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!