3 June 2010

It seems to be a truism in life that once you notice something you think is unique you then notice it everywhere. Two weeks ago I wrote a little note about “overspeeding.” I thought it was unique to sign posts on the Accra – Cape Coast highway. It is not unique to that highway. I now see signs about “overspeeding” all the time. Here is a photograph of the back of a truck that had better not be “overspeeding.” It makes you think that this might be a conscientious driver who is concerned about safety. Ha! Fooled you. I doubt it would do any good to try and report him or her to the number on the warning sign. Nothing happens when you call 1801.

 Here’s another photo. I’ve described the abundance of fruit here in Ghana: pineapples, bananas, papayas and mangos. All are grown locally, are plentiful at the fruit stands, and are inexpensive. We eat fruit at least two times a day. It is probably the best part of living here in West Africa. I’m familiar with the plants that produce pineapple and bananas. Travels to Hawaii and the Caribbean have taught me to recognize these plants. But I have not known what to look for with papayas and mangos. About two months ago on a trip to Kumasi our driver pointed out to us the trees that produce papayas. They look like a coconut palm tree, with a smaller diameter trunk, and palm fronds that are very short. From a distance you would look at the tree and think it is a palm that is dying. The fruit grows from the center of the trunk/fronds. Even though they grow year round the best season for papayas, I’ve been told by the fruit stand managers, is August through January. I had not seen a mango tree until last Saturday. We encountered one at a bead business about an hour outside of Accra. The tree is a branching shade like tree, with large leaves and lots of hanging down fruit. This is a picture of Marsha and a mango tree. Welcome to the Garden of Eden. Walk out and pick your dinner.

 Another photo: this is my tomato garden at three weeks. The tomato on the left is Justice, and the one on the right is Mercy. I’m going to see which yields more tomatoes.


OK. So what has happened since I wrote last? We had another cockroach encounter. We had been out until about 8 p.m. and returned to our apartment complex in the dark. Being outside in the dark makes Marsha nervous because she is always worried about the critters that emerge when the sun goes down. She knows that having to walk the 40 feet from the car to our stairwell and  up two flights of stairs gives us significant exposure to such critters. As we exited the parking lot she pulled very close to me for protection. We approached the stairwell. In the dim light we noticed something shoot across the walkway too fast for identification. I suspect it was one of the stray cats that live around the apartments. Marsha thought it was something much more dangerous. She pulled closer to me. As we turned the corner into the stairwell we both jumped. There was a large frog about half the size of a dinner plate. We couldn’t see it very well because of the dim light. We stepped around it. On the first landing there was another frog. We jumped again. We hurried up the last flight of stairs watching for more frogs. We made it to the door of the apartment and stepped inside, thinking we were past the critter encounters. We turned on the light to the living room and a cockroach was right in front of us. Marsha yelled and I smacked it. We’re getting pretty good at cockroach yelling and smacking. I took a photograph of this one before I disposed of him/her. 

We talked to the complex manager the next day and he gave us some brown jell stuff to put down around the perimeters of the rooms and the thresholds of the front/balcony doors.  It is supposed to keep the cockroaches out. I tried to read the label of what we put down but it was in a foreign language that I didn’t recognize. There were a lot of danger emblems on the tube, enough to impress me with the toxicity of the jell. If we come back to the states and our hair has fallen out and we are drooling it’s probably because we’ve been sleeping cockroach free but breathing something that is banned in all English speaking countries.

We are enjoying the rainy season. There is no pattern nor predictability to the weather now. Sometimes it rains during the day. Sometimes it rains at night. Some days will be cloudy and look like an impending storm. Right now, for instance. As I write this I can look out my office window and see very ominous dark clouds to the northeast. I’ve been watching them for an hour anticipating rain but nothing has happened. The clouds might stay all day or might go away in an instant. It doesn’t rain every day. Some days it will be completely clear with beautiful blue skies. Most of the time the clouds move in from the higher elevation to the north. Just when I think this is a predictable weather pattern the clouds and rain will move in off the ocean. Thunder and lightning are often part of the rain, especially at night, keeping us awake with the light and noise.  But some times the rain just quietly slips up on us and catches us unaware.

This is a picture looking outside my office window during a rain that lasted for over an hour. The best part of the rainy season is that the temperature is about 3 - 5 degrees Celsius cooler now. It is very tolerable. The humidity still makes one sweat, but the cooler temperature keeps one from melting.

I must be getting desperate for ideas when the best I can do is cockroaches and the weather. What else can I report?


Last Saturday I drove to C&J Hospital at 6:30 in the morning. It was the first time I had driven the streets of Accra at that hour on a Saturday. A lot of things were different. There was less vehicle traffic. Most of the trucks/vans were carrying items or produce, I presume, to the markets. Every empty lot had a soccer game. There were lots of young men playing, and lots of spectators. There were more pedestrians than I would have anticipated for that hour. I have no idea where they were going. Maybe to the markets. Many were dressed up, but not in the black/red clothing that means they are going to a funeral. Maybe they were going to church. I was very impressed with the number of women cleaning the areas around the fronts of their houses and businesses. They were bent over with little hand brooms sweeping the dirt, the pavement, or the concrete. I noticed a man and his daughter on one of the sidewalks. The little girl was about two years old and dressed in a yellow Easter like dress. The man was carrying her in his arms. Both were laughing. He might have been tickling her. Why would I consider this unusual? Two reasons. First, women carry the children here, not men. I posted a picture on a previous blog of a woman carrying a child on her back. It is not unusual to see women carrying children 3 – 4 years old on their backs. To see a man carrying a child was unique. Second: the amount of laughing was also unique. Ghanaians, especially the children, are very happy, but I have not seen this much parent/child interaction before. This father and his daughter were enjoying each other, laughing and giggling. It was a very tender and singular show of affection.

I’ll close with a bat story. When we were learning our way around Accra we often made a point of knowing our location in reference to the “bat trees.” These are about a dozen LARGE trees on the median and along the sides of Independence Ave at its intersection with the Burma Camp/Achimoto highway. There is a hospital at this intersection. The trunks of these trees are about 6 – 8 feet in diameter and the height of each tree is about 40 – 50 feet. Each tree has large branches that spread out and arch over the base of the tree and extend over the north and south lanes of the road.


For the first four months we were here we would pass the bat trees on our way to the office in the morning and note the commotion of the bats returning from the night and getting into their upside down sleeping positions. The bats would fly toward and around the branches looking for an open resting place. Multiple bats would group together creating large, black, teardrop appearing masses all over each of the trees. Marsha always accuses me of exaggerating, but I’m not exaggerating in this case when I say that there must have been at least 50,000 bats on the trees.

This is a picture of the bat trees.  Look closely to see the "blobs of bats."  On our way home in the afternoon the bats would be pretty quiet without much, if any, movement. If one hadn’t noticed the commotion in the morning one would probably drive by the trees and think nothing of the hanging down blobs of sleeping bats. With the sunset, however, the bats would start leaving the trees and move out for a night of eating (hopefully malaria infested mosquitoes.) These bats would fly to the north right above our apartment. We could stand on the front porch and watch thousands of them go overhead. The process would continue until it was too dark to see. I don’t think my estimate of 50,000 bats was an exaggeration. This mass movement of bats in the evening would be bigger than one could see extending in every direction in the diminishing light. And then the bats would return in the morning.

I’m sure that many of you have read the Bat Books: Bats in the Barn, Bats at the Beach. One indeed wonders what bats do all night long. Eating insects for twelve hours has to be pretty boring.  Maybe they spend the night at the hospital: Bats in the Morgue.

The reason I describe this bat phenomenon is because the bats are gone. They left last week. Not just a few of them. All of them. And they did it overnight. I wonder where they migrated to. We can’t call the trees at that intersection the “bat trees” anymore.

Here is a picture given me by John Welling. He took this during the time he and his wife, Cozette, were here. I look at this picture frequently. It is captivating. I hope you agree.