Comforts of Home

"Ay, there's the rub!" - Hamlet

So I was wondering what it is about my time in Ghana that is so different from my time in Mali. I mean, sure we go places, we have fun, we take pictures, I eat different foods and experience different things but surely something is missing. And then I realized it is the grit, the take life by the scruff of the neck drama that I experienced in Mali that is nonexistent here in Ghana. I landed and Shirley had a sim card for the Ghanaian cellphone network and a card with phone time on it all ready for me. Whenever I think of needing something, someone has already anticipated the need. I am having a wonderful time, and it certainly feels more comparable to a 4 star hotel with fam and friends than it does to my time in Mali.

Am I being spoiled?
- Sure.
Do I deserve it?
- Sure.
Does this make for an uninteresting blog?
- I don't know. You be the judge. But if my relaxation does dull down my blog then, ay, there's the rub!

I wanted some drama the other day so when Nana Yaw, Carmen and I were at the Internet Cafe I told them to take the taxi without me and that I would do a little exploring on my own. I made sure that I knew how to tell a taxi to get me to the general vicinity of the house and how much it should cost. They wanted to know if I was sure about my decision. Yeah I'm sure. After all everyone here speaks English, how difficult can it be?

Well after nosing around a bit and seeing nothing out of the ordinary I decided to walk back to the house as I can see more when I walk than drive. Whenever I was unsure about which turn to take I looked at the billboards and walked towards the ones that were familiar. Sometimes I walked on a trail alongside the road and other times on the edge of the road. Nana Yaw had said it was about 2.2 miles but it felt much shorter.

I arrived at the house and rang the bell outside the gate and someone, I think it was Eugene, opened it for me. Shirley's dad was in the yard and he said he heard I had gone off by myself, no doubt to find something to write about in my blog. Touche! Shirley's sister Carol expressed surprise that I walked all the way from Swan Lake and said Nana Yaw was mad at me for making him worry about me. Shirley and Nana Yaw reminded her that they used to walk that far to school everyday (uphill both ways as Nana Yaw says) and he said he wasn't mad. So I couldn't figure out if me walking was a bad thing, a good thing or just an unexpected thing. They asked if I took the shortcuts and I said no I couldn't afford to as I only recognized the way by the road.

We went to Cocoa Beach and though it has been rather cool weatherwise we enjoyed lunch overlooking the beach and a stroll. I saw Mummy Anodh talking to a woman and I politely said good afternoon, shook her hand and then kind of moved on. Mummy Andoh asked me if I remembered her niece Wendy's mother and I said yes and she said well this is her, my sister, Wendy's mother. (I last saw Wendy in May when I stayed with the Andoh's the night before staying in the hostel and she was staying there before leaving for grad school in London.) My jaw dropped. I don't know what it was about Auntie Naa that made me not recognize her, perhaps it was the fact that we are in Ghana and I assume I don't know people here. Craziness! I apologized profusely and gave her a big hug.

I found some beautiful pink seashells. The monetary term in Ghana is the Cedi which is pronounced the same way as the word for cowrie shell, an early form of money. They are reissuing the Cedi now to equal 10,000 of the old Cedis. So where you used to have 200,000 Cedis to make 20 dollars, now you will have about 20 Cedis. Good thing too, because changing 100 USD into Cedis would have required 1 million Cedis. Can you imagine what that looks like in your wallet when the biggest denomination used to be 5,000 Cedis? You might need a duffel bag to carry the money you'd need to make a large purchase.

We all enjoyed watching the kids play in the water and on the sand. Who can't enjoy watching kids? The house is bustling with their activity. From 9 year olds Barbara (Nana Gao) and Nana Yaw to 7 year old Jesse, to 6 year old Kelvin (poor Nana Gao amongst all these boys), and then 3 year old Nina who has come visiting from the States with her parents Nana Yaw and Carmen. Nana Yaw and Jesse, Carol's sons, keep to themselves for the most part.

Only recently have they said anything to me other than to answer a direct question, but of course they are always talking and playing amongst themselves. Nana Gao and Kelvin are Regina's kids and they are night and day. Nana Gao is painfully shy and quiet but if you catch her in a rare moment she is full of smiles and talk (like when she is beating the boys at the Xbox games). Her younger brother Kelvin is a ball of energy, literally finding reasons to walk through and around the house many times in a few minutes. He does an excellent impression of a bad guy, deepening his voice and all. It's actually pretty scary. Nina, a pretty typical American child, stands out here because she is talkative but mostly with adults, she tells them no, and she expects to be the center of attention.

We've noticed that Nana Gao and Kelvin do not clean up after themselves or go and get their own food from the kitchen. They simply say I am hungry and wait for someone else to serve them. Since Nana Yaw and Carmen are staying at their house, they are coaching them to begin doing these things for themselves, saying if they want to America that's the way things are done as most people do not have househelp.
Shirley and Nana Yaw said things are different from when they were children as they had househelp growing up but they still served themselves and cleaned up if they spilled something.

Young girls (under 17 or so) here wear their hair shaved very close. A lot of them look like boys unless you see a skirt and the omnipresent gold stud or hoop earrings. Interesting as the girls in Mali all had their full head of hair and it was usually braided in some sort of intricate and elaborate fashion. Shirley says most schools, with the exception of international schools, will not allow girls to grow their hair as they feel it makes young girls vain.

I really like corned beef stew, never knew that I would. It tastes like very spicy pasta sauce with corned beef and a ton of fresh vegetables in it. We ate it with boiled yams. Not the brown outside/orange inside ones from the States but the brown outside/white inside long, tubular ones that are boiled and sliced. I also like palava sauce, sauteed spinach with tomatoes, garlic and onions. I have definitely grown an appreciation for all that can be done with the tomato...