Zorash is one of the community volunteers. Yendi’s Agric (agricultural) officer is organizing a project for the village women that includes teaching them the new and improved ways to make shea butter and hulling/polishing rice in addition they are going to teach the women to make flour chips (a snack food) and how to make meat pies. Zorash said that she volunteered to teach them how to make meat pies. I asked her if she knew how to make meat pies and she said that she had never made them. Why in the world would you volunteer to make something that you had no idea how to make? I asked her if she was going to practice before she went to the villages for the demonstrations. She said no because she did not have the ingredients to practice with. Please! Is that a formula for disaster? She said that she was going to make the dough with baking powder and deep fry the pies because no one has an oven. She was going to use smoked dried minnows for the meat in the pies. It sounds better and better doesn’t it? Now if you live in Alabama or anywhere in the south you know about fried pies even if they are not filled with meat. At our house we also make homemade Samosas (an Indian potato filled fried pie). I told her that after the Child Center closed we would practice making the pies. I called our daughter Charity and had her give me the recipe for the Samosa dough. After our walk this morning Steve and I made two batches of dough; one with baking powder (which I never have used before) and one without. After the Child Center closed we made 32 fried pies. Some of them we filled with the fish/onion mix and the others we filled with seasoned black-eyed peas. The bean filled ones were delicious; the fish ones not so much! The Ghanaians love fish. We shared the pies with the workers.
The family of the little girl that had the hernia repaired was able to sell their peanut crop and they got 700 Cedis to help with the hospital bill. Steve gave them the rest of the money. They are going to look for something else to sell to get the transport money for them to come home once the child is discharged from the hospital. Of course if they make another plea we will help with the transport too.
Amama was still off work today. Zorash said that she was feeling really bad and she did not expect her to be back the rest of the week. Maybe next week she will feel better.
I finished the quilt top that I have been working on. Everyone that has seen it thinks that it is the prettiest one yet. I found a piece of dark royal blue fabric to use as the accent fabric in the quilt and the dark color makes all the scraps pop!
Your help with all the projects that we are doing is greatly appreciated!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
