few items on sale because they were about to expire, and headed to the check out. On our way there we spotted our administrator's wife, Joyce, and our school's project manager, Laurie (who is also the woman that provides me with incredible bran muffins on a monthly basis). Naturally, we threw a couple balls at them to get their attention, they turned around and laughed and consequently offered us a ride home!! BEST NEWS EVER!! (Getting a taxi home from the mall is quite frustrating, they have some sort of union that says no matter where you go, you pay a minimum of 5 cedis. FOr the distance to our house, we should pay just 2 cedis. We usually end up walking a quarter of a mile with all our groceries and our fingers falling off before we fetch a good price). With this news, we made a quick stop in another store, and went to load our stuff in the CAR! We were holding car keys in our hands for the first time in months! It felt good; we took turns. Although, we couldn't drive it, we felt VERY cool sitting inside it with the windows down while we waited for our ladies to finish their shopping.
On the way home we had to stop to pick up our freshly varnished shelves. The first one fit snugly when we took off the headrests to the back seat. Then came the packed clown-car feel when the second one was inserted. I had to move up and squish in the front while Elyse and Amanda sat where just half-a-person should have fit.
The new varnish emanated through the entire vehicle, burning our eyes and throats, adding to the slightly euphoric feeling we were currently experiencing.
After a few pictures and a lot of laughs, we released the girls from their captivity. All this great stuff had happened and it was only 12:00!!! The afternoon was full of rest, reading, and sleeping. Dinner was great because of our awesome Saturday-sale buys and then something great happened. Five of us were sitting at the dinner table, talking and laughing for about two hours! It was better than candy. A few evening plans had been canceled and we decided we would watch Die Hard together instead. Before it began we were just having such a good time chatting. How do you explain fun like that? The kind of conversation that you know God is listening to because it's just so hilarious. The kind that demonstrates just why humans are so much cooler than animals. After the dishes were washed we all settled in comfortably to watch our movie.
We were basking in John McClane's awesomeness when with 20 minutes to go, Satan stepped in. He knew us Christians were just high on life over here, so he decided to stop it by cutting off our power. It's now 8am Sunday and after a sleepless, HOTTER-THAN-THE-CORE-OF-THE-EARTH night, the power is still off. When the three of us girls that lived downstairs found each other at 6am in the kitchen, we were on to Satan and really SHOWED HIM by having ourselves a good time! :) We decided to make pancakes because that involved the least ingredients from the slowly warming fridge. With quick ninja-like reflexes we were able to open the fridge only once for a total of 3 seconds, grabbing the butter, powdered sugar and fruit (syrup is too expensive) [see video on Facebook]. Our candlelit pancake breakfast was delicious after we re-discovered the gas side of our stove. During breakfast we put together a list of why we love Ghana to keep from dwelling on the negative.
WHY WE LOVE GHANA:
-plantain chips
-Gari Fotor (yummy Ghanaian dish)
-Yam balls
-5 cent bags of water anywhere
-cheap beach travel
-weather for the pool year-round
-easy access to cheap jewelry
-BBC on radio 24/7
-no need to impress
-cheap material and seamstress work
-excitement when the rain cools everything down and brings wind
-meeting people from all over the world, constantly
-walking a lot
-Hamartan Season (cool dry weather)
-waterfalls
-good friends with similar passions
-bananas and peanuts
-oranges on the side of the road
-buying anything from a car window
-the cool students :)
-new yoga habits
-cheap wine
-value of dollar vs. cedi
-nice dark abs walking around all over the place
-Ghanaian smiles (huge teeth and laughter)
-we're tan
-FANICE
-FANYOGO
-FANCHOCO (these are three different types of bags of ice cream that are driven around on bicycles with horns and only cost 40 cents!)
-good testing ground for our beginner cooking
-INCREDIBLE, WONDERFUL, FANTASTIC, AMAZING HOUSEMATES :)
We had just had breakfast, the power had been off for about 12 hours, and the 3 of us girls who live downstairs were hanging out in the common room. I was writing, Amanda and Elyse were reading, and all three of us were trying not to move a muscle, for without a fan even the turn of a head of the flare of a nostril will cause your pores to open up and start spewing sweat.
We stayed in these positions for a couple hours, not knowing what else to do when just before noon our 3 housemates from upstairs came down, freshly showered, and announced they were going to the air conditioned mall to watch a movie. As they walked out the door the 3 of us reassured ourselves that we needed to save money. After another minute of sitting in the stagnant heat with no hope for our day to get any LESS miserable, and our minds still dwelling on the mall, we looked at each other, stood up, spoke some indecipherable words, and headed to our rooms to shower to head to the mall. We walked out the door shortly after, smelling good, with smiles on our faces, and not a thought directed at our swiftly rotting milk and freshly purchased, quickly defrosting meat.
At the mall, the generators were on. Stores' lights flickered on and off as we almost skipped past on our way up to the theater. We bought our tickets to Gran Torino and settled in with our scarves because the air conditioning was THAT cold. Woohoo!
45 minutes later, the movie shut down, the lights did not come up, and the three of us burst out laughing and could not stop. We began to talk with strangers in the dark before a man with a flashlight led us to the lobby where we picked up our vouchers for a free movie. We met up with the rest of our group and headed down to the food court, which was a gamble because of the power situation. During lunch we decided to head over to a friend's house that had power and consequently a copy of Die Hard. We watched the last 30 minutes together and hung out until dark.
Somewhere between the mall and dusk, an amazing, perfect, wonderful thing happened. I have previously told you all about that wonderful family that has 12 of us teachers over for dinner EVERY Monday, right? Well, they just happen to be on the same line as us and therefore know when our power goes off. They, however, have a generator. We received a call from them, asking if the 6 of us wanted to come for a sleepover in the air conditioning! Because we had been dreading the second, sleepless, sweaty night (especially one where we would have to wake up early and go to school) we GRATEFULLY screamed "YES, PLEASE!!!"
I cannot properly explain the next 12 hours, but to sum it up...
-Our substitute dad picked us up at our friend's house, drove us home where we scrambled to pack up our things while he went to pack up our things while he went to pick up some bread at the store and then brought us over to our "hotel" for the night.
-Mattresses were laid out while we were treated to family, beverages, and cookies HOT from the oven.
-The 6 of us girls bunked up all in the same room which hasn't happened in the 1 1/2 years that we've been together.
-We fell asleep after pictures, boy talk, and tons of laughs.
-We woke up under...FLEECE BLANKETS!!!!!
-We had been cold all night!!
-At 6am the scents of french toast and freshly brewed coffee greeted our chilly noses.
-Did I mention FRENCH TOAST!!??!?
-Did I also mention the bananas, peanut butter, real SYRUP, and powdered sugar we put on top!?!?!?!?!
YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
-Unforunately, the dream had to end and we had to get ready for school.
-As we were getting out of the van to head into our dumb generator-less house I said, "Thank you Michael, you're amazing!"
-Michael's only reply was "God is amazing."
Okay, hope that wasn't too confusing! Meg is so much better at writing than I am and you deserve all the commentary. Last weekend and this week have been full of high highs and low lows. The high highs make it worth it :-)
