Posted tagged ‘Ghana’

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“Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.”

April 14, 2011

4″ of rain fell yesterday. It started raining the night before then poured all of yesterday. We even had thunder to give the rain a bit of spice. Today it’s 50°, and the sun is lurking behind light gray clouds. Gracie is busy watching the men clean the yard across the street. Their blowers were the first things I heard this morning. Today is one of Gracie’s favorite days: dump day. We’ll go as soon as I finish loading the car with my cardboard, bottles, magazines and newspapers. Did I mention the trash? She would have loved the old dump with piles of refuse and seagulls everywhere. The dump now has bins for all the recycling and bigger bins for the trash, and there are no seagulls.

When we lived in South Yarmouth, my father used to love to go to the dump. Every Sunday morning, he’d ask if anyone wanted to go with him. Guests were in big trouble as they were usually dragged along as if the dump was a tourist destination. I used to be able to see the old dump from the highway. The seagulls were always circling hoping to find a morsel. That dump too has been replaced, and from the highway, all I can see are green hills where the old dump used to be.

I sometimes drive by our old house in South Yarmouth. The only changes in the forty plus years since I lived there are an addition added to the kitchen side and a fence in the back. My bedroom was on the first floor as was my brother’s. I’m often tempted to stop and peek in the windows, but I can still see every room in my mind’s eye. It’s the same with the house we left to move to the cape. I remember every piece of furniture in every room. In Ghana, my house was small, four rooms, and I know every one of them as if I still lived there. My bedroom had a wall of slat windows, and I actually made curtains. They were of brown Ghanaian cloth with a design. I cut then hemmed then used string to hold them across the windows. In the living room, the light bulb hung from a long wire. I made a shade from a Bolga basket, the same ones you can now buy from catalogs. I cut a hole in the top and used pieces of a wire hanger to hold the bulb. The shade left a small circle of light on the floor below it. During the rainy season, the only time we had bugs, the circle under the lampshade was always filled with dead ones from the night before.

Well, enough with the memories. I need to get to the dump.

Categories: Musings
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Comments: 18 Comments

“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”

April 12, 2011

The weather is the same as yesterday with clouds, but the sun has been playing some peek-a-boo and might just surprise us. It’s 56°. I never did go anywhere yesterday despite my good intentions; I just played at being a sloth, but this morning I have already been to a meeting and gone to have my blood drawn. Three more errands are on the list, and I’ll leave as soon as I finish here. I never can pass up these bursts of energy.

The birds are back. I am forgiven for leaving the feeders empty for so long. There are my usual visitors: titmice, chickadees, goldfinches and nuthatches. Did I mention the red spawn of Satan? It gets into my smaller feeder and settles in for a lavish feast. I tiptoe over and scare it to the ground. I did leave more peanuts for them yesterday and watched as the red spawn dined al fresco. I filled the suet feeder but the woodpeckers haven’t been there yet. They seem to prefer the wood on the side of my house.

In Marrakesh, cranes nest along ancient walls. I sat one afternoon having coffee and watched them coming and going. It was fascinating. Strangely I don’t remember seeing many Ghanaian birds except Guinea fowl and vultures. The vultures made me think of all those movies where they circle the dead bodies and wait for dinner. I remember sitting at the compound of my Ghanaian father’s wives and seeing vultures walking around. I was mesmerized, but after a while, they just became part of the landscape.

Every morning, when I go get the papers, I can hear the birds greeting the day. It is such a welcome sound that I always stand and listen for a bit. They make me believe that soon enough the days will get warmer, and I’ll sit on the deck while the birds swoop in and out over my head to get to the feeders. They make me feel optimistic. If I could whistle a happy tune, I probably would. Come to think of it, I may just anyway.

Categories: Musings
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Comments: 18 Comments

“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.”

April 8, 2011

Warm weather is coming. Starting tomorrow it will be in the 50’s for the next four or five days. My only wish is that the wind takes a break and stays off-shore so we can enjoy the weather. Gracie and I have a few things to do this morning then we’ll be back to watch the Red Sox play their home opener. Never in my scariest nightmares did I expect them to be 0-6 to start the season. Maybe playing the Yankees this afternoon will raise them to a higher plane.

I don’t cook for myself very often. It just seems too much trouble to pull out the pots and pans. Most times I just fall back on cheese and crackers or a sandwich. I keep hummus in the fridge, and there are always eggs, but, if the truth be told, my diet is sadly lacking in vegetables though I do take vegetable credit for coleslaw with its cabbage and carrots. I really like vegetables so there are no reasons to avoid them. I swear it’s just laziness as most go best with a meal to complement them. Carrot sticks might just be my salvation.

I don’t think I have had okra since I was in Ghana, but okra stew was one of my favorites though I had to overcome the slime when I first ate it. In the far north where I lived, it was often served with tuo zaafi, better known as T-zed in English. T-zed is like a thick porridge and locally it was made from millet. I’d grab a piece of T-zed and then dip it into the stew. It was delicious. Groundnut stew was another favorite to eat with T-zed. I never would have imagined a soup with a peanut butter base, but it was wonderful. Usually it came with chicken.

In Bolga, chop bars lined the lorry park. They were hole-in-the wall places to eat with unmatched tables and rickety stools or chairs. In the back, the sound of fufu being pounded was a sign dinner was nearly ready. I’d buy my fufu with whatever stew was available, place it in a pot and drive it home on my motorcycle holding the pot with one hand and steering with the other. I guess I’d call it take out.

Categories: Musings
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“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

April 2, 2011

The day is sunny and is supposed to be in the high 40’s, but the wind is making it feel far colder. Gracie, though, has been outside most of the morning. I guess wearing a fur coat helps.

Oh the pain, the pain!! My Red Sox lost the opener. Jon Lester was off his game and Carl Crawford didn’t get a hit. He actually struck out three times. The highpoints were few but heartwarming. David Ortiz hit a home run, Adrian Gonzalvez went two for four and Jacoby Ellsbury stole his first base of the season. My friends and I wore our Red Sox sweatshirts and socks and cheered and moaned in unison. We ate appetizers and then had pizza delivered. If it weren’t for the loss, the evening would have been great fun.

Today is my do chores at home day, but I can’t really complain as I have so few of them. Most times my stay home day is reading and lounging and being a sloth. Among my chores today are laundry, trash and litter boxes then it’s back to being a sloth.

My front garden has blooming flowers in yellow, pink and purple. I don’t know the names of all of them, but the crocus have been up a while, and I can see the flowers of the hyacinths so they aren’t so far away. I planted these bulbs last year, but I thought the squirrels had eaten most of them. How lovely a surprise to see so many survived.

I can still see all my neighbors’ houses through the naked branches of the trees in the backyard. Once their leaves arrive, though, the houses will disappear, and I’ll sit on my deck among the trees and think I’m Tarzan and Jane’s neighbor. Gracie and the birds will provide the sounds, not quite from the jungle though, but still enough to make me think I’m far away from my street and my town and the suburbs.

I have organized all my Ghanaian pictures on my new Mac. Next I’m going to figure out how to add music. I’ll then make a duplicate with captions and send it along to Tim, another RPCV from Ghana. He has already made a DVD from his slides and those of two other returned volunteers. Peace Corps Ghana has been asking for archival items as part of the 50th anniversary. I hope to bring them copies of my slides and the combined ones. I look at my slides and can’t believe how young I was. Forty years has passed far too quickly.

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Odo Anigyina: E.T. Mensah

March 29, 2011

This is from an album called E.T. Mensah Day by Day, Classic Highlife Recordings of the 1950’s and 1960’s. When I was in Ghana, I loved watching couples dance to highlife music. In what was a ballroom dance, they had this wonderful rhythm.

Highlife emerged in the 20’s and is considered a major influence on all subsequent African Music. I can still remember sitting in a spot, an outside bar, listening and watching.

Categories: Music
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“If things are getting easier, maybe you’re headed downhill.”

March 29, 2011

Today has exactly the same weather as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Poor Gracie goes out, tries to get comfy on the deck lounge but finds the breeze far too cold and comes back inside. She sits at the front door and lets the sun coming through warm her fur, and she watches the neighborhood but sees very little. When I’m done here, we’re going for a ride down cape. Maybe that will remove the ennui the weather is causing the both of us.

When I was a little kid, very little grossed me out. I’d see classmates picking their noses and checking out their finds, but I won’t even describe but some them did with their bounties. Once in a while someone would get sick in class, and it was an event to be described over and over at recess. As I grew older, though, my tolerance for the gross disappeared. I’d get car sick on even short trips. At dinner once, someone’s milk got spilled into a plate of spaghetti, and that sent me running to the bathroom. It was Ghana which finally cured me.

I remember going into a market for the first time. The stalls in front sold goat patties for fuel and they didn’t smell all that great. I ran outside to be sick. I was embarrassed, but I was stuck with a sensitive stomach. That lasted about two more weeks. I stopped noticing the smells. Some, like wood charcoal burning, became a favorite smell, a sweet one which still never fails to bring me back to Ghana. Public toilets, here a term loosely used, could be smelled blocks away. My neighbors in the field behind my house squatted in the millet adding their own fertilizer. I learned to aim perfectly at the hole in the public toilet and to squat when forced by necessity. When I visited Morocco, my skill returned quickly. I figured it was like riding a bike, something you just don’t forget.

I am going to Ghana in late August. I have the dates and am hunting for a flight which won’t exhaust my bank account. I figure it might take me a day or two to get acclimatized to those smells I remember. The one thing I know is my aim is still good.

Categories: Musings
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“We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.”

March 4, 2011

When the sun is bright, I am easily duped into thinking the day is warm. It isn’t, but I’ll accept being easily duped. Looks like the birds need their feeders filled. I’ll bundle up a bit later and go out on the deck with my bag of sunflower seeds.

Tonight is chili night while we watch The Amazing Race from last Sunday when we watched the Oscars instead. The chili is cooking and will cook all day long. I’ve  some corn bread and toppings to serve with it. I haven’t made my guacamole yet and won’t until just before my friends come. The only thing left is the dessert, and I have no idea what we’ll be having yet.

Italian and Chinese were the most exotic foods my mother served us. That was a good thing as we probably would have turned our noses up at most other foods. She started us out with American chop suey, not at all related to its Chinese cousin, but it was her way of sneaking bean sprouts into our diet. Later we’d order out at the China Moon. It was until my two years in Africa that I was introduced to all sorts of exotic, strange foods.

I ate Indian food at the Maharajah. It was near High Street and was on the top floor of a retail building. The walls went only halfway up so we could hear the hustle and bustle from the street below us. We sat on cushions, and I thought the restaurant was the most one exotic one I’d ever seen. There were lots of red cushions and curtains and tassels. I don’t even remember what I ate, but I must have enjoyed it as I still like Indian food. Hummus, tabbouleh and falafel were next, and it was a good thing I didn’t know anything about them because the mere mention of chickpeas would have put me off. I still like my hummus the way it was served at Tahal’s in Accra: a ring of hummus on a flat plate with sesame oil in the middle and red pepper in a ring around the outside of the hummus.

I ate food from the street vendors. Lots of times I didn’t know what I was eating, and I knew not to ask. I decided if it tasted good, that was enough. I have made Ghanaian food here for my friends to taste, but that was a long time ago. I am hankering for some kelewele and jollof rice. Maybe that will be my next offering. Luckily my friends are adventurous and will try most anything. They too have learned not to ask what is in any dish I serve.

Categories: Musings
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“You’ll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea”

January 16, 2011

It’s in the mid-30’s and is again a bright and sunny day which feels a bit warmer than yesterday. I went out for my Sunday breakfast and was amazed at how crowded the roads were. I guessed people wanted all their chores done before the football playoffs this afternoon. I have one more chore I couldn’t do this morning as the store was closed when I went by it. I’ll go before the Pats play this afternoon. The game starts at 4:30.

Today is one of those not so much on my mind days. My muse has left for a warmer clime, and I don’t blame her. The snow has lost its glamor. It’s dirty along the roadside, pockmarked from the rain and filled with boot, shoe and dog prints. It needs to go rather than be replenished.

Yesterday the Earth was nearly destroyed by ice, a black hole, meteors, the sun, a behemoth disguised as a mountain and a volcano. Luckily, our hero, always a male, was always on hand to save the day, but it was usually the female scientists who first noticed something was amiss.

I checked the Peace Corps Ghana site to see if there was any information about the 50th anniversary. There wasn’t. I’m getting anxious about the possibility of missing another cheaper priced flight as I have missed two already.

This entry seems like the sale table in a store where everything is marked down to 75%. Usually that table is a mishmash of items including, months later, Christmas items which never sold. It’s just one of those days.

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“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

October 30, 2010

The cold is back. The days are autumn cool, but the nights are downright chilly, blanket on the bed chilly. Yesterday was so windy yellow oak leaves now dot the deck and the lawn is hidden under pine needles. Some trees along the roads are down to bare branches. They look desolate. They look like winter.

Once in a while a memory from Ghana pops into my head. Today I remembered the Chinese restaurant, the only one in the city back then. It was a long way from the center of town. Taxi rides used to cost only 20 pesewas no matter where in the city of Accra you wanted to go, but the Chinese restaurant was a cedi away, a whole 100 pesewas. It doesn’t sound like much money but for us it was.

The restaurant seating was mostly outside. The tables had real tablecloths, and the Ghanaian waiters wore short black jackets over white shirts which made the restaurant seem fancier than it was. The Chinese food was different but it was delicious. For some reason I remember a lot of peas and fried rice.

We never celebrated Halloween in Ghana. The volunteers in my region were spread thinly, and we didn’t get together much as the travel time was too long, and we were teaching. My only acknowledgments of the holiday were some Halloween cards my mother had sent. They were on display on my bookcase. My students, who would often visit in the evening, checked them out and wanted to know what Halloween was. I tried to describe it. They were most impressed with the trick or treat and candy part.

On Halloween there was a knock at my door. Three of my students were there and they yelled, “Trick or treat,” when I opened the door. Luckily I had peppermint candies which I offered. Each of my students took one, said, “Thank you, madam,” then left. Halloween was over.

Categories: Musings
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“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat”

September 9, 2010

The other day I read an article where a woman of 65 was described as old. I was taken aback because I remember wanting to be old. I remember wanting to be sixteen. It seemed the perfect age. You could drive at sixteen, go to the movies at night and even sit in the balcony. Streetlights no longer set a curfew. I could go to bed when I wanted, and I wasn’t forced to eat vegetables. Life was getting more and more interesting. It’s funny how age becomes relative over time.

Air conditioning is being installed today. Most summers have been tolerable, but this summer was so humid that even reading a book caused me to sweat, and I refuse to go through that again. I wanted the air installed earlier, but it seems a huge number of people had also reached their boiling points, and I had to wait my turn.

When our choices are limited, we seem to be far more tolerant. I didn’t even have a fan in Ghana, in Bolga, and it got so hot a candle melted without ever being lit. I’d stand up from my living room chair and the imprint of my body would be left  in sweat on the upholstery. I went to bed still dripping from my shower so the air and water would cool my body enough so I could fall asleep. I never complained. That was life in Bolga.

I have been back here far too long. I am now spoiled. My expectations are grand. I don’t need to be hot. I don’t need to be cold. Every discomfort has a solution.

Categories: Musings
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Comments: 14 Comments

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