the workers of ECG need to find new jobs

ECG is the power company here. They've been having "issues" to say the least in the past week. Okay, so I mentioned in my last blog post that I was going to copy Meg's post and post it here...so here it is! Remember, this is Meg typing - shift your perspective... (Thanks, Meg :-) )


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 :-)

I like Ghana...yesterday

So, the title of this post originally was "I like Ghana...today" but that was yesterday, Saturday, BEFORE the power went off for the umpteenth time this week in the middle of my doing laundry and being productive with e-mails and blogging. Sigh. Yesterday ended up being pretty good though - again thanks mostly to the Mozley family who are amazing! Amanda, Meg, Ashley and I headed off to the mall to use our free movie passes we got last weekend when the power went off DURING the movie. Amanda, Meg and I saw "The International" while the rest of the house girls saw "Marley and Me." "The International" was pretty good - Clive Owen is great! After that we headed across the mall to Game (think Target but smaller and not as cool) where they were having a soccer competition - in which Meg took 2nd place!!! Yep, little white girl beat a bunch of Ghanaian's and won two soccer balls, a towell, 2 pairs of socks, and 2 pairs of Nike soccer cleats. Picture...
After going home and dropping off our stuff we headed over to the Mozley's for dinner where Michael Mozley made us quesadillas - with CHEESE! It was just sooooooo good. "Remember the Titans" is also a very good movie which before last night, I had never seen - nice job Denzel. Thankfully, the power is on right now and hopefully it will stay on.

Okay, let’s catch up on some other stuff. It's been a while :-)

Last weekend and this entire last week has been a huge MESS of no power. Meg is writing a blog about that and since she’s a much better writer than I am, I fully intend on stealing her story and posting it here. So, update on that to come :-) For now – here’s a picture of my new shelves!Even with all the power nonsense, Friday ended up being a great day! First, it was Friday and just by definition Friday’s are great because that means it’s the start of the weekend at Okay, so technically it’s supposed to be 3:20pm but Amanda and I were so out of school right at 3pm. We came home, I threw some laundry in the washer (haven’t been able to do that for more than two weeks – thank you ECG, power company), we read for a while, ran outside and bought Fan Yogo as the little guy went by (YUM), ran on the treadmill, had dinner – typical Friday night. A bit after Meg got home (from a not so good soccer practice – thank you Ghanaians who don’t get that white people can LIVE in Ghana, too) Amanda and I decided to walk and get some fruit and crackers at this new shop that’s popped up close by. Every time I walk past this shop there is something new – the first time it was just the shop, next time it had a nice stone patio part, next time it had an awning, then they added tables and chairs, now there are lights and even dividers to shield you a bit from the road – it’s a great little place!!! It also just so happened that Friday night across the street from this place they were setting up chairs and sound equipment to have an outdoor church service. When we got back home we talked to Meg and all decided to head back to this new little place – I’ll call it Rosemary’s, that’s the lady’s name who runs it – enjoy the music from the church service and play some cards. After applying liberal amounts of bug spray – a necessity – we headed out to Rosemary’s and played a pretty competitive game of Phase 10 – Meg won! Seven bags of peanuts and a few drinks later we were commenting about how much we really appreciate Ghanaian culture – sometimes. We were also lamenting the fact that no one at home will ever truly know what it’s like to live here. Friday night we were sitting in patio chairs playing cards being stared at by children (okay, and adults), watching stray dogs run around, next to an open gutter, across from a church service where people were speaking – LOUDLY – in tongues, watching people in Mercedes drive by the people sleeping on the side of the road. Ghana is such a combination of opposites it’s funny sometimes. Anyway, it ended up being so much fun just hanging out and relaxing at Rosemary’s – we’re definitely going back!

So there's a small part of what's going on here! Miss you all in the States! I'm looking forward to coming home for the summer in just over two months :-)

So, there was supposed to be a video in this post but after 4 hours it still hadn't uploaded. Stinking, frustrating Ghana. Bah, anyway... Here is the story that went with the video that never uploaded...

Last night, it started to rain, which is something pretty unusual for this time of year in Africa! When it rains it POURS here - literally and in the pessimistic figurative sense. Anyway, Meg, Amanda, and I went out dancing in the rain, enjoying how cold it felt! Meg and I had just had a conversation before it started raining about how I was just beginning to take advantage of the video option on my camera and how I wanted to do MORE video because I think it's great. So, in light of that conversation, I ran inside and grabbed my camera and shot a lovely piece of cinematic art. We just watched The Sound of Music last weekend because of our upcoming trip to Germany and Austria for spring break, which is why the song that Meg and Amanda sang and danced to in the rain was fresh in their minds :-) It's the one that the girl and the guy sing in the gazebo. I love my housemates!


I also thought I would share some of what God has been teaching me these last few weeks! It's been a long, laborious, and sometimes painful process but here's what I've got so far :-) Instead of me trying to explain it all I'm just going to give you some verses that when read in order explain it better than I ever could...

We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

...you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Those who doubt should not think they will receive anything from the Lord; they are double-minded and unstable in all they do. (James 1:6b-7)

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

I can pray and read my Bible and listen to sermons and do all that I'm "supposed" to do but without faith - none of the rest of it matters. I have to have faith in God - faith that he'll meet me wherever I am - because He will! Hebrews says that He will and that I will be rewarded for earnestly seeking God. Yay! This might seem elementary to some of you but in my actions I have been doubting God - doubting that he'll be there with me when he asks me to do something. See, I can't explain it right :-)

Okay, what else is going on... OH. We got a "new" bridge. Every day on our walk to school we have to cross this bridge and just in the past few weeks they've put in a new gutter. Ghana = open sewage/gutter system. With a new gutter comes a new bridge...
Looks safe, huh? Good thing it's not too far off the ground. The bad part is that the water underneath - super disgusting. The official count of diseases you would get from the water if you fell in is 7 million.

This past Friday was International Day at school. The best part was that I didn't have to teach my classes and that every family in the school brought a food dish native to their home country to share for lunch. It was sooooooo yummy. Then, that night at Emily and Liz's (and Becky's now, too!) we had a mixer party! Emily, Liz and Becky provided the ice cream and the rest of us each brought a mix-in. My insides don't always agree with ice cream and it's not my favorite dessert but I eat it anyway - mostly for the toppings!So much for all the working out I've been doing :-)


Anyway, I hope everyone is doing amazing! Send me e-mail updates! elyse.lyle@hotmail.com

Eating Soap and Oil Fires

Okay, so I've been thinking all day about the blog I was going to write when I got home tonight and now I have a real story to tell! I'll start with the scary one and end with the funny one.

So tonight was Egyptian night. Mariah and Amanda went to Egypt over Christmas break and tonight was their night to show pictures and tell about their trip. Amanda has been doing experiments with making falafel - they ate it a lot in Egypt. Her last try was AMAZING. To make it, you have to fry it. As Amanda was assembling the falafel tonight she put the oil in a pan with a lid on the stove to heat up. I walked into the kitchen to talk to her and Meg while everyone else waited to watch the slideshow of pictures in the living room. I looked into the pot of oil through the lid and it didn't look like it was doing much - it certainly wasn't boiling. A few minutes later, Amanda was done assembling and took the lid off the pot. Immediately the oil started smoking. Confused, Meg opened the back door to help let out the smoke and I picked up a towell to try and fan the smoke to the outside. When the smoke didn't stop and began to get worse, I picked the pot up off the stove and walked it out the back door. As I was standing and holding the pot trying to decide what to do - it caught fire. FIRE!!! The pot exploded in my hands. It startled me - of course - and burned my thumb, which then caused me to drop the pot without thinking. THANKFULLY (seriously thank you Jesus) the pot of fire spilled away from me. So now, the ground covered in oil is on fire and the pot is STILL on fire. I'm standing and yelling at the girls in the kitchen to get the lid to put it on the pot to put out the fire and the girls are yelling at me because all they can see out the back door is fire. So Jules (Amanda?) must have picked up the pot lid because the next thing I heard was a crash of glass - she had dropped the lid because it was still flaming hot from being on the pot. By this point the ground is no longer on fire but the pot is still blazing. I head back in to the kitchen to find something to put on the pot to put out the fire and find our cookie sheet and quickly head back out the door. After a few tries of trying to get the cookie sheet on top of the pot with my shaky hands, our guard Daniel came over and got it on top and finally got the fire to go out. Ahhhhhh! That's when I realized my thumb hurt pretty badly and was probably burned. Back in the kitchen I can't remember what happened but I started to feel bad that I had poured out all of Amanda's oil :-( Sorry Amanda! Anyway, my thumb is fine, just a tiny blister that will probably be gone by the morning but my lungs and throat could be better from all the smoke. Oh and I still have my eyebrows - yay! But really, this night so could have been SO much worse. What if the fire had started in the house? What if when I dropped the pot our guard had walked by and I doused him with fire? What if when I dropped the pot it tipped the other way covering me from the waist down with fire? I could be in a Ghanaian hospital right now. BAH! And none of it has to do with luck! It was nothing short of a miracle from God that everything happened the way it did and no one got hurt. God really protected me tonight and I'm SO thankful! Below is a picture of me with my bum thumb, blackened pot and broken lid.Sidenote: Meg just turned on her iPod with it on shuffle and what song starts to play? "We Didn't Start the Fire" Meg's response, "It's Jesus!" Haha!

Here's another picture and it's one of the oil spill...see how HUGE it was??? And can you see the splatter pattern? That's approximately where I was standing and see how everything splashed AWAY from me?So, we're all alive and well thanks to the amazing God we serve! Thank you!


Now the funny story :-) Actually, just the end of it is funny because the buildup won't make sense since none of you reading know this student. Anyway, this 7th grade student came up to me this morning offering me "candy." It looked like a big Listerine strip - you know those ones that you put on your tongue and they dissolve? It looked like one of those only yellow and bigger. So I kept saying no and finally this student says she'll eat some of it to prove to me that it is candy. She ripped of a tiny piece and put it into her mouth. From her face I could tell it was most certainly NOT candy and she started to laugh and gag at the same time. Come to find out - it was SOAP! This student was so committed to getting me to eat soap that she did it first! HAH. Really the joke was on her because I outsmarted her. Genius. I'm sad that this story sounds lame in light of the story I just told but really - it was hilarious when it happened :-)


Okay, I gotta get off here and go plan a European spring break vacation with Amanda!
Love and miss all of you in the States!!!