About three years ago, I wrote a blog post called Whoopie Pie Heaven (now featured temporarily along the sidebar on this blog page), a memorable way of spending a day together, as shown by a recent series of texts:
L: Sara, we need to celebrate after you are back from Ghana with another Whoopie Pie Day!
A (our newest sister-in-law): Oh my! Did y'all make all those goodies in one day?
D: Yes! And that wasn't a bake sale! Just Sister's Day, baking cookies for lunches!
L: Oh yes! Sara was a little overwhelmed with my big bowls of batter, but she happily carried trays home for her freezer! Didn't we each end up with over a hundred cookies?
Me: When I thought of doing a Whoopie Pie Day, I expected each of us would go home with two dozen Whoopie pies. I didn't realize that meant two dozen of each kind. And there were five diffferent kinds, or something like that.
L (laughing, no doubt): Great memories!
Indeed, her massive bowls of batter and the disparity between a mom-of-eight's idea of a baking day and a mom-of-two's idea have become unforgettable among us three sisters.
Today, my sisters are getting together again to bake whoopie pies for lunches. (It took three years to recover from the last round, I see.) This time I'm not close enough to join in, so I'm remembering the fun we had three years ago, and thanking God for sisters.
Speaking of memories, I recently saved my son from creating bad ones. Sophia alerted me to "a really high bike ramp." Just in case it was high in more than a 5-year-old's estimation, I checked it out. . .and nixed its use.
Like most churches across Ghana, the Deeper Life Bible Church we
attend planned to usher in the New Year with a midnight prayer and praise
service.
"Should we go?" John asked me. The two of us wanted to
be there, but we weren’t sure if it was too much to ask of our young children.
"Well, it is only three hours out of our lives," I reasoned. "The
baby will sleep in my sling and the other two can take naps
tomorrow."
So we went.
The older children thought it was novel to go to church when they should have
been in bed. They each took a blanket for warmth and planned to hunker down in
their chairs and sleep at church. (Definitely an unusual privilege. Our church
has ushers who tap any sleepers on the shoulder, ensuring a wakeful audience.)
Other children, I noticed when we arrived, had mats as well as blankets and
were sacked out on the floor in the back of the room.
So we stayed while the baby looked around brightly for the duration of the
service with my fellow-mommies laughing at him. "Why?" they asked me
as I bounced him just outside the open church door where I could still hear the
service. "Why isn't he
sleeping?"
"He wants to see the New Year," I told them, grinning. And other than
a restless dozing twenty minutes before fireworks announced the New Year, the
baby stayed awake to the amusement of my friends.
John and I enjoyed listening to songs in Twi which we don't hear on a regular
Sunday morning and watching our friends truly feel the music as they sang. It
was obvious that Twi is not only their mother tongue but their heart language
as well.
We listened to inspiring testimonies including a song of praise from the
pastor's wife who has a baby with an amputated foot and obvious developmental
delays. (You can read her story here.)
She shared the story of her baby's birth and troubles and ended it by saying,
"I am praising and thanking God that my baby is alive." There was no evident
self-pity nor any reference to a hard year but simple gratitude that her son is
alive.
A final highlight of the evening came after the booming fireworks died down
enough for me to hear the pastor again (lights were off, so we were in darkness
without a sound system). He said we would sing a New Year song and shake hands
all around while we sang. Everyone was in high spirits. Mothers swayed the
babies on their backs as they shook my hand and held on longer than normal. There
was laughter and greetings all around. The camaraderie I had felt among the women
while standing outside the church door with our babies expanded to include many
other churchgoers during the New Year song. It was such a beautiful way to usher in the New Year.
This is the song they sang, though ours wasn't as professionally done since we had untrained voices and no instruments.
On our way home with three tired children, we noticed the haze in the air was
unusually heavy. Car headlights coming our direction were soupy puddles of
light like those in heavy fog.
"Harmattan is bad tonight," John observed, for it was dust in the air
that caused the haze.
And, sadly enough for the housekeeper within me, the dust hasn't lifted yet. The
air smells of dirt and a dusty haze obscures the hill we normally see behind
our neighbors’ trees.
The harmattan is a phenomenon, though it happens annually. Winds pick dust and
sand up from the Sahara (largely from the Bodélé depression in Chad) and fling
it skyward. They blow southwesterly, dropping sand and dirt all along their
path, but still carrying enough to South America to replenish phosphorus in the
Amazon rain forest. Phosphorus, a mineral easily washed away by the excessive
rains of the Amazon, is found richly in the sand of the dry lake bed in Chad.
NASA has photographs of a dusty trail spanning the Atlantic and carrying the
equivalent of 104,908 semi-trucks full of sand that actually reach the Amazon.
More than 6 times that is lifted annually, according to this article,
and dropped along the way.
All the dirt that falls on us in Accra is redeemed by knowing that the harmattan has a greater purpose than simply dusting the earth. Redeemed or no, the dirt is still here to contend with. But I'm fortunate. Housekeepers less than
400 miles north of us deal with a substantially heavier coating of dirt. Theirs
isn't the fine powder I clean off my table every day. Theirs is true
gritty grime in a thicker layer than mine. I have memories of washing every shelf in our two-roomed house when we lived in a
northern Ghanaian village, then waking up the next morning and being able to write my name in the dust on those same shelves.
This season is unbelievably dry, especially from my perspective, coming from humid PA. Our laundry dries in short order,
which is fun for a change. Lips chap and crack. Food remnants cement onto
plates if they aren't washed immediately. Bread turns to croutons if left
uncovered. Often people are troubled with sinus issues or bad coughs. John woke up
one morning feeling dried out from the fan and the dry air and said, “I feel like a frog
that has been out of its pond too long.” Knowing how hard it is to keep myself
and my nursing baby hydrated, I sympathized.
While international flights are unhindered, regional airlines lose money during
harmattan when visibility is too poor to land. If we have travelers going to
Tamale during this time of year, it isn't unusual for John to buy both bus and
plane tickets, then get a refund on the one that isn't used since flights are
so unpredictable.
One of our guests was told the following story by a fellow-traveler which
highlights the difficulties of traveling during harmattan:
"When I arrived in Ghana, my luggage wasn't taken off the
plane. By the time they figured out what happened, my bags were already on
their way to South Africa.
"Luggage or no, I needed to get north, so I flew up to Tamale. When we
were close enough to see the airport below us, the pilot said there wasn't
enough visibility to land, so we turned around and came all the way back to
Accra.
"The airline said they'd run a special flight early in the morning and that I would need to be at the airport by 5:00. I was up by 4 and got to the airport
in good time. Sadly, the harmattan was still too heavy, so they cancelled that
flight and suggested I take a bus.
"I bought a bus ticket and was finally sitting on the bus at noon waiting
to pull out of the station when the airline called to say the plane is going to
leave and I should come back. I quickly got off the bus and hurried to the
airport. So right now I’ve been waiting almost two hours and am losing heart
that the plane will fly.”
He was right. After a two-hour delay, the flight was cancelled and the good man
was forced to find another bus.
The harmattan brings more than dust to Ghana. With the sun blanketed behind a
haze, mornings are cool. Accra doesn't get the extreme temperature change you
feel farther north, but it is still cold enough for a sheet at night and a hot
beverage in the morning –pure happiness for us westerners. Recently, one
morning was a delicious 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
The sun at 4 pm today.
Should you be interested in visiting Ghana, December/early January is a fine
time to do it. The days get warm enough for you to appreciate the strength of
our equatorial sun (provided the haze isn’t too thick), but nights are cool
enough for you to sleep well.
Best of all, if you visit now, I’ll have help cleaning.
