When you drive through the village or the big city
of Accra, at every intersection at stop lights are buskers trying to sell
anything from tools, to bras, honey or peanut butter and furniture. I was
looking at all the stuff they were selling. Marvelle told me not to look
at them. If I do make eye contact with them, they will come over to the
car expecting you to buy their wares. They could attack the car.
It was hard for me to not look at them. If Marvelle wanted popcorn or
peanut butter, she knew where there was a guy who sold that. If the guy
didn’t have any he would tell us to come tomorrow and he would have
some.
While I was there, Clifford was sick. He
thought it was just the flu at first. It was on his about the 6th
day he decided he should go to the hospital. He went in and saw a
doctor. He told Clifford it was Malaria. He gave Clifford a
prescription for an antibiotic. He had to go to the chemist to get
prescription filled. The chemist filled the prescription and passed the
prescription paper back to Clifford. Clifford told him he thought he
should keep the paper. The chemist told him he didn’t have space to file
the prescription and Clifford may have to get it filled again, so Clifford
should keep it.
Clifford and Marvelle had lesson to teach
prospective members. The had a fireside in their home. We made
cookies and had a drink of juice.
One time Marvelle had gone to the School for the
Deaf to rent their school bus for the next Sunday to go around and
pick up members and non members and bring them to church. Some people
would walk up to 15 miles just to come to church. It a was a stake
conference time. The Africans would get to church on their own time.
When there was enough people to start the meeting, then we would start.
When we went to check if the bus was coming, the lady at the school told us the
Master was fired. We would have to go see the a superintendent of the
school. We got directions to where the Superintendent was located.
So we went there. The building was like an old movie studio of
Bonaza time, with a second floor and a balcony all across the front. We
had to go up to the second floor where the superintendent was. He had
garden chairs for his visitors. We went in and he ask us to sit. He
was quite snarky with a Marvelle. He told her the bus had gone to
Accra and broke down. He was waiting for parts to fix the bus. This
was a Monday or Tuesday. He told us he would call her if the bus got back
by Sunday. Marvelle told him she would call him. She felt he was
just trying to get rid of us. Marvelle gave him her business card.
On the card was a picture of Clifford and her. The guy took her
card and looked at it. He ask her how did she get a picture on the card.
She told him she printed it with her computer printer. He ask if she
could make him a card with his picture on it. Marvelle told him to get
her a picture he would like to use and she could print a card for him.
Boy his attitude changed and he told her the bus would be there by Sunday.
Marvelle called him on Saturday and the bus was ready for Sunday to go
pick up the members and non members, whoever got on the bus.
One day Marvelle had a notice in her post box that
she had a parcel to pick up. We had to go to another building to get the
parcel. We went to get the parcel and the guy there invited Marvelle to
go behind the counter and hunt for her parcel . The room was filled with
parcels. She didn’t know how big the parcel was or who it was from.
She looked at each parcel and finally found her parcel. She found
out it was a Christmas parcel from Cathy Greep Needham. It was May.
It took 5 or 6 months for the parcel to arrive. We had a
good laugh about it. Christmas in July.
We would go to an international hotel to have a
Western food meal. I ordered a combo plate of roast beef, pork chop, and
chicken, with American vegetables and mashed potatoes. The Stake
President and his wife, the Mission President and his wife invited us to
dinner one night at the restaurant. The dish I had was 65 cents in CDN dollars.
I had exchanged about $500 from USD to Cedi’s. I was there for
three weeks and I still had money left over. Their paper bills were much
larger than our dollar bills.
Clifford’s mission job was to look after the
younger missionaries and pay them. He had to go to the bank and withdraw
the stipends for the missionaries, including their money. He had to
take a large bag the size of a gym bag to carry the money home. He was always
cautious going into the bank, count the money and get back into the car and get
home with the money. He was afraid he would be robbed. He then had
to separate the money in envelopes for each missionary and their
companions. With the money they had to pay their rent and budget their
food money for the month. They would run out of money before the time for more
and they would call Clifford for more and Clifford had to tell them there was
no more money. They would have to wait till the new month.
One night a family members of the church
invited us to dinner. I was very hesitant as to what they would have for
dinner. Was it going to be African food or American fare. We went
and the sister had fried chicken, coleslaw and cassava. The cassava
looked like our mashed potatoes. She had peeled the cassava and cubed it
up like we do potatoes, boiled it in water and mashed it up like our mashed
potatoes. I tried it and it tasted between a potato and a yam. It
was good. I ate it. I was pleased with the dinner. Africans
use a lot of hot spices and hot pepper sauce on their meal so I was hesitant
what the sister would serve us.
It was so hot in Ghana: 53 - 60 degrees every day. It was so exhausting to go out in the heat of the day. One day we went to
the cocoa bean factory. It consisted of big cooking tubs the size of a
tractor tire over a fire in a pit in the ground. The ladies sat close to
the big cooking area and stirred the cocoa beans till they cooked.
It was so hot around the big pots, I thought my camera was going to melt.
The ladies workers were quite used to the heat. The ladies had their
children at work. The small babies and children would sit back from the
hot pots of beans on a mat to sleep. The mothers all nursed the
children so when the baby would cry, mom was there to feed baby.
It was such a great trip. I’m glad I went
when I did. Later there was a war on the Eastern coast of Ghana and other
countries. Colleen did go about two weeks after I left. It would be
very unsafe to go there now.
The time went by so fast. Marvelle and
Clifford took me back to Accra to catch my flight back to Amsterdam and then
home to Calgary. I had to leave Marvelle and Clifford. There were
tears shed by both of us.
When I left back to Amsterdam, I took a Tafalgar bus
tour all around the circle of the country of Holland. I called it Holland
but now it is called The Netherlands. My Great Grandfather Day come to
America from Hukelem. I made it to about 20 miles away from the village
where he lived. On the bus I was with about 30 travelers, so I had lots
of other people to talk to. In the morning, you had to be up early, get
breakfast in my hotel and be on the bus by 8 am. We would have lunches on the
bus, which was a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a drink. Every evening we
would stop at a different hotel and have supper and sleep, to start the next
day by 8 am again for two weeks.
We stopped one day at the village of the windmills.
I love windmills. Whenever I drew a picture in my youth, it would
have a windmill in the picture. I went in the windmills and saw them
processing linseed oil. There were lots shops to shop. I
bought a pair of updated wooden shoes. The sole was wooden and the top
part was red leather. There was the photograph studio and they dressed me
up in Dutch dresses, a white hat and wooden shoes. They took my picture
so I just had to buy a photo. I bought two wheels of Gouda cheese.
I went to Floriade, the festival of the flowers.
It was a big, big park with flowers all over the place. I have
never seen so many flower and walked so far to see them. It was in
Amsterdam. One day we went to a factory of the flowers. Flowers
come in from the flower farms, are put in big pots of water and shipped
out in big shipping containers within 24 hours to all over the world.
We went to a Diamond factory where they were grinding and polishing
diamonds. I bought a small Diamond ring. We were told not to go to
a coffee shop, as they could sell and used marijuana there. We visited
the Van Gough Museum. Outside the museum on the grounds there was a bunch
of Chinese monks singing and playing their instruments like flutes.
Their music was very guteral sounds. They were fascinating to
watch. We visited the Village of the Minatures. It was a replica of
the capital city, with everything from the sky scrapers to the lake with a fire
boat that would put out the fire on another boat in the lake. It was
fascinating to say the least. I visited the village that make the blue
and white delft pottery. I bought many pieces of the delft. I
bought a cheap ring that had an oval stone in delft with a windmill in it.
When I got home I took it to a jewelry store and had a ring made with
good gold and the deft stone mounted in the top of the ring,
Every night you just fell into bed exhausted from
all the walking and sight-seeing. You had to be up early the next morning
to get back on the bus. One lady from US wanted to see the tulips growing
in the field. The guide on the bus one day said, ok everybody look out
your window to the left, so we all looked out wondering what was coming up.
The guide said ok look there are your tulips in the field. The
field was black soil. Everybody was peering out our window. It was a
summer field. The tulips had been harvested. The lady from USA
wasn’t too pleased. It was the wrong time of the year to see tulips in
the field.
At the end of my two week tour of Holland, I boarded
my plane back to Calgary. When I arrived home, it was well after midnight.
Because I had the two wheels of cheese in my luggage and I claimed them,
I had to go through agriculture. I went there and waited and waited.
I finally went back to the guy at customs and told him nobody was there.
He said he would X-ray my bag. He did and found my two wheels of
cheese. He said to just go home.
I went home and was exhausted from all my trip and
all the walking I did. After I got home, I had exchanged addresses with
Charles. We corresponded some. He asked me if I would take Mavis to
Canada and send her to school. I wasn’t keen on that idea. My kids
were grown up and to take on responsibility of another child 13 yrs old
was just too much. I had work to look after and I really didn’t have
money for another teenager. He wrote to me several times then got quite sharp with me. I finally told him I was in a divorce and now living on my
own in my house and would not look after Mavis. She would have to get
immigration papers in order for her to come to Canada. He quit writing
letters.
That is my story of Africa and Holland.
No comments:
Post a Comment