April Fools and le weekend

Yeah, that whole deportation thing--it turned out to be a stomach ache. For those of you who didn’t look at the date of my last post, I wasn’t actually deported. April Fools! I got a few hilarious commiserating emails. At least I know that some people read the blog (and trust me, or at least used to).

But the joke was on me in the end, as I got a text at 4 AM Monday morning wondering where I was. I actually picked up my passport last week and the level of BS was extra-high but the worst was that I only got a two-month extension instead of three. Every time I go I try my hardest to be zen-like and each time it is worse than before. That’s all on that subject. Until the next time I have to go back there.

This weekend was pretty productive. On Saturday I finished the package of documents and photos to send to the director of the NGO I met with in Seattle over Christmas. They are re-designing their website soon, so you can check it out at www.villagevolunteers.org.

Sunday we went back to Sekyere, which is a village I went to the day before I left for the North. The community built a really good clinic but has no one to run it and we are going to take it over. I went with Maxwell the first time, but Dr. Addae came today, which was really good, as he saw how good the building was and how strong the leadership in the community is. The chief, the assemblyman, and the elders are all very development-minded. Seeing the building and meeting with the officials has encouraged Dr. Addae to speed things up a bit, so hopefully we’ll have it running in a month, although I definitely wouldn’t make any guarantees.

I’m going to end this post with some advice. It’s a little risqué, so I’m sorry if I offend anyone. First of all, fufu is always served submerged in soup and it’s eaten with your fingers. So here’s my advice: if you ever have fufu and soup and there is a lot of hot pepper in it, make sure you wash your hands really well and get all the pepe residue off of them before going to the bathroom after dinner.