Some things that stood out today (in no particular order):
We had a new driver driving us to and from our placement at Happy Kids. Generally the taxi drivers are polite and most are quiet. What made this one stand out was his obsession with the car's horn. You hear a LOT of car horns here, but most drivers aren't on it all the time. Mostly it's used to let walkers and cyclists know you're coming so they can move off to the side. It's also used to indicate that you want to pass a slower moving vehicle or that you're coming up on the left. This driver though used it almost constantly from school to the house, about a 25 minute journey. We thought of our friends Laura and Sean and a story they told us about driving through some remote part of Australia. To keep themselves amused on some stretch of desolate highway they tapped out songs on their horn. Eventually they managed to wear their horn out. No such luck today, though!
There was another big rain storm today as we move into the rainy season. At one point we were driving on one of the back roads after it had subsided a bit. On this particular road there wasn't much infastructure compared to those around the homebase; just a shalow ditch on either side of the road. Yet, the design was perfect. The water ran off the road and the ditch was a raging stream of run off. When we got closer to home where they've built some "proper" gutters, though, the run off was much more problematic because the sides of the gutters rise up close to two feet at the side of the road. Supposedly, there is to be more fill for the road bring the two things level allowing the water to run off into the gutters. Until that fill comes (if?) little of the water makes it into the gutter and instead most pools in the road because of the two foot concrete barriers on either side of the road...
The teachers are still on strike. The person who's in charge of CCS explained to us the other day that it's not really about problems that indvidual teachers have about their salaries or working conditions, but instead it's the union executive who are doing to this for their own ends and purposes. Big bad unions that stifle the wishes of their members. Very nearly the same things I heard mere months ago in Ontario.
Sylvie's been travelling for almost a month now and I think she's doing remarkably well. It's hard to imagine what goes through the head of a 7 year-old at the best of times, but given all that we're seeing and the very different routine, it must be difficult to know what to think sometimes. We started arguing more about food (for those of you know us, you'll know that's not really anything new) but in the grand scheme of things I think she's adapting very well, learning a ton and having a fair amount of fun. Hopefully we'll segue smoothly into a new phase next week...
Tomorrow is our last day at Happy Kids and we'll probably write more about that when we get back from our placement in the afternoon, but we've all grown close to many of the kids in the KG class over the last month. They wrote their "exam" yesterday and it was nice to see that many of them had made some progress over the last month. Virtually all of them could write their name properly, which is something we worked a lot on in our groups because many of them were still having problems with that when we arrived.
The power was out for close to 24 hours (from about 6 pm Wednesday to 4:30 pm today) which caused many headaches and hiccups. For one thing, the homebase runs a generator when the power goes out; generally we are thankful for this because it means that we can use the fans. Still, the drone is hard to take after a while (I can't imagine what our neighbours think about it when they don't get the benefits that come with the noice). Many in the house have been complaining that they are tired even though they feel they are sleeping well-enough. I think, though, the constant hum and rattle interferes with people sleep so that they don't end up feeling very rested. The generated finally conked out after lunch which was a bit of a relief. The power outage has also meant that the two seamstresses trying to finish work for Alice have been unable to get it done. I can't imagine how frustrating it is trying to run a business that requires power (and how many don't?) and to never know how much you're going to have at any given time.
It occured to me today that I have probably eaten more pineapple during the last month here (at least twice a day, sometimes three times a day) than I have eaten in my whole life. And yet somehow I have managed not to get a single canker. I have no idea how this is possible, save for the possibility that Ghana has developed a special pineapple that they are keeping secret from the rest of the world. (I thank my lucky stars that pineapple is something that Sylvie likes -- dispite our differences over what to eat, she has eaten her body weight in pineapple many times over this past month and has never once complained about it)
I'll end with Nutella. Growing up this was not something I ate and so it's not a craving I have. There's been a jar of it out for about a week though and I'm gaining an appreciation for it. Aside from the pop and occasional (they have become occasional, by the way) Fanice, we don't have much in the way of deserts. A piece of bread with a thick smear of Nutella, though, fills the void nicely. Or at least I tought it did until Alice just made use of the sandwich maker to make a warm Nutella and banana pressed sandwhich. There might not be any going back now...
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