Daily Home Life

After our morning walk, we get back to our apartment and begin the new day.  We share the building, a large cement-type structure with the Nkwabeng Chapel.  It is surrounded by a huge 7 foot cement wall with another 2 feet of barbed wire on top.  A huge iron gate opens to the street and it is padlocked at all times.  All of the windows and doors have bars on them, and as soon as it gets dark, we have to turn on big floodlights that light up the entire exterior courtyard.  I now know what it feels like to be in prison--not quite, but almost. 

The food situation in Sunyani has taken a while to get used to.  There is no meat or poultry that is edible for "obrunis", and eggs are the only dairy product.  No milk or butter or cheese, but we do use soy milk for cereal in the morning.  We were given some frozen chicken by the Mission President's wife, Sister Shulz, when we arrived and we are almost out.  Hopefully, she can bring us more next week, as they have to make the trek up here for some interviews.  The produce is wonderful.  Pineapples are the best, and bananas and cucumbers, tomatoes, and avocados are fabulous and everywhere.  You just stop at any of the little shops along the street.  We have found our favorites and have developed a relationship with some of them.  They all remember us because we're the only white people in town.  Felicia is our bread lady and Nicolas our veggie guy and so on.  The only downside is that everything--EVERYTHING--that comes in the apartment, as well as the dishes every day, has to be washed in a clorox solution.  There is one rule in Ghana when it comes to food:  PEEL IT, BOIL IT, COOK IT, OR FORGET IT!  Food spoils quickly here so it seems that every afternoon, or at least every other day, we find ourselves out foraging for food.  The only trick is playing bumper cars with all of the taxis.

The power goes out almost every day--sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for several hours.  We do have a generator but we are careful not to overuse it.

We share our apartment with 3 little household geckos, endearing, bug-eyed, translucent white lizards, who scamper up the walls and across the ceilings in pursuit of pesky bugs and mosquitoes.  We like them for that but Elder Thayne didn't appreciate one on the window above his head this morning.

Elder Thayne has purchased a bicycle because he doesn't think he's getting enough exercise.  Boy did he get his wish!  We have affectionately named the bike "Harley" because it weighs about that much but you have to pedal it.  He has to stand up to pump even on level ground.  I just keep telling him that it's not a bike, it's an exercise machine.

We will be moving to a new apartment in a couple of weeks, as the church is growing so fast that they need all of the rooms we are using for classrooms.  Our new place is a ways out of town, in the country.  It is quite a bit smaller but is brand new and has a gate guy 24 hours a day.  We have already met Yaki and David and it will be comforting to have them around.