Here it is the last day of May already. What happened to the month? I honestly cannot tell you. I’m sitting here trying to recall the events of the month and I know we have been busy, but I cannot explain how the month slipped by without any kind of a blog entry. Let me see what I can remember.
The bats moved out. The street hawkers are slowly moving back in. The rains have started. It is so invigorating to see everything turn green and vibrant after a few days of rain. The median on Independence Avenue
The roundabouts are green.
Unlike last year (I just went back and reviewed what I wrote last May) the rains this season have been occurring most of the time at night. This is very convenient. We have had very few day time storms to walk in or drive through. The rains have brought a little relief from the heat. However, it is still hot enough in the morning after a nighttime rain, that stepping outside the apartment is like stepping into a wet sauna. Here are pictures of what is in bloom around the apartment.
The roundabouts are green.
Unlike last year (I just went back and reviewed what I wrote last May) the rains this season have been occurring most of the time at night. This is very convenient. We have had very few day time storms to walk in or drive through. The rains have brought a little relief from the heat. However, it is still hot enough in the morning after a nighttime rain, that stepping outside the apartment is like stepping into a wet sauna. Here are pictures of what is in bloom around the apartment.
 |
| This is the Orange Blossom bush outside our stairwell that is so fragrant. |
Last Wednesday was Africa Unity Day. I’m not certain what Africa Unity Day represents, other than another day for Ghanaians to not work. One Ghanaian said that it was a holiday throughout all of
We’ve had a couple of adventures I need to report. The first involves an animal other than a cockroach. About two weeks ago, towards the end of the day as the light was fading, I stepped into the second bedroom that we use as an office and noticed in my peripheral vision a flash of brown on the wall behind the file cabinet. My first thought was that we had a mouse and I knew how Marsha was going to react to a mouse encounter – screaming equal to or more than a cockroach encounter. Without announcing the presence of the visitor I stepped over to the file cabinet thinking I might be able to do something about the invader without having to alert Marsha. I looked behind the file cabinet as best as I could. I didn’t see anything. I started to move the file cabinet forward and the brown flash shot across the wall above Marsha’s desk and disappeared behind some stacked notebooks. It was way too fast to be a mouse. I pulled the stacked notebooks forward and discovered a brown gecko, about five inches long, two and a half inches of body and an equal length of tail, trying to find a hiding place among the items on Marsha’s desk, as distressed with seeing me as I was distressed with seeing him/her. How did a gecko this big enter the apartment? When one is living in a country where being human is just part of the food chain it seems a logical query to ponder such intrusions. I know that he/she didn’t walk in through the front door. If a five inch gecko can get into the apartment how safe is the apartment in keeping more dangerous animals out? What about keeping mosquitoes out? I called for Marsha. She came into the office. I showed her the gecko attempting to hide behind the items on her desk. I thought the gecko looked pretty cute trying to blend in with the pencil sharpener. But Marsha was not very pleased with the intruder, probably less upset than she would have been had it been a mouse but more upset than she would have been were it another cockroach encounter, which has become routine enough that the cockroaches don’t uptset her very much these days. We briefly discussed methods of getting the gecko outside of the apartment. I thought of the fly swatter – tap the gecko hard enough to stun but not hard enough to kill -- but remembered about a year ago when we tried a similar approach on a smaller gecko in the kitchen and found out that geckos do not have an external skeleton like a cockroach which crunches when smacked, and that a fly swatter to a little gecko results in gecko jam. We decided not to use the flyswatter. We briefly considered spraying the gecko with permethrin but decided that bug spray probably wouldn’t work and Marsha didn’t want sticky permethrin all over her desk. So, we decided to trap the gecko. I quickly located an empty margarine container and moved into position to place the container over the gecko, whereupon we would slide a piece of paper under the container and transport the gecko to his/her freedom. Great plan. I made several attempts to deftly place the margarine container over the gecko but each attempt was unsuccessful because the gecko quickly demonstrated his/her brown flash evasive movement skills and hid behind another item on the desk. Each miss would be accompanied by a shriek from Marsha who was convinced the gecko was going to become aggressive and attack her. After a few more attempts I successfully anticipated the gecko’s movement and smacked the container down on the table catching the little guy/gal under the container. Or at least I thought so. What we quickly discovered was that I covered his body but cut his tail off with the edge of the margarine container. And to our utter amazement, this amputated tail started a Mexican jumping bean routine that kept us both shrieking for several minutes. The two and a half inch tail would lie still for a few seconds and then start convulsing and bouncing around the table. It eventually bounced off the table, fell to the floor and kept on moving. I ran to get my video camera but by the time I got the camera, got it turned on, and focused on the tail on the floor the little appendage was disappointingly lethargic compared to its initial jumping performance. Too bad. It would have made a great You Tube video. Add a little musical score and it could have been a Michael Jackson imitation. Oh, by the way, we did escort the tail less (or should that be “detailed”) gecko outdoors and let him go. As he took off I’m pretty sure I saw him look over his shoulder at us, probably wondering what kind of cruel creatures would cut his tail off and then laugh at it.
The second adventure was not quite so humorous. No animals were involved. As I mentioned above the rainy season started this month. A week ago Thursday, in the early hours of the morning, Marsha and I were awakened by thunder. We listened for probably an hour as the thunder boomed and boomed. It seemed the storm was right above us with the flash of lightning and the immediate thunder. And then the rain started. And it didn’t start gradually. It slammed the roof, probably as loud as we’ve ever heard it. When it started getting light we got up and looked out the windows at the rainstorm. The rain was so heavy that as we looked out our bedroom window we couldn’t see across the street. At about 6:15 a.m. the apartment phone rang. (We have a phone in the apartment but it only works to communicate with other apartments or the guard house.) I answered the phone. It was the guard house. Without identifying himself the guard politely, as if he were bothering me, announced “it is flooding.” I thought he might want to say more but my silence was matched by his silence. I asked him to tell me again, which he did. “It is flooding” (a little more emphasis on the flooding.) I asked him what I needed to do. He quietly said “please move your car.” Ha! Now I understood. Last fall we had a similar rain and the street gutters in front overflowed and washed down our apartment complex driveway from the front of the complex to the back of the parking lot into a storm drain at the edge of the lot. Our car is parked right next to the storm drain. The water at that time had surged to the mid tire level on our car. After hanging up the phone I looked out the living room window and noticed the flood of brown water again coming under the front gate and coursing down our driveway. I quickly changed my clothes and went out to the car. The water was almost up to the level of the passenger side door (upstream side.) When I opened the driver side door some of the water flowed into the car. I got in, started the car and drove it through the muddy water and parked it off to the edge of the parking lot away from the water trying to get out the storm drain. The rain continued for about another half an hour and then stopped. The pooled water in the parking lot didn’t recede for several hours. And when it did it left the parking lot covered in a brown sludge that didn’t look good, and didn’t smell good.
I had to travel during the middle of the month. I escorted a missionary with mental health problems to his home in Melbourne , Australia Sydney Dubai Accra Sydney
One cannot go to Australia without seeing kangaroos and koalas.
Sydney San Francisco
 |
| The Opera House. |
 |
| Darling harbour. |
Other events of the month: the weekly routine visits to the MTC to give shots
and health lectures,
to Ho in the Volta Region for the closing of an LDS Charities Neonatal Resuscitation Program,
to Nsawam with Rebecca Tetteh and her mother to get new shoes for Rebecca,
and several trips to the airport to pick up or deliver travelers.
and health lectures,
to Ho in the Volta Region for the closing of an LDS Charities Neonatal Resuscitation Program,
to Nsawam with Rebecca Tetteh and her mother to get new shoes for Rebecca,
and several trips to the airport to pick up or deliver travelers.
Our time here in Ghana
Stay focused!
