7 - 14 March 2010 Week #8

It was a pretty quiet week.  Nothing like the spike boys last week.  Marsha and I have been walking in the morning and marveling at the flora that surrounds us.  The bougainvillea is so abundant that it becomes overlooked when something new blossoms.  Yet you really can’t ignore the bougainvillea.  It is everywhere.  Here is a picture of a wall covered with three different colors of bougainvillea. 

A tree has blossomed this week for the first time since our arrival.    We have asked the locals its name and haven’t received a consistent answer.  The expats call it a “flame tree.”  The trees are very large with long horizontal branches.

The leaves are small like a honey locust and a medium green color.  The blossoms are very delicate, like a honey suckle, and red to orange red in color.  The blossoms are clustered around a single blossom that has longitudinal streaks of white on the petal, about 10 – 12 red ones for one streaked one.  The clusters of blossoms turn the medium green tree into a bright red tree.  Hence the name “flame tree.”  We see it everywhere now.   It especially stands out when viewed from a distance.

 We found a blossoming plumeria tree this week.  We noted it on Tuesday and returned to see it this morning.  It’s a single tree on the edge of a parking lot in front of what looks like a business building.  It stands there all by itself.  Just like a hitchhiker trying to get a passerby’s attention.  Well, we gave it our attention, both times this week.  The people standing in front of the building have probably wondered why the white ones were pulling the branches down and smelling the blossoms.  One sniff and it’s an instant time/space warp to Hawaii.  We brought blossoms home and put them in glasses in water, just like we do when we come across a plumeria in Hawaii. 

Some other observations about our environment:  the air is much cleaner than when we arrived, the sky is bluer, and the temperatures are hotter.  We’ve been told that March is usually the hottest month of the year.  We hope that’s true.  When we step outside each morning it’s like stepping into a sauna.  Those who know say that the rains will cool things down.  No one here talks a lot about the weather.  I guess there’s not much to say about it.  

Last Thursday we had Rebecca Tetteh in to Accra for x-ray pictures of her hips.  After we finished at the hospital Marsha and I drove her, her mother, Roselin, and her brother Michael home to Sotad, a village about 6 km from Dodowa.  It was about a two hour drive, not because of distance but because of road construction and crowded traffic.  When we finally got into the “rural” area of the drive we marveled at the beauty of the land.  It is so green and so full of vegetation.  It could easily be a country club setting if the local economy could support it.  

There is not a road sign pointing to Sotad.   You turn right just past Dodowa.  The road is part asphalt and part dirt with a few large waterholes to test one’s driving skills.  You then turn off this road onto a narrow dirt road.  Sotad is down this road.  The only building that we could see that would be considered a community building is the school.  We had to drive right through the front yard of the school.  A class of older students was sitting with its teacher under the tree in front.  The younger students were in back with another teacher, probably doing PE.  As the younger students saw us they broke from their teacher and came running. They surrounded the car and wanted our attention.  They pressed against the car, heads in our windows.  What a beautiful sight!  We would have liked to stop and get out but I think we would have never been able to get back into the car had we done so.  We would have been taken captive by 40 children!

 

We left Rebecca, Michael and Roselin at their home, drove back around the school and then back to Accra. The return trip was a little over an hour.   I am sure it will not be our last time to Sotad. 

    This is a picture of a roadside stand selling avocados.  We bought six huge ones for the equivalent of $4.00.  What a bargain, and Marsha says they’re the most delicious she has ever had.