Sept 16 – ok I tried uploading photos but the system kept crashing so sorry, no photos yet. I even compressed them! The largest photo was 49kB. Whatever.
Ben is now registered for school. I paid the first instalment of $150 and still owe about $150. Not bad for a private school. He has a uniform, for which we bought material to make him a couple shirts and have to buy him some jeans. Poor Ben, the 2 things he hates most to wear, jeans and button down shirts. I’m sure it will be easy to convince him that at the end of each day he needs to change into play clothes. School starts Sept 28th. They go from 7:30 AM til noon, Monday to Friday, and 3 – 5 on MWF afternoons. Kinda weird hours, but sorta matches the work day. They have before and after care too, you can arrive as early as 7AM and have til 6pm to pick up. The school provides books, we provide workbooks, pencils etc. They get a recess in the morning with a snack and they do a bunch of other activities as well such as swimming and martial arts apparently. His courses will be French, English, Math, Science, Geography, History, Art/Music I think, and Social studies. The school is not far away, less than 5 min on motorcycle but I think it’s about 1.5 km away. A bit of a walk in the noon time heat so I’ll have to figure something out for lunchtime pick up.
I can’t recall if I mentioned previously that the school offered me a job as a coordinator of children’s activities. I’m still thinking about that although it is unlikely that it pays very well and I would have absolutely no idea what I’d be doing! My other option was to start doing my Master’s but I don’t relish the idea of doing an entire master’s by correspondence (London School of Economics – Environmental Economic program)
We also now have water, sort of. They came to install the water meter and turn on the water and then ran away as fast as they could. The tap in the kitchen works fine which is fantastic. When I turned on the outside tap to allow water into the bathroom area, the bathroom was showered in water because the pipes connecting the sink were broken (soft pipes) and it sprayed the bathroom. Neither the shower nor the toilet work in the main bathroom and I was so frustrated I didn’t bother checking the en suite. At least we don’t have to live out of containers anymore and can start drinking tap water (the containers held diesel so only used the water for cleaning, taking showers and flushing the toilet). This means we start drinking tap water soon. It’s not the parasites or anything that will cause problems... it’s the chlorine. The available free chlorine in the water here is higher than the amount allowed in swimming pools in Holland.
Sept 17 - Other advances into the modern world, we have hired a girl to do the housework. Caroline is 18, and she will be here from 9AM til 6PM, 6 days per week to clean, cook, run errands, wash clothes and watch Ben if I ever find work. I pay her $75/month which is a good salary. She watched him this afternoon while Loren took me to the bank and groceries. She did her high school in Ghana so speaks English if with a very harsh accent. Ghanaians speak English but it’s hard to understand. Earlier this afternoon, we left Benny to play while we walked to the market (it was far about 45 min!) to get baskets and cloth. I was wearing sunscreen, 30 SPF but I still look like I’m wearing a white t-shirt with a bright red necklace. Matches my Rudolph nose very nicely. Doesn’t do much for the mosquito bites, scratching is not advised.
For those moms freaking out that I left Ben in the house by himself, it’s all good. I left Ben one day for an hour to play with his friends because Loren only had his motorcycle to take me to do errands. I locked the door to the house and he played outside with his friends. I felt bad at first but I knew that Luik’s dad was home if he really needed anything. Then I found out there are several kids here, same age as Ben whose parents leave them most of the day locked out of the house. They work from 7 til noon, come home for lunch and sieste, then go back to work from 3 til 6. THAT I cannot imagine! Like I said earlier, there are a lot of freedoms here that we couldn’t and wouldn’t do at home. Here, I know he is safe, I leave him my phone (he can call his dad), and there are lots of neighbours and people around to help.
Loren brought a special snack over today... caterpillars. It wasn’t very timely because we are having a small problem with them right now, there are a bunch of fuzzy ones wandering about – you need to look in your shoes before you put them on – Ben found a cricket the hard way, in his boot one morning on his way outside to the toilet. I digress. So the caterpillars were in a little clear plastic bag, with the fuzziness burnt off them, and fried in oil and salt. These are very specific caterpillars which are apparently hand picked extra special off the karité trees here – extra high in protein. To quote Ben: that’s just gross. I had to agree but Loren just laughed. Loren drives me crazy with that kind of stuff. The one thing we can agree on here is none of us likes fish other than fresh caught. Loren prefers if he caught it himself. I can’t argue with that.
We have an ant nest somewhere in the house as I spent much of last night trying to brush them out of my bed. They are sugar ants and they bite if you piss them off, for example by lying on them. I keep all our sugar, flour, etc in the Tupperware containers I brought so they shouldn’t even be able to smell it and we sweep and wash the floor every day. So I may have to have the house sprayed.
So a couple more weeks till I can buy a car since I have to wait for money to come from Canada as the bank account isn’t connecting to Canada somehow. Today also I couldn’t exchange my traveller’s cheques because the internet isn’t working.
Sept 18 – went again to the bank downtown but in a rather amusing manner. There is a bank nearer to me than downtown, it’s about 2 km instead of 15km so I decided to walk to see if I can take money out on my Visa card. As I was walking, a man stopped on his motorcycle and asked me where I was going. I said I was going to EcoBank. He said to get on and he would take me there as he was going that way. (how often does that happen in Canada? And how often would you agree if it did?) So I got on and he started driving. We got to the main road and he said he wanted to take the road, instead of the dirt path next to the road but the entrance to the highway was going in the other direction so I thought whatever, he gets on the main road, gets turned around on the next exit but then instead of continuing in the direction I was going, starts heading downtown. I thought maybe he has to cross back this way. Well finally I realize he’s taking me downtown and I’m getting farther and farther from where I was originally going. So he’s talking on about how his son is on a scholarship in Canada with the bank and he himself is a swimming teacher at the Hotel Pacific’s pool and I should take his phone number and call him if I want to go. So I take his number, we shake hands and he leaves.
There was still no internet downtown but I did manage to get money.
Ben is now registered for school. I paid the first instalment of $150 and still owe about $150. Not bad for a private school. He has a uniform, for which we bought material to make him a couple shirts and have to buy him some jeans. Poor Ben, the 2 things he hates most to wear, jeans and button down shirts. I’m sure it will be easy to convince him that at the end of each day he needs to change into play clothes. School starts Sept 28th. They go from 7:30 AM til noon, Monday to Friday, and 3 – 5 on MWF afternoons. Kinda weird hours, but sorta matches the work day. They have before and after care too, you can arrive as early as 7AM and have til 6pm to pick up. The school provides books, we provide workbooks, pencils etc. They get a recess in the morning with a snack and they do a bunch of other activities as well such as swimming and martial arts apparently. His courses will be French, English, Math, Science, Geography, History, Art/Music I think, and Social studies. The school is not far away, less than 5 min on motorcycle but I think it’s about 1.5 km away. A bit of a walk in the noon time heat so I’ll have to figure something out for lunchtime pick up.
I can’t recall if I mentioned previously that the school offered me a job as a coordinator of children’s activities. I’m still thinking about that although it is unlikely that it pays very well and I would have absolutely no idea what I’d be doing! My other option was to start doing my Master’s but I don’t relish the idea of doing an entire master’s by correspondence (London School of Economics – Environmental Economic program)
We also now have water, sort of. They came to install the water meter and turn on the water and then ran away as fast as they could. The tap in the kitchen works fine which is fantastic. When I turned on the outside tap to allow water into the bathroom area, the bathroom was showered in water because the pipes connecting the sink were broken (soft pipes) and it sprayed the bathroom. Neither the shower nor the toilet work in the main bathroom and I was so frustrated I didn’t bother checking the en suite. At least we don’t have to live out of containers anymore and can start drinking tap water (the containers held diesel so only used the water for cleaning, taking showers and flushing the toilet). This means we start drinking tap water soon. It’s not the parasites or anything that will cause problems... it’s the chlorine. The available free chlorine in the water here is higher than the amount allowed in swimming pools in Holland.
Sept 17 - Other advances into the modern world, we have hired a girl to do the housework. Caroline is 18, and she will be here from 9AM til 6PM, 6 days per week to clean, cook, run errands, wash clothes and watch Ben if I ever find work. I pay her $75/month which is a good salary. She watched him this afternoon while Loren took me to the bank and groceries. She did her high school in Ghana so speaks English if with a very harsh accent. Ghanaians speak English but it’s hard to understand. Earlier this afternoon, we left Benny to play while we walked to the market (it was far about 45 min!) to get baskets and cloth. I was wearing sunscreen, 30 SPF but I still look like I’m wearing a white t-shirt with a bright red necklace. Matches my Rudolph nose very nicely. Doesn’t do much for the mosquito bites, scratching is not advised.
For those moms freaking out that I left Ben in the house by himself, it’s all good. I left Ben one day for an hour to play with his friends because Loren only had his motorcycle to take me to do errands. I locked the door to the house and he played outside with his friends. I felt bad at first but I knew that Luik’s dad was home if he really needed anything. Then I found out there are several kids here, same age as Ben whose parents leave them most of the day locked out of the house. They work from 7 til noon, come home for lunch and sieste, then go back to work from 3 til 6. THAT I cannot imagine! Like I said earlier, there are a lot of freedoms here that we couldn’t and wouldn’t do at home. Here, I know he is safe, I leave him my phone (he can call his dad), and there are lots of neighbours and people around to help.
Loren brought a special snack over today... caterpillars. It wasn’t very timely because we are having a small problem with them right now, there are a bunch of fuzzy ones wandering about – you need to look in your shoes before you put them on – Ben found a cricket the hard way, in his boot one morning on his way outside to the toilet. I digress. So the caterpillars were in a little clear plastic bag, with the fuzziness burnt off them, and fried in oil and salt. These are very specific caterpillars which are apparently hand picked extra special off the karité trees here – extra high in protein. To quote Ben: that’s just gross. I had to agree but Loren just laughed. Loren drives me crazy with that kind of stuff. The one thing we can agree on here is none of us likes fish other than fresh caught. Loren prefers if he caught it himself. I can’t argue with that.
We have an ant nest somewhere in the house as I spent much of last night trying to brush them out of my bed. They are sugar ants and they bite if you piss them off, for example by lying on them. I keep all our sugar, flour, etc in the Tupperware containers I brought so they shouldn’t even be able to smell it and we sweep and wash the floor every day. So I may have to have the house sprayed.
So a couple more weeks till I can buy a car since I have to wait for money to come from Canada as the bank account isn’t connecting to Canada somehow. Today also I couldn’t exchange my traveller’s cheques because the internet isn’t working.
Sept 18 – went again to the bank downtown but in a rather amusing manner. There is a bank nearer to me than downtown, it’s about 2 km instead of 15km so I decided to walk to see if I can take money out on my Visa card. As I was walking, a man stopped on his motorcycle and asked me where I was going. I said I was going to EcoBank. He said to get on and he would take me there as he was going that way. (how often does that happen in Canada? And how often would you agree if it did?) So I got on and he started driving. We got to the main road and he said he wanted to take the road, instead of the dirt path next to the road but the entrance to the highway was going in the other direction so I thought whatever, he gets on the main road, gets turned around on the next exit but then instead of continuing in the direction I was going, starts heading downtown. I thought maybe he has to cross back this way. Well finally I realize he’s taking me downtown and I’m getting farther and farther from where I was originally going. So he’s talking on about how his son is on a scholarship in Canada with the bank and he himself is a swimming teacher at the Hotel Pacific’s pool and I should take his phone number and call him if I want to go. So I take his number, we shake hands and he leaves.
There was still no internet downtown but I did manage to get money.
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