Hey all! Sarah here - instead of a boring update (because that's usually what my blogs are) I thought I'd give you some quotes that occur in our daily life, and a small update on the story that inspired it, to give you a glimpse into some of our daily pleasures here in Tarsor :) Enjoy!
"Kai! Wonderful! God has made life different, different!" - Issah (Our good friend and neighbor that Jordan works with on multiple projects in the village)
Jordan has been watching episodes of Planet Earth at night with Issah, and sometimes with some other friends, and they LOVE it! And, we love watching it with them, it makes us appreciate the beauty and wonder of our great earth even more, because their reactions remind us how wonderful it is! It's a great chance to let them see all the other places earth has, since their world can seem so small as many people in our village don't even get to leave the district/region!
"You're the cheatingest cheater I've ever seen cheat, you cheatface!" - Jordan
Jordan and I play a couple hands of gin rummy (and think of Grandma Panzer and Grandma Butcher while doing so!) most nights at dinner, and right now, he is losing VERY badly to yours truly...and NOT because I cheat! Although, that one time he did see a mistake in my addition of points...hmm...must have been tired that day from all the math at school... :)
"If the latrine smells like rotting animal, it's because a mouse crawled into one of the toilet paper tubes inside the plastic bag, couldn't get out, and died. I removed it, but it still smells...just a word of warning..." - Jordan
Upon arriving home after evacuation, etc, we came back to a VERY messy house! Dust and spiderwebs everywhere, moldy pillows (yuck!) smelly clothes, and a few dead mice! Awesome that they died and are not eating into our food stuff, but not awesome that they died because of Jordan's poison that dehydrates them so that we don't necessarily know WHERE they died.... We found a few right away in the shower (I screamed out of surprise and Jordan made fun of me for being afraid of mice, let alone DEAD mice... :), another a few weeks later on the shelf where our pots are (it was small, the place is shaded, and they blend in perfectly to the color of the wood!), and another just a few weeks ago in the toilet paper tube when we went to grab a new roll for the bathroom. So now, when you spin the roll to get a few squares, you're not greeted with the smell of fresh flowers like some of the fancy plastic rollers you can by stateside - you're greated with the smell of rotting mouse :)
"Jordan, you know what would be a great way to work on the second goal of Peace Corps tonight?" - Sarah
The second goal of Peace Corps is to teach Ghanaians about American culture. Jordan and I do this daily in all forms! This can come from showing my students American magazines, to listening to American music at the garden. But one of our favorites is having Jordan do things here that are normally things only women do, like washing clothes, fetching water (and carrying it on a pan in his head to boot!), helping to cook dinner....and (where this quote stemmed from) washing the dishes :) It was more a joke, since we switch off on nights to do the dishes, but Jordan's male friends from the garden (all male, and all husbands) were coming over to watch Planet Earth, so I thought, hey, what a great way for them to see some American culture in action! :)
"Sarah, don't move, turn around very slowly..." - Jordan
Lizards are like squirrels here, but never cease to be exciting! Usually they're just small and fun to watch run around really fast or sunbathe on the walls. Sometimes, though, we see a bigger one
"Dude, I just got drooled on, I mean literally, saliva just came out of a kids leg and landed on my leg...gross..." - Jordan
Jordan and I have kids over to "paint" (color in coloring books) around once a week, and in order to get a coloring page, they first have to go learn about numbers and letters with Jordan before getting one. Lots of the little kids go over by Jordan first, even though they are too small to be learning it, and just lean over his leg. One of them happened to drool a bunch, oh well, all in the life :) Sometimes it's gross! We make sure to wash our hands thoroughly after having the kids over :)
"But let's not look at the scientifics of it, both are just telling us to be good people, and how we should act." - Issah
"We don't mess with the Jesus! We don't play with the Jesus!" - Simpatico (another one of the farmers that works at the garden that Jordan interacts with daily)
We've been having some good conversations about differences and similarities between the Islam and Christian religions, and it's been really good. The Muslims we live with in the village are so open about their religions, and very relaxed - not the extremists we see on the news all the time! We've been learning a lot, and it's been a good chance to just learn about our different cultures in an open and non-judgemental environment.
(Say this one in the voice of Meril, the chef with the tv show) "First you take some wata', and cook it til it's boiling, then put in the dehydrated meat, stir it a little, and BAM! You got ground beef." - Jordan
Many people from home have sent and are sending some of the things we miss most from home, and recently, we got to try out the dehydrated ground beef we got from Jordan's mom, and it was a HIT! Spot on! You literally just mix a pack of this stuff with a cup of boiling water, stir it, wait a little bit, and you have ground beef! We made chili with it, also using a can of sweet corn from our Danish friends that they gave us before leaving (thanks Kirsten and Kenth!) and it was fantastic!
"Well, everything you want in life has it's costs..." - Jordan
This is the biggest news we have to report on from the village: drum roll please....Tarsor is getting electricity!...most likely...GMT (Ghana Maybe Time) :) Workers moved into the village the last week of September, and every day they put up more poles! We have been told that within 2-3 months, we will be connected! Whether or not every home can then pay for hooking up said electricity to their homes, installing lights and outlets, and then buying appliances that use electricity is another story. For us, we're torn: we enjoy living without electricity, since we are some of the few volunteers that are left in Ghana without it. But at the same time, who are we to stay that our village shouldn't have that modern convenience? Since it's coming (hopefully) so close to the end of our service though, we don't know if we'll even pay to get wired. We'll get the meter installed and electricity connected (since that's free) so that the next volunteer won't be mad at us :), but may not choose to pay to get lights and such, since we wouldn't be able to reap the benefits for very long, for how much it would probably cost us. Plus, it will be way more fun to live by headlamp at night for the time that we have it, right? :) (I know most of you are rolling your eyes, but we actually do enjoy it! It's just like camping!) We will keep you posted as they progress!!!
