Damn you Voltic!

Voltic bottles - I'm really beginning to loathe you!

I hate having to open you every time I want a drink, or want to fill the kettle or wash my lettuce.

I hate having to go and get more bottles when I'm in the midle of something - like in the bathroom so I can clean my teeth, cooking in the kitchen; or having to plan ahead and take water with me wherever I go - in my handbag, in the car....

I hate having empty bottles strewn all over the house, and having to pick them up all the time and stack them back in the box again. (Its surprising how many bottles you actually consume in a day - about 20 on average).

Most of all I hate breaking the seal on the bottles - I don't know why that annoys me so much!

I just want to drink water out of the tap!!

The Lake of Bosoms?!

On the weekend we went to stay overnight at a lake about an hour away - Lake Bosomtwe. Warren thought he might like it because it had "bosom" in the name! Do men never get past the teenage boy stage?!!

Lake Bosomtwe was formed by a meteorite crashing into the earth millions of years ago so is almost perfectly round, and apparently is the freshest water in West Africa because it is only supplied by rainwater. Apparently you can swim in it and it doesn't have any germs like bilharzia, worms, leeches etc - personally I wouldn't risk it still!

We stayed at a hotel called Lake Bosomtwe Paradise Resort which was..... disappointing! Perhaps I shouldn't have had such high expectations, but it was really no more than 1 or 2 star standard. It had nice gardens at the lakeside, but there were so many midgies and bugs that we couldn't sit out there, so had to stay in our less than average room watching 1980's movies on the one channel we could get.

There were some positives to our stay however:

They made really good hot chips.

The soap in the bathroom was Lux - which reminded me of when we were kids, and mum would always buy the cheapest soap in the supermarket in bulk, but occasionally she would buy Lux (probably when it was on special!) and it was a big treat to use Lux soap! So the smell reminded me of that, and I thought we were getting our little bit of luxury with Lux soap. Funnily enough, Warren said his mum did exactly the same thing!

We bought a nice wood carving from a rastafarian artist in the town - who was drunk at 10.00 in the morning! But very entertaining.

The bed was enormous - it was two doubles joined together, so we didn't have to touch each other all night ;-)

Which brings me to yet another piece of roadside advertising - this time "Latex Foam Honeymoon Mattresses - your partner for life". Just beautiful...

Vodaphone Houses

Here's another example of funny roadside signage - along the highway you'll often see houses painted in the bright red colour of Vodaphone, with a big Vodaphone emblem written on the side. There is also canary yellow houses (see in the photo) for MTN which is another phone company, or even green and purple houses for Zain. There's one particular village in which just about every house is advertising a telephone company!

Mobile phones here are a massive business - everyone has at least one mobile, sometimes two or three, or you can get phones which you can put two different SIM cards in. People talk on their phones ALL THE TIME! Or call you at 11pm, or send text messages at 3am. Infuriating! So I think painting the houses is a clever little advertising ploy for the telephone companies - they probably pay the people a tiny amount to have their house painted, and they get very visible advertising all the way along the national highway. Everyone's happy!

Copy Cat Kate Middleton!

There was a lot of excitement on satellite TV today (BBC News, Skynews) with the news that Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement. Lovely for them - as hyped up as it is, and as much as I'm not a monarchy-lover at all, you've got to love a royal wedding! And Kate Middleton is a very beautiful young lady. However what I wanted to comment on was her ring.....

Well maybe she's just a little bit more beautiful than me, and has perfectly manicured hands, and I suspect her ring cost just a smidgeon more than mine did.... But I still got my sapphire and diamond ring before she did, so I believe that I've started a worldwide trend, followed by none other than the future queen of England! (So Katie you can stop laughing at me for basing my choice of rings of Princess Diana's all those years ago!!)

Now for that wedding dress....

School Photo Chaos!

Remember when you used to have your school photos done and everyone would be lined up in straight lines from tallest to shortest, with your skirts to just the right length and shoes shining?

Well I thought I would take some photos of the kids at school, to show what their classrooms and uniforms look like. However when I took out my camera, there was almost a riot! All the kids came running towards me, then when the flash went off they went running away again screaming! I tried to ask them to sit back in their seats, but couldn't be heard over the noise! So I'd walk over to take a photo of one group and everyone else would pile on! It was very funny and obviously very exciting for them....

So these are my mischievous, excitable, noisy and very cute year 5 and 6 students.

Birthday Drumming and Dancing

On the weekend we invited some of our Ghanaian friends over for dinner for Warren's birthday. The girls - Rita, Latifa and Endurance cooked up a storm of kenkey (cornmeal balls) with fante fante sauce (fish and tomato), jollof rice and chicken, and hot pepper sauce.

The best part of our little party was that our friend Sandra gave Warren an African drum for his birthday. Its beautifully carved on the sides, and they took turns playing it while we all danced around the lounge room. It was really good fun! Although they all laughed hysterically at Warren and I trying to do African style dancing - I'm not so sure what was so funny about it? We thought we were doing a fairly good impersonation of them!

The funny thing is that African parties start and finish early - everyone came at 5pm and once everyone had eaten and done a bit of dancing, they all went home! So our party was finished by 8 o'clock at night! I'll try and put some video footage on here, but not sure if it will work or not....

Ghanaian Road Rules

Speaking of Warren (another mention Wozi!), he is currently in the process of getting his Ghanaian driver's licence which is a fairly long winded affair, as per usual. He won't be driving far, just around the minesite, but it will be much easier than having to wait for a car/driver to take him places. So he's been reading up on the "Ghana Highway Code" booklet...

Now the roads safety situation in Ghana is not cool. One might say that Road Safety is not top of their priority list. So this little passage in the booklet made us laugh - it really sums it up well:

"41. If a vehicle approaches on the wrong side of the road: the driver may be asleep, drowsy, inattentive, ill or drunk. Warn him with your horn and pull to the right as far as possible".

Huh!!! So its OK if you're driving while you're "inattentive, ill or drunk"?!

This one was also funny:

"45. Be careful near fruit bearing tree. Children are more interested in fruits than in traffic".

Crazy kids....

Happy Birthday Wozi!

Yesterday was Warren's 37th birthday - happy birthday old boy!

So I thought I'd devote a whole blog to him - he'll be stoked, he's always complaining I don't write enough about him!

Here's some photos of him - with baby Jacinta; trying to look seductive on the "Love Rug"; and the first published photos of his new mullet! He hasn't had a haircut for a while and its starting to curl up on the ends - looking very mullettish! He's so proud....

I was encouraging him to grow his hair longer, but I'm hoping it will pass the mullet stage soon?!

"I'm fine"

It's funny how after being here for a while we've begun to adopt Ghanaian manners of speech. This is how a typical greeting goes, and everyone replies in exactly the same way every single time!

Jacinta: How are you today?
Ghanaian: I'm fine. How are you? (the emphasis is on fine, with a long "i" sound).
J: I'm fine, thank you.
G: You're welcome (this is meant in the sense of "You are welcome here in this place").

And then you can start talking about other things. There is no variation like "Good thanks" or "Alright" - everyone is "fine" all the time.

Everyone speaks English to some degree, although some better than others. But the accent can sometimes be tricky. When Warren first arrived here he would have a translator for his daily work meetings - translating from English into... English!

Our other favourite word here is "delicious". They pronounce it like "del-i-si-yos", and the higher and longer the "i" sound is - the better they like the food!

Easi-Yo

This little contraption was our best purchase on our recent visit to London. Its a yoghurt maker - which is very handy in a place like Ghana. Since we've been here we haven't had any good yoghurt - there is a limited range to buy in Accra (four hours away), but its either dodgy local made yoghurt, or has been imported from France or England - who knows how long ago. Usually by the time we get it home, it has curdled and gone off! So we've been missing good yoghurt for breakfast.

I remembered that my mum used to have a yoghurt maker many years ago, and then when we were in London we spotted one just like it! Yay! So we bought it home with us, and its been a revelation! You buy sachets with milk powder with the active cultures, mix them with plain water in the small container, put it in the thermos with boiled water and then eight hours later you have fresh yoghurt! The good part is that we don't even need milk to make it, because the milk supply can be a bit variable too (fresh milk occasionally, or UHT).

It tastes good too - as good as any you would get in Australia. And you can get different flavours -natural, Greek, honey, vanilla or all sorts of fruit flavours. And I believe if you run out of the sachets you can keep a little bit of yoghurt from your previous batch, mix it with milk and it will make a new batch. Our intestines are very grateful! (I'm sure you didn't want to know that!!!!!)

Baby Sophia

So maybe this isn't a photo from Ghana - but it was such a cute photo I decided to put it in anyway! This is my little niece Sophia. What big eyes she has! and what big ears she has! Very cute.... I miss seeing her growing up, and I really hope she remembers me when we come home in December! I'm going to try carrying her "African Style" on my back, like baby Jacinta. Actually baby Jacinta who is only 3 months old is almost as big as Sophia who is 9 months old (baby Jacinta is 5.8kg and Sophia is only 6.5kg!) What's with that?! Must be good African breast milk...

Religious Signage in Accra

Way back when I started writing this blog I mentioned the overtly religious street signs in Accra proclaiming "God is Love Hairdressing" or "Christ the King Tyre Service" etc. Well I've finally managed to take some photos of a few signs - trying to be discrete whilst we were driving along so that I didn't offend anyone! So hopefully you can see "Christ Water Supply", "With God Furniture" and "Perseverance Art Printing" (with a very strange picture of a cat with a helmet on?).

I've also added some general photos of Accra so that you get an idea of what it looks like - everything is sold on the side of the road - tyres, lounge suites, clothing, fruit and vegetables - pretty much whatever you want really! Puts a slightly different spin on window shopping.

What the?!

This is a sign we saw in a shop window in the town of Cheddar - we were already laughing a lot that day, and this made us laugh even more!