A Month of Sons

(First installment.  The internet is so slow I am going to finish this in the office.)

Christopher arrived on 20 December 2010.  He departed on New Years Day.  I posted a photograph of his arrival on my entry dated 26 December 2010.  This is a picture of his departure.

Even from the back I don’t think anyone would have trouble picking him out.  

We enjoyed Christopher’s visit.  During his twelve days here:

We took him to the Missionary Training Center twice.  On the first visit he helped us give vaccinations.  He administered the oral polio drops.  After we finished at the MTC on the second visit we drove around Tema.  Chris thought this road sign at a rotary warranted a photograph.

And this muslim woman. 

This is when we photographed the Christmas dinner goats shown in the entry dated 26 December. 

Christopher went with me to Korle Bu hospital.  He took pictures as we drove out and back.  Here is a photograph of children in Jamestown waking up and starting the day. 

We took Christopher to an evening outdoor Christmas block party hosted by some of the embassy personnel.  The food was great.  The entertainment was a local dance troupe, the Kusum Gboo Dance Ensemble which consisted of twenty men and women, and a dozen drums.  They performed three native dances.  We were exhausted watching them.  The dancing is hard to describe.   It was definitely not a two step waltz.   Try to visualize Michael Jackson at his dancing best.  Then add some flailing of the arms and some jumping into the air  Then turn up the speed about three times.  That’s what these men and women did for about 20 minutes.  I would estimate their caloric expenditure for these three dances equivalent to what I burn in two days.  

The photographs we took on Christmas day are on the 26 December entry.

We took Christopher to Cape Coast on the 27^th.  This is a photograph of the sun setting along the shore.

Pretty nice, isn’t it?  Looks like paradise.

We toured the Cape Coast Castle.  We discovered the museum (how had we missed it on  other visits?)  The museum has excellent displays on the history of Ghana with an emphasis on the slave trade.  We learned a lot more than what we had been told by the guides in previous tours.  Such as:  only 10% of all slaves taken from West Africa came to the United States.  Almost half went to Brazil.  The guides would have one think that they all went to the United States. These are photos of the castle. 

 

This is the "Door of No Return" through which slaves passed as they were loaded onto ships. It's a nice touch to the finality of departure, and it makes a great tourist photo opp walking through the gate and returning, but I seriously doubt that the sign was there at the time of the slave trade. 

Quite different from what the slaves would have seen, this is the current fishing village immediately outside of the door.  

We took Christopher to Kakum National Park to do the canopy walk.  

This is an exhilarating experience.  The walk, a series of aluminum ladders covered by one inch boards, is about 40 meters off the ground and has seven spans, about 300 meters in total length, suspended from the tops of LARGE trees.  Marsha was not planning on going but changed her mind at the last minute. 

We stayed at the Coconut Grove Beach Resort.

This name is a little misleading.  There are enough coconut palms on the grounds to qualify as a grove but to call it a “resort” is stretching it.  Christopher’s rollaway bed was a mattress on the floor.  (more about that later.) He did enjoy the ocean.

Christopher spent a day with the full time missionaries. 

He had a Ghanaian lunch consisting of banku and ground nut soup.  It wasn’t entirely authentic because it didn’t have fish heads.  Christopher enjoyed the day with the missionaries very much.  However, he didn’t like the two days of post lunch gastrointestinal distress.  (Ghanaians call this temporary illness “runny tummy” and don’t get too concerned over it.)

We took Christopher to Tafi Atome to the monkey sanctuary.  This is a photograph of the five km road leading to the village.

I have to stop and photograph it each time we drive it.  To me it is quintessential Africa:  the red clay, the elephant grass, the people walking along the edges carrying items on their heads, and the hills, in the mist, in the background.  The monkeys were not very cooperative this time.  Our guide had a hard time finding them.

We eventually found a few that hesitatingly took Christopher's bananas.  It was quite a different experience compared to our visit in October when the monkeys were all around us (and all over us.)

The monkeys didn’t take Marsha’s earring this time!

Final photograph.  Christopher was able to take a picture of goats on top of a trotro.

Many people have lived here for years and not accomplished such a task. 

Christopher’s time with us seemed way too brief.  Marsha and I tried to savor each day.  The opportunity of having him with us here in Accra made our Christmas seem almost normal.   Almost.

An interesting postscript to Christopher’s visit:  A little over two weeks after his return to the states Christopher called me to describe how he had awakened in the night with a pounding headache (hammer hitting the head type) bed shaking chills, and nausea.  By the time he made contact with me the chills had diminished.  The headache and nausea were unchanged.  I instructed him to start the malaria medication I had given him at his departure.  Within 48 hours he was 90% improved.  I can’t say for certainty without a blood test to confirm it but it is probable that Christopher spent 12 days in Africa and contracted malaria.  I think it was the night he slept on the mattress at the “resort.”   He might not be the best to interview for Why Ghana is Fun to Visit at Christmas.   

Monday 10 January 2011

We received a bunch of Christmas cards this week, most of them postmarked early to mid  December.  Thanks to all of you who thought of us and sent a card.  We have enjoyed reading each one.   

Here is what’s happening in the neighborhood.

Garrett is visiting us.  He is on break from law school.

It hasn’t rained for three weeks.  Everything has turned brown.

The flame trees are starting to blossom.

They bloomed in March last year.  Are they early this year, or do they bloom more than once a year?  We'll find out. 

Gas, or petrol as the locals call it, has increased in price from Ghc 1.169/liter to Ghc 1.520/liter.  No one can explain why there has been a 29% change.  I wonder if it has to do with the recent opening of the oil industry in Ghana.  Oil started shipping from Ghana two months ago.

I was finally able to photograph a gray headed kingfisher, the beautiful bird I mentioned in one of the blog entries last month.  He/she was sitting on the radio tower outside our kitchen window.

We have not seen him/her since I took this photograph.  We did see a similar species this week but slightly smaller and dark purple in color.  I have not been able to identify the second bird nor find an example on Google photos.

The holiday season is over.  Is this how Ghanaians take down their Christmas decorations?  This is the holiday photograph of the grinch type Christmas tree at the intersection of Independence Avenue and Achimota Road.

This is the same decoration last Tuesday.

The metal support for the branches is all that is left standing.  The grass is scorched ten feet peripherally around the base.  I do not know if the fire was intentional but I bet it was quite a sight.

We might have some new construction starting in the neighborhood.  I have previously described the empty lot we can see looking out our kitchen window.  I showed pictures of it shortly after our arrival (blog entry dated 7 Feb 2010) with all of the cattle that would graze across it every two or three days.  I then described the concrete and cinderblock fence/wall installed around the periphery, presumably to keep the cattle out. (blog entry dated 8 May 2010.)   Last week a second fence was erected outside of the concrete/cinderblock enclosure.

It consisted of 3 x 3 framing and ¼ inch plywood.  In the two weeks prior to the installation of this second enclosure we noticed a lot of garbage being dumped onto the site.

The big trucks would come in and dump their load and then we would watch people rummaging through the garbage hauling off anything that could be used.  It was sad to see the garbage and even sadder to see the rummaging.  Based upon our previous experience with construction projects I doubt that we will see any construction activity for months.  Hopefully the second fence will prevent more garbage activity. 

I mentioned the harmattan in my last entry when I posted the picture of the red/orange haze at sunrise on Christmas day.  Note the difference in the two pictures above that were taken about two weeks apart.  The haziness is due to the harmattan, a yearly phenomenon when the sand of the Sahara is blown southwest over the continent toward the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA photograph of sand blowing over West Africa.

This annual phenomenon begins in Nov/Dec and continues for several months.  The sky was gray/brown when we arrived a year ago in January and did not turn blue until April.   In 1999 Marsha and I were in Luxor, Egypt, and our guide described this yearly sandstorm.  She indicated that the winds deposit up to six inches of sand each year in Luxor.  I didn’t believe her then.  Now I do.  Fortunately we are far enough away from the Sahara that the sand, at our location, is high in the atmosphere and doesn’t accumulate six inches on the ground.  It does, however, leave a very fine red/brown residue on the car every two to three days.  Where does the sand go?  Does it all fall into the Atlantic?  I don’t know.  Could this be the real reason for global warming?  Or does this answer the question of where does the sand on beaches come from?

I have mentioned before the frequent highway accidents involving trucks.  In the past month we have had two near miss accidents.  The first one was on our way home from Tema.  We were in our car sitting at the light waiting to go over the Tema highway overpass.  We were in the outside lane of two lanes with a raised concrete median separating us from two lanes of oncoming traffic.  While waiting for the light to change a truck came over the overpass toward us, obviously out of control.  The truck jumped up over the median and crashed head on into three cars in the lane to our left, stopping within ten feet of us.  We could see the wide eyes of the truck driver as his truck came to a stop in the midst of these cars.   The sound of the collision was not the sound heard on TV or in the movies.  It was much lower pitched, like cardboard boxes exploding.  The driver of one of the cars slumped over his steering wheel obviously injured by the impact.  It all happened in a few seconds.  It was very unnerving.  We scooted around the carnage and drove home, grateful to have been preserved.  The second near miss occurred on the Cape Coast highway just outside of Accra.  We were traveling about 50 km/hour behind an eighteen wheeler.  It was a flatbed with a heavy load tied down and covered with tarps.  We heard a loud bang which seemed to come from the front of our car, toward the right front fender.  We couldn’t determine a source for the noise.  Within seconds we noticed the truck in front of us starting to wobble and then veer toward the right.  The truck went onto the shoulder of the road and flipped on its side.  It continued on its side for 30 km until it came to a stop, making a loud grinding noise and pushing up a cloud of dirt and dust.  Once again, this entire accident took only seconds to happen.  We never did see a brake light come on.  I am grateful that the truck went to the right and not across the median into the oncoming traffic.  Christopher was in the front seat of the car and had been taking photos of scenery.  He quickly took this picture.

Let me describe a less disturbing incident.  I mentioned in November that the bats had returned to the trees on Independence Avenue.   About three weeks ago I was coming up Independence and stopped at the Independence Ave/Achimota Highway intersection right next to 37 Military Hospital.  This is the same intersection where I had the disturbing experience last May trying to take a video of the vendors (see blog entry dated 8 May 2010.)   I had come to a stop and was leaning against the driver side window looking up at all of the bats hanging from the tree branches.  I heard some shouting outside the car but ignored it and continued looking at the trees.  The shouting continued and came closer and closer to my car.  I didn’t look around because I knew I wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, like photographing the vendors.  The shouting continued.  I tried to see from my periphery why everyone was shouting.  I noticed that they were yelling at me and pointing to my side of the car.  I then noticed something bobbing up and down slightly toward the back window on the driver’s side.  When I turned to my left to look at it I came face to face with a bat, obviously dead, strung up by one leg and held by a young man with a full grin on his face.  The young man was bobbing the bat up and down for me to look at.  I didn’t know if he wanted me to put my window down and touch the bat, or if he wanted me to purchase it for dinner.  The bat was beautiful.  It was about 14 inches across, a sable brown color with a streak of gray/black down its back. Its fur appeared to be soft like cashmere.   I am sure it would have been very soft to touch.  I acknowledged the display by giving the bat vendor two thumbs up.  He grinned even wider.  And then all of the other shouting vendors broke into grins.  I guess they wanted to show the inquisitive white guy who was looking up into the bat trees what a bat actually looked like up close.  Or maybe they had bets on whether I would buy it and were pleased to see, predictably, that I wasn’t interested in it for dinner.      

In late November I had reason to sit in a patient waiting room at Ridge Hospital for an hour.  I was accompanying an elderly Ghanaian to an ophthalmologist to see if cataract surgery was an option for treatment of his diminished vision.  We had arrived at 8:00 a.m. along with forty or fifty other patients.  We were all crowded together in a small room waiting for our turn.  A small television set was in the center of the wall we were facing.  It was showing programs from a local station.  I could not understand most of the programs.  However, one program was very understandable and quite informative.  It was ten minutes of instruction for an upcoming local election.  It was mostly visual with very little audio.  I didn’t recognize the district, I assume it was in Accra, but the program listed all of the candidates running for election.  It showed a picture of each of the candidates, a picture of his or her name, and then a symbol representing, I assume, either his or her political party or some kind of an emblem of identification.  Some of the symbols were animals.  One was a red chicken.  Some were geometric designs.  One was a star, one was a pentagon.  There were about ten individuals.  The ballot was then shown listing all of the candidates and their symbols.  The camera very slowly panned the ballot from the top to the bottom, showing each candidate’s name and each candidate’s symbol.  A box adjacent to each candidate was noticeable on the right side of the ballot. The program then demonstrated how a person would vote by putting black ink on his or her right thumb and placing his/her inked thumb in the box of his/her candidate of choice.  The thumbprint had to be entirely inside the box.  The program demonstrated how ballots with thumb prints outside of the box would be rejected.   The program ended by showing an individual holding up his inked thumb and smiling.  I am sure that this election demonstration was repeated many times during the day and night.

I was fascinated by this television program.  Think about it for a minute.  When you and I vote we obtain a ballot by showing our identification and signing our name.  We then look at the ballot listing all of the candidates and read the names and choose the one we want to vote for.  And then we read each of the legislative issues being considered and decide either yes or no to support the issue.  How do you hold elections when a large percentage of the people voting cannot read or cannot sign his or her name?  You do it the way I just described.  And you demonstrate it on television (everyone has TV) for weeks ahead of the election.  Very ingenious. 

By the way, I found out about the red rooster party.  This is a billboard with a red rooster candidate from a previous election.

I also discovered the red rooster party slogan:  “Backward never.  Forward forever.”      I think someone needs to come up with an ingenious slogan for our two political parties.   Maybe one of them (you choose which party) could use as its slogan:  “First fix the blame.”     

        

Here are a few fun photos.  I have described the kapok trees in Ghana.  They are huge, standing above the other trees like Manhatten skyscrapers.  This is what they look like when cut and loaded on a logging truck.

It is unnerving to see one of these coming toward you knowing the number of trucks on the highway with brakes that are waiting to fail.  Each time we see a large truck approaching, especially a truck carrying a tree the size of a tennis court, we take a deep breath and look to which direction we would have to go should the truck cross into our lane out of control.

The next photo is one of the current orange harvest.

These piles of oranges are along the sides of the roads waiting to be loaded and transported into the towns/cities.  It is easy to see why we can buy oranges for Ghc 1 per dozen (about sixty eight cents.)

This third photo is a display of women's hats for sale.

Isn’t this a beautiful display of hats that would have been popular in the US about half a century ago?  When you see one of these hats on a Ghanaian woman you can see why such beauty never goes out of African style.

Ghanaian women make any item of clothing look beautiful.

Last item.  What’s in the news?  This week’s article comes from alert reader Kevin Page and is entitled “Cure for Malaria Discovered in Ghana.”   You can click on the article to see it magnified.  

The article gives details about two entrepreneurial women, “Mrs. Lily Amoa . . . [who owns] the Kiddy Centre, a nursery school” and “Mrs. Bade Nkwankpa . . . a lawyer/pharmacist by profession and a pastor”  and their startling discovery of Chanca Piedra “a small, erect weed-like herb that grows 30-40 centimetres in height and . . . spreads freely like a weed.”  The article relates the fact that Mrs. Nkwankpa had been ill with malaria and had been advised by a friend to drink some tea made from the Chanca Piedra plant that was growing in Mrs. Nkwankpa’s yard.  She did so and in three days was cured from her malaria.  She even went to the hospital to confirm she was well and the doctors there “certified that all malaria parasites were flushed out of her system.”   Flushed?  Is that what it takes to cure malaria?  Maybe Drano would work.  Based upon this experience the two women “read widely about the plant and at the end of the day sent the result of their findings to the Nogouchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana, Legon, where the efficacy of the Chanca Piedra plant was certified through a series of scientific tests.”  Isn't it commendable that these two women spent an entire day researching this finding?  The best part of the article is the list of secondary medical benefits from the plant.  “The Chanca Piedra has been identified as potently effective to reduce excessive cholesterol in the human body, lower blood pressure, reduce blood sugar, expel stones and support kidney in its functions.  In addition, Chanca Piedra has also been known through scientific tests as having the potency to increase urination, relieve serious pains, clear obstructions, kill viruses, aid digestion and reduce inflammation.  Other diseases that a well-prepared Chanca Piedra can combat include killing bacteria, preventing mutation, reducing fever, expelling worms and it can be conveniently used as a mild laxative.”

There you go.   Scientific journalism doesn’t get any better.  I would suggest buying stock in whatever pharmaceutical company starts making this Wonder Drug available to mankind.     

In one week we will have been in Ghana for a year.  I would like to say that our time here has passed quickly.  But it hasn’t.  It seems like we have been here forever.   It has been a challenge.  But it has also been very rewarding.  Many of our initial fears and concerns have faded.  We are not worried about our safety.  The traffic doesn’t create as many heart palpitations as it did in the beginning (except for the trucks coming at us with a load of kapok trees.)  It doesn’t seem as unbearably hot as it did in the beginning.  The food is better as we have learned how and where to shop.  Our living accommodations are more comfortable, not that much has changed in the apartment but because we have become accustomed to the shortcomings.  (Having a dryer installed in the apartment has made things a lot better.)  The best part, as I have mentioned so many times, is the people of Ghana.  They are kind, loving, sincere, friendly, and helpful.  They have made our stay worthwhile.  And the children.  Oh, the children.  They are the most beautiful children we have seen anywhere in the world.  We have to continually suppress our impulse to gather them up and bring them home with us.

I will write the next entry about the wonderful month we have had with Christopher and Garrett.  A Month of Sons.