Happy Things

1.  The Boy and his bike
   He had a bike in America but no good place to ride it. Occasionally I took him to the church parking lot or to a park so he had a smooth surface, but that didn't happen often enough for him to gain his independence on two wheels. Still, leaving his bike behind was sad.
   
   
   And then we arrived in Ghana and there was a little bike just his size waiting for him. The decal on the bike is a rocket, the perfect choice for the child who loves space things, and he fell in love with the bike immediately. It doesn't matter to him that the one pedal has been replaced with a piece of wood and that the other pedal is in half; he has a bike to ride!
   
   
   

   
   Not only did he gain a bike but also a beautiful place to ride, and within four days of us being here, he was riding it without training wheels. Now when he starts his day he says, “Guess what I’m going to do! I’m going out to ride my bike and catch a lizard.” And he’s off for another happy morning.
   
   I noticed his skill is improving daily. There is a little slope going to a storage garage and instead of following the slope, he thumped off the side, dropping off six inches for the sheer adventure of it. He also called me out this morning to watch him turn tight, fast circles, leaning hard enough as he did so to scrape his pedal on the cement. This “mother of boys” thing is getting scarier all the time.
   
2. Hot water!
   
     We showered in cold water for days and then I happened to notice a ‘thing’ on my kitchen wall.
    “Hey, what is that?” I asked John.
   “It looks suspiciously like a hot water heater.”
   And it was. We need to turn it on each time we use it (which isn’t often), but at it is nice to know we have one if I really need a warm shower instead of a cold one.
   
3. Playing in the Rain -something that doesn't change by a move overseas.
   The water ran cold from the downspout, but Tyler loved it anyway. Sophia didn't get brave enough for the downspout shower, but ran around in the rain until she was drenched. This is rainy season, supposedly, but we've only seen one rain since we are here. Wells in our area are drying up and the leaves on our orange trees are curling. The rain, then, was something worth dancing in.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Bogiant Bakery
   On the edge of Achimota Market is Bogiant Bakery. It is clean, inviting and modern enough to give you a printed, itemized receipt. The only thing missing is coffee, tables, and a power source for my computer. But what it does have almost makes up for its lack. They sell beautiful wheat bread, an item you never see sold along the streets. They also have tea bread which makes delicious egg sandwiches. Tea bread is shaped like French bread but much softer with a powdery top and a hint of nutmeg. In northern Ghana six years ago, tea bread was plentiful and was one of the foods I was looking forward to this time. I was disappointed, then, not to find it sold all over the place; the Bakery is the only place I’ve seen it, thus my deep appreciation for Bogiant.
   
5. The eggs from the worms in our oranges should be easily digested by our stomach acids.
   There are six orange trees on our property which are still providing us with oranges. We picked a heaping bushel of them on Monday and juiced them. We tried to be careful to cut out all the worms with their little nest of eggs but the eggs blended in with the color of the oranges and I wasn't sure I got all of them. Apparently I didn’t, for when I opened the container of frozen fruit slush I made using freshly squeezed juice, I found a dead worm lying on the top. If I missed worms, how many eggs are in there? The second batch we strained through cheesecloth. The good news is that this isn’t a species of worms that grows within you, even if you ingest their eggs (or the worm itself).
   
6. The Broom worked!
   We were in town over lunch, which is a happy thing altogether. I love a good excuse to get lunch on the town. This time we needed food on the go so the children split an entire bunch of bananas between the two of them. To go along with the fruit, we stopped by a stand to buy meat pies. Meat pies are interesting because sometimes you find meat in their filling and sometimes you just don't. This time the little stand surprised us by selling hot dog-sized sausages wrapped in the same flaky dough meat pies are made from. While I was overjoyed to patronize the woman's innovation, the dough-wrapped-sausage might have been a bad choice to feed two preschoolers in the back of a truck. When they had finished, it looked like someone had put crackers through a fan and aimed it in the backseat. Upon our immediate arrival home, I took out our broom in lieu of the vacuum we don’t have and swept out the truck. And it cleaned up beautifully.