I am so excited! This morning Zorash went with us to the market and we bought a cow skin. This cow skin is for eating. It came with the tail! Yum! We did not want to buy the skin from the front of the cow because it does not have the coveted tail. The cow skin is fresh; it was slaughtered today. The butchers prepare the skin by burning off the hair. Right now the meat has sort of a singed burning hair smell but after we scrub it with a stainless steel kitchen scrubber it will be left with a smoky flavor. I personally love the cow skin but Steve is not really a fan. Maybe if I feed it to him often enough he will start to enjoy it! Ha! You have to order the cow skin ahead of time because the vendors that prepare cow skin soup buy it up quickly. We were lucky to get one today. Zorash called the butcher and he had the skin from a female. You can use the skin from the male cows but it is softer and not as chewy as the skin from the female. Seriously, I can’t tell the difference. Zorash owes us a couple days of work; she is planning on coming to work tomorrow and showing me how to prepare the skin and soup. We have eaten it but never prepared it.
Red brought his welder this morning to connect the old metal grates to the new one he made only to find out that the generator was not strong enough to run his little welder. He went to town and asked around but did not find one to rent that was bigger than ours. This afternoon we went to town and asked Gomda the mechanic if he knew of anyone that had a generator we could rent. He said he knew of some but he did not know if they were in working order; he is going to check and see. They went ahead and installed 3 of the upper grates. We told him that he might have to use metal screws or nuts and bolts to attach the lower part. When “Plan A” fails you should start formulating a “Plan B”!
The Wawa boards we bought yesterday for Dawda to make the pillar boxes out of were not really Wawa boards. The guy selling the lumber just wanted to make a sale and we did not know the difference. They are actually facial boards which have a terrible tendency to warp. We put them on the cement floor in the garage and put cement blocks on top of them to try to get them to dry flat. There are no return policies in Ghana. We had to go back to town and buy more boards before they could start this morning.
We met Divine in town and he did not have any information about the cost of the annual returns yet. No one in Ghana seems to get in a hurry to do anything!
Be careful tomorrow is April Fool’s day and someone will try to trick you! Meri is off work tomorrow; she gets the biggest kick out of pulling a prank on me and Steve!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
P.S. At 6pm the temperature is 101 degrees with a heat index of 108 degrees.
