Yahoo!! I’m finally living in the Abrafo house--Number A19--that cute, big yellow house with a new outhouse!!

The NGO boys moved me a week ago Friday. I was shocked when they actually appeared with a truck to move me, even more shocked when another truck appeared with furniture. So the suspense, the drama, the pivoting is over. Fini!!

Now, I’m settling into my own space for the first time in six months. The suitcase is almost unpacked.

The house has good energy—of course it does!! I don’t know anything about the house’s past and gratefully no one has offered any of those gristly tales of past murder and mayhem. However (you knew their was something, right?), today one of the park guides told me that my village name means “executioner,” and that historically the village was responsible for killing the folks necessary to accompany the chiefs into the afterworld (think Egyptian funereal practices!). OK, so now I live in Execution-town. Believe me; I’m watching my back even though the swords have gone the way of plowshares. This is now mostly a farming village, although many of the park’s employees and wildlife guides live here.

OK, ok, the house?? I know someone will want to know! Well, A19 is one-story bungalow. The house is stucco/masonry construction with a corrugated gabled roof. It is a rectangle, approximately 24 x 60 ft. There are 3 bedrooms, a living room (they call it a “hall”), a kitchen, a storage room (my bike garage), and a shower room (a 5 x 5 ft room that is tiled with a drain hole to the outside). There’s a u-shaped porch that wraps around from one side of the house to the over and splits the house between bedrooms/living room and kit/storage/shower end of the house. This is harder to describe than I thought, but at one end of the house the space is divided into two equal sized bedrooms from which you can either enter from the porch (via doors) or from the living room (again, via doors and both of those doors in both of those rooms are located on the same wall). The living room is a sort of peninsula with a total of four doors—two to the bedrooms and two in opposite directions onto the porch. Next to the living room is a single bedroom (the end of the peninsula) surprisingly with only one door from the porch. All the rooms have two large windows and when the wind is moving the house has good air flow. Incidentally, the house does not have a single closet! The inside colors are Caribbean.

The furniture is fine. I have a nice bed with a head/foot board, a new firm mattress, a desk with a chair, a 3-piece living room set (chair, loveseat, sofa—in brown herculon, whew, no flowers!). The NGO boys claim that a kitchen table and shelves for clothing is on the way. It will take time to repair my trust with them….

A new bamboo fence surrounds the backyard, which is roughly the length of the house by 15 ft. and includes my outhouse. I plan to have a vegetable garden as soon as the rainy season begins next month. For now, there’s no reason to carry water for vegetables. Speaking of carrying water, that is exactly how water gets into my house and now I have someone to help with that chore. Rebecca is an eleven year old who comes every morning to carry water and sweep the floors. Mr. Geenah, the owner of the house, is a charming ancient who started a private elementary/jr high school in town and he insisted that I have some household help. Rebecca’s father lost a leg somehow and my remuneration will assist her family with school fees—this is the right thing to do although it feels more than odd. Mr. Geenah also thinks that I’ll be teaching in his school soon—it could happen, at least a couple hours a week.

In the past week, I’ve gotten curtains up on all the windows. A curtain here means a cheap sheet from the market vendors. I spent about 150,000 cedis, about $15, for all the curtains--10 large windows, or $1.50 each?? Any kind of clothing or textile is here for sale somewhere in Ghana—the world’s largest Goodwill Store, sans house wares and furniture. Sunday is clothing/textile day in most of the markets and you can find some amazing stuff—cow girl boots, jogging pants, sweat suits, sweatshirts, down jackets (why?). While on this topic, let me just add that money here is really weird to me, it seems fake somehow. I understand that I must live on the 1.5 mil cedis that they give me each month, but it is somehow divorced from me. Did I earn that money? Is this the first time that I’ve gotten money from somewhere else?? (Besides you Mom and Pop!). I’ve never felt this awkward about money before. Then there’s the whole expenses issue—how does this all equate into food, transportation, entertainment, etc. costs?? I’m still trying to understand it all. Some days I spend hundreds of thousands and other days not a portion of a cedi. I don’t know how to start besides tracking my expenses, so I have some good data. Yup, I guess I’m a nerd.

I’m running out of steam for the day. I'm in Cape Coast for groceries and a meeting with the NGO boys. While in town, I’ll also mail some letters have my favorite lunch, red-red. Incidentally, I can buy real butter in Cape Coast, not much else, but I’ll take what I can get.

Next time some details: what am I eating? What’s happening at the park? What is village life really like? Birds?????

Healing thoughts to Jen, Carter, and Carole’s Dad.

I miss everyone and everything. I can’t think about what March means in Indiana or the bulbs and spring flowers that will soon dot gardens and slopes….

As always…xoxo…d