God, Our Protector

I am especially thankful for God’s protection these days. I believe sometimes He intervenes from behind the scenes and miraculously saves us from harm. And we, finite creatures that we are, don't see the full picture and come away saying, "Wow. That was close." How humble God must be to intercept a danger and remain anonymous. Maybe in Heaven we will be able to look back across our life and see how many times and in how many ways God protected us.

Several incidents occurred recently to give me this renewed gratefulness for God’s protection:

#1: The children and I rode along with John on his errands one day. We could see the ticket counter from where we were parked, so we voted to stay in the vehicle and wait while John purchased tickets. Because we would be in the truck, John didn’t bother to lock doors or roll up windows –both mandatory safety procedures when leaving a vehicle unattended in town. Those neglected gestures were not lost to some men standing nearby. Hardly did John have his back turned until two opportunists hurried towards the truck. One rounded the front corner, heading to the driver’s door and the other came towards the back door where the children and I were sitting. It was he who noticed us first and quickly said a sentence in Twi to his pal. I understood the word “Bruni” (white person) and the two of them whirled around and soon disappeared in the busyness of the bus station.

I knew they weren’t after us, but it would have been scary if they had boldly stolen something from the truck with us sitting there.  God knew that. Wasn’t it kind of Him to cause the man to see us before he opened the door? And wasn’t it good of God to make a woman and two children enough of a deterrent for the men to hurry off? Instead of a big scare to talk about for months to come, the children never knew anything about it.

#2: This week John took the motorcycle to town. Good wife that I am, I worry a little bit about him in the traffic on that thing and found it no comfort when he sent me this text: “Almost rammed a bolt thru rim. At fitter.”

He had been driving on the freeway, a busy road where traffic makes really good time for two reasons. One, it is new (which means it is smooth) and, two, it has limited access enforced by cement walls and jersey barriers. On this busy stretch, John felt terrible bumping and stopped the motorcycle along the edge of the road. There he discovered he had picked up a large bolt in the rear tire and knew he could go no farther. John climbed over the wall and guardrail and found four men willing to help heft the motorcycle across the barrier. He pushed the motorcycle a mile to get to a mechanic where they found the rend in the tube was irreparable and the rim was dimpled, but safe to use.

Can you see the large hole?

God was so good. A puncture on the busy highway was not a good thing but it could have been exponentially worse if it had been the front tire instead of the rear. I have heard stories of front tires bursting and the motorcycle becoming an uncontrollable beast that thrashes around the road and often overturns.

#3: God is our protector in other ways as well. This week there were children at our gate. Again. I stood at the front door trying to discern if I was needed or if they would tire of their game of Make the White Man’s Dog Bark and go away on their own. It looked like they were growing bored and leaving, so I turned around, grateful I didn’t need to bother parenting someone else’s children. Just then there was a BANG like that of a small firecracker or a pop-gun that sounded loudly in our living room. John was walking towards me just then and stopped, startled.

“Did you hear that?” John asked, wanting to know if it was all in his head. We definitely had.

The noise had sounded beside John but the only thing close by was a tote that had nothing in it but curtains, candles, and coffee mugs. None of those items spontaneously say “bang.” We checked light and fan switches, thinking maybe those had blown, but nothing was amiss.

There simply was no explanation for the bang.

We told our director and his wife about it and they, people of great experience and wisdom, determined it to be a disturbing ghost. We had a time of prayer to dedicate this house to God and offered it to Him for His glory.

I assume the goal of the noise was to strike fear and, indeed, it had that potential in me. I fought fear and turned to God for my assurance. I know God is our protector. The righteous can run to him and be safe, the Bible says, so I ran to Him and found refuge from the fears.  

I love Psalm 18:2 for it details the provision He is for us:

The LORD is my rock 

(never changing stability),

My fortress 

(a place of security from the warfare raging around us)

And my deliverer. 

(Think power and the potential for miracles.)

My God is my Rock in whom I take refuge, my shield. . . 

(safety)

The horn of my salvation. 

(salvation = deliverance)

My stronghold. 

(A safe impregnable hiding place.)

I stand amazed and so grateful to God, our Protector.

My husband's job description:

Hurry up and wait!

Wait in the traffic with rain pouring down in torrents and cars clogging the circle so badly that no one is moving. The problem is simple: The right lane tried to merge left while the left lane did its best to merge right and traffic perpendicular to them all tried forcing its way straight ahead. A bus wiggled over. The blinkers blinked. The horns honked. The wipers wiped on their fastest speed. The lorry mates waved their arms out of windows for added emphasis. We in the blue truck hurried up and waited. The little buses called trotros squeezed through, not offering a foot of grace for the little blue pick-up that daringly inched its nose rightward. Then, seizing its chance, it scurried into a little space behind a trotro and in front of a little white car that honked loudly in protest as it took its reluctant turn to hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and Wait!

The paperwork trail was started. But the queues were long and only inched forward. The whole process could have been completed in twenty minutes if there were no lines. But there were. And it might not take long if things moved efficiently. But they didn’t. So they hurried up and waited while the officials behind the counter left their posts to go outside and do marching practice. The band played, the officials marched, and the men waiting on their paperwork had no choice but to hurry up and wait for another two hours until the practice drills and routines were done.

Hurry up and wait!

A mistake was made on the paperwork so the process needed to be started over. But the man they needed to see just left for lunch and would be gone for two hours, they said. There was nothing left to do but hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait!

Stand in this line only to be told you need to go to the next. Go to this office, then on to the next until you have been through 14 steps in all. Wait in queues full of clients who are doing a fine job of waiting like yourself. Sit and listen while the officials try to figure out what to do with your driver’s license that was issued in the North but you are trying to renew it in the South. It is a puzzling process, so hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait!

They said the container they are building for you will be done this week. But then the Boss traveled, so go ahead and wait. They’ll get it done “tomorrow,” of course, which literally translated simply means “not today.”

And then folks back home ask, “What does your husband do all day?” 

Go ahead and wait. 

I’ll tell you. . . “tomorrow.”

Critter Intrusions

It began in the early hours when I was barely awake enough to make sense of what I was hearing.

“A chicken?” I said in my early-morning voice. “In our compound?”

John was more awake than I and laughed lightly. “No, you hear the neighbors’ chickens across the wall.”

Oh well. It was, as I said, early, and in my groggy cognitive state it sounded for all the world like the thing was strolling past our bedroom window.  And would you know, I happened to be right. Later that day, Tyler came racing inside, eyes shining. “Dad, come quick! There is a big pile of feathers out here.”

Turns out it was more than feathers. It had been my chicken. (Notice the past-tense.) Apparently it met the dog before it met the humans and was killed instantly.

It was only the next afternoon that Tyler came running inside again (he practically lives outdoors these days), telling me to come. There, under the orange trees were two chickens. Live ones this time, and the dog was nowhere in sight.

“Quick!” I told Tyler quietly. “Open the gates so we can shoo these things out before the dog gets them.”

The squeak of the gate called the dog and before we had a chance to rouse the chickens to safety, the dog was in full pursuit of the first one it got to.

“Sassy!” I hollered. “No! Come here!” But Sassy ran with laughing eyes after the squawking hen and I was sure I was about to witness its death.

The chicken must have sensed it was in a race for its life and flew over the wall, clearing the wires so narrowly that a handful of feathers were left clinging to the razor wire. Sassy turned and galloped back to the remaining chicken. With a mighty squawk, the chicken ran past me, the dog bolted after it, and the chase was on.

Poor chicken. I’m sure it hated being the center of the drama. The dog was closing in on her; I was six feet behind the dog hollering at it the whole time; and Tyler was following me as fast as he could. The wild-eyed chicken made a lap around the palm nut tree (a good choice as it could do corners faster than the dog) then headed down the south side of the house (a bad choice for the dog gained ground on straight stretches). The dog won, slapping a paw onto the chicken’s back, seemingly pleased to have stopped in the intruder.

“Sassy, let it go!” I gave the dog one swat on her backside and she released the chicken, apparently hoping this would provide an opportunity for another chase, a pleasure I denied with an authoritative word. The chicken limped for cover and cowered behind a wok left by the man who did some plastering on our wall until we caught her and tossed her out the gate with Sassy leaping up to snag the tail feathers as a final goodbye. The chicken, wisely, didn’t come back.

If they were going to come anyway, it was too bad that the chickens didn’t coordinate their visit with the termite invasion since chickens love eating termites and we would have been more than happy to share. Chicken farmers also love termites as they add great protein to their chickens’ diets and make a cheap and easy meal. Termites come boiling out of the ground like little tornadoes following the first rain of the season. Apparently Accra hasn’t had a good hard rain in a while, for the termites came out of hiding following a gully-washing rain we had this past week.

On the evening of the invasion, Sophia was quietly playing on the floor with fake bugs and animals, lining them up and making them sing in her squeaky animal voice, “Joy to the World.” (A fitting choice, I thought, when her critters reached the end of the verse singing “and heaven and nature sing.”) And then, abruptly, her fun ended and she stood up, crying hysterically.

“Sophia. Why are you crying?”

She was almost incoherent, but managed to gulp out, “Because there are things in here.”

The “things” were winged termites that wiggled their way into the house from between the windows and screens and came over to join the insects singing in her church service. From the sounds of things, they weren’t invited.  

Outside every window of our rooms with lights on, you could hear the beating of termite wings as they fought to gain access to our indoor lights. We had termite invasions in the villages where critters were just a normal part of life. (We even ate termites with the village schoolchildren who fried them on my charcoal brazier for a snack.) But here? Somehow having termites drunkenly dive at indoor lights of a city house seemed like a clash of worlds.

So instead of collecting them for food or letting them make themselves at home, we plugged their entrances on the window ledges and killed the dozens that were already in. Fortunately the crumpled water sachet bags effectively blocked the holes and the invasion was short-lived. Termites shed their wings on the night of their emergence. Evidently a whole host of them chose to do it on our back veranda for abandoned wings blew into my kitchen from under the door. Even now, several days after the termites came, I still find stray wings when I enter the kitchen each morning.

Not all things are fixed as easily as cramming water bags into holes or ushering a chicken out the gate. Sophia came to me yesterday with her fuzzy blanket wrapped around her head and shoulders like a shawl, a sure sign she is feeling insecure. “Mommy, will you hold me?” she asked.

I snuggled her, hating the blanket that added heat to the little body already peppered with signs of heat rash. “Mommy, do you remember the big airplane?”

Ah. So she was homesick. I held her against me, talking soothingly and wishing I could “make it all better.” For the most part, she is doing so well that I know this little hiccup of homesickness is only part of these transition days. I was glad that little bit of extra love I gave her yesterday must have been what she needed, for she is playing happily again, singing and chattering on a toy phone. The purple and white blanket is nowhere in sight.

Homesickness isn’t relegated to little people. I felt a twinge of it on Sunday when I missed our church folks back home. I also felt it when John reminisced about farming rice by hand in our old village, a time when we felt connected with our community by farming like they did. City life isn’t as community-oriented and I miss that. I realize that these unsettled feelings are an expected part of the transition and that someday soon city life will feel normal.

But right now I could use a big ol’ blanket slung over my shoulders. Only I don’t want one of fleece. I’ll take one of God's patchwork quilts made with grace and endurance and joy and hope and love all stitched up together.

Cooking is an art.

That truth was drilled into me when I was fourteen and making pudding for the first time in my life. I hadn’t cooked much at all previously, and certainly not with cornstarch and hot milk. Nobody told me I needed to mix the cornstarch with cool liquid. So I didn’t. I dumped it in and stirred. Vigorously. The inevitable lumps formed almost immediately. In desperation, I alternated my frantic stirring with smashing the lumps against the edge of the kettle, but it was an obvious no-go. I admitted defeat, learned from my error, and the pudding was carried out with the slop.

Then there were the pancakes that weren't becoming pancakes at all but were little discs that brought new definition to the phrase "flat as a pancake." I double checked my recipe to make sure I had included all the ingredients that work miracles in batter, and I had. Whatever the cause, the ‘things’ we ate for breakfast tasted (and looked) much more like humble pie than pancakes. 

Since the days of the lumpy pudding and crepe-like pancakes of my teens, I’ve done just enough cooking to have the truth reinforced to me that cooking is still an art.

Part of this art is being able to creatively use ingredients on hand, a virtue which was sadly lacking in the first weeks after our move. Then, I paged through five cookbooks and ended up with pancakes served with alligator tears for dinner. At least it wasn't pasta or rice; we had that every day until our son finally admitted to being tired of rice. I could hardly blame him; I was tired of it, too. About then, one of my fellow-Americans told me they survived on fried eggs for the first three days of being on their own in Ghana. Knowing that she has become a creative cook since then gave me hope that I’ll get my wings back in the kitchen. 

Cooking begins in market, of course, where I buy nearly all my ingredients. Open-air markets are delightful places, as you know if you’ve been to one. Just today I was at there to purchase ingredients for shito (SHEET-oh), a spicy fish sauce that you eat with rice and stew, boiled yam, hard boiled eggs, and about anything else that could possibly work as a conveyor.

Today’s purchases were made at a stand comprised of three tables. Gigantic silver bowls were heaped with grains, spices, and dry ingredients. Using a well-worn evaporated milk can as a measuring cup, the merchant poured fish powder, shrimp powder, and red pepper powder into plastic bags and tied them up for me. It wasn’t that she leveled that little can off every time she filled it. Oh no. She heaped it up like the Biblical measurement described as “pressed down and running over.” She is not unusual. Often when the women measure dry ingredients, they use their forearm to form a higher rim on the container they are filling, generously giving you more than the amount you agreed to purchase.

At the same stall this morning, I purchased chicken bouillon, tomato paste, and oil, declining the fresh ginger and garlic she wanted to sell me since I had those at home. While I chose the cheaper oil for my shito project, I was pleased to see sunflower seed oil along with the vegetable oil, a new product for the local market stall.

It was just down from this stand a couple of weeks ago that I heard a commotion and turned to see several grown men chasing something just out of my line of vision. They whacked at it with boards, dashed back and forth, and whacked again. Suddenly one of them grabbed a large rat by its tail and thwacked its head against the cement. Twice. The kill was made, the market drama ended, and somebody probably had good eating for dinner.

I have eaten rat in the past, but would prefer purchasing my meat in market, like I did earlier this week. I had only walked in the direction of the butchers when they recognized a purposeful step and surrounded me, saying, “Do you want cow or goat? Okay, come here, come here. This is the fresh one.” “You come here!” “Come over here for the fresh one!”

I chose the stand on the edge of the meat market and watched with gritted teeth as he used a gigantic meat cleaver to cut a half kilo from the chunk of beef on the chopping block. His precision was perfect, but to me it looked like he narrowly missed his fingers with each whack.

“Can you reduce the price for me?” I asked.

He was relentless. “No. That is the price. But if you come back next time I will reduce for you.”

“Okay, then. When you see my face the next time, you can remember that is the day to give the reduced price.”

He grinned and I left, hopeful that from “now going” I will get cheaper meat. There are benefits to making a friend of the sellers in the markets; often they cut you a deal when you make your purchase.

Like the vegetable lady. I told her I wanted lettuce. She brought out a bin of lettuce that had been sitting in the shade of her stall and picked out several nice clumps. Then when I agreed on an amount, she tossed in one extra, “For a dash,” she said generously. (“Dash” is the word to describe the items tossed in for free.) She also dashed me a cucumber and a pepper, sweet seller. I’ll be going back to her the next time I’m in market.

I told you that cooking begins with purchasing food items in markets, but shopping isn’t done solely in markets. Accra is an up-and-coming capital where supermarkets are becoming more popular. These fancy grocery stores remind me of ones in America, especially when I stumble across a brand I recognize like Jiffy peanut butter. Unfortunately, import fees and taxes launch many of their prices well beyond the reach of our budget. Like the celery a friend told me about with her jaw gaping. “Did you see the celery? It was 12 American dollars for one stalk!” I certainly hope somebody buys it before it goes bad, but it is equally as certain that the somebody won’t be me.

Other things in the grocery stores are actually better deals than you can find in the markets which means shopping in these supermarkets can be a good idea. At least financially, if done carefully. 

But I still love supporting local economy. 

I love the markets. 

I love going stall to stall, selecting a smoked fish cross-section at one 

and stopping to take in the scent of spices in bulk from another. 

I love finding the unexpected, 

like bulk chicken bouillon in a heaping headpan, 

or quick oats at a tiny shop you’d least expect them in. 

And I love the interaction with the merchants.

Marketing complete, however you do it, “all” that remains is to create healthy meals for the family. Now that we’ve been here a month, my pantry feels well-stocked and my creativity is slowly coming alive again. Finally. Homemade yogurt helped to crack open the door of cooking possibilities. 

We had a mouth-watering Chicken Curry with a yogurt sauce from Bangladesh;

 Shawarma chicken served with a yogurt sauce and 

a tomato-cucumber salad from the Middle East; 

and granola and yogurt for breakfast. 

Plantain and yam give us delicious lunches and snacks, 

like the Plantain Donuts even the dog liked. 

(Hey, she was begging so hopefully and it was only a little one. . .) 

We made tacos one night by purchasing beef at market and 

chawing it to hamburger with our hand-crank meat grinder. 

Having a freezer also opens a world of options like the Orange-Banana drinks I made last night using our very own frozen orange juice.

Variety and creativity, much to my children's relief, are finally starting to reappear on the menu. Usually, that is. But right now it is time for dinner, John is still gone on an errand, and I have nothing started. Got any suggestions? 

"Today is the day."

I greeted the woman at my door with a happy, “Madame Salome, you are welcome!”

I had invited her over so she could teach me how to make southern-style fufu. And, no, that doesn’t include hot sauce, fried chicken, or salsa. It is the difference between the pounded yam fufu of the north and a mixture of pounded cassava and plantain as it is made in the south. Fufu is a heavy, filling meal of the vegetables being thoroughly pounded with a mortar and pestle until their consistency is that of (very) stiff mashed potatoes with elasticity similar to bread dough. There is no salt or seasoning in fufu, so it is always eaten with a flavorful soup. The fufu, mounded into a round, doughy island, dominates the bowl while soup floods the edges and invites all to dig in. Literally. We eat it with our hands, cutting off pieces of the fufu with our fingers then dipping them into the soup.

John and I love fufu and I imagined a happy morning working together with Salome (SAH-loh-may) and learning the art well enough to repeat it for our family in the future.  

But things didn’t run as smoothly as they did in my imagination.  Salome went to the mortar where I had piled my cassava and plantain. “You have only two cassava?” she asked. I could see light amusement dance in her eyes and threaten at the corners of her mouth.

“Yes.”

“These two small, small ones?”

“Yes.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize I had guessed poorly on the amount of cassava. Salome lost the battle with her amusement and began grinning broadly.

“Do you generally use more cassava than plantain when you pound fufu?” I asked for future reference.

“Yes.” She gave a quick nod, still grinning at the cassava and the equal portion of plantain lying beside it.

I got the uncomfortable feeling of having made a mistake. It has been a while since I have been the newbie making a fool of myself out of little things that “everyone” knows how to do. Immediately it took me back to the days of living in a northern village where I was laughed at on a regular basis until I learned the ways of my village friends who had only one right way of sweeping their compound or cutting up a chicken or washing a garment. The small cassava staring up at me now and Salome’s undisguised amusement made me feel like a child again and one who knows very little.

Part of the problem was that I knew the cassava were small, but I had done the math while standing at the market stall. “I looked at the size of this cassava and thought it was big enough to feed Mr. John and I looked at this other one and saw it was enough for me and the children. So if we add the plantain, I think we will have plenty of fufu.”

That was very true but even the small quantity was a laughing matter for Salome. Africans can eat double the portions of these heavy local food as we Americans so even that explanation wasn’t going to expel her amusement.

Salome sat on a low stool and started to peel the cassava and plantain. Her grin stayed wide.

When the vegetables were on the stove to boil, Salome turned to me. “Shall we make light soup?” I wanted her to make it like she would make it for her own family, but another glitch was just ahead.  

“Okay, so which meat do you have?”

My spirits drooped. With Salome barely over the humor of my small portions, I hated to break it to her that I didn’t have meat. I dearly wished I had thought through this scenario while at market and purchased a smoked fish or a hunk of beef. But I hadn’t. All I had was sardines and they seemed like a poor excuse for meat in light of Salome's expectations.

Salome’s amused look returned. “We can do it with no meat,” I suggested lamely and started peeling an onion.

In the middle of pressing a garlic clove, I suddenly remembered that I was out of Maggi (bouillon cubes), a necessity for soup. When I told Salome, she stopped short. This cooking experience wasn’t turning out like she imagined either, what with my small cassava, meatless light soup, and now no Maggi as well. I felt she almost pitied me as she said matter-of-factly, “Then today is the day.” She squared her shoulders as though she was going to make the most of it and pitched in to help me. 

I assume she meant 'today is the day things go wrong' and felt that way myself when I quickly ran to a tiny shop up the street for bouillon --and the banana bread I was baking nearly burnt in my absence. 

When we were on the porch pounding the fufu until my arms felt like jelly and blisters formed (and I had to call John to take over for me, much to Salome’s amusement), the soup on the stove boiled over, creating a gigantic mess across stove, kettle, and counter.

And then the lights went off.

And then our child who hates mashed potatoes and anything remotely close to that texture had a rough time with our hard-earned lunch.

“Today is the day,” yes, but tomorrow is another. And I’m imagining a happy day because Salome is coming back and is bringing her 5-year-old to play with Tyler. Maybe that means Tyler will finally have a friend. 

John pounding fufu while Salome turns the 'dough'