Sur la Ville

Antonia and Tobias being all romantic. I walked them halfway to Dzita before work.

I mentioned previously that I was having some guests in from Ho, the regional capital.  Those guests were my new friends Tobias and Antonia.  Tobias is working through a German equivalent of Peace Corps teaching English.  His girlfriend, Antonia, came to visit for a couple months and is now considering extending her stay if she can find a good volunteer program.

They arrived Christmas Eve and we proceeded to have a very low-key Christmas day.  Antonia was on the mend from a none-too-pleasant bout of typhus, malaria, and food poisoning.  It seems she had some bad luck with the food at their home-stay.  Actually it seems that their home-stay is an unfortunate situation altogether but I digress.  Regardless, they really enjoyed staying in our concrete bungalow and it was a good opportunity for Antonia to get some well-deserved rest and relaxation.  They continued on their way down to Meet Me There, and then headed back to Ho this morning.

Duffy’s family arrived the 26th and brought a wealth of provisions, including some Christmas cookies.  I indulged in them shamelessly.  We’ve had some delicious meals in the meantime.  I made jolof rice for the first time, which went alright.  I made it a little spicy and it was the first meal the Tillemans had in-country.  It was a cool night and I told them I made it spicy because Ghana would have them sweating one way or other.  Sammie did up a couple of feasts on following days, including a roast duck dinner on the evening of the 27th.  I don’t think I’ve had straight duck before, and it was pretty good.  I still think I’m a vegetarian at heart though.  After being here for awhile and living without cheese and dairy, I even think I could stomach veganism.  (boo, hiss, yes I know)

Mixing away... Not super stringent about the safety here.

For those of you that looked at my flicker photos and were confused to see a bunch of pictures of walls and light-switches, I should let you know that those were photo references for a friend who needed some shots of West African buildings.  Nothing too exciting there.  It did so happen that I got some nifty pictures on that day though.  I try to grab at least a couple of decent pictures when I have the good fortune to borrow a camera, and had some good fortune.

One of the places I investigated was this mill next to our office in Anloga.  I wasn’t really clear on what they do there, but after my tour it appeared that they make crackers of some kind.  They were working away when I arrived and only took a brief break so that the head of the process could get me to photograph him training to be a boxer.  It seems to be somewhat common that I can photograph whatever I want as long as I take a couple staged photographs of the shop owner looking like a badass.

Those peppers hardly stand a chance. There is another good pic of this on my flickr page.

Anyway my tour of the cracker factory was pretty magical indeed.  The machinery is all open to the air and is a safety nightmare.  While I was observing the process I noticed a neighbor spreading cayenne on the pavement.  I’ve seen peppers drying here often but never seen the lady responsible.  She was kind enough to let me take some shots of the process.  It was a pretty vibrant scene with the peppers and her red shirt.

Announcements!

1. The first Ewe lesson is up under Ewe Classroom.  It’s brief, it still has typos, but it’s a lesson.  Please comment and let me know what is confusing.  I’ll be revising them as I go and would really appreciate the feedback.
2. I’m redesigning this site.  This isn’t news to me, but I thought I’d make the announcement here.  I may even post drafts of the design on the site for comments.  It’s going to be a dramatic change, and yes, the current design is just fine.  The current design is also the default WordPress theme, which means there are thousands of sites out there that look almost identical.  I want to come up with a design that somehow represents the activity and vibrant nature of the Anlo region– something more representative of the blog’s objective, which is to try to convey the experience here.

MEDIA BONUS EXTRAVAGANZA!  I made a panorama of Atorkor from the top of a building.  The pink building barely visible in the upper leftish region houses the Lumana office.  The haze you see in the sky is the Hamatan that I may have mentioned before.  It’s a haze in the sky typical of this season.  So far it’s only around the edges, but it’s working towards the center.  I understand that during the peak of the season, the sky will be full of it.  Crazy!