Too much chilli?, Old Soldier and Mona Monkeys

Been over a week since my last post.  Had probs with netbook deleting my user profile for some reason and couldn't logon.  Luckily all sorted now after a backup recovery.  Pain in the arse!  Thanks Karen for your help.

Pounding fufu in the house.

Almost three weeks and daily food consists of rice, banku, fufu, occasionally pasta or fried yam when I'm in Ho.  All with a chilli sauce.  Not much variety but the sauce is great; nice and hot but was wondering whether you can have too much chilli.  Prob not and I'm sure I saw somewhere that it's good for you.  That's what I'm going to stick to anyway, although finding chilli in an omlette for breakfast may be a bit much for a certain part of my anatomy.


Have had lunch at 'Old Soldier's' a few times with a couple of glasses of red boxed 'Spanish table wine' (not the greatest but in the absence of any other wine...).  His wife is a great cook and even had soya.  Seems one of his sisters is a vegetarian and owns a veggi shop in Accra.


'Old Soldier' is one of the chiefs here in the village and used to be a UN soldier for 26 years with postings in various countries including Sierra Leone and Liberia during the civil wars.  He doesn't go into much detail of what he's seen, but the occasional comment about women and children who had survived machete attacks shows that he found it difficult at times and just had to 'put things to the back of my mind and get on with my job' as he puts it.  Even though we hear of humanitarian crisis around the world, we've no idea  what it's like for those people.  Watching the news with more than enough food and drink and all forgotten when some crap reality tv show comes on.  The few courses I've done with REDR UK have comfirmed and increased my wish to enter the humanitarian sector, so hopefully I'll be able to do this on my return or perhaps on my travels.


On one visit Old Soldier showed my some plots of land being used to build houses.  Each is on a plot of 100 x 100 feet.  Can't wait to get my house sorted.  He has offered to help in organising the build along with Badu and Jackson and to ensure it is secure; his speciality.  Jackson has shown me a plan of a house that I could use.   A bit of rearrangment of rooms and it will be fab.  Hopefully the plan, land marked out and quote can be arranged on this visit and the house built by the time I'm next over here.  Will be discussing more with Badu when he's back in the village next weekend for a funeral.

Ruth all ready for church.

Church again Sunday morning.  Jackson was doing most of the preaching and wanted to introduce me; even though everyone knows I'm here and who I am.  Slipped out early whilst everyone was dancing.  Also the church bell is now ringing at 4 and 4:30am; fantastic!  Seems there are very early morning services and to wake people up, to get out of bed and go to their farms.  As if people didn't get up anyway before Christianity arrived.

After 3 hours at the local hairdressers I now have braided hair again.  She didn't have any other colour mesh apart from black, so I'm going goth for a little while.  Not exactly as I wanted it, there are neat gaps between the briads and my head looks like a football pattern.  Will be ok for now and helps with the heat but the next time I'll make sure it's completely covered and red.

Mama Mona and babies.

Hello, what u looking at?

Up at 4am Wednesday to head off to Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary with Jackson and his son Prince.  Took about 2 and a half hours to get there and think it's only about 50km away.  Wandered through the forest for a little while before we saw any.  Our guide was carrying bananas and making sucking noises to attract them.  We saw one troup of the Mona monkeys and how cute!  They came right up to us eating the bananas from our hands.  I did ask whether anyone would go through this ritual to entice them in order to kill them, but luckily the monkeys and forest now are protected in that area after becoming endangered, with the villagers keeping a close eye out.  They protect the monkeys and forest, one, for the tourism income and two, they believe the local gods sent them.


The coughing sheep is still about sounding very sorry for itself, poor thing.  The goat is raising an army and my room is slowly being invaded by several different types of spider.  The spiders tend to keep to themselves and seem more afraid of me than I am of them.  Little do they know that if they stood their ground I'd be the one doing a runner.


Until next time...


Sam x