Here is a journal entry I recently found from the April - August 2008 trip.
When "Grandpa" was
a baby, his mother came in and saw a black mamba sleeping next to him. Black mambas have enough venom in one
bite to kill 40 men (at least according to my friend Clive who owns a snake farm
in South Africa). Somehow, the
mother snagged the baby (who was grandpa) and got the baby out, got a hunter to
shoot the snake, and scared the baby nearly to death because
of the petrified expression on her face. I’ve seen black mambas before in South Africa and they are creepy. They are probably the only snakes that
will stare at you in the eye, follow your eyes with their heads, and look like
they want to strike out even though they are completely unprovoked.
On another note, the Lever brothers (of
Lever soap) built the compound we live in. There was a factory nearby and one of the executives lived
in this compound.
This week the water was off again (it happens more often than
I thought it would) but unfortunately it went off in the middle of me washing
my face. I had to walk out of the
bathroom with my eyes closed, find my water bottle, get back to the bathroom,
and wash it off. The day was also
unfortunate because I sat in office doing absolutely nothing except dealing
with stupid technology. The email
was extremely slow, and my computer’s memory was completely eaten up so Solomon
and JJ recommended I save everything I want to and completely wipe it. There were all kinds of other
technology problems as well. I felt so unproductive, but in the end
realized things will run much more smoothly with these problems fixed. The electricity is always going out as
well (it happens throughout Ghana, at the office and the house). It was actually kind of funny last year
staying at the temple dorms because the temple would go out and come back on
immediately with the generator whilst everything else remained dark. Anyhow, when the electricity goes out
at the office it is a bit hard to work because my laptop battery doesn’t last
very long, and the computer there won’t turn on. But there is nothing we can do about it… that is Ghana! I am just ungrateful because it is the
norm for me to have light and water.
I should think of those in the villages who always have to use lanterns
or fetch water from boreholes.
While we were driving in a busy part of Accra, we saw a
gated complex. The wall had golden
symbols on it and the words that said something about it being a palace. We asked Kweku about it, and he told us
it was the chief. We also saw some
chiefs walking down the street in the city. I had assumed chiefs were only a rural thing, but we found
out that complex in the middle of busy Accra was a chief’s palace. In fact, the city is split into
sections where different neighborhoods have different chiefs.
Three random people came into Kweku’s house and sat on the
couch. We had no idea who they
were and thought they must be relatives.
Apparently, no one else knew who they were either, but they were
“siblings.” “Cousin” is a new word
in Ghana. Since Kweku was supposed
to be the chief, he has a lot of distant “relatives,” apparently.
Another interesting tidbit. Mommy means “mother.” “Maahme” which sounds the same to me,
is “give me.” In addition, if you
wave at a child the way a lot of Americans wave, wiggling the fingers with the
hands lowered, it actually doesn’t mean “hi,” it means “come.”
Wednesday, JJ, Solomon and I visited Sunil (the energy
expert) at the World Bank. The
most valuable thing we got from him was a long list of other people’s
contacts. Let the goose chase
begin! I also made an application
for the rural schools so there can be some competition among the schools in
receiving a merry-go-round, and hopefully in turn have them take better care of
the equipment. The most memorable
thing that happened at the office was that some of the shop workers picked us
some coconut off the trees outside the office and we got to drink the liquid
straight out of the coconut while working. Once again, they chopped them open with a machete and we got
to eat the meat as well.
The taxis and trotros all have stickers on the back windows
that are usually religious such as “Redeemer” or other words. Some of them are not religious but very
random. For example, we saw one
that said, “Happy Yourself.” I
wasn’t sure at first if this meant, ‘you can be happy alone’ or ‘make yourself
happy.’ Solomon then told us he
knew a man named “Happy Yourself.”
And the man would tell everyone, “No one can make you happy except you.” I think I will start selling “happy
yourself” bumper stickers.
I thought we were going to dramatically perish on the ride
home. The taxi driver was
nuts. We had so many near
collisions. My heart was palpitating
wildly the whole way, and since it’s over an hour drive I think my blood
pressure increased notably. People
drive extremely close to the cars in front of them so no one else can squeeze in,
but everyone sticks their nose in anyway. I guess it was better than the taxi ride in the village when there were 8 people in a 5-seater, and one door was completely missing so I was hugging the person next to me so I didn't fall out, and part of the floor was missing (so I could see the ground below us).
I had mentioned my gum bleeding problems to Lydia, so she picked up
some “chewing sticks” for us. They
are just small chopped up chunks of a certain kind of tree that contains
natural antibacterials apparently.
So we’ve been chewing on those nonstop. JJ says they are bitter but I cannot taste it.
The home teachers came for the Anno family one day, but JJ
and I were the only ones home.
They told us we are family now so they would just teach us instead and
we could teach everybody else after they left. They gave us a lesson and I’m sure they checked ‘the Anno
family’ off the list on the way out.
I’m glad to be considered part of the family.
Thursday we (Solomon, JJ, and I) visited the West Africa
Aids Foundation to ask them how to get a good auditor and get our finances in
order. We followed up on the
contact list from Sunil, continued to deal with technology problems (we have
internet access for 1-2 computers for the three of us).
I thought the day was comparatively boring until we came
home at night and there was no electricity, although this time it really stayed
off for a long time, as in, more than a day. We had decided to cook spaghetti, but the gas stove was not
working so they pulled two coal pots from outside into the kitchen. It was pitch dark in there besides one
“torch” (a citronella candle) and one other torch (a small flashlight). We waved the coal pots with a big fan
to get them going and cooked spaghetti and sauce in them. It took more than an hour and was quite
the experience. The whole family
was in the kitchen, some sitting on the floor, others fanning, others stirring,
some standing around. We ate by
light of a small lantern and it was interesting getting ready for bed with no
electricity and no water. I used
my cell phone to read scriptures and brush my teeth. Once again, I am completely convinced the work we are doing
here is valuable!
Friday the most enlightening thing that happened was
visiting Cyril Kattah at the IFC (International Finance Corporation). Kattah is in charge of the Lighting
Africa competition I wrote about earlier that JJ and I caught the last day
of. We want to enter it next year
if there is a contest, but now they are still looking for funding. They cannot help us fund the project
because they are looking for businesses with returns, not nonprofits. They did an extensive survey in rural
areas of Africa to see which type of lighting is preferred (LED, what type of
lantern, kerosene, candles, etc.)
It was Lydia’s birthday on Friday. She went to Nigeria in the morning so we were supposed to
leave the house at 6am to get her to the airport but didn’t end up leaving
until closer to 7am (time here is sometimes like the traffic laws. It supposedly exists). We did not celebrate her birthday that
day, but JJ and I had gotten her a card and some English chocolate bars, which
she really appreciated. After we
gave it to her, she started telling us about her cross-stitch and showing us her
patterns and the things she has done.
I think she took heart because she saw that we were actually interested
in her. I felt bad though because
the rest of the family hadn’t done anything… although her friend gave her some
money so she could buy a cake for herself. Maybe birthdays are not as big of a deal here.
JJ tried to get drunk off the fermented orange juice
(remember the Thursday coal pot cooking adventure you just read about unless
you are skimming?) It stayed off
the whole night and he didn’t realize until after he’d had a swig. The banku eaten often here is a very
common fermented dish. I really
wonder about it sometimes.
Saturday I woke up feeling absolutely awful; Thursday and
Friday I didn’t feel great either but Saturday it was worse! We visited Linda (remember the one with
the two kids from Nigeria)? I
really felt like we should visit.
Lydia dropped us off at the chapel, where we met Linda. We took two trotros (vans tons of
people cram into) into town. It is
hard to figure out the trotros because there is no written system. You just have to know where they allow
you to alight and which ones are going in which direction (which is still a
mystery to me). The first stop was
this crazy market where people were selling refrigerators and random car parts
and even kitchen sinks. There was
also a lot of food being sold—people were pounding fufu or making redred and
wrapping it in leaves as a plate.
There was one part of the road that would get flooded a lot when it
rained, so the people found a good solution by dropping coconut husk on the
part that would flood (one of the shops sold a lot of coconuts which produced a
lot of waste). What a good
idea! It turns into road after a
while and is pretty clean to walk on (especially compared to the other things
we were walking on—both animals and children sometimes relieve themselves in
the middle of the road). We saw
some kids playing with Styrofoam as if they were cars. It was very crowded and very very
dirty. It is kind of fun to see really
poor people so happy, such as kids in nothing but underwear dancing around in
the rain. We saw some guys pushing
a broken down trotro, and the saying on the window of this one was “Never give
up.” The stores never cease to
crack me up. For example, there
was one called “Tourist Attraction” that was just a normal little shop selling
roadside food.
Riding in the trotros is interesting in itself. There are two employees, the driver,
and the ‘mate’ who has a little fold out seat right next to where the door
opens. The door often stays open,
even while driving and the trotro doesn’t really come to a full stop before you
jump out of it at your stop. We
took a second trotro to Linda’s house.
We took a trotro with Linda to the hospital where Lydia was,
and went back to McCarthy Hill to celebrate Lydia’s birthday. She found an EFY song she is
particularly fond of and has been playing and singing it nonstop, kind of like
my mom does when she gets a new CD (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,
eh?). She would even close her
eyes and sway and sing over the conversation during her party, to the point
that she wouldn’t even respond to her name. We had some cake and ice cream for Lydia but I noticed they
didn’t do presents.
Sunday I didn’t even fast because I was still having
sickness issues and figure it’s not really a good idea to combine that with the
heat. I was supposed to teach
Relief Society, but suddenly another teacher showed up, so I didn’t. Sunday School was very interesting
because Lydia was teaching about Alma the Younger and the class started to get
into a discussion about the people they have not seen at church for a while. An American missionary raised his hand
and said, “Whatever happened to Hilda?”
Then others in the class blurted out other names, and Lydia made a list
as well. Lydia asked who would
visit who. Then she said they will
all meet in a certain spot after church, divide up the names, and everyone will
visit after church. It was
amazing! So much more effective
than ward council meetings where you talk about someone, maybe organize an
activity around someone scheduled for the next month, or assign a friend. They just went. Lydia, Kweku, Essie, Adwoa, JJ, me,
Papa, Narki, Nati, their parents, and a few others went to see one man. I think 14 people went to visit
total. He cried and cried. I didn’t know what was going on because
they were speaking Twi (or Ga, I still can’t tell the difference) of
course. At the same time I was so
touched I just about cried. I
think he has sickle cell and used to bring candy for the kids every week and no
one had visited him since he became ill.
They said he looked a lot better though. It reminded me of the mission where we visited one less
active member and he told us, “thank you for remembering there is a
Stephen.” After that we went to
visit the former RS President who had recently given birth. Kweku, Adwoa, Papa, Nati, JJ, and I
walked home up a big hill.
