I think I'm in love! With the French Alps (and Warren too of course!) I think its one of the most beautiful places I've been to, and has a special ambience about it that makes you calm and peaceful as soon as you arrive. Picture high mountains with snow covered peaks, crystal clear blue skies, vast meadows filled with wildflowers and Alpine villages with houses that remind me of the story of Heidi (the little sickly girl who went to live with her grandfather in the mountains, and gradually regained her strength again until she could walk again). I think I'll start wearing my hair in plaits in honour of Heidi!

My love of this area began when we arrived in Geneva (in Switzerland, but right near the French border), and went through ONE immigration checkpoint which took only 30 seconds! This in comparison to Ghana where we had just spend two and a half hours and more than 10 passport checks for goodness knows what reasons (probably just to give someone a job to do). So we were impressed with Swiss clockwork precision at its finest. We felt the need for some coffee and food before we picked up the hire car so we stopped at an airport cafe where I had salmon and avocado which I had been craving and wasn't able to get in Konongo! By this stage I was a happy girl!

An hours drive later we arrived in the town of Les Houches, just near Chamonix, and drove up a winding mountain road to our chalet. Its fairly small and cosy, and you can hardly turn around in the shower, but is big enough for us and has a fantastic view across the valley. Later than evening I made myself comfortable on the front porch drinking wine and eating cheese, sausage and olives - it was then that I decided I was in love!

Dying.... just another part of life.

This blog may seem a bit morbid - apologies for that, but I'm just trying to record all different aspects of life here.

We have a regular driver named Daniel, who is lovely and always very helpful to us. He had told us last week that his mother was sick in hospital, and then on Tuesday night he rang to tell us "my mother is dead". He wanted to check that it was alright with Warren if he took the car to Kumasi where his mother had lived. He sounded very matter of fact about it - he didn't actually know what she had died of, just that she was sick and then died. When I said to him "That's very sad Daniel", he replied "Oh I'm sorry madam" - like he was sorry that he had made me sad!! So he went off to Kumasi that night, but was back at work again first thing in the morning - ready to go. Life goes on....

Unfortunately people die here quite regularly - the life expectancy is only about 57, and infant mortality is about 1 in 20 of babies under the age of 1 years - that's not good odds. The main causes are malaria, tuberculosis and polio - strange, because those are diseases we don't even have in Australia! Thankfully we've had vaccinations for them, or have medication to treat them, but some of the local people either don't have their children vaccinated, live too far from a hospital, don't have the money to pay for good medication or don't get good quality medical treatment. I think there's a funeral pretty much every Saturday; everyone dresses in black and goes to the church, and then they have a "party" afterwards! A celebration of life if you like. Everyone goes along, and they give a gift of money to help the family pay for the funeral expenses.

We had a funny discussion with Rita and her sister just recently - they were saying that their grandmother had died and that she was "on the fridge". We didn't really understand, they were pointing to the fridge - I thought maybe it was her ashes there? Then I thought maybe she was in that particular fridge! But no - eventually we figured out that she had died about a month beforehand (just when we arrived here) and that she was in the morgue at the hospital "in the fridge"!! We all laughed about the misunderstanding, but I thought at the time I wouldn't be laughing if it was my grandmother! They will be having her funeral next month when some of her children can return to Ghana from overseas.

So that's a bit about life and death in Ghana...

Updates on Baby Jacinta

This is Rita's mum giving baby Jacinta a bath. She's still quite fair skinned at the moment (they say she's red), but she's getting more brown by the day, and once she starts going outside a bit more she'll be black in no time!

Have you ever seen a pineapple growing?

I have to admit that I had never before seen a pineapple growing - has anyone else in Australian seen one?! To be quite honest I'd never even really thought about it! I thought they grew in a tree or something. But they don't - this is how a pineapple grows (see above). You can either grow them by cutting the top of an existing pineapple, peel away a few of the spiny leaves at the base until you expose some little roots and then pop it in the ground. In about a year it will grow a pineapple on top like the one in the next photo. This one is almost ripe and ready to pick!

You can also grow them from little suckers that develop at the bottom of the plant - you can cut it off and plant it again to grow into a new plant. These ones grow a bit quicker than the others - about 6 - 8 months until you get a pineapple. Today Joseph (that's our gardener Joseph in the other photo) planted about 10 of those sucker plants and also 5 banana tree suckers. So early January we should be loaded with pineapples and bananas! Happy days!

My visitors

School holidays have just started, so there are more kids wandering around the neighbourhood during the day. Yesterday these two girls were hanging around next door waiting to see their older sister who works here. They came over to say hello and asked for some water, I invited them in and then they just stayed for the rest of the day!! I'm not sure of their names, I couldn't quite understand them when they told me. They quite enjoyed sitting and watching cartoons on TV. Although at one stage they said to me "please can we put the air conditioner off - its too cold!" They're not used to having air conditioning, and they both had goosebumps! They also enjoyed taking photos of each other with the digital camera - I think they're rather photogenic really.

Happy Birthday Rita!

On Tuesday it was Rita's 26th birthday - I asked her what she was doing for her birthday and she said nothing - so we arranged to have dinner at our house for her. She invited a few of her friends, and Latifa helped me cook her favourite meal - banku with okra stew! We also cooked some jollof rice, roast beef and vegetables and I made her a chocolate birthday cake.

She was SO happy because she's never had anything for her birthday before - she kept hugging me and saying thank you - and that it was the best day of her life! I also made her a dress out of this bright green African fabric that she chose, so she was pretty happy with that too. Its nice that a small effort makes such a big difference in her life....

Baby Jacinta!

Something very exciting happened this week - our housekeeper Rita's sister Aysha had a baby girl - and she named it Jacinta! And not just Jacinta - but Jacinta Downey! How funny is that!! I tried to explain to her that she shouldn't use Downey, that it was my family name, but she insisted that she use my whole name - so there's now another Jacinta Downey in the world. Actually they also add a name for the day of the week they were born so her whole name is Amma Jacinta Downey. My Ghanaian name is Akosua Jacinta Downey.

It's quite an honour really! Must have made a big impression on her... Or maybe its because I'm so beautiful....

I've been to visit a few times now - these photos were taken yesterday when she was a week old. Notice the eyebrows that have been drawn on with kohl pencil - I'm not sure why they do that, but quite a lot of the small children have it. They don't use nappies on the babies until their belly button thing has fallen off - they just wee or poo into the blankets - so you have to be careful!

The other little boy in the photos is Aysha's other child - his name is Jo and he's six years old. He was very funny - he said his mum's boob was as big as his head - which it was!!