Dear Home

Dad,

     Got the cupcakes yesterday!  Thank you so much!  You have no idea.  There is nothing like that here, and because there is nothing like that here, I think my sugar allowance is a little low and I found them sickly sweet.  Not that that kept me from eating them or enjoying them.

They make us open the packages at the post office for the customs people and when I opened it and pulled out those cakes there were ants in the box and they asked, what are those?  And I said Birthday Cakes!  Ha!  Thanks so much, sweet gesture, sweet cakes.

Sorry I have not been in touch.  I have been out of credit for days. 

ADVANCE has a new project leader in the North.  He is Ghanaian and really great, Lauren and I got to sit down yesterday and talk about what this next year could look like for us.

I told him I was no longer working with the farmers at the scheme and that I focus on forming and teaching womens groups.  I put a picture on facebook this week.  I taught Rabi and the Dalun women how to make soap, this is mainly used as income generator, maybe used during dry season when there is nothing to do and no other income source.

So I taught that group and they liked it so much, we’ve done it for the last three weeks.  Thus far, we have only been making it in a bucket, but they are so into it that this week I am having a soap box made.  This way they can be making more and have nice, uniform square pieces.  For some reason they really want to make yellow soap.  Yellow is the color of soap, also there is a certain shape people love, its called key soap and I have heard you can buy the moulds for it, I’m looking into this.

My friend Fahimeh came back this week!  Great news as half of my group has terminated early.  Ghana used to have the best E.T. early termination rate out of all Peace Corps and my group alone has taken that title away.  Anyway, Fahimeh tore her ACL and had to go to DC for surgery and no one thought PC would let her come back, but they did!  And she brought me a big bag of coffee!!  

What else?  Oh okay, so I have always known that I had mice.  But I never saw them and they stayed in two bottom kitchen doors and I let them and that was fine.  Then one moved into my underwear drawer.  And then.  One fateful night, there was one IN MY MOSQUITO NET WITH ME.  That was it, the next day I bought poison.  Its zinc phosphate and I really hated to use it, especially because after I mixed it with rice and sprinkled it around the house, I still had a bunch of poisoned rice left over.  What was I supposed to do with that?  So, I got my shovel and went to bury it outside.  Pretty good idea I thought.  The next morning, the chickens had scratched it up.  Bastards.  Just like they scratched up my cucumber seeds and my sweet pepper nursery.  So all in all, I think they deserved it, but they have not died, so.

I found one dead mouse.  And I can only smell the others.  I cannot find them.  This house is pretty terrible, there are a number of places they could be, like behind pointless woodwork, in the giant concrete hole my toilet balances over, the doors, the bottom of door frames.  But I really think they are in the ceiling.  As it is hot season, I think I’m just gonna deal with it.  They’ll bake for a few days and then it’ll be done right?

Along that line, I got a kitten, he is pretty awesome.  I never liked cats but this one is pretty entertaining and I hope he scares away any potential mice.  I have taken back the bottom two kitchen drawers; I store water there now.  I put a box of dirt in the kitchen and the cat went right there to pee, he eats rice, and he perches on my shoulder when I am on the computer and he likes to chew on computer cables.  But too, he likes to walk on my keyboard so that’s annoying.  Don’t know how this is going to work with the allergies but I have concrete floors and a very drafty house so I think it’ll be fine.  He doesn’t sleep with me but he wishes, he slept on the very corner of the bed but outside the net last night.

Also, Dad, I know you are not going to want to put the effort into this, but I really want you to.  I want you to go to the post office and try to track the packages you have sent that have not come, like the phone and the red pepper seeds.

At the post office yesterday, the package man brought us back to his office, picked up and box and asked us if we knew the person.  It was a package belonging to our friend Diana.  They had lost some slip and her package had been there for months without her knowledge.  It was a hassle getting that package out of the post office but we got it for her.  So I brought up the fact that I have been waiting on two packages.  They said it should have a tracking number, which I’m sure you did not keep, but if you went to the office you shipped it from, I mean I don’t know, but if you gave your name and the date maybe?  Or something?  They have to have a way to pull up the record, and get the number.  Because even if things like the phone was not insured, if US post tracks that it came into Ghana, Ghana is responsible for reimbursing/finding it.  That’s what the people said.

That’s all for now really.  We had a great sermon Sunday.  Kings Village has a couple new administrators from Accra that do the sermons now.  Assemblies are very…enthusiastic worshipers and I find myself an observer.  Not only do they speak in tongues and run around and dance but yesterday was especially powerful in that three people got laid out in the spirit.  Some of it I believe, some of it I don’t.  There is power there of some sort anyhow.  Do you know the scene from Blues Brothers?  Think that but far less coordinated.

I should tell you I cleaned up all the poisoned rice before I got the cat.  Cat is still unnamed.  I’m leaning towards Sugar or Babycakes.  I will name this animal, as the last time I let a Ghanaian name my pet they named it God Knows.  Speaking of naming, the Tamale Office/House got a new kitten too and we are going to have a naming ceremony for it.  The cats at that house tend to get named after powdered milk, first it was Nido, and this one we think will be Milo.  Not MI-lo but MEE-lo.

One last thing!  Thank you so much for sending the packages!   But I’m sorry I have ONE MORE request, but this one can seriously go in an envelope…or maybe with Brother Samuel if you see him?  I am out of drink mixes and its hot season.  There is one a friend gave me that is very nice, it’s the Great Value Peach Mango Green Tea.  I seriously drink 150 ounces a day, effortlessly.  I have the Gatorade Liza sent with me and I use it but like to hoard it for when I am sick/really dehydrated.

Oh wait, I do have more!  Last week was March 6, Ghana Independence Day.  That was okay, fun festivities etc.  Lauren lives in Bimbilla where there are chieftaincy issues already.  Well, a chief there died and then things got out of hand and people were shooting at each other and one person was killed, so Lauren got evacuated.

Yesterday I was in Tamale shopping and I stopped at a friend who sells shoes.  This guy, he is finding American flag All Stars for me.  He told me he had them but when he came with them, they were Vans and a men size 9.5 and he still tried to get me to buy them for 50 cedi!  But I refused and went to leave when he told me not to continue down the road, that some politician had been shot and killed and they were fighting and the military was there.  He told me to get out of town fast, so I went about my business and found my way through the market to my station where I did see the military, and they were not happy.  It was a lot of trucks full of uniformed men swinging big guns around and yelling at people.  But no big really, nothing else happened, I went home.

That’s all the excitement I have for now.  Soap making, dead mice and military involvement.