We are sleeping in a finished house. It is fully light by this time of day but the sun is not high and bright and hot yet. Most of us are still sleeping or dozing but everyone and everything else is awake and they have been for an hour or more. Our cooks, Peace & Jane, are busy preparing our first meal of the day and the community is awake cooking and crying and yelling and crowing.
Peace was the lead cook for our trip and she joined us in Accra with boxes and boxes of supplies and equipment to cook for our brood. She had cooked for many Habitat Global Village trips before and did an amazing job keeping us very well fed with simply delicious food! Here she is in the storage room of the utility portion of the women's building - we ate off of the dishes stacked off to the left and food was served piping hot from the round yellow thermos like pot you see directly beside her to the right. Neither Bruce nor I experienced many stomach troubles from the food and I think Peace's experience and skill were the biggest reason we stayed healthy! Here's hoping Peace is doing well - she is expecting a baby in early February!
Jane joined us along with Peace from Accra. She did a lot of the cooking outside. Here she is using a stove which holds charcoal under the pan - she is fanning the charcoal to heat the oil to fry either potato or plantain (yum!) fries.I hear the sounds of pounding fufu (as shown in the video below - courtesy of Bruce), snoring, clucking, sweeping or peeling of fruit, louder crying and talking. Sometimes I hear the wind rustle the garbage bag hung on the large open door, not yet full of our North American garbage (dirty wipes, granola bar wrappers and toilet paper rolls).
Our room is quite large and houses 8 of us – Sue, Sharon, Britt, Karen, Suzanne, Krista, me, Yanik. We have used a rather ingenious method to rig up our mosquito nets and I think it has made everyone more comfortable. Three lengths of rope strung the length of the room, one at each side and one in the middle then the middle of each end of the net is tied to the string to make a two peak tent long enough and wide enough for our sleeping mats. We have then exploded our packs and suitcases inside and placed items in each corner and along the sides to widen it. We have tied our corners together to give us much needed height and breathing room. Having the net sit just several inches over your head means it gets much hotter inside, much more quickly and also means a good work out anytime you want to search through your pack, change or even put on your shoes. Lying on your back, planting your feet flat on the mat and lifting your rear off the mat means you can remove pants and underwear and put on clean ones. Sitting cross legged and bent almost in half means you can change your shirt or sports bra within a few minutes, rather than the few seconds it takes you standing up. At dawn and dusk this is important to do all under the net because this is prime time for the mosquito which carries malaria. So far we have seen little to none of these little ‘beasts’ which many of us are thankful for I think.
We are here at the beginning of the dry season and are experiencing the warming harmattan winds from the Sahara. These are more pleasant than we had thought as they take the humidity out of the air and give us a lovely breeze. Our room has two large double doors at each end and these have kept things cool for us at night. [Unfortunately, the threat of cobra season meant that our host, Naomi with the Habitat for Humanity Ghana office, suggested we keep the doors closed instead of open – yikes! This made things much hotter, but safer I guess.] Last night I slept well from about 9pm until 5pm. I was warm at first, but not as warm as the night before but I did wake to find myself damp and chilled again so I was prepared to lay my fleece over top of my torso to stay warm. I’m wishing I brought my fleece blanket but will likely be just fine with just my jacket.
Washrooms are a latrine within the same house. A quick hop to the ground from our room and then a step on to the porch and then down the hall past the cook’s room and shower room and stacks of bottles of water in the halls. There are two toilet seats set into the mortar covered bench in the room and so far it doesn’t look like things will be dire enough for us to come to the point where we will have to go two at a time! The set-up is quite smart and is a raised clay bench with the seats directly cemented into place – they are rather far back though so you almost have to fall back on to them. They are clean and smell fine despite the heat and are a pleasant surprise for most of us, as many things here have been.
The latrine of the Habitat for Humanity Kofiase office building that the women stayed in. Typical in its set up but atypical in the fact that there were two seats . . sadly, the 'lack' of smell did not last long with 13 women using the same latrine ... : ( This morning’s air is misty and it seems like things may be much cooler today – we cold weather Canadians can always hope! I am cross legged under my tent facing the doorway and I can see grey misty sky and tall stalks of corn blowing in the cooling breeze. Meg just walked by in Capri pants and a sweater so it must be nice and comfortable out. It’s 7:04 now and breakfast is at 7:30 – time for me to get dressed for our first full day of work and hopefully visiting homeowner families in their current homes, as planned.
A typical breakfast . . . fresh white bread, delicious Ghanaian style omelette (this one had mini sausages/wieners thrown in for kicks!) and fresh papaya or popo, as it was called locally.
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