Sunday "school"

We luckily still have the double cab at our disposal, so we asked Tony to come with us to try and buy some fresh fish. I have misled you a few times and will rectify the mistakes as I go along! The little village (Frame`) is actually spelt and pronounced Mframa. Mistake number one. We travelled through Mframa and ended up right at the end of the road at a little place called Battor. 

 

It was wonderful to have Tony with us as not only were we welcomed (I'm sure we would have been anyway though) but he was able to introduce us, to translate as well as answer all my many questions.

 

See, no fences, everyone just mingles with everyone else, especially the aminals and fowls.


(That was on purpose!- skew smile)

Plantain trees growing amongst all the little huts.  They are so similar to the banana plants but the only difference I can see is that they grow taller and bigger.





One finds little huts amongst the plantain trees, sheltering from the sun.

The fire-place in front of every hut where the ladies cook, boil water and socialise.

 I was impressed with this Lazy-boy chair that someone had made.

 

                                                                                                                            

This is their smoker. It is a clay oven with an opening at the bottom in which to place the fire.Near the top of the opening they have placed sticks like a grid and then on top of that is wire meshing.  They light the fire at the bottom, place the meat on the mesh and then close the top and bottom with a lid of corrugated iron or whatever they can get hold of.





Tony is showing us another oven that had just been used.  The holes are sealed and the smoke cooks the meat (but you knew that, hey?)

 Spot the crucified grass-cutter (cane rat - you didn't know THAT though!),

the squirrel, (I thought it was a Gundi - horrors!) the lizard

and the fish!

 







Hundreds of little fish that have been caught today, gutted, scaled and placed on netting to dry.

 

The dried fish from yesterday's catch.








A photograph of all the fish together.  The dried fish are re-hydrated when they add it to a soup or a stew.

These were about eight trees planted in a circle. The ladies have woven grass into mats to place around the trees to make a private area in which to bathe.

 

A pillow.  Similar to those ones used in the South. 

This is the chief of one of the villages we went to.  He has been innovative and bought himself a solar panel and connected a globe for light.  (There are new teak electricity poles just lying around the village that were used as propaganda for this last election - now the election is over?!)


The huts are rustic but the churches are very important to some of the Ghanaians.  This little church is in the middle of nowhere - still being built.  You can see the lace table cloth on the table in the front, obviously used this (Sunday) morning, and the drums for some spirit on the right.  The ground was also wet, I presume to keep the dust to a minimum.



Sometime in the recent past the European Union has visited this little remote village and tried to teach them about preserving the wetlands and conserving the wildlife. One poster had been nailed to a tree and the other one was just lying on the ground.  These villagers hardly speak English so I don't hold out much hope that this information was understood.

The grass all around the village for hectares had been burnt.  Porks said, "Oh, they are aware that the grass should be burnt so that the new shoots will grow."  "No", said Tony, "they want to catch the grass-cutters!"

 
But - it did bring back many happy memories of my special time at Roselands with you and the children, Haze.

Here is a field of cassava.

A close-up of the cassava plant.








These cassava sticks have many nodules on them, more so than sugar cane.  Tony told us that they are pushed into the ground at an angle, and then sliced off with a cutlass just above the "eye".  Then moved along, pushed in again, and sliced off.  So one can get many cassava plants from just one of these sticks.




Here is a close up of the planting sticks.
The root takes hold, grows, and that is the part that is eaten.  It takes three months to grow before the root is ready to eat.







Some families own grinders (this one worked with a diesel motor that is hidden behind the drum.) The cassava is pushed through the "mincer" and the liquid is drained off.  The remaining mulch is placed in sacks and sold or stored to cook later.

Coll and Malcolm, mistake number two, they do grow sweet potatoes here.  These are the only ones that we have seen though (besides the 8 rotten ones we bought for R50 in Kumasi yesterday and only found that out today!) ......... that they were rotten not that they cost R50, I'm not that blonde!

Many Ghanaians are seen to be chewing sticks.  When I asked Tony what it was for, he said it was for cleaning their teeth.  Some people would buy a toothbrush and toothpaste, others would use a branch of this tree.  I tried one and the flavour isn't bad.  It has quite a fibrous texture and I kept having to spit bits out like one does when eating sugar cane.


One of the huts had these poles with plaited grass in semi-circles all the way up both sides.  It looked like the beginnings of a fan or roofing.  When we asked, we were told they were decorations for Christmas and New Year!





These boats are not in the same place as the other boats we showed you.  There seem to be little villages scattered all around near the dam and their main source of protein is fish.  Only the men and boys go fishing and they catch enough for their own family.  I asked Tony what would happen if the lady's husband died and she only had daughters - he said "She is doomed!"

After walking around a number of huts we eventually came across a lady cleaning fairly large fish.  We stopped to negotiate a price and wait for her to clean them.  They were all still gasping for air! (Or is it water!?)

When ever we stopped at a hut the very hospitable inhabitants would rush inside to grab chairs for us to sit down and relax. It was quite humbling but also became difficult as we were not planning on staying for any length of time in any one place but felt we couldn't refuse.

We eventually came home with these four fish.
We had the larger one for supper.  Quite a sweet meat but unfortunately it had many tiny little bones that were difficult to see. The other three are tilapia. (Well, we were told that, but what do WE know, some of us are only huntin', shootin'....., kinda people!)

 

Mistake number three. That open-air "school" building that I wrote about turned out to be a church! The desks and chairs were stacked away for Sundays, not for the holidays! tsk!

 

 

 

This is the government school that I told you about. It is beautifully built but I do not know what supplies and equipment they have as every school classroom I have seen is virtually empty.
Only the desks and the chairs are there, but perhaps this will end up being mistake number four!




 This is the ablution block, not too far away.










                                                          And....here's the teacher!
                       (The one in the middle, well, all of them are actually, but he is the paid one!)

                                  A very softly spoken gentleman who was very welcoming!

Tony's two elder boys go to international schools and board quite a distance from Bantama.  He pays 200 Cedis a term for each child - they have three terms here in Ghana.  The two younger children travel to an international junior school in Kwame Danso every day, get lunch at school, and he pays 6 Cedis a week per child including the transport. The Ghanaian limit on teacher to child ratio in the government school classes is 1:35, but as with most African schools, there are often 60 - 80 children.  It is difficult to refuse to take a child when there is no other school in the nearby vicinity!

                                        So that was our "Sunday" school lesson for the week!

One last thing........I have a confession.................see this bump?...........iiiiiiiiiiiiiiits Gundi!

 

She has managed to worm her way into our bed at night.  Her frenetic screeching to come and cuddle pulls too hard at my heart strings and I have eventually capitulated! Sigh!

(Bad mommy, bad, bad mommy!)

                                                      

 Porks', Gundi's and my wish for you all, is that 2013 will be your healthiest, happiest, most successful and most loved year yet!

 See you next year!

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!