Supersize Me

The last week has been a pretty uneventful one in comparison to our previous week, hence the lack of updates. We saw no monkeys, nobody glued any body parts to each other and we have actually hardly left Koforidua. Last week we had a very dedicated work week, including working through African Unity Day on Tuesday over my protests. I mean, when in Rome right? On the plus side, we have finished much of the accounting cleanup and have a long weekend coming up in which we plan to visit Mole National Park, another (better) monkey sanctuary, Tamale and Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region. Hopefully there is much to be seen in the form of wildlife and culture. Or if you ask Debi, elephants, monkeys and textiles.

The few notable events of the past week included: our first (and second) truly torrential rainstorms (see picture above of the runoff collection), which ironically cut the power for about five minutes (as opposed to the completely uncaused outages, which can last over an hour); another trip to the Thursday bead market, and correspondingly the ATM; Debi spending two days relaxing by the pool and beginning her first pleasure novel since roughly her teenage years (not surprisingly it prominently features eastern Washington and WSU); and my bout with a mystery illness that I'd rather not go into -- I'm just hoping it's not some tropical loveliness like malaria while of course stubbornly refusing treatment or a visit to the "doctor."

Since there is nothing really substantive to catch everyone up on, I figured I'd end this abbreviated post with a public service announcement for those considering travel to Ghana: do NOT come for the food. I have probably lost 10 much needed pounds, which I had planned on using for pushing around the huge eastern Washington boys at a three-on-three basketball tournament in late June. As tempting as it was to include this warning much earlier in the blog postings, I have held off in order to ensure that we had tried it all. Well, aside from the dried, grilled freshwater fish sold on the side of the road sans refrigeration in 85 degree, fly-infested heat, we have basically tried it all. Don't get me wrong, I'm somewhat adventurous with my meals and certainly no food connoisseur or stickler. But the only meals I would call decent are those covered in so much pepper sauce you can't taste the other ingredients. Oh, and the white rice is good. So there's that. That jackass who did Supersize Me (about eating McDonald's every day for a month) has no idea how good he had it.

I promise the next post will be more exciting and picture-laden after our trip to Mole, Kumasi, etc. And most importantly, I want to wish a happy birthday to my wonderful stepmom Mary Anne from 7 time zones away. I don't even know exactly how old you turn today but I know you act ten years younger. And I would have sent a card but I think it will be faster to just carry it home.