Monkey See

It was my first tree and I attacked it with zeal. I was admittedly a little nervous. Here you can see me at the peak of my progress. Thanks to Brass for spotting me, I had no idea he was there.

Chad and I had quite the adventure in Dzita this week, and guess what?! Chad climbed his first coconut tree and didn’t die like I predicted. It was pretty entertaining! A Lumana employee named Brass hurried over to spot Chad after he started climbing. Although Chad didn’t make it all the way up this tree, I think the Ghanaians were pretty impressed. Chad suffered some scrapes on the insides of his ankles and Brass was quick to nurse him back to health (pretty sure infections start pretty rapidly here).

Although Chad was a little beat up from his first attempt at retrieving a coconut, he wouldn’t let it get him down! A few days later he decided to try again! I went and got Bridget (figured she would want to watch). Good thing we got her because it turns out the trees behind our house actually belong to someone and we needed to ask permission. Bridget asked a small boy to show Chad how it’s done, he made it look so easy!

Brass is a quick draw with the H2O2 and alcohol.

With many spectators at bay, Chad climbed his second tree. This time he made it all the way to the top! He stayed up there for quite a while trying to figure out how to get to the coconuts. He is stronger than I thought! After a few minutes he had cut his first coconut down! Impressed? I was! Turns out this coconut was dry (not fleshy like the first ones we had). Interesting fact, when they are dry they are used to make coconut oil. We want to try!

This time I had a crowd of spectators. I knew that they were counting on me to collect a coconut.

With both Duffy and Bridget traveling, Chad and I had the place to ourselves last night. We made chili and rice. Not bad, except the chili was a little too spicy for me. I’m getting a little more used to it though! We made a shelf for my room and two new shelves for his so our new volunteers have something to put their stuff on. We used left over plate glass from the windows and mounted them on bricks made of cement and sand, pretty resourceful eh?! After I rearranged my room there was a strange noise that I couldn’t pin-point. I discovered that it only happened when my fan was on but couldn’t see anything in my room clicking against anything else.. and it sounded like it was coming outside. It freaked me out so Chad finally caved in and investigated. I was sure some twisted Ghanaian was playing a mean trick on me. After a few minutes of silently following his ears Chad discovered that a tag on my suitcase (under my bed) was rattling against the plastic handle.

Do I look tired? At this point I'm tired. When I got up to the palm fronds I realized there was an ant nest at the same level as my chest. I spent a long time contemplating how to deal with this situation and it was tiring as hell to hang on.

Mystery solved and I was able to sleep like a baby!

Today we are off to Dzita again, this time for a community meeting with all of our clients there. Also, we have two new volunteers that will be staying for the next month. We haven’t met them yet but hope that they will be cool dudes. Next week Abbey comes and I can’t wait to have another girl in the mix, I’m being overrun by boys here.

We found an african cat being cute. Maggie took an excellent picture.

I take a minute to size up my quarry.

One of these is probably the puppy that helped a lucky child win the Cutest Kid in Dzita contest last week.

Maggie is trying to make a friend. She failed.