An adventure?!

Thursday:

We were given a white guinea fowl as a Christmas present. We were told to kill it and eat it for Christmas night dinner. Well, I am definitely a non-Ghanaian lady because that was impossible for me to do. So we took it to the office where there is a fowl/guinea fowl run. We (Chesty and Porks) cut it's wing and set it free with its darker cousins.

"Chesty", the chap that gave us that beautiful pineapple helped Porks.







I am not a huntin', shootin', fishin' kinda gal, so this was a relief for me but far more so for the guinea fowl!








There were these two ladies and a little girl walking along the road with huge piles of wood in basins on their heads and we stopped to give them a lift back to Bantama. This gorgeous little tot stood still for me to take a photo - look at the log of wood on her head - and then giggled from the bottom of her stomach when I showed her the photo of herself. Absolutely precious!

I couldn't leave the older sister and mother out so when we got to Bantama, I took a family photo. The mother's basin of wood is still on the back of the bakkie and the little girl picked up another log to pose. Mom had a baby strapped to her back but it didn't have any wood!

Boxing day is very important. All the little ones get given new clothes for Christmas and the next day, they all get dressed and walk around the town showing off their clothes. You can see the closed stalls in the background. Look at how neat the surrounding sand is. Apparently New Year is the same, so I'll watch what happens.
Gundi and I planted my seeds. Tony gave us a little fertiliser from his supply. I have planted rocket, chives, radish, two types of lettuce, beetroot, two types of carrots, swiss chard and cabbage. I was also given butternut, tomatoes, gems, beans and onions but will wait until (if and when) we move into the new house where there will be a bigger planting area. Friday:
There was a massive party next door last night, with what sounded like a DJ and "doef doef" taxi music blaring from 7.30pm. It carried on until about 3 am. I said to Porks, "Why is it that if we were at home we would be highly irritated and here we just let it be?" He replied, "Nothing here is easy Shan!" I agreed. We try so hard "not to sweat the small stuff" but it is getting more and more difficult to do, and in this heat we battle not to sweat at all! We are here for 6 months on and 2 weeks off and that thought makes it extremely difficult. Even the bed is hard................  oh! but that's a good thing, I love a hard bed!    The one and a half days a week that Porks is supposed to have off just doesn't happen as the workers call on him to help at all hours and there is also nothing to do and nowhere to go for entertainment...........except,       I am so excited........... we are supposed to be going to Kumasi tomorrow to stock up on food! I would never have believed that Porks and I could look forward to an 8 hour drive to buy groceries! (That's from Tygerskloof to Pietermaritzburg and back - but each way is less than 200kms!) We have to have a driver take us as we are not allowed to drive that distance on our own. Fortunately Jose` has just been given a double cab and he is still away so we are able to use it - we cannot go in the land cruiser as 3 of us cannot fit in. (I suppose we could put a deck chair on the back for Porks, but then............ how would he sleep?!) The guys from South Africa are due to come here after new year and stay with us, so we need to stock up for them too.
On Friday evening we went out late to help a driver who had got his truck stuck in the mud.
Ooooooopsie! (Andre`) We got stuck too!
Here are the two stuck trucks.
So we had to get truck number three to pull us all out! No nearby tree to help winch us out this time!
Saturday: We left at 5.00am with John, the driver, to go to Kumasi. (After another all night party, this time on the other side of us.) He drove very well, and we got there at 9am. Porks had asked for some Cedis instead of part of his salary as there is nowhere to get money in Bantama. Half way to Kumasi we met someone who gave us a cheque, so when we got to Kumasi we asked John to go to the bank to cash it for us. We went to the Golden Tulip Hotel for breakfast and to wait. (The same hotel where we waited that first day when we flew in.) While we were there, we saw this - Porks had to hold me back because I was so tempted to point, wave and shout "Ahhh brony, Ahhh brony, Ahhh brony!!!" In over six weeks I have not seen another brony woman! Having breakfast with a strelitzia (the flower on the left) - reminded me of East London and my family. (Remember on the verandah, Pete?) We went outside to wait by the pool. The buffet breakfast cost us R125 each. We waited for John for two hours. While we were there they were playing Boney M's Christmas Carols and a tiny little bird was sitting on top of the aerial and singing beautifully, seemingly because of the music......well, I like to think so anyway! They then played "May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white"...... I used to think that the song was referring to snow. Then John arrived and we started our shopping! This chap was selling hundreds of sunglasses balanced on his head! Great umbrella in this heat. I consider myself adventurous and fairly brave but there is no way I way going to take a chance and buy these. We bought Cynthia and Paul two little books for Christmas.  It is difficult to know what would interest them. We went to the first shop and bought 20% of what we wanted. Then drove to another shop and bought another 20%. Then the third shop had 30%. At this third shop "Melcom" (remember the same one fell down in Accra?) I heard a strange language and turned around and there were two bronys! I said "Praat julle Afrikaans?" and they were thrilled. Kurt and Liesl Leisse are from Gordon's Bay near Cape Town and he is working on the mines nearby. Liesl has flown up to visit him over Christmas and New Year. Again Porks had to stop me from going up to Liesl, hugging her and not letting go! They were shopping with Isaac, a Ghanaian who works with him. She promised to take back loads of my love with her to give to Andrew in Cape Town. The fourth shop sold meat and by then we all had had enough! I imagine that even if we had stayed for the whole weekend, we would still not have managed to find everything we wanted. It was nearly 2pm and we were thirsty and tired and we headed home. (Remind me again why I was excited to do this???) We got home in the dark and Porks still had to organise drivers for Sunday morning as all of them had suddenly claimed to be ill. After all the parties (not ours!) and the 8 hour drive and the 3 hour shopping and the early start and the patience with me and the tolerance of the traffic, I had loads of empathy!