As I pinned a shirt to the wash line, I saw Tyler coming to find me, a reading
book in his hand. He needed to read aloud, but noticing I wasn’t ready for that,
he deviated from the sidewalk and scuffed his foot in the dirt beside the house.
He poked around for a minute, then asked, “Have you seen these bugs?”
Considering they were hidden behind a stubby tree in the flowerbed, I
hadn’t.
“You really should see them. They make holes in the dirt and if you drop
an ant into the hole, dirt pops up like a little volcano.”
My
eyebrows popped up, too, and soon I crouched behind the tree in the flowerbed while
my young entomologist gave me a further education on antlions. Had I noticed them
previously, I would have assumed that the pockmarks in the dirt were created by
water dropping from the eaves. But, no. They were live traps, made by antlion
larvae.
“See? The walls of these holes
are so steep that the ants can’t get back out.”
We dropped an ant into one of the craters and watched it scrabble at the
smooth sides. Then, suddenly, he said with his voice rising in excitement, “Look! The dirt is
popping up!” Indeed! From the center of the hole, dirt was being kicked up a
centimeter high, as if a mini popcorn popper was at work. This action helps knock the ant into mandibles waiting at the bottom of the hole. The antlion was having his lunch.
It was my first encounter with antlions. Impressed with both the bug and
my son’s knowledge of them, I changed the day’s penmanship assignment from copy
work to writing a paragraph about this intriguing insect.
As he worked, he said, “Mom, don’t you think antlions would make an
interesting blog post?”
I did. And so, with his permission, here is a picture and a small report,
both courtesy of my son.
Backyard
Volcanoes
Tyler
Nolt, age 8
There are so many interesting bugs
in Ghana.* This bug makes his house like a bowl of a funnel. If you put an ant
in it, or if an ant crawls in it, it cannot climb out because the sides are so
smooth. Then dirt shoots out like lava from a big volcano when the bug eats
them. The name of this bug is called an antlion.
Tyler's picture of the lions' dens.
Our very own antlion. Photo credits to Adriel.
*Antlions are found worldwide. In the States, the larvae are sometimes called doodlebugs because of the squiggly lines they make in sand. The adults look like a damselfly.
. . .and other ways to care for a family in an emergency.
In the ambulance,
ready for an hour and a half drive
Too far away to do much more than pray, I kept checking my phone this past week for updates from my sister Laura. Her two-year-old daughter Deborah was recently diagnosed with hypoglycemia. The cause is still undetermined even after two traumatic ER visits, two lengthy ambulance rides to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and over a week spent in the hospital. Deborah is home, thankfully, and doing well, though her parents live with the knowledge that her sugars might plummet uncontrollably and another hospital stay will be necessary.
Listening to the doctor's heart
This isn't their first experience with hospital stays. Laura herself has been hospitalized
eight different times and, no, not always with new babies to show for it. Knowing
her history, I asked her for ways the rest of us can reach out to a
family with a hospitalized member. Many of the following ideas were gleaned from her abundant experience, from acts of kindness gracious friends poured out on them during their medical crises. Truly, the beauty of the family of God is
highlighted during an emergency. Denny Kenaston said, "God the Father is seated on the throne; God the Son is at His right hand. But where is the Spirit? You is the hands and you is the feets." One tangible evidence of His Spirit within us is when we find ways of caring for those in a crisis. At the hospital:
1.Ask
if visitors would be enjoyed. If they are,
make time in your busy schedule to pay them a visit.
2.Communicate
by text. Texts can be received anytime and read or responded to when they get
the chance.
3.Before
you visit, ask if the caregiver (or patient) wants you to bring anything, either from home
or the store.
4.If
your children are sick, leave them at home.
5.Be
aware that a hospitalized child might not be on
their best behavior. Don’t go away appalled.
6.If
it is a child who is hospitalized, offer to babysit so the parents can have a
little date.
Gift ideas:
Ideas are endless, of course, but
here are a few proven to be successful.
1.Deborah
really enjoyed glo-sticks and helium balloons.
2.Give
a box of small, wrapped reward gifts to be opened after painful or scary
procedures. Deborah needed her blood sugar checked every three hours around the
clock, had to have three IV placements, and one painful heel stick –the latter
aggressive enough to fill a test tube with blood. Reward presents can
(sometimes) save the day.
3.If
a small child is going to be in the hospital for a lengthy stay, give them a
photo album of favorite people and places.
4.No
money? No worry. Take a pile of your own books to read to the child during your
visit.
5.Don’t
forget the mom! Take snacks and books for her, too.
6.Hospital
food can get old after a while. Families of inpatients usually have access to a
fridge and microwave in the family lounge. Take home-cooked meals for them to
reheat.
7.Can't be there in person? Order a gift from the hospital's online gift shop and have it delivered to the room. While selecting a gift for Laura and Deborah, we noticed that CHOP's online store also had $5 meal vouchers -another great gift idea.
8.If
the hospital is far away from home, give gift cards for fuel.
9.Offer
rides. “I didn’t always have a car available,” Laura said, “so it was nice to
have a friend from church offer take us to the ER.”
Gigi, the monkey, deserves
applause, too, for tirelessly
offering moral support.
For those waiting at home:
Having a family member in the hospital is hard
on the ones left back home. Don't forget them.
1.Offer to go grocery shopping, or surprise them with a box of staple ingredients (and a few treats).
2. Take them prepared foods like a hot supper or frozen meals. Supply them with convenient options for packed lunches.
3.If the patient is hospitalized for an extended
stay, volunteer to do something special with the little people left at home.
4.If teens are shouldering the burden at home, find ways to recognize their service. My 18-year-old niece did a marvelous job of
taking care of the home while her mother and sister were in the hospital for a
week. But it wasn’t easy -especially since she was caring for a toddler with a stomach flu. Friends dropped by to visit, bring flowers, or to
drop off a frappe. Their care renewed her courage.
4.Offer to babysit the little ones still at home.
5.Comb little girls for school or church.
6.Offer laundromat services. Pick up the dirty
laundry and return it freshly washed, ironed and folded.
Afterwards:
Whew! They are finally home. But
the family might not feel like everything is back to normal as quickly as the
rest of us do. It might not just be curdled milk and fossilized leftovers that
need to be sorted out; hospital stays can be exhausting emotionally, too.
1.Offer your services. Need a hot meal? Laundry washed? Groceries? Depending
on the situation, they might be exhausted or simply overwhelmed at trying to
catch up.
2. Text, call, or stop by. Sometimes a mother needs to unwind, to debrief. Show your support by lending a listening ear.
3. In the event of an ongoing medical problem, don't wait for a crisis to show your love and support.
Jesus said, "I was sick and ye visited me." Then said they, 'Lord? When did we see you sick?' And Jesus said to them, "As often as you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me."
(paraphrased from Matthew 25)
All photo credits go to Laura. She read and approved this post.
We only lived there two short years, yet somehow the village managed to permanently embed itself in our hearts. It is the one place in Ghana that still feels like home to us. We were glad it was possible, then, to visit Bagli a few weeks ago.
Taken 8 years ago, but it looks the same today. Only,
right now is dry season so there is zero green anywhere.
One of the first people to meet us was a former neighbor lady, a person I was best acquainted with in the village. She met me outside of her gate with outstretched arms to embrace me, an unexpected welcome from an undemonstrative septuagenarian. She also loved up on my baby who went to her without protest.
Upon leaving her house and walking through the village on our way to greet the chief at his palace, a group of children began collecting behind us. They stepped on the heels of my sandals when I walked and pressed against my legs when we were seated. Except for a short period at night, the crowd of children hanging around us never diminished in size until we left.
There are two white children in this crowd, but only
one is (sort of) visible.
One of our followers was a child who learned to walk in my house almost nine years ago. She seemed so grown up now and stayed close to my side for the entire visit. I hated leaving her behind when we left.
When we arrived at the chief's palace, he abandoned normal formalities and met us at the door of his room. This time it was my children who were wrapped in an unexpected hug and led to his throne. They sat with him politely while the chief stroked Sophia's braid and kept an arm around Tyler's shoulders. I was proud of my twosome for being willing to step out of their comfort zone like that.
We were hosted overnight in the compound of an English-speaking friend. They showed us wonderful hospitality and we are very grateful for all they did for us. It was no fault of theirs that our night was interrupted and not too restful.
They couldn't help it that a nanny goat gave birth in the wee hours of the morning or that the other residents in the sheepfold protested loudly against being penned in the labor room. So the tin gate was opened, shuddering across the gravel, and the noisy flock was released. They stuffed their faces into the kettles resting on the ground of the outdoor kitchen area. Their little hooves beat a rapid staccato when they were shooed out.
The moon rose around 3 am. My baby took that as an invitation to play and sat on his mat under the stars, playing. It wasn't ideal, but least he wasn't crying, a mercy the fifteen sleeping people around us didn't know to appreciate. Then the rooster began to crow. And my city-born baby was afraid.
Something living kicked in my ear. A spider, perhaps, though I couldn't see it. Even after I flicked it out. I didn't see where it landed and hoped it wouldn't come back.
A breeze, though glorious and refreshing, rattled the tin roofing sheets, and blew dirt across my face.
After declining the use of a proffered foam mattress, we slept on a thin plastic mat which held us off the mud/cement compound floor by an eighth of an inch. At midnight, I spent some time contemplating whether I wished for twenty extra pounds to pad my hips and offer a softer platform for sleeping on, or if I wished to lose twenty pounds so I would press less heavily against the unrelenting ground.
But the starlit sky helped to make up for unavoidable interruptions. Orion (the only constellation I can pick out) stood in his glory above us. And falling stars left us breathless. For the moment, anyway, until the toes of my oldest dug into my back and the body of my youngest laid heavily against my knees and the mama goat baaed in her pen. It was a combination sleep could not overcome.
The long night finally ended around 5:30 when the women went to fetch water from the pump and lit cooking fires. They were cheerful and happy, regardless of their night. Bagli's women, like most Ghanaians, seem immune to self-pity. They heated more water than our family of five could use to bathe and brought us more food than we could possibly eat.
We spent our morning greeting old friends. Many of them have relocated, but to those still there, we gave family pictures. "This way you can always remember us," we told them.
To some, we also gave pictures we had taken of them nearly ten years ago. Here are two of those:
Our friendly chief is in the center of the picture. Someone is
holding the umbrella above him and a young wife is seated
close-by, fanning him.
The picture of the children roasting termites for a pre-school snack (and to share with the white folks) was taken on our veranda. The girl with her hand by her face passed away not long after this (no reflection on the termites). Knowing the girl's mother had no pictures of her late daughter, I printed off a copy for her. Giving it to her (and watching her protect it from little hands that wanted to hold it), was a special moment for me.
After we had greeted everyone, we left with hearts full of memories we will carry with us, possibly forever. Two live chickens in a handmade fowl basket rode at my feet in the truck. We put the two large smoked fish from the chief and a bag of beverages from the village's only storekeeper at Tyler's feet. We had already eaten the pigeons gifted to us the night before.
A Kenyan once told me, "When you drink the waters of Africa, they always stay in your heart."
"Let's do a taste
test," John said, holding the pint jug of maple syrup someone sent to
us.
I was game. The last taste
test I took part in was to identify different brands of Malta, a non-alcoholic
beverage I'm not particularly fond of. I flunked that test completely. But the
taste test John proposed was one I was certain to ace: pure maple syrup vs. my
own homemade.
Maple syrup, in its purity,
is part of the fabric of my childhood.I
didn't know syrup was kin to liquid gold when I was eight and applying it
liberally to pancakes. I always made sure I had enough to puddle on my plate so
I could eat it with a spoon after the pancake was gone. Then, if the syrup
pitcher was empty, we simply refilled it from a gallon brought up from the
storeroom in the basement. This endless supply was possible because my grandpa
had a sugar maple woods, and each year the extended family worked together to
make syrup.
We did it the old-fashioned way by hanging tin buckets on the trees.
In March 2006, The Elkhart Truth, a local paper, read:
"Grandchildren tromp through the woods on February and March afternoons,
crunching fallen leaves with rubber boots. They grab buckets hanging from the
800 or so taps on trees and dump clear liquid into larger buckets. Sometimes
sloshing sap onto the hems of their dresses or pants, they carry them to a tank
mounted on a trailer and pulled over rutted trails by the Farmall H tractor
their grandfather got when he started farming."
It takes about 40 gallons of
sap to make a gallon of maple syrup. That is a lot of buckets.
Gathering sap always
includes mud. Lots of mud. The Elkhart Truth reporter didn't
witness anyone losing a boot one pace back in sticky mud, almost an annual
event. Nor did they follow us at night in the rare times when rain was imminent
and sap was gathered with flashlights and lanterns. Brambles are invisible at
night.
When the tank on the trailer
was full, it was emptied into a large holding tank at the sugar shanty.
Ah, the sugar shanty.
There is nothing quite like being chilled and walking into the sugar shack. It
was steamy and warm and smelled pleasantly of syrup and wood smoke. A fire,
fueled by the wood Grandpa cut while cleaning up the woods, burned hot beneath
the evaporator.
My dad and brothers took
their turns boiling sap far into the night during the prime of the season.
Boiling had to be done almost around the clock (except on Sunday) in order to
make room for more.
And then, finally, there was
syrup. Gallons and gallons of amber sweetness. To me, it is so much more than an expensive pancake accompaniment.
It is tangible evidence of my happy childhood.
With that in mind, you will understand why I knew the maple syrup
taste test was my moment to shine. Eyes closed in readiness for the taste test, I could imagine myself enfolded in the warm, steamy interior of the sugar shanty. John gave me my first bite. I
swallowed and smiled. I tasted the second option and froze. The smoky sweet memories evaporated and dismay rose within me. I had no idea which of the two was the real deal. And I
flunked the test.
In the deep bitterness of the moment, I knew it was past time for me to
go back and visit my grandpa’s woods and the sugar shanty.
Or, come to think of it, maybe I should market my own syrup.
Maple Syrup photo sourced from Pixabay. All other photos are my
own.
In discussing a writers’ conference, I had a few questions:
“How do mothers with little children juggle a weekend like this?” I asked. “Are
there nursery facilities?”
A fellow writer-mother had been
to this venue before and told me there are no nurseries. She included this line
in her response: “If your little ones do well at sitting through church for
long periods of time, they should be just fine. Ha.”
Immediately, my mind went to REACH 2015, a Mission’s Conference we took
our young children to. The following words were written to debrief myself
afterwards.
I knew it was going to be a long day of
sitting for a five- and two-year-old. It was a long day of sitting for an
adult, but adults can get caught up in the inspiration of the moment and forget
they are sitting.
A child does not. Inspiration is not on his menu for the day.
Survival is.
I thought I went prepared. In general, our children sit quietly
through church services without much extra-curricular entertainment, but
considering this was a full day of meetings in a less-formal setting than
church, I tucked snacks, books, tablets, and coloring things into my bulging
bag and thought we had the day aced. We did great through the first three
sessions without even touching the snacks. I was impressed.
And then came lunch.
When the moderator announced that there was only seating for 350 of the
900 people at a time, John leaned over and asked if McDonald's was in order.
"Nah," I said, imagining easy-to-eat sandwiches. Plus, fast
food restaurants seemed scarce in the area we were in, and the children were
still doing so well. I was confident and reassuring. "We’ll be fine.”
Wrong.
Things deteriorated the minute we reached the food tables. There were
little cups of stew, a salad, dinner rolls, and fruit in more little cups, all
to be balanced on a Styrofoam tray. We were each getting food for
ourselves and a child. It felt like we were balancing an entire army of
cups on trays not designed to carry them. Weaving through the crowded room with
our precarious burdens, the backpack slipped lower on John's arm, threatening
the stew with disaster before we ever got to our table. But we made it without
mishap to the seating area.
Our troubles might have been over had there been tables in the room we
were directed to. But there weren't. Only rows of chairs with thickly padded
cloth seats that rested upon beautiful, wall-to-wall carpeting.
We stood knock-kneed in front of four chairs, only slightly better off
than we had been during the balancing act it took to get there. I sat the Girlie’s
tray on a chair and had her stand in front of it. So far so good.
But it happened. You knew it would, right? Somewhere between the Girlie
dropping a forkful of salad onto the carpet and The Boy losing part of his
cookie down the inside of his shirt, the soup fell. It didn't
land gently on its side with a few stray beans spilling out, this was a
full-blown crash, landing entirely up-side-down on that beautiful carpet.
John was sweating profusely.
Our saving factors were three. The first was the tightly woven nap of
the carpet; the second was the thickness of the stew; and the third was a wet
washcloth I had in my bag. Between the three, the mess cleaned up beautifully.
The best part of the spill was that it broke the stress of potential
disaster. When the dreaded became reality, we started laughing at the absurdity
of the situation: two preschoolers, soup and fruit cups, and no table.
And lunch was over. I gladly pitched the offending Styrofoam cups into
the trash, mean ol' things.
But even then, things did not improve. Restless little legs were tired
of this, a tiredness so deep it was not cured by running around outside during
lunch break. Sessions ran back to back and were an hour long. We burned
through all of our snacks, stickers, and books in a single session.
Sitting all day was a lot to ask of a child who appreciates nothing the
speaker is saying. So we cut out early.
On the way home, John and I discussed the day and what the expectations
should be of a child. I regretted that I hadn’t taken the children out
for some exercise during one of the sessions. That would have offered some
diversion and worn off some of the energy that was building for the Grand
Finale in the last session. In that period, the words of the speaker were only
background music to my test in child management skills as I tried to save fellow
attendees from a side-ring circus. Ironically, this session was held in a real
dining room where the children and I sat at a table only long enough for them
to color two pages apiece on high speed and to consume all of the chocolates in
the little bowl on the table. Then we gathered our things and left.
It had been a long afternoon for fledgling parents. Long enough that he
looked at his tired wife on the way home and said, “Do you need some coffee?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I’ll take an espresso. Intravenously.”
At least they were laughing.
For a long time afterwards, the day was an
icon of stressful parenting. Other potentially challenging situations were
overshadowed by the memory. "Hey,” we would say encouragingly, “if we
survived REACH, this will be a no-brainer."
Experience has made us wiser. In
discussing the possibility of me attending a writers’ conference, John already
has made a generous offer: “I’ll be happy to take you to one when the baby is
older. The children and I will find something fun to do in the area during the
day. That way we can see each other in the evening, and you’ll be able to enjoy
the conference.”
And I say, what a good idea. Photo sourced from pixabay.com
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.
