Another Update

Hello again,
It's been a while since I gave an update, so I figure I owe another one.

Here goes it.....the last couple weeks in pictures.... (I realize I take less and less pictures now that I am getting used to life here :) sorry, I'll try do better)

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I had a slight mishap..my laptop fell off my bed and the charger got jammed in and broke the piece, so it wouldn't charge anymore. So, Philip and I took it apart and tried our best to fix it. Much to our dismay, didn't work. So we took it to a place down the street, payed a little money, and had it back in a few hours working perfectly!! This is our fixing station, haha, kitchen table..

Philip looking perplexed. :)

So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, World Cup Frenzy is on. This is the colors of Ghana flag on this mans hat. They will sell anything that has a flag on it or the colors to make money. This was one of the bus drivers.

This is my patriotic part...

Philip bought me a Ghana Flag Bandana :)

Just in case you need to see what the flag looks like... here's my wrinkled bandana flag haha

This is Marium's little brothers. I don't remember if I told you before, but her family couldnt' look after her so she lives with Philip's family. Her mom and brothers came for a visit last week, and there definitely is a resemblence ;) little cuties.

The little one, named Mohammed (a Muslim family) hurt his finger and was upset, so Marium was tying him on her back. He was slightly too big for her :)

This next picture might surprise you at first glance, and I'm sorry it kinda looks funny...However, this is what it looks like.

This is FuFu. It is another food they eat. It is made out of Cassava and plantane pounded together into a paste pretty much and then made into these balls of dough. You then eat them with a sauce. This time, we had it with a peanut sauce, Yum! I dont' mind this food, it's good.

Here it is with some fish, and a piece of crab on top of it, in the peanut sauce.

Ok, this is quite a contrast from the last picture, but we went to "Frankie's" and it's a restaurant that has really good western food. We had been before, and they have highspeed wireless internet so we went to do some internet time and watched one of the World Cup matches there also. It was USA playing against England I think, and there was a table of probably 20 American Black's from Southern USA and they were very loud and proud :)

This is how you graze your cows, just bring them to to steets in town, there's nice green grass there :) haha. It's funny, and you often never see anyone there looking after them.

Coconut Milk anyone!?? Also in this picture, a very comfy place to have a nap - the hard wooden bench under the tree!!!

And, here's how you graze your goats...the same way as the cows! haha. Also in this picture is many many Ghana Flags for sale.

This is a little shop, right inside the tree. They are very ingenious here, save themselves putting up a shop when you can make use of what's there :)

Again, very patriotic Ghanaians! Flags everywhere, even on the hood of the car.

Anyone want to buy an emergency triangle to use when you're broken down. I have seen these for sale in lots of place and seen a lot of broken down vehicles and they are never seen together!! haha. Not sure who buys them or who uses them.

Flags for sale...Spot the Canadian Flag : ) : )

This is one of the swamp/rivers that flows through the center of town.

This is the Presidential Palace here. Quite a huge building.

Esther and Ami and I went to get a visa for me to go to Benin. We stopped in for "fried chicken n fries" at the mall. These girls enjoy the treat.

so do I :) Yummy Burger and fries

This is us waiting at the embassy for my visa to get processed. Ami enjoying her Sprite :)

Esther and I, the other chairs were full.

One "hot" day on the bus, I HAD to take a picture of this....I'm not sure you can notice, but the "mate" of the bus (the one who collects money and call's the people to join the bus as we pass by) was wearing there cute "rubber ducky" socks!! Can you imagine wearing SOCKS in a country that is 30 degrees or higher at all times!! haha.

Traffic in town. This is a very busy roundabout

We stopped in to visit Philip's cousin one day, and these little kids saw the "Aubruni" or "white person" and wanted to be my friend, so I snapped a few pictures :)

(notice the "football" game on in the background haha)

So, as I mentioned before, I got my visa to go visit Benin. I was going on Sunday after meeting, meeting up with the Sister workers at the Togo border, spending the night with them and then going on early Monday morning with them to Benin. Well, it was a extremely rainy night, and continued all day long, but we thought I could go anyways. Well, we got an hour out of the city (of a 4 1/2 hour trip) and we ran into a flood.

Both sides of traffic were covered in water at soem points. We started throught he water, that was probably 1.5-2 feet deep and the bus died...

Where we stopped, there was quite a "river" flowing over the road and a steep dropoff to the side. The driver got out and asked the men in the bus to get out and push us out of the water, because it was a dangerous place to be stopped. There was an area that wasn't flooded just ahead a bit.

pushing in the deep water

he is walking on what's supposed to be the median

terrential rains (not sure how to spell that one)

So the Moral of the story is that my bus stayed broken down, we were sitting there an hour, and nothing so I called Philip and he sent his cousin from Tema (the town we were near) to come in his truck and pick me up. He took me back through the deep water in his truck and then I caught a taxi from that town back into Accra, where I live. Eventfuly few hours then back in time for Gospel Meeting. Auntie Florence, the Sister, was also stuck in the flood on her way back from visiting some friends, and didn't make it back for the meeting either. You'd think with the amount of rain they get here in rainy season that the waterway's would be used to it or built up properly, but no.

So....I postponed my trip to Togo and Benin for a couple weeks. Hope the rains subside and the way is clear for me to go next month.

That's all for now. Not sure what else to share. I realize that there's not really an order to the pictures, but mixed up or not, they can probably tell what I've been up to better than words can..lol.

Thanks again to you all for your comments. Keep em coming :)

All for now,
Leah

Football has started in this Country!!

Hello Everyone,
I don't have pictures to add today, but I wanted to say a quick note just to let you know I'm still here, still having fun, and surviving.

So, what's been happening here???.......
Friday marked the start of the 2010 FIFA Worldcup Soccer Tournament in South Africa. This is the first time FIFA has held the world cup here. Some of you may know what this means for Africans...they love their "football." Yesterday was the first GHANA match, and they beat Serbia 1-0. Let me tell you that this is a very proud and happy country at the moment. They play again on saturday, so for those of you who want to follow along, I'll be tuning in also.

Life is good here. It has started into the rainy season, so not really getting much of a suntan anymore, but it's much cooler and easier to sleep at night, and much more comfortable in the days. Cooler is a reasonable term, you still sweat at times of the day, just not as much :)

Philip will be finishing school in July, so will be nice to have all day to go and do things. As of now he has classes in either the morning or in the afternoon, so we only have half a day, and most of the fun things are far away...which leaves us only a few saturdays. Anyways, I am not complaining, I am enjoying it so much. His family is starting to feel more and more like my family, the girls have started calling me their sister, and his cousin Ernest calls me Auntie Leah (He is 23 yrs old), but is only joking- they call everyone older than them auntie. I set him straight that I am not THAT much older than him, and that I am just "Leah" to him! haha.

Okay, my time is running out here at the cafe, I'll let this be all for now. I'm missing the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDER season, but I will be tuning in to the scores and updates when I can :) :)

Bye bye for now!!.....
Leah

JUNE

Hello again,
Here is another installment of Ghana....

So, as I promised the last time, I would show you some pictures of how the mothers carry their babies. . . well, there aren't a lot of babies around here, so I had to practice with Mariam, who happens to be 9 years old!!! So, needless to say, it didn't go so well, but this is how you do it!





So, because it didnt' go so well the first time, the next week I tried with little cutie named Yvonne. She is 4, so she is still a little too big, but it worked much better this time :)

We happen to have cockroaches here. This one was with me in the shower.

Selling items in traffic

Had to get a picture of this :) CANADA

These are the buses that you take on long hauls, however I think they look like caterpillar's with antennae :)

More road side selling

Okay, there's two things about this picture...first one is the guy who wouldn't leave, and wanted to sell me icecream!! And, the second one is the girl behind, she has socks in her flip-flops, check it out!! haha I guess it is to keep the dust off her feet.

Directing traffic in rush hour

Our Taxi driver had to make a stop along the journey..this is a common sight

These guys collect the scrap metal on the streets and take it for money

So, this guy made us laugh... I think he lost his bike!!

Last week, we went for pizza, they have 2 for 1 tuesday here. It was great. So this was our pizza party!

Another day, this was our lunch. This is deep fried yam, and a tomatoe based sauce with fish and egg. This has gotten to be one of my favorites!! YUMM

Okay, so I told you a couple posts ago, about eating with your hands, this is it.... Auntie Teiko is eating Kenkey, roll it into a ball, which makes it softer, and gather the sauce and eat it. Quite effective really ~ haha

After lunch one day, we had a "orange picking event" This is Vincent using a rake to get oranges from the neighbors tree (they were allowed).

I was getting on the wall to help in this opperation..

The one side of the tree (our side) was well picked, but the good oranges were a long reach away..

This is Esther, collecting the oranges that we knocked down.

Have you ever seen such big hair on a child?? This little girl was the cutest ever!! She was shy at first, but then let me take pictures. She was on her way to get her hair braided, but her mom stopped to get some alterations done on the way.

This picture really shows how big her hair really was, bigger than my head!!

This is Mariam and Esther cooking banku. Mariam is fanning the coal pot, and Esther is stirring the dough continually.

Then Ami came along when it was ready, and put scoop fulls into the calabash (bowl made of half a fruit, calabash fruit). Get the bowl wet so the dough won't stick, and then roll the dough into a ball, then put it into the cooler to keep warm. This is what you eat with the sauces.

This also goes along with it... Mackerel Fish
deep fried in spices, very good!

So, here you go, this is me eating the meal with my fingers!
Almost fit in ;)

Philip and I went for ice cream one night. I'm not sure if that's the moon or a street light, but it's a cool picture!

This was our "Canadian Supper" night. I had to go to the Accra Mall that day, and so went to the big supermarket and got a few things to make a Stirfry. Seemed that most enjoyed it.

Just like home..YUMMM

Next was dessert. Banana Split's. This is Auntie Teiko using a knife to open the cans of fruit...the can opener broke so had to improvise.

Loading up the bananas and ice cream

This was along the roadside. Does anyone want to buy a goat??

Save money on transportation, put everyone in the back, not exactly a safe idea on some of the roads that they travel on.

Someone's little living

Philip and I went to Tema, a town an hour and half away, to visit one of the friends, Eunice.

We went out for Chinese food. It was really good. They were surprised that the blacks could make Chinese food :) All the other restaurants in the area were run by Chinese, but were closed when we went, so we ended up at this one, however it was really good!

This was on the way to Union meeting. On Union Sunday, we have to go by tro-tro about an hour to the place. This little baby continued sleeping, even though he was a little squished :)

On the way back, there was an empty tro-tro that took a whole load of us..

This was some of us in the back

Ernest, Philip and I went to Fifi's school to visit him (he is Auntie Teiko's son). He is at a boys boarding school, and visiting hours are on sunday, so we went to visit. This is in the eating hall.

This is their sunday uniform. They have to wear a white shirt with khaki shorts, and then a cloth of their choice over it.

Ernest, Fifi, and Philip

Well, there's a few pics of what's been happening here the past week or so. Hard to believe that I've been here 3 1/2 weeks already. Time is flying by. Time flies when you're having fuN!!!

Thanks to you all for writing comments on here, I really enjoy hearing from you all. I don't get much time to write back to you all individually, but pls forgive me. This post took me 3 days to do, so I hope it's worth it :) The internet link doesn't always work, so I have to do a little and come back another day.
Anyways, I enjoy sharing my adventures with you all.

Better go, hi to all, and miss you all!
Love Leah