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!