I am so sad! We found out today that the lady we buy our fast food from has closed her kiosk. For the past 3 or 4 weeks we noticed that she was no longer selling the Banku, fermented cornmeal dough ball with goat and okra soup; she was still selling the rice and tomato oil but Banku is my favorite Ghanaian dish! Yesterday we went to the kiosk to check and see if she had started cooking Banku again and no one was cooking anything. After we closed the Child Center this morning Zorash went with us to town to see if we could find why she was not cooking or if she had moved. Zorash said that she did not actually own the plot where she put up her food stand and that her husband had been transferred to another town. Anyway we found out that the owner’s daughter had a new baby and that she decided to stop cooking and help take care of her grandchild. Zorash taught me to cook Banku last week but it was not as good as the one from our fast food lady. On the way back to the mission house we stopped and bought fried yams (my second favorite Ghanaian food), plantain, dried beans and hot sauce. It was good but not nearly as good as Banku.
We ran out of the smaller boy clothes this morning, we had to finish out the morning by giving the mother of the boys larger clothes than they needed. The mothers did not seem to mind; they were just happy to get something. As we were heading out of the gate to town we were met by 4 mothers that had come to the Center after we had closed. We could tell that they were disappointed that they had missed out on the clothes. We offered them a ride to town. They climbed into the back of the pickup and were excited that they did not have to walk to town in the heat.
Yesterday Nazo, the day man, said that he was dizzy when he stood up. He has been sick and has had diarrhea; Steve took his blood pressure but he figures he was dehydrated. He had been working outside in the heat all morning. He said that he was feeling better today. We think he just said that so we would not insist that he go to the doctor.
We were pleasantly surprised when the uncle of the little girl with the hair lip came to the Child Center this morning to talk about getting the corrective surgery for the child. Steve told the mother to have her husband come and talk to him about the child but the uncle came instead. We didn’t care who came as long as they were willing to do their part in getting the surgery. Steve gave them the transport money to go to Tamale for an evaluation. We have heard that Tamale has a surgeon that is able to do the surgery. We hope that our information is correct.
Thanks for the love, prayers and support.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
