Hopefully the roofers will have all the wood put on the roof tomorrow. Abochi, the carpenter wants the masons to come back and do the masonry work before they actually put the metal roofing on because he is afraid that the roof will not be stable enough for the roofers and that the stilts will not be strong enough to support the roof. Steve just got finished talking to Dawda and he will come tomorrow. We are not sure if he will actually start the work tomorrow because we will have to rent the scaffolding again and get it hauled to the job site. Fortunately we have lots of cement blocks; we might have to buy more cement.
Steve spent several hours this morning trying to get the VAT (Value Added Tax) paid for the nights that we will be spending in Accra. Paying the VAT tax is time sensitive and we will have to pay penalties if we wait and pay it when we come back to Ghana after the first of the year so we like to pay it early. The VAT tax is generated by the Ghana Revenue Authority. He picked up the receipt and went to the bank to pay it but the bank could not accept the receipt because for whatever reason their computer rejected it so he had to go back to the Ghana Revenue office and wait for them to print him out a new receipt. Then back to the bank to wait in line again. At least it is done and we can check that off of our list!
This morning Mr. Iddrisu’s wife came to the mission house to gather produce from Mr. Iddrisu’s garden. She picked tomatoes, hot pepper and Bra “meat” which are the flowers off of the Bra plants. They look sort of like an okra blossom but they have a hard center that has to be cut out and discarded. The leaves are called Bra and the flowers are called Bra Meat. We love both. She was going to sell the Bra “meat” so we bought it from her. It has a sour lemony flavor. Meri, Zorash and I helped Mr. Iddrisu’s wife remove the center from the flowers. I ended up with 3 packages for the freezer and some for supper.
A new malnourished child came to the Center this morning. He was 1 year 4 ½ months old and he only weighed 5 kilo (which is about 11 pounds). His mother said that he had been in the hospital for 4 days last month and had been going downhill ever since. We loaded him up with lots of food stuffs and lots of advice. The mother has been using enemas every day. It seems that when the mothers and grandmothers don’t know what to do for a child they use enemas. We begged her to stop using the enemas. Hopefully when he comes back he will have gained some weight.
When Steve went to town this morning he locked the door to our bedroom and I did not have my keys. I had to borrow money from Amama to pay for the Bra meat. The ladies thought it was very funny that Steve had locked me out!
Take care and enjoy your day!
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
