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.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
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.
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.
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.
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