It seems every day is full of something new and different. One thing of interest is children in school. They all start going to “school” as young as under a year and they go full time. The parents have to pay for school so I guess most of them that can afford it send the children off young. I was visiting with the sister missionary that I waited 4 hours with last week at the clinic. She has a degree in teaching and hopes to be a teacher when she returns home. I asked her if she was ever caned in school. Her response was “oh, all the time!” Caning is being hit with a stick. I asked her the reasons….she said it was for just about anything such as being late to school (that would solve a lot of tardies back home!), doing poorly on a test, not having a clean uniform, not performing in class as the teacher thinks. That is normal behavior here. Wow. That is quite interesting as on the whole Ghanians are not violent people. We do see them yell at each other occasionally but we have not seen any evidence of fist fighting or shooting. Right now we are hearing that they are mortified that President Obama allowed some Al Quaida fighters that were in US prisons for years come to Ghana. He wouldn’t let them return to Afghanistan but they could come here. I don’t know the truth to that but it is what they are talking about. We are learning that sometimes the phone map sends us on rather interesting roads. One day this week we ended up going about 20 miles on some interesting dirt roads going from one missionary apartment to another. We were driving through the jungles again and passing through villages. We saw evidence of gutters being poured along the road….maybe in a few years there will be a road! We came upon the fellows mixing the cement by hand and pouring it in the wooden hand made forms. Amazing. When we arrived at the missionaries’ apartment they let us listen to the bats that are in the roof. They may have to find a different apartment for the missionaries to live in. There are lots of adventures with apartments. Plumbing issues seem to be frequent. The mission just received rechargeable fans that we are starting to pass out. They are quite nice. They can run about 15 hours from a full charge. We have one and I charge my phone on it also. That is a life saver when the power is out… It gets hot and humid in a hurry around here. We did see some blue sky for the first time this week! It will be nice to have harmattan over hopefully soon but it may become hotter with full sun. This morning we left early for Techiman where we had a district meeting. I helped with the training. We had a special time this afternoon. We called a set of sister missionaries and asked if we could go out with them. We met them and walked into a neighborhood village. We were with them as they taught two different households. We sat on chairs or benches right outside of their little huts. It was really a neat experience of which to be a part. We are staying in a house tonight that had no water. The plumber arrived from Kumasi about 7PM tonight. Lynn and he were outside for 2 hours and he finally got the pump working so we have water. We took him to the trotro to catch a ride 2 hours back to Kumasi. homemade pingpong table! This is a typical soccer field! we went to the market to buy fabric for curtains for missionary apartments. This was the fabric store! Sorry it is blurry big pieces of wood being pulled by a tractor and trailer. Note the tires This is common. When trucks and cars break down. They leave them there and fix them right there! typical site along the road. police checks are very common. We usually just smile and wave as we slowly drive by. One day we did get stopped for speeding. We were eating peanut butter on a cracker. We gave one to the police officer,apologized for speeding,smiled and told him to have a good day and drove off! Little chicken coop right along the side of the road. They carry everything in trotros! Note the fellow outside the window trying to get more customers to ride. This is the beginning of a funeral. They are held on Thursdays and Saturdays….many months after the person dies. They have to collect a lot of money to have a big celebration for the deceased. We passed 4 funerals on Thursday. LOL. We were already going about 10 mph! not sure what they were drying but we see this a lot. Maybe palm nuts getting a bath Sisters at district meeting. We gave them bags that were sewn by a benefactor in the US I believe these are onions being transported in a small trailer pulled by a motorscooter. we went to lunch with missionaries today having our first street meal…. Chicken and rice! It was good The sister missionaries teaching in the village. Lynn was in his element. The kids thought it was a lot of fun seeing this obrunie play with them! They are so sweet and cute!

Happy New Year!

We made it to 2016! We have been in Ghana over a month now and are surviving well! We have even read a few Christmas cards. My daughter Anna has received our mail and takes a picture with her phone. Then we get to read them. We also actually got a couple Christmas cards in the mail. Christmas is much more low key in Ghana. There were a few decorations around but not a lot of hype. The day after Christmas is "boxing" day. It stems from a British holiday. There are tons of churches every where you turn and a lot of church groups were having revival style activities during Christmas and New Years. People love to dress up here especially on Sundays. Shopping is an interesting experience. There are a few 'regular" stores here but they remind you of our dollar stores with a lot of plastic everything. Fresh vegetables and fruits we buy at street markets along the road. Today I stopped in the car and bought tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, carrots, radish. yesterday was mangoes, pineapple and avocados. We can even buy things without getting out of the car. Vendors walk up and down between cars because traffic is often very slow. I have bought plaintan chips and cloths by rolling down the window to the car vendors.We have even seen street vendors walking through cars selling bras! I have tried to figure how that would work! Driving is very interesting. There is an art to driving here. People move in and out....as Lynn would say you give an inch and they will take an inch! People move in and out of traffic without stopping with their cars. It is quite interesting. One would never fall asleep at the wheel here from boredom. You have to constantly be on your guard.....we have learned so much. People here are very friendly and they always notice us :-) We are the only obrunies (white people) in the neighborhood! We have walked to the local football (soccer)stadium to work out in the mornings. We have made some good friends at the track stadium.