What happened to April?

It seems like just a day or two ago that I was working on the last blog entry on fabric, fashion, and footwear.  That was the end of March.  And now it is the last day of April.  What happened?  I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them to find that the world declared the month of April as the Royal Wedding month.  Did anything else happen during the month?  Thank goodness the wedding is over.  No marching bands, nor military parades, nor cathedrals for us but we have been busy.     

We traveled to Cape Coast and Axim.

Our accommodations in Axim.

We spent four days in Abuja, Nigeria.

We had a wonderful time with Kim Woodings who came to visit for a week.

Kim and Marsha shopping for batik.

Kim is a dear friend from Boise.  She is an administrator at Boise State University.  She enjoyed being here and was able to purchase some of the BSU football batik shown in the last blog entry.

We spent an evening with Devon Hale, M.D. a professor of medicine at the University of Utah.  He is an infectious disease specialist and probably knows more about the unique diseases of West Africa than most of the African doctors.  He is always a wealth of information.

And we have spent a lot of time taking care of missionaries.  It has been busier than usual, with a lot of unique medical problems this past month. 

The flame trees are in full bloom.  They dominate the green background with their bright red/orange blossoms.  

There is also a second tree blooming right now.  It is a yellow tree, similar in color to the forsythia of home.  It, too, is stunning to see.

The fence around the vacant lot visible from our kitchen window has been painted.

It is a very beautiful blue.  It reminds me of the temporary fencing at Sea World that is erected to close off a part of the complex while a new attraction is being built or remodeled.  It is exciting to imagine that Shamu might be coming to Accra but the reality of local construction is readily seen from our kitchen window with three unfinished projects staring at us across the view of the vacant lot.  No work is being done on any of them:  a Hilton Hotel, 

The sign says "COMING SOON".

a Marriott Hotel, 

and a high rise building named the Marina Mall (where are the boats?)

This is the proposed building that is to be built on the vacant lot.

I doubt that it will ever be constructed as evidenced by this similar advertisement

that has been standing along the Tema Motorway so long that the steel posts holding it up are rusting and will probably break with the next strong wind.  In reality it is a good thing that Shamu is not coming to Accra.  He would probably be eaten shortly after his arrival. 

We had a paradigm shift this month.  You know what a paradigm shift is.  It is a change in ones circumstances, due to scientific discovery or personal insight, that makes one look at the world in a different way.  Paradigm shifts occur all of the time, kind of like sub threshold earthquakes.  Most are minor.  But some are big time paradigm shifts such as when Copernicus proved that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.  I have had many paradigm shifts in my life, especially as a young man, when I realized that the world was not made up the way I had thought it was, such as when I discovered that Wonder Bread did not really build strong bodies thirteen ways, and that a little dab of Brylcreem actually didn’t do it.  Here is what a paradigm shift looks like.

The paradigm shift that has occurred here in Accra happened the first week of April when all of the street hawkers disappeared.  To the best we can tell the local government decided that they were hazards to driving and ordered them off the streets.  Probably figured they were getting in the way of the crazy motorcyclists.  We don’t know the details of the punishment but the ban has been pretty effective.  There are only a few brave ones still working the intersections.

This is a real disappointment to me.  I have had to change my perception of Accra.  I have experienced a paradigm shift.  I have to look at Accra in a different way.  Prior to the first week of April when I would conjure up a mental image of Accra I would think first of the myriad numbers of men/women/children walking among the cars selling items such as automotive supplies, food/fruit/drinks, clothing, exercise equipment, household goods, and personal items such as umbrellas, hair trimmers, etc.  I have enjoyed the visual display each day.  Driving up and down Independence Ave has been the equivalent of seeing a Wall Mart walk by your car windows.  Marsha and I have slowly become converted to drive by shopping.  We have purchased food and drink, clothing, household items, and fabric (of course.)  And now it is all gone.  What a disappointment.   I’ve been pondering for several months a blog entry entitled Shopping Comes to You.  But it probably won’t happen now that that the hawkers are gone.

I made another ornithology discovery this past month.  I have previously tried to describe some of the bird sounds we hear on a daily basis.  [blog entry dated 14 August 2010]  One of the sounds I attributed to the “bubble up” bird.  Here is a link to the sound: http://www.xeno-canto.org/embed.php?XC=43434&simple=1" scrolling=no frameborder=0 width=340 height=160>  This is the bird that makes the sound. 

On the radio tower outside our window.

It is a Senegal coucal.  These birds are very difficult to observe while making their sounds.  Marsha and I drove into the office complex a couple of weeks ago and heard the “bubble up” sounds as soon as we stepped out of the car.  I started looking around in the trees of the parking lot but couldn’t see anything.  After a few minutes of searching I finally found this bird in the tree right above our car.  He/she was tucked in among the leaves and was minimally visible.  Now that I know what to look for he/she is easier to find when we hear his/her melodic sound. 

I have a follow up comment about the last blog entry.   In describing local fashion I purposefully left out one style seen on a frequent basis.  I want to mention it briefly here.  It is unfortunate, but there are many mentally unstable people who live on the streets of Accra.  They are easily recognized by their behavior and their clothing.  They tend to walk aimlessly among the pedestrians, talking to themselves, shouting, or shaking their fingers or hand at those around them.  And they are always dressed in either black/dark brown rag clothing because the clothing has been worn daily for years and never washed, or no clothing at all.  It is disturbing to observe.  It is an unfortunate reflection of the inadequate mental health facilities here in Ghana.  It is sobering. 

One such man lives about three blocks from us.  He lives under a tree on the side of Independence Avenue and has an area under the tree where he piles all sorts of paper goods and then covers them with palm branches.  He leaves his tree each morning and walks the streets of Accra gathering more items for his pile.  Every month or so someone comes along and burns his paper pile.  But it doesn’t stop him.  He starts his collection again.  Marsha and I have become accustomed to seeing him each day.  In fact, if we miss him for several days we worry about his welfare.   The reason I mention him is because of his iconoclastic fashion.  Unlike the other mentally unstable people on the street he doesn’t wear black/brown rags.  He gives new meaning to organic clothing.  He wears layer upon layer of paper items.  He is a walking paper recycling bin.  I have wanted to photograph him but have not done so out of respect for his mentally unstable world.  He always wears something on his head.  For most of the time we have been here it has been a woman’s hand bag, and a good looking one, such as a Gucci knock off.   Shortly after my last blog entry on fashion we noticed that he had changed his hat.  He had a flat hub cap on his head tied under his chin, kind of a metal sombrero.  (Remember the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes?  They often wore the hubcap hats.)  He has worn it now for a month. 

It is a pathetically sad situation, but a humorous one.  Even the mentally unstable can be trend setters.

We have to go to Cape Coast to give a health lecture today.  I am going to close for now.