Cookin'

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Yesterday, after a long afternoon of work at the house on my computer, I made myself a lonely dinner. Ari and Kathie, you should be proud of me for this! Chickpeas and tomatoes and onions and curry all stirred together, along with rice. It even lasted until tonight, which is quite exciting, because I don’t think I could have managed much more than a peanut butter sandwich in my current state of exhaustion. Ari, you will be less proud to hear that I got ripped off by the friend of the mango/pear girl down the road. I intended to buy a pear (avocado), but she didn’t have any good ones by the time I got there. So I bought apples from her friend instead. I won’t tell you how much…it was embarrassing.

This morning I went back to Nima to meet Fatah and begin taking measurements of the gutters. I got there early, which was unfortunate because there was a man in the tro-tro who was really bothering me. I have to say that there are a lot of times in Accra where I wish that I was less obvious. It’s impossible to walk here without drawing attention to myself, and I wish I was better at dealing with that attention.

I wasn’t sure if he would get off at the Nima overpass as well, so I decided to go straight to one of the houses where we did measurements last year. I was there quite a lot last summer—usually to grab the big rickety ladder out from behind one of the buildings and scramble up on the roof to check on our equipment. The family(s) living there is large, and there are always a ton of kids in the yard. But three of them, siblings, for some reason are much more outgoing than the others and they are the ones that I was looking out for. I was mad at myself for having to go there right away, because I really wanted to grab some donuts or something for them on the way. Mary, the eldest, ran right up to me and jumped into my arms, which was really sweet. Nene and Baba are still really young, and I couldn’t tell if they remembered who I was.

After work I went to visit Fatah’s wife and their new baby. Fatah tells me that the baby has been sick frequently since it was born, but it seems to be alright now. She is still so tiny, and adorable. We also went to visit his friend Rashid and Nazar was there, so I got to see him as well. His friend was in the Multinational Forces in Iraq for the past two years, but seemed pretty cheerful about it. He showed me his photos from his time in the Gulf.

Favorite tro-tro signs of the day:

“Stay Firm”

“Pray for your Life”

“Power of [Driver’s Name]” (made all the better by the fact that this car was stalled in the middle of traffic and three people were pushing it trying to get it moving again)