Busy Me

John, the driver, didn't manage to get all my requests but he had to go to Kumasi yesterday so maybe I'll get the rest of my order today.  Poor chap.  Kumasi is about 4 hours away and he had just got back from Accra...sorry for him but maybe lucky for me!

I had the correct ingredients for crunchies (I used honey instead of syrup) and they were a hit!

The pork chops actually turned out nicely too, very tender, after 11 hrs in the slow cooker. I added some of the carrots and some tinned peas. It was edible so I am improving!

When we have finished eating at night and there are left-overs, we have to wait until they haved cooled down enough to place them in the fridge. Well, here, we have to put them in the fridge to cool them down enough to put them into the fridge!

During the 1960s, Porks' Dad used to help a South African, African man who worked in Ghana.  He was given a coffee table by this man who brought it from Ghana that had an elephant holding up the top.  When we were at the hotel in Kumasi, we saw this "sugar-holding" elephant that is very similar to our table. It was quite touching to be connected to Reggie again, who left us 11 years ago.

I am loving writing my blog!  It should be a compulsory activity for everyone.  What it does, is make one look for the humour in every day situations and for the good in less than perfect events.  Your feedback is a life-saver though, thanks everybody, as otherwise I am just writing to myself and not sharing this with anyone.  (I regret not responding to Emma, sorry Em.  I loved your blog but didn't tell you enough!) 

Mike and Vonnie, my brother and sister in law, bought me an ipad (the best thing EVER! - big hug!) before I came and downloaded a thousand books for me, all great reading. Mandy and Greg organised hundreds of movies and series for us on 2 external hard-drives.  So, I have plenty of entertainment when I get the time, in between trying to cook meeeals and doing my haaaiirr and watering the gaaaarden and pruning the rosssses, phew! busy lady me.

Gundi can climb!  I have placed a comforter on the couch to help with........ comfort (!) and Gundi is strong enough to get up by herself.  I used to have to help her up when she screeched and now I say "you can do it Gunds" and she does.  I have brought in some small logs from outside and she is loving them.  She grabs the smaller one in her paws and does head-over-heels with it and taps it like playing with a live insect.  You'd love her!
(I try not to think of my darling Tiki and Scruffy otherwise I'll get too sad - I miss them terribly. I am just so grateful for their replacement though.) 


I would normally be saying "Woza weekend" but here Porks works every day so the weekend is not that much different from the other days of the week.  Perhaps next weekend will be better as Friday is a public holiday (Ha, I put the "L" in this time girls!) as well as Election day, so I don't think there'll be much work going on.

Parcels

We have had no internet connection for a few days so I am behind on my news. Today is Thursday and the parcels only arrived at 6am yesterday as John only got back from Accra after 10pm the night before. 

It was so exciting ...

He managed to get:
empty containers
a sieve/colander
a grater
raisins
tissues
dessicated coconut
bicarb
a cabbage
some apples
vanilla essence
a tin opener 
self raising flour
aaaaaaaaannnd..........ice trays.....so last night I had.....

(Hands rubbing together, cheezy grin.)

 

He also managed to get us some fresh carrots....

fresh, meaning not frozen and not cooked.

There is no way on earth I would buy these (or Porks eat them) if I was at home but here you take whatever fresh vegetables you can get.






I have decided to do some pork chops tonight for supper.

Here is the kilogram of thawed pork chops?

 I have put them in the slow cooker with some apples and some cow powder, so we'll see what that tastes like tonight. One of the most difficult challenges here is to try and make this Ghanaian food tasty with very few resources.  I'm not a very inventive cook at the best of times, so this is a huge learning experience for me.

Yesterday afternoon, we went for a ride on the bike to Bantama and stopped on the side of the road to buy a "vetkoek"- like bun for 30 peswas.

 

A little like "igwinya"  but less fatty and less crispy - lovely treat!

 

 

Last night we were sitting at home and "Chesty" arrived with a deliciously fresh pineapple for us.  Porks asked how much and he said, "This is not for selling, I give you". 

 

 

 

A half an hour later Tony arrived with mealie meal, still warm from being freshly ground. (But it can't sing...ha ha!, sorry!)  

 

 

Gundi is really getting tame now...it is so sweet. She sleeps in a box in the lounge and in the morning when I get up I call "Guuundiii" and she screeches and comes running. When I leave her to go to the kitchen, she screeches again, so I say "Come Gundi" and she tentatively comes around the corners. I was making coffee this morning and she screeched, so I called her and she just screeched louder. Eventually I went to see what the problem was, and the door opening was too small for her to get through and she was at the door saying "I caaaan't come, the door is closed, open uuuuup silly!" 

I find myself smiling so much, as this little rodent has brought such joy to my life!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

Excitement!

One of Porks' workers had to drive to Accra (about 9 hrs one way!) to collect something and I was able to give him a shopping list in the hope that he had some spare time to buy some much needed items for the house.
He will only be back late tonight but I am like a little girl waiting for my birthday presents...so excited and eager to see which items he has managed to buy to make our lives a little easier!... and maybe, just maybe I can have a whiskey tonight met ys, ya!

Even empty containers for left-overs for the fridge are like gold here and will help. I am starting to get like those wonderfully resilient women of my grandparents' age.  I am saving the wax wrap that covers the butter, to grease the dishes, to bake my cakes..(that lay in the house that Jack built!)  Everything is useful and I don't throw anything away that can be used in another form.

 

The view we have looking towards the road from our gate. (The hotel is on the right.)

And we complain about the heat when the air-conditioners go off!

The latest "audience". Entry	Pageviews
South Africa	360   (Com'on South Africa!!)
Australia	118
United States	88
Ghana	53
Zimbabwe	39
Netherlands	18
Botswana	15
United Kingdom	14
New Zealand	14
Germany	7

 

 

Here is a photo of the colour of the eggs we get here. I am positive that the paler the yolk the less cholestrol it has, hey?

 

 

Celebrations?!

Sunday:

We had a massive party here for Porks' birthday!?  The two of us had some fruit then baked beans and tinned sausages for supper. Porks had a cup of coffee, I had a whiskey and then he was in bed by 7.30pm, as usual.

Ghana is doing its best to get rid of me though. I have finished a box of tissues and three rolls of toilet paper over the past week, blowing all the gunge out of my head! My Achinaforce is half empty. I have been bitten on the backs of my legs by some vicious invisible little insect (probably while sitting on the grass outside playing with Gundi). Then last night, just to complete the celebration, I had projectile, explosive diarreah for the night. Porks went to bed, Gundi asleep, me alone feeling really sorry for myself.  Then out of the blue I get emails from my loving friends wanting to send me things to cheer me up....and even without the "care packs" here yet, I am feeling a lot better.  Thank you so much, you have no idea what a difference just the thought makes!

We get another carbohydrate here called Cassava. (Cassaaava, Pips, like wasaaabi!) 

It's similar to the yam, but Porks prefers it.  I haven't done it yet, but apparently boiled, sliced and then fried it tastes... amazing! (I was going to say "yummy" but that would have confused you as to which vegetable I was referring!?) The cut vegetable is the yam and the long dodgy looking one is the cassava. (npf? - private joke!)  I am still wanting to go to the farm where these are grown to take photos of the plants and see how they are reaped.

 

 

Monday:

I had an off day yesterday after having a colonic cleansing (and some people pay for this?) but had a good night's sleep and am on the mend!

 

 

 

The picture above is of the "hotel/guest house" (with no food) next door.  The red sand you see in front is just off the main Bantama road. The tree on the right hand side of the picture is the same one that is on the left hand side of the next picture.

 

Our house is in the background with the arches on the verandah.

 

A close view of our house and the grass where I take Gundi to play.

 

This is why I have to take Gundi outside.  Inside the wall, it is all cemented, making it even hotter.

Cries of "Abruni", "Abruni", resound whenever we venture outside. It means 'white person' and the children are exceptionally excited to see us.

 

Since I have been in Ghana Porks and my roles have reversed! In South Africa, I had control of everything! Money, budget, grocery shopping, accounts etc. HERE I am in charge of keeping Porks happy and he is doing the rest! It's quite refreshing...I say I need onions and Porks tries to organise it and gets out the Cedi's to pay...I have NO money and no responsibilities here!

 

 

I am sounding JUST like Dad here, Kell and Andrew...we are just about to leave and I say "where's my hat?" The sun is so vicious here that hats and sunglasses are compulsory and I cannot go anywhere without them. I understand Dad's obsession now.

 

 

 

Gundi is also obsessed with my hat.  She plays with the ties and sleeps under it when she can.  We have to be careful when we sit on the couch as she could be underneath it.  Porks is falling fast and even said to me yesterday..."Gundi is getting to me, Shan."

 

 



Happy birthday Porks.

We had a lovely storm here last night and the night before with gun-shot thunder and pouring rain.  It cooled the atmosphere slightly although in the middle of the night the electricity went off and it was stifling in the room with no movement of air.

Gundi's body mechanisms are amazing...she can urinate on demand.  (I am SUCH a good mother!) I take her outside onto the grass and as I place her, so she stays and relieves herself and most times defecates too.  She is uncomfortable being so exposed though (to the environment!) and as soon as she is finished she screeches to be picked up.  (Okay, maybe not such a good one then!)  So I walk off calling her and she follows, still screaming and when I stop, she stops in between my feet.  By the time she has walked home, she is exhausted and cuddles up around my neck to fall fast asleep.

 

 

 

When I was a little girl I had a "cat" pyjama bag.  We had moved in with my aunt when we transferred to Pietermaritzburg from East London and they had a kitten called "Lighty" that used to sit on my cat, knead its body and suck on its fur.  I found out later that it was weaned too early and to suckle on my pyjama bag was a comfort for it.  Sean is convinced that Gundi is a girl, but she sometimes has a slight protrusion between her back legs that she suckles on when she goes to sleep.  I have tried to google information on this but with no luck.  Her mom was killed before she was weaned so perhaps this is a comforting action or maybe that protrusion is a natural dummy that mongooses all have?  She even purrs when she is doing this. Anyone?


On the way to Atebubu the other day, I think I found our Baobab's pretty younger sister.  Is there anybody out there that can verify this?  Ems, perhaps Orf can found out.  I have no reference books here!

  

These are photos of the office block and nursery which are about 4 kms away from where we live.  I am thinking of buying myself a bicycle so that I can ride there if I need to. Everyone here rides bicycles as this is a very flat country.

 

 

The nursery.

We went to Kwama Danso yesterday to buy petrol - 1.70 GCD (x R5) for 1 litre. We also bought some fairly large onions at 70 peswas each and 3 ply toilet paper for 60 peswas per roll. Kwama Danso is only half an hour a way, but driving in second all the way on a wild-sea road, it does feel like one and a half hours like I lead you to believe before. 

We gave a lift to one of Porks' workers to Kwama Danso who was heading for Atebubu (in the other direction).  He explained that the taxis only leave Kwama Danso when they are full so he cannot get a lift as it comes past Bantama.  We have no idea about how some people have to live!

 

Tony our new best friend and finder of most things, stopped us on the road to see his farm.  One just stops on the road, parts the long grass and there is the farm. (You can see the truck in the background.)  He also grows rice, ground nuts, tomatoes and onions but we haven't been to see those yet.  He brought some fresh milk for us this morning as I am wanting to make maas and cottage cheese and long life milk is no good for that.  After the milk settled there was about 4 cm of cream on the top...how's that Charlie?

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the side of the road, we saw literally hundreds of wooden school desks just lying in the sun.  Some of them look brand new and some look like they have been lying around for some time.    Perhaps its because there is no space in the classrooms.  I will have to find out about these and let you know, how sad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can buy bread in Atebubu that only lasts a day before going stale.  This is a teaspoon on top of the bread!

 It is great for melba toast though!

 

 

 

 

 It is Porks' birthday today and I have made him a cake.  I got the bun recipe from Bridgie but do not have a muffin pan so I made it in the brand new heart-shaped pan that I found in the cupboard.  I had to grill the top for the last 5 minutes as this oven only seems to cook from the bottom.   Then I found some of Sean's Nutella in the cupboard.  Porks says I am a 
"bee-you-ty!"

I 

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY PORKS!

Audience

The connection to the internet is very erratic and is off for hours at a time, sorry.

I just have to let you know how grateful I am for all the support you have given me, my friends.  Emma taught me that I can see how many times and from where people are going into my blog and its fascinating to see.  I'll give you the "audience" so far:

South Africa     213
USA                    51
Australia             59
Zimbabwe           31
Ghana                  31
Netherlands         15
UK                       11
Botswana               9
Germany                5
Russia                    3
This is crazy because why would anyone in Russia be interested in this blog, or Germany or Netherlands for that matter???

So please know how thrilled I am and your supportive and wonderful comments via the blog, email, sms and bbm are keeping me going!

Porks had to get a trailer welded in Atebubu yesterday, so we went to the market while we were waiting.  Here are some photos of how we shop here in rural Ghana.

These are yams (pronounced yums in the Ghanaian accent). A sticky potato-like vegetable that is quite bland but quite tasty with the right condiments.

We can get oil, eggs, garlic, tinned baked beans etc., here as well as cow powder. None of these things tastes like anything we are used to.  The eggs do but the yolks are an insipid pale lemon colour, not bright orange like we are used to.






This is another store with similar things on sale as well as shrimp stock cube (I haven't used one yet, they don't smell that appetising!).





                                               Fish for sale.  Flies are optional.  These (the fish) are   
                                     dried and crushed and I have no idea how to use them in cooking.

Then look what I found!!!  Awwwww!  Unfortunately not for sale!

 

We found a mouldy cabbage (yes! a fresh green vegetable), some green peppers, a few ripe tomatoes which weren't too bad actually and a cucumber just like my daddy used to grow.

 

 

Before I arrived, Sean went shopping in Kumasi to fill up on groceries and meat from the abattoir. Thanks Sean.  Last night I cooked cabbage with chilli, onion and garlic, some roasted tomatoes and baked some chicken sausages that were inedible.  They were tough and tasteless.  Perhaps I should have boiled them first and then added a sauce but this is how we learn!

 

We are minor celebrities here.  When we drive through Bantama, "Porky, Porky, Porky" is shouted from the houses and the stalls.

Yesterday, while I was waiting in the truck while Porks went to buy some welding rods, a young Ghanaian chap rode past slowly on his bicycle.  He was staring at me so much that he very nearly crashed into the parked lorry in front of me.  I have always wanted that to happen to me ..............arm-pumping YES!

 

We have not seen any beggars here in Ghana.  Everyone is doing something to make a little bit of money.  People wash windscreens in the city as one is waiting at the robots, others are carrying sachets of water, nuts, and other unidentifiable things in basins on their heads to sell to the passing motorists.

 

In the rural towns every family seems to own a little bit of land on which the whole family works.  They are up early planting, weeding or reaping their produce and then it is taken to the road where one member sits at a table and sells to the passing public.  (I saw a basin load of tomatoes yesterday in Bantama - I now have to find out where they come from and buy them as soon as they are reaped.)

 

Then on our way to drop off something at the office, a chap on a bicycle who has his own farm and also works a little for the company Porks works for, stopped us and said to me "Madame, (mudum not madam), you are welcome!  I will bring you a yum!"  It is so humbling to see that these people who have so little are so willing to share!

 





I don't know what to call this one.

Monday:  I am feeling slightly under the weather today with a scratchy throat and also slightly headachey - probably a bug from the aeroplane, I suppose.  So this blog will be over a few days as not much is happening of interest.

I am really chuffed with myself though as Porks came home at lunch time with scratchy eyes (hay fever) from the grass seeds and I whipped out my eye gene and allergix!  There was a time when he was rolling his eyes (the healthy ones, not the red ones) as I was packing as if to say..."What on earth are you packing all THAT for?" 

                    

We went out yesterday (Sunday) afternoon to check on the ripping/ploughing or whatever its called.  He is working so hard up here.  Porks gets such job satisfaction from a job well done so the delays and distance from anywhere are really difficult for him.

What is great though, is that every day he tells me what a difference my arrival has made to his happiness.  If I am needed I am fulfilled, so we are both winning!

Tuesday: I have been in Ghana a week today.  If I just go about my daily life, it is not too scary because it is still the "Africa" I am used to (I could be in Umtata), but as soon as I think of a map of Africa, I get a sinking feeling that I am too far away from my Kelly and my Andrew.  So I cannot go down that route and have to try and block that from my mind.

One of the the problems here is one never feels completely clean.  As soon as I get out of the shower, I have to slather myself with anti-mozzie cream and then top it off with suncream, so before I have even got dressed I am sticky without even having gone into the heat.

I have still not turned on the hot water at the house. The "cold" shower is perfect and sometimes even too hot for a good refreshing cleanse. Porks still has a hot shower and then perspires profusely afterwards, cooling himself off in the air-conditioned room. (Thank goodness the electricity has been working this week. Apparently it goes off often but since I have been here, there have just been a few surges.)

When I lived in all the different places I have stayed since I have been married, Boston, Bulwer, Karkloof and Vryheid, we lived far enough away from shops that I had to do a monthly grocery shop.  I would start to panic a little when I only had 6 tomatoes left.  Then we moved to Pietermaritzburg and lived 2kms from a large shopping centre.  It took me a while to learn that I didn't need to fill up the fridge every day and that if I ran out of something, I could always get it within 10 minutes.  Eish!  I am back to panicking that I haven't got enough so watch out when we come home Kell!  We'll have to buy another fridge until I am used to it again!

                                                Oh no, it's still happening.  I give up, Kell!

The DSTV here is different from the one at home.  We get some of the main channels but also many obscure ones that  obviously pertain to this area.  M-net is here but the 101 we know is obviously the S.A. one and there is no Carte Blanche etc. on this one.  Here it is called 101 MNetW and has series and movies showing. It takes some getting used to as the remote is also a little different. (The good thing here is that one can "search" for a programme by typing in the title, something I often wished for at home.)

Look! I managed to make a banana bread for Porks this afternoon!
Aren't you proud of me Bridgie?

We have got a slow cooker, a steamer and a toasted-sandwich maker in the kitchen! But no sieve, measuring cups, scale etc., ........and you thought I was a useless banana bread maker, hey, hey, hey?  What I am really missing are fresh veggies, cracker bread, TOMATOES, cottage cheese etc. (I'm thinking of you, Bo!) The tomatoes here come in tins and if one can get fresh tomatoes, they are tiny, soft and go off in a day. I AM drinking a lot of water though (Bo,again!) as it is too hot for coffee and tea.  I did send up a box of rooibos ahead of me and am going to try and make some iced tea.  (There are no ice trays here either!)

When we were still in Accra I noticed that the whiskey was fairly reasonably priced but the wine was expensive.  So I said to Porks...we need to take a bottle..."No, no, no...we can get it easily there!"  Well, arriving on that first night after SUCH a long journey I said, "where's the whiskey?"  We'll go to Bantama! So off we went with Sean on tow and went in to all the "pubs" (a shack on the side of the road) to find my freely available whiskey!  After 3 pubs AND the hotel...still nothing! To Porks' credit though, he made a plan and we managed to get some from Kwama Danso, a drive of 1 and a half hours one way!  I think he saw my face and realised that he had made a HUGE mistake...he doesn't even drink whiskey so how he KNEW we could get it, flummoxes me.  Anyway, now I can have a whiskey in the evening if I want one, even if it IS with no ice!

I have bumped up the air-conditioner to 24 degrees as the discrepancy between the house and outside is STILL too large for comfort.  I can feel the perspiration prickles immediately I step outside, so hopefully this will be better.


Andrew, how do I turn this photo around?

Porks insisted I put this one in of Gundi in his favourite position, Porks' not Gundi's.

Chat again later!