When in Ghana do as the Ghanians do

We’ve been sharing our experiences and will continue to do so.  And with every adventure there are wonderful things and also reality.  Many of you asked us about food, bathroom stops in service, etc.  So we thought we’d answer those questions.  The food is great (as you can tell so far)!  We are enjoying many of the customary dishes and I don’t think any of us have tasted a dish we didn’t like.  For service, we walk down the dirt road to the main road to catch a taxi.  Which usually holds 4 uncomfortably and we are 5.  Still we get in and go to the Kingdom Hall.  After meeting for service we walk to both the territory and calls/studies in town or we walk through town to the station to catch another taxi to a neighboring village.  We then walk to visit everyone we’ve come to see in the village.  Talking to everyone along the way!  We go until we are done (because it is WAY too far to come back later) and then find some snacks on the roadside while we wait for a taxi back to town.  Then we buy some food in the markets for dinner and take a taxi back home.  We don’t stop and eat lunch or have breaks other than pulling your water bottle out of your pack and getting a drink in between.  Here the brothers and sisters eat only 2 meals a day.  So when in Ghana…!  When we get home, we prepare dinner and eat.  Now, for the bathroom stops…everyone’s bathroom in the villages is outside (so are their kitchens).  So you find the nearest one.  The bathroom consists of 4 tin walls held together by branches.  So sometimes it’s best to wait until you get home.  But, yes, we’ve had to use it.  Yes, it’s hot here.  You sweat all day long.  And the roads are mostly red dirt.  So you start out clean and white and come back dirty and red (both from the sun and dirt).  As for the water, we have a running shower.  When we need to use it, we walk downstairs and turn on the pump.  But it pumps from the tank, so no hot water.  But after those service days, it feels good!  There is no running water in the rest of the house.  So you stand in a bucket when you shower.  Then you save that water for the toilet to flush in the bucket.  For the kitchen we have a tank of water that has to be filled from the well outside.  There is a young man who buckets the water in for us (whew).  For drinking water, we use that and boil it and pour it in a filter, then into water bottles.  For cooking and washing we use that water in small buckets in the sink.  Now laundry…we have a tank outside of our door on the patio.  We fill 3 buckets from that and take them to the shower.  One bucket is for washing and one is for first rinse and one is for final rinse.  Yes, Elli and I do our laundry by hand, with Annette’s help of course.  But it’s all for the sake of the Kingdom!

Brandon, Elli, Jeremy and Deann