Snippets: Conversations

Sometimes it is snippets of conversations that show the soul of a country:

• My Advans driver was taking me from Ho, the regional capital of Volta Region, to Hohoe – about 47 miles, a 2 hour drive. The road went through some mountains, offering beautiful views into the Volta plains. As we crested one mountain and looked at the vista below he got quite serious and asked  “Does the sun shine like this where you live?” Think about it.  I did and was humbled.

• Getting quizzed by 3 Advans loan officers while driving crazy bad roads from Jasikan to Hohoe (30 miles, 1.5 hours) – “Why don’t you have children?” “We decided not to have children – it was our choice,” I answered, kind of dreading where the conversation would go.  The guys were obviously shocked by my answer. “When you get married you have a baby in 9 months-you have to have kids, it is what you do when you get married!” All three agreed, and I could feel the pressure for me to change my mind growing and to start having kids at 54.  I decided to try and turn the tables. “Are any of you married?” That brought lots of laughter. “No! But soon,” was the response.  I decided to push a bit, “So what are you waiting for?” “Because of what happens after you get married” “And what’s that?”I asked.  “Kids!”  I couldn’t help but laugh so hard I snorted.  I am sure anyone driving by would have wondered why everyone in our truck was rolling with laughter.

• Electricity went out for the entire town of Hohoe just before 7pm.  It was already pitch black outside as Ghana is close to the equator.  I like to think of equator meaning equal – equal day to night, about 12 hours of sun to almost 12 hours of darkness. There was no light to eat my Cliff bar by, and more importantly, no fan or a/c. I went outside my motel room and just stared at the stars, marveling at the Milky Way. Sadly, the lights came back on after a couple of hours.

• On our way into Jasikan we stopped at an Advans borrower’s shop who happened to be funded by Kiva lenders.  I was formally introduced to Rejoice, and we exchanged appropriate pleasantries. She cheekily asked me what I brought her from the USA.  I said “The good wishes and encouragement from all the lenders around the world who worked with Advans (partner) to fund your loan.  They hope for your continued success.”  Rejoice listened to George interpret what I said, and after a second or two, she started laughing and nodding.  She got up and went into her shop, returning a few moments later with a kente scarf.  Rejoice motioned for me to stand up, and she put the scarf around my neck. George translated, “She is very happy you are here and thanks you!”

  Looking at the scarf now hanging across the tv in my apartment, I smile.  Life is Good.

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SNIPPETS ENLARGED

It’s been awhile, and I am afraid I will start forgetting all the fine, wonderful, wacky things that are making up my current life.  You get to help me keep the memories and share in a laugh and a nod.

• Exploding curry powder – it wasn’t the curry powders’ fault, it was the ants. Of course, I blame the ants.  They were converging en masse in my kitchen, and I had to move my recently bought spices, cans of tuna fish, and top ramen aside quickly so I could kill the tiny buggers.  And the bottle of curry powder dropped to the floor – a glass bottle.  It absolutely shattered. A haze of orange filled the kitchen, and I thought for a moment I was in the best Indian restaurant ever.  But I wasn’t, I was in my kitchen on a Saturday morning, not even having a cup of coffee yet.

Do you have any idea how invasive curry powder is? Let me just say I was finding orange particles for 3 days, hiding in cracks and crevices I had cleaned only an hour before.

The great news is that my whole apartment smelled fantastic for about 48 hours.

• I really was going to buy a dark backpack last weekend. I somehow got sidetracked while shopping the streets of Osu (area with nice shops, bars, restaurants – a bit of an obroni hangout) and found myself buying yards of fabric from Woodin.  My new goal was to hunt down a wonderful tailor named Esther who made me a dress 3 years ago (also from Woodin fabric).  She was around here somewhere…

After wandering the streets of Osu for about 30 minutes (no mean feat, it’s not that big, but dodging cars and open sewers was a bit exciting), I heard a “Hello Madam!” Sure enough, there was Esther welcoming me back to her shop that I had just  walked by +3 years!

After exchanging greetings and catching up a little, we got down to business of fitting me for my new wardrobe: two dresses, a skirt and a simple short-sleeved jacket.

Fabric: $30

Tailor: $55

Reconnecting with a lovely lady: Priceless

Stay tuned for photos!!

• Same theme – fashion: I wore my dress to work last Monday. The one that Esther had made me 3 years ago.  It created a bit of a stir; everyone was quite excited I had something with Ghana fabric.  Three of the Loan Officers I knew demanded photos with me.

Can’t wait to see what happens when I wear my new collection!

• The picture of me doing aerobics for Advans’ 10^th Anniversary Walk is showing up on various office powerpoints…I am choosing to be flattered, although hand-covering-eyes was the first reaction.

 

• Toe kicks are an interesting thing. I don’t have any in my kitchen.  The lower cabinets have doors that I now call ‘toe scrapers’

 

• I can get my 2-room apartment cleaned and sheets and towels washed for $4.50. I wanted to get it done every 4-5 days, but management asked me to keep it to every 2 weeks.  Some concern about water consumption, and the comment “This is Africa after all”.

I have compromised to every 10 days.

• I have found a place to stay in Tamale, my next 2-month stop on my Kiva Fellowship. I had lunch with a friend a couple of weeks ago (okay, a Facebook Friend whom I had actually never met in person) at a local restaurant.  He lived for a while in the US, and understands the hopes of comfort an obroni has.  Since he spends a lot of time in Tamale, I asked if he could help find me something, preferably a house-sharing situation.

Turns out he has a friend who is going to be out of town for several months – and a housemate willing to share the empty space!  With hot water and A/C!  AND A COFFEE GRINDER!!

• About the coffee grinder…a sweet friend from Pfizer days was in town (really – she was here visiting another friend from her Global Health Fellowship days and I was a bonus). She had just finished a safari trip to Tanzania, and was travelling home with some coffee beans.  I didn’t know about the beans when I exclaimed over her luck in visiting a country with good coffee.  She promptly made me a gift of a pound of delicious Tanzanian coffee beans.

I have been searching off and on for a coffee grinder ever since.

My finding the house in Tamale is obviously a God-wink.  Must be doing something right!

• There is a mosque not that far from my apartment. I can hear the muezzin calling the Muslim for prayers.  It is quite beautiful and haunting, and I know I will miss it.

 

• Hitting the road for all of next week, back for the weekend, then out for the following week. See MAP in Photos for locations, and keep good thoughts!

 

• What I am hearing: dogs barking, cars honking , a soprano singing opera, the beat and bass of dance music, the muezzin, a radio talk show…but nothing while I am writing.

 

The Potato Salad Caper

Women in their bright fabrics with children tied to their backs dodged in and out of the traffic –  both human and vehicle – with fully loaded heads. Why use your hands and arms to carry stuff when you have a perfectly good head that can balance buckets with fish, bananas, glass cases with baked goods, clothes, etc.

Well, when in Ghana…seriously, did you not read my post about being a klutz?! I will eventually give this a try, but not during work hours when I am chasing down my dream – a potato salad.

Tomorrow (August 21) is a Muslim holiday that celebrates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and God’s intervention.  This got me thinking about the 4th of July. And yes I know, other than they are both in the summer months, they have absolutely NOTHING in common. Other than the requisite feast, of course.

Potato salad came to mind.  It’s easy, totally American, and holiday appropriate.

And I am in Ghana, at an outdoor market that sells everything from mangoes to salt to flip-flops to…you guessed it, potatoes.

My colleagues (2 Advans loan officers I was tagging along with to Nsuwam and its market) assured me they could find me potatoes – sure enough, a bag of 8 dirt encrusted slightely odd-shaped “yellow” potatoes cost me about $.75. I had mayo at home and an onion…what else could I possibly need? Ohhh – EGGS!

I hadn’t touched an egg since my traumatic experience two weeks ago.  It was time I stopped being chicken (  😜 ) and faced my fears.

After quizzing my colleagues about the likelihood of coming across another chick-in-the-egg, and (more) assurances that it NEVER happened to them, I bought 6 eggs for $.80.

Let me clear up the ingredients list issue right now.  No one sells celery, and I was so excited about potatoes I forgot about peppers, which they have plenty of here. I know, I know, I was already on shaky ground for good results.

Things back in my apartment were going fairly well.  Potatoes were cleaned, peeled, chopped and immersed in boiling water. A few minutes later, they were done, and I cooled them off the best I could – lots of running water, finally putting them in my fridge’s little box freezer compartment (no ice cube tray).

On with the terrifying part – the eggs.

I spun each of them, promising myself if one spun oddly I would pitch it.  They all spun the same odd way, so I went ahead and boiled 4 of them.

Done!  But how to cool them off quickly so they didn’t overcook?  Easy! Put them in the freezer!

You remember what happens to Ralphie in A Christmas Story?  The tongue-on-the- flagpole thing?  Turns out eggs in a freezer compartment react the same way.  They were practically glued down.  I tried water to little effect.  I wound up wrenching them out of the freezer, leaving chunks of egg and shell behind.

Will frozen egg smell up the freezer/fridge? The water I used to try and unfreeze them created a nice layer of ice over the actual egg and shell.

Eager to move past the ridiculousness, I tasted the cooled down potatoes. Hmmm…not bad…but not what I expected from a slightly white/yellow potato.  Ummm…sweet???

Yup.  My good ol’ fashioned potato and egg salad sans anything green was now a sweet potato and egg salad.  I threw in some chili powder, onion, salt, pepper and mayonnaise with an air of desperation.

It’s almost 10pm, and I have decided to do the taste test tomorrow.  That way I can go to bed hopeful.

THE BIG DAY

Let’s not drag this out any longer…it’s edible!!  And not bad, in the grand scheme of things.  The chili powder is a definite plus.  Gumby oversaw my tasting, reminding me to be flexible – just because it isn’t a perfect reproduction of what I wanted doesn’t make it bad, just different.

And as I sit at my table eating sweet potato and egg salad, listening to the sounds of Ghana around me, different seems to be pretty darn good.

Why to NOT bring your computer to work

Maybe I set myself up for this by even thinking about it.  My computer has everything in my life on it (should I be admitting that online??), but I can be a klutz.  It’s a disease I am managing, this klutziness.  I keep a sharp eye out for possible pitfalls, like uneven sidewalks, things sticking out from car roofs, posts that tempt me to walk into them…Over the years I have even trained myself not to catch a falling knife or put my hand in a running garbage disposal (the last is from personal experience…).

So lugging a computer back and forth from my apartment in Accra, Ghana to an Uber, into the office and back again, seemed fraught with danger.  But worse was the idea of having it stolen.  Lugging won.

Streets of Accra

And then I dropped it.  On the second day.  In my apartment.  And I treated it like a knife – no stopping it.  I waited to assess the damage until I got to work, as it was tucked into my backpack-really, how bad could it be??

Great news, screen was intact and my computer started.  Bad news – the opening hinge was broken and it was pulling up the corner of my laptop.  CRAP!

By Thursday I knew the computer and I couldn’t go on like this. I confided in my next-desk seat mate, Kubra, who told me to go to IT (the org I am partnered with, Advans Savings and Loan, has all the mod cons). With trepidation and sweaty palms, I carefully took by wonky computer to them.  “Oh, we can’t fix that.” Crap. “But we can send it to a shop that can.”  YAY!   Wait, NO!!!    That’s got my life in it!!  Send it to some computer shop in Ghana?  Seriously?  I might be a klutz, but I am not stupid.

I handed over the computer, begging for its safe return.  Friday I would be visiting cashew farmers in the Volta Region, so I would pick it up on Saturday.  I started to hyperventilate.  Everyone chuckled in commiseration – at least, that’s how I decided to view it.

Saturday morning finally came – managing my anxiety levels over the past 36 hours had almost been effective –  and I made my way to Advans, hopeful that IT (whom I was assured would be there) had my fixed and unviolated computer.

The super nice security guard lady led me into the bank, informing me with a lovely smile that of course IT was not in today.  Whipping out my phone I called my contact and lifeline at Advans, Samuel, who knew all about this stuff.  I gave the phone to the Advans bank teller, and lots of conversation ensued. She closed her window (much to the dismay of the other clients) and led me to the back office. To a desk that had a hidden key that unlocked a secret cupboard.  And my computer!!

I started it up to make sure it really WAS my computer and functioned – YAY! Hinge fixed, and seemingly unviolated, I silently sent apologies to everyone everywhere for my doubts and anxiety. A well-deserved coffee was in my very near future, and I headed out with the backpack confined to my back with both straps.

I will be looking for a secret cupboard of my own on Monday.