Moving US Style

Yesterday was moving day and for us, it was really a study in how differently things are done in the US versus Ghana, which is really our only comparison at this point. Our move in Ghana took 6 men and 2 full days during which the movers cut cardboard sheets to perfectly enclose our furniture, wrapped items with layers and layers and more layers of paper, and then painstakingly carried items either down 2 flights of stairs or down an elevator and then on top of their heads onto the truck.  It was by no means an easy move, especially with some of our solid wood African furniture.  However, yesterday, 3 men arrived at our house at 8am, packed and loaded the truck with the same exact items as we moved from Ghana, plus a little more, and finished by 2pm same day! Granted there were a few factors that made the packing and moving a little easier including special padded paper that doesn't exist in Ghana, a trolley for carting boxes around, a ramp onto the truck, and a ground floor house vs. elevator building but it really got me thinking about how the US is a pretty smooth running efficient machine most of the time. Wonder what awaits us in Peru?!

And to just add a little more stress to the mix of moving to a foreign country in a few days, Alan did something to his back on Thursday that basically laid him flat on the bed until today when he slowly started to move around. An MRI is scheduled for Thursday and we can only hope it is nothing serious. And Eli, who has been fighting a cold, now has a double ear infection. We just all need to be on the mend by Friday! Thank goodness grandpa and grandma are taking good care of us now that we are settled in with them until we leave.

Round Two

Despite taking 6 months off from the blogosphere, I am back in it now for the long haul. Somehow our life back in the US seemed rather mundane compared to the constant barrage of new experiences Ghana offered us and so I decided to take a bit of time off from recording our lives and commentary.  But, now I have good reason to get inspired to write again, as we are off to Lima, Peru in about a week where we will settle for a few years likely.  Alan has gotten a job with a mining company there.  But, our time back home has been wonderful. We've made a nice home with all of our African furniture and crafts.

Eli got settled in a wonderful Montessori preschool here in Athens where he made sweet 1 year old friends and has learned so much, and I have been busy baking with a local caterer which has been great fun. And meanwhile, Alan was busy looking for work both in the US and abroad and got a lot of quality father-son time with Eli while I was baking away.

We've enjoyed spending so much time with my parents, have gotten some good time in with extended family with visits down to Miami to see my brother, sister-in-law, and their 2 boys as well as attending Alan's cousin's wedding where we got to visit with much of his family. Alan and I took our first mini-vacation without Eli to Charleston, SC which was great fun. We've enjoyed watching Eli soak up new experiences that he just didn't get in Ghana like going to parks, going down slides, taking long walks, and playing in sandboxes.  He is learning things so fast and is now starting to communicate with words (well, we can understand some of them) which is really exciting.

But now the time has come to move on to our next adventure. We always knew Athens might only be a temporary home, as Alan would likely not find the right kind of job in such a small town.  We remained open to moving abroad again and so when Lima, Peru appeared as an option, we jumped on board. I have always wanted to live in a Spanish-speaking country because I know it is the only way Eli and I will really learn Spanish.  We will be close to Alan's sister and her family who live in Lima which will be wonderful, given she has two children not far in age from Eli. We will hopefully get to travel around South America and learn about Peruvian culture while we are there. I'm looking forward to the amazing culinary world of Peru and all the colorful crafts we will surely find.  I'm really optimistic about the experiences we are going to have but am also realistic that the beginning may be rough. So I will document the best I can our path towards acculturation and all the comical stories that will probably occur while on this path. 

Coming Home

Alan and I have finally learned of our fate after Ghana...well not really our fate but at least we now know when we are leaving and where we are going. It only took 5 months for this fiasco to get sorted out! We couldn't be happier to be going back to Athens, GA next weekend even if Alan doesn't have a job come June 30.  Despite his fantastic work here in Ghana and accolades coming from every which way from his superiors, his company cannot seem to find him a suitable job in the US or abroad in the time frame we needed since his contract comes to an end in Ghana June 30. So we will wind up getting a package from the company, which is not a bad deal at all, they will move us back to the US, and Alan will start searching for his next job and I will explore my next career move! Eli will hopefully get to explore a little half day nursery school and we will be one content little family.  We're so excited to be close to my parents and well...closer to everyone for that matter. We've got suitcases in the middle stages of being packed, we've given away loads of stuff we're not bringing with us, we've collected loads of stuff we are taking back with us, and the movers will come 9am Tuesday morning. Now we've just got to sort out our flights and we will be on our way home...cannot wait to taste all the fruits and vegetables I've not had in 6 months, take walks on sidewalks that are not next to or over open sewers, and most of all for Eli to play outside without the fear of Malaria!! Yeah!!!! Next weekend cannot come soon enough.

Eli's Obsessions/Hobbies

Eli has a couple of hobbies developing that I thought I'd share.

If Eli had it his way, he'd spend most of the day playing with the iPad, or any computer for that matter. We generally keep them out of his reach because when he does get near anything that has buttons or a keyboard, he goes absolutely nuts! This is what happened at the Kente weavers workshop a few weeks ago. He found an old keyboard in the corner.

But his second favorite past time is turning the pages of his books.  He can be found much of the day sitting in one of his favorite few places - next to the water dispenser, on his play mat, or next to the sliding glass door, "reading" his books.

We can only give him hard cardboard books because the following is what happens if he gets his paws on a regular paper book or magazine in this case.

He also has gotten quite good at rearranging our kitchen cabinets...with his music box close by.  Everything is more fun when you have a soundtrack playing in the background!

Eli's final obsession is following Rita around the house as she does her work.  He wanders around the house with her, "helping" of course. He claps his hands and dances when Rita is around because she really makes him laugh. We will miss Rita very much!

Of course when we arrive home and he has more time to run around outside, I predict his new obsessions will have to do with dirt and rocks, as he can get enough of the stuff when we do go outside to play.

The Pride of Kente

Alan and I have become a bit obsessed with Kente, a form of weaving which is common to two tribes in Ghana, the Ewe and the Ashante.

                                   

                                   

The cloth has been used for years and years in traditional tribal ceremonies and the two tribes produce very different versions of the weaving.  We have grown to love the Ewe style which uses more pleasing colors (at least to our eyes) whereas the Ashante Kente is generally in bright yellows, greens and oranges.

This is a photo I found on the Internet featuring Bill and Hillary Clinton wearing the Ashanti style of Kente.
                                      
For reference, the Ewe come from the Volta region of Ghana and the Ashanti come from the Ashanti region.
                                                       
We have a pretty large personal collection of Ewe Kente placemats and table runners that are produced by some amazing Kente weavers based in Accra. We got to know them when we first moved here and used to visit their small workshop on the military base in town. But they've since moved to the neighboring port city of Tema, which is about 30 minutes drive from Accra. In the last few months, as our time in Ghana has slowly been drawing to a close, Alan and I decided that we would share this amazing work with others and would bring back loads of Kente table settings to sell.  We have worked with two producers of Ewe Kente based in the area and have about 400 placemats and 30 table runners to sell when we depart Ghana.  How we sell will depend on where we relocate but I hope people get as excited about them as we do...and if they don't, well, our friends and family will be receiving Kente table settings as gifts for many years to come!
                                          
This week I went out to our supplier in Tema to have him teach me a little more about how Kente is woven.  I have a new appreciation for the process of creating these weavings.  It is incredibly time consuming and tedious, not to mention monotonous work.

The weavers take an entire day to set up one very long piece of Kente...or what will become Kente.  It begins with tiny cotton threads stretched over a long distance from one side of the workshop to the other.

 The weavers, always men who've learned the tradition from their fathers, sit at one end of the threads and use a loom, operated with their feet, by pushing pedals made of coconut shells.

 The loom separates two layers of threads allowing them to toss a spool of thread through the layers

                                     

They use a tool to lock the woven thread into place and continue with the same procedure over and over again.

Then they meticulously weave in these traditional symbols and designs.

It takes them 2 days of hard work to complete one strip which is then cut and sewn into the cloth.

Now we just have to find a market for this beautiful cloth and sell, sell, sell! Stay posted for ways you too can become Kente owners! We'll be sure to post more about how we plan on selling the table settings. Oh, and we'll also be selling baskets and napkin ring holders made from these beautiful Ghanaian beads.
                                         

Tragic Night in Accra

When Alan and I got home from a dinner out last night, we saw on Facebook that a cargo plane had crashed on a road near the airport.  It was really raining heavily last night and while Alan and his boss, Rob, were grilling meat out in the rain, they heard a really loud plane and even commented that it would not be safe to land in this weather. What they probably heard was this Allied Cargo plane, coming to Accra from Nigeria, overshooting the runway and skidding through airport cement barriers and onto a very busy road and straight into a tro tro, or what is a minibus used for public transport here. These are some pictures I found on various websites about the crash.

                                     

The media reports say 10 people were killed, all passengers on the minibus, but it seems that it would be a miracle if not more people lost their lives. This is a road we take every week and is right next to residential neighborhoods where many of our friends live.  As tragic as it is that people lost their lives, I consider it a miracle that this was not more of a disaster.  This particular road is usually loaded with cars and tro tros so how only one tro tro was in the plane's path, I don't quite understand...especially on a rainy night when traffic was sure to have been worse than normal.  And on top of that, tro tros, especially on rainy nights are usually loaded with passengers, sometimes with up to 20 people. Of course I immediately wondered what sorts of people were on the tro tro, where there children and babies as there usually are? Despite the unusual nature of this tragedy, unfortunately tragedy comes in so many forms and is so common in Ghana, I wonder how the Ghanaian people understand something like this.  People lose their lives all the time for totally preventable reasons here.  These are some recent examples:

1) a woman lost her life trying to find a hospital that would deliver her twins because doctors had recently gone on strike. Her husband took her to hospital after hospital and when she eventually arrived at one that would agree to help her, it was too late.

2) a tro tro filled with passengers was crushed by  truck that was overloaded and not properly balanced.  The truck simply fell over on top of a tro tro killing everyone.

3) the other day, Alan saw a dead body on the new highway that was just completed (thanks to the American government funding the project) because this man, as hundreds of other Ghanaians do, was trying to cross the 4 lane super highway over the barrier at night.  He was propelled through the front and back windshield of a car that was probably going 70 miles an hour.  Despite pedestrian bridges being built over the highway, people do not want to walk the 5 minutes to one and instead risk their lives crossing a major highway, sometimes with their children on their back.

4) our friend's driver's daughter was killed after being hit by a car...but not directly after.  You see she had a broken arm and was attended to in a hospital but they never checked for internal bleeding and she bled to death later that day.  Her father showed up for work the next day.

These examples just go on and on and so death here is somehow not looked at like we see it in the Western world. Most of these events get shrugged off as part of life in Ghana when you ask Ghanaians about them.  In fact funerals here are not somber and sad like in the US but are big parties where people sing and dance and spend lots of money they don't have to throw a big bash.

So today, as Alan and I drove near the plane crash, we were stopped in traffic for quite a while and noticed the hoards of people who simply came from all over the city to try to get a glimpse of the crashed plane. People brought their children, carried cameras around their necks, and bought snacks along the way.  If you hadn't known about the crash, would you have thought there was a street carnival going on.

A Getaway Weekend

The three of us took off on a little getaway this weekend to a beach resort about 2 1/2 hours away from Accra called Sisimbo. I've been hearing wonderful things about this place and so despite our worries about the increased risk of Malaria once you leave the city limits, we decided to take the risk (of course taking all the precautions too) and venture out. I was actually quite desperate to leave the city because aside from a few day trips, we've been in Accra since January 1 and that means we're pushing 5 months straight without a change of scenery.

The drive there was actually quite pretty once we got through the trafficy parts. Lots of green, plenty of fresh fruit stands along the side of the roads, and big blue skies.  We always get nervous on rides like this though not just because Ghanaian drivers can often be reckless but because there is the threat of being stopped, for no reason, by police who simply want to hassle you until you feel forced to give them a bribe to leave you alone. This always causes us stress, as we don't ever give them money and you never know how long you'll be stuck along side the road dealing with the inconvenience.  Alan did a wonderful job of avoiding this by carefully placing our car right behind another whenever we saw police in the area so that by the time the police could see we were obruni (white people), we were too far past them to pull us over. 

Once we turned off the main road and onto a dirt road for the last 20 minutes of the drive, we got an up close view into village life, as we drive right through a village called Kuntu. Really off the beaten path, this village was very simple consisting of mostly thatched roofed homes with a few cement ones scattered throughout. Goats ran across the road, children played and danced on the side of the road trying to get us to give them something, and mothers cooked over hot coals with babies on their backs. It definitely seemed world aways from our lives in Accra.  

The beach resort was really idyllic.  It is a simply constructed resort of 12 little cottages in a semi-circle around a big sandy play and eating area complete with a ping pong table, tables for eating, a hammock and a playground.  

All of this leads you to a beautiful expanse of coast line with relatively calm waves, white sand, and lined with palm trees...a true getaway if you ask me! 

The food was delicious and we loaded up on as much fresh fish as we could get. Eli, although not a big fan of the ocean, couldn't get enough of the sand, and these bowling pins scattered around!

We really felt relaxed even when a big storm blew in out of no where and kept us inside for a few hours in the afternoon.

  The only unfortunate part of the trip was Eli's insomnia throughout the night probably just due to a change in environment.  This kept us up most of the night and left us feeling like zombies the next morning. But, once we saw the white sandy beach and sun pouring through the palm trees early that morning, we forgot what a long night it was. 

So mosquito bite free and relaxed, we headed back to the hustle and bustle of Accra and we continue our countdown to departure!

Last Days with Friends

Now that it appears we will be relocating back to the US at the end of June, Alan and I are really trying to treasure our last few weeks with our good friends we've made in Ghana. Even though we're always complaining about how there is very little to do for fun on the weekends here, one thing we can always count on is good times with our close friends. We've kept our circle of friends fairly small but these friendships will definitely last way beyond our parting of paths.  Alan's boss, Rob, and his wife Julie have been amazing friends and really like family to us. We braai (South African BBQ) with them almost 2 times a month and every Friday we go out to dinner with them. They are headed to Kenya sometime in July and took off on their "look-see" visit to Nairobi this week to see what life will be like there. So we had a farewell sushi dinner with them last Friday night and I gave them the quilt I had posted about in a previous entry. They loved it!

Then on Sunday, we joined our very good Colombian friends, Uxoa and Carlos, and some of their Italian friends for a delicious BBQ. Alan has generally been an observer at our braai's and BBQ's since we've been here. If you ask him, he's just been mentally preparing for the task. So this time, he was determined to marinate and make the meat himself. So he got Rob, his boss, to give him his secret South African marinade recipe. It was delicious (well, partly because I added a few things when Alan wasn't looking and partly because we shelled out the big bucks for South African meat imported fresh, not frozen, weekly to a shop here in Accra).

 Carlos bought Alan this shirt, not made in Ghana but somehow a typical Ghanaian shirt, so they decided to sport matching looks for the BBQ.

As the days draw near to departing and saying goodbye, we're busy trying to fit in as many social gatherings as we can because ultimately, all of our friends will be scattered around the world and as much as we would like to see them often, the chances are slim that we can make that happen. 

Eli In Action

I've been meaning to get these videos uploaded to the blog but it just takes so long to get them on so finally I've made the time.

Eli's obsession with wheels...he's such a boy!

The neighborhood girls' obsession with Eli!

Papi and Eli's play time! 

Passing Time

Alan and I are not so patiently waiting to learn where we'll spend the next few years and what his job may or may not be. So many options have come through the pipeline and still nothing is set yet so as we wait, and start to count down the days we have left in Ghana, we're trying to stay busy and upbeat. However, this is not always easy, but playing with Eli provides a nice distraction from the worry and anxiety we've experience for the last several months. He is so much fun to play with and it doesn't take much to have him in stitches.

He loves exploring but unfortunately his exploring is mostly limited to the cement sidewalks surrounding our compound. But, he doesn't mind and finds the parking space numbers and the shiny big cars fascinating.

This red bike caught his eye the other day but he mostly just wanted to make the wheels go round and round.

We're spending our last days collecting African crafts because who knows if we'll ever be back in this part of the world again. We've recently purchased statues from Mozambique and Mali, wooden elephant tables made locally here, and lots and lots of Kente, which is the local style of weaving. We know two producers in Accra who make beautiful placemats and table runners so we've decided to buy loads of it and make a go of selling it once we get to our next destination.

Last weekend we also bought some more beautiful drums!

I'm busy collecting Ghanaian fabric in all kinds of colors and prints but have no idea what I'll do with it all.

Here is Alan sporting a bold Ghanaian shirt that he had to wear for a conference last week. Imagine 60 people in this bold shirt all in one room!