Good Morning-O

Days in Ghana start early. I’m an early riser even at home, so I notice the morning sounds as I start drifting into wakefulness around dawn.

The first sound, usually, is a rooster crowing. If you’re lucky, it’s in the distance. If you are not lucky, or in the village, it is likely to be right outside your window. If you are in the village, this is followed by other rural sounds. The gentle clucking of chooks may lull you back to sleep, but if you’re starting to get romantic ideas about farmyard idylls, forget them. Turkeys gobbling outside your window at dawn is not something you will enjoy.

If you are in Mensakrom, and possibly other similar villages, however, you’ll soon prefer any amount of turkeys and roosters over the terrible clanging as over-enthusiastic clerics bang bits of metal together in the 4.00am call to prayer. I kid you not. Two different churches. One scored 45 bangs, the other 85. Give me the Islamic muezzin any day, no matter how badly amplified. I’ve only heard it once on this trip, and that was in Tamale.

But back at my place in Kumasi, the religious stuff starts a bit later on. Usually. Except when there’s a midnight or all night service at a local church. But the sound of hymns and drums are generally subdued by distance. In Asuoyeboah, the first sounds of human activity are usually a neighbour’s radio in the distance (DadaK is very firm about what time it’s appropriate to turn on the radio in our house because he doesn’t want me to be disturbed), the creaking and banging of doors as people get up and all the children consecutively come to check if we’re awake (we play dead), and sweeping. It’s the young women’s job to sweep all the floors inside the compound early each morning, with a broom made from the spines of palm fronds, tidying away any of the previous days’ debris that hasn’t already been tidied by livestock or rats: bits of chewed sugar cane, fragments of plastic, bottle tops, onion peels, powdery charcoal.

Owuraku pouring water in the hall outside the bathrooms

Gradually the layers of sound accumulate as more people get up. Conversations, the roar of the gas cooker or the crackle of charcoal, water pouring from bucket to barrel, from barrel to cooking pot or shower bucket. Fetching water is also the ask of the youngest women in the family and sometimes Owaruku. ActionMan has done it a couple of times but no-one wants him to – they are afraid he’ll hurt himself, or spill it. It’s pretty hard on the neck and back.

Most mornings there’s the sound of a hand bell when a woman walks up the street carrying a headload of toothbrushes, toothpaste and sponges, followed by one or two of her daughters carrying assorted soaps. I bought a toothbrush from her and I’d like to warn you now, never trust a Ghanaian’s interpretation of what is a ’soft’ toothbrush.

Sometimes people sing as they go about their daily tasks. I don’t always enjoy this, and ActionMan hates it. But I loved it on the morning of her mum, Obaapa’s birthday, shortly after we arrived, when Treasure wandered around singing the birthday song all day. It was especially poignant as Obaapa wasn’t there, she’d already returned to Australia.

Finally, Akonta can stand the ’silence’ no longer, and turns on the radio. Good morning-O. And that is the end of the gentle layering of sound. Usually by then I’m awake enough that I can stand it (it’s in the next room to us) and ActionMan has his head under the pillow.

So, that’s more or less how mornings sound between 4.30ish and 6.30ish. In school term everything stars earlier; now we’re in holidays the pace is a bit more relaxed. Variations on the theme include: the period when one of the dogs slept outside our window and snored, snuffled, scratch and occasionally howled his way through the night; the time when someone from Mensakrom urned up early and had a raging argument with someone, about what I never learned; Treasure calling out “Me! Me! It’s ME!” outside my door, with the absolute certainty of three year olds that once I know it’s her, I couldn’t possibly refuse to open the door; and then of course, there’s Jesus.

On Saturdays we get terrible droning gospel until the family leave for church (they’re 7^th day Adventists). Believe me, not all gospel is good. A large percentage of Ghanaian popular music seems to be religious these days, and ActionMan and I have both developed a strong aversion to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because it’s religious that I object. Christians have created some of the most sublime music on the planet. It’s the style. If it’s lively and /or joyful, I’ll even sing along; but there is a certain style of religious music that drones mournfully, and it’s not restricted to Ghanaian Christian music. In fact I believe it is a style that’s been copied from western churches. However Ghanaian Christians did redeem themselves in my eyes when I went to church one day and a group of women sang glorious a capella in a more traditional chant & response style. So please, Ghanaians, remember Sankofa and stick to your roots. Don’t copy the worst the west has to offer!

The other early morning religious experience I haven’t enjoyed has been the madman preaching in our street at 5.00am. Thankfully this hasn’t happened often. I know I’ve made a terrible value judgement on the poor man, but I guess that’s a measure of my annoyance. The first time I heard him was a Sunday, and he ranted in the choleric tones I’ve heard preachers use here, so I assumed he was indeed preaching at one of the many local churches. But after further investigation it turns out that although Jesus featured in his raves, he’s not actually coherent, and one morning I sneaked out to have a look, and there he was, two houses down, preaching to the air. Thankfully, he hasn’t done it very often.

I first drafted this post very soon after arriving in Ghana, because the difference in morning sounds is so marked. In my Sydney flat I’m woken by the hum of distant traffic and birdsong, not roosters and prayers. Admittedly, nesting rainbow lorikeets are not the most melodious of birds, but still – we’ll be home within two weeks and I’m looking forward to hearing them again. (And now I’m back and the birds have left and it is soooooo quiet!)

Homowo – it’s not what you think

Street performer at Homowo

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you may have noticed the theme emerging that I’m aiming to do things in Ghana that I haven’t done before, like going to Bolga, and getting cornrows. My most recently fulfilled goal was to go to a cultural festival.

I checked my tourist pamphlet guide to Ghana, consulted with a friend back home, and organised to go to the Ga festival of Homowo. This festival (means Hooting at Hunger, and celebrates the harvest), takes place throughout August at different Ga communities around Accra. Conveniently, the Jamestown Gas were celebrating on the weekend after the OurMedia conference, so I stayed on for the weekend and we arranged for my friend’s stepson, Nii, to take me around.

ActionMan didn’t want to go, saying he didn’t like the noise and confusion at festivals even in Australia, and that if he didn’t like it here, he wouldn’t have been able to get home without disrupting my enjoyment of the event. He spent our whole week in Accra reading online Manga comics, hanging out with the kids and arguing about religion with the adults at Naomi and Gifty’s place (in-laws of DadaK’s, where we stayed when we first arrived in Ghana). I think he would have enjoyed the first part of Homowo that I attended, but he has no regrets about missing it.

The first event Nii and I went to was the Twin’s festival on Friday evening. Still without a travel guide to Ghana, I hadn’t done much research on this, but what little I’d done did not prepare me for the mayhem, misrule and madness of this most enjoyable festival. The soporific Guide to Ghana Festivals said things like “.. the twins and their families proceed through the streets carrying offerings to the shrine”, which really doesn’t prepare you for it.

We found a viewing spot near a street corner, and waited in the fading day and growing crowd. Nii explained the bit about “proceeding through the streets”, only in more casual and friendly language, and I munched on peanuts offered by a very small, cheerful and feisty elderly lady (Letitia) who’d insisted we sit with her family on benches outside her house.

At last the first family approached and I realised this was not going to be the dry and formal occasion the festival guide had promised. There was, as AM predicted, lots of noise and confusion, but I think he would have enjoyed the craziness. What really happens is this: young women, men and sometimes children run or stagger through the streets carrying basins filled with water, leaves and other stuff (I’ll find out what it was and get back to you). They are surrounded by family members and friends who are holding them up, steering them in the right direction, pouring gin over them or in their basins, adjusting their clothes that have gone awry. In more sedate parties they are just running along beside them in matching outfits.

In this case it is th twins who are carrying the offerings through the streets.

There’s usually just one person per group with a basin and they are not necessarily the twins. Apparently the basins are carried by people in the family who have this special role and who are possessed by spirits. Most of them – shaking, grim-faced and staggering – did look like they were possessed or else they were having a great time pretending to be. The crowd with them was usually riotous and happy: playing music, chanting, turning somersaults, sweeping dirt onto bystanders’ feet, careering into the crowd, jumping onto any cars unwise enough to stray onto the route. You get to see every group twice because they return the way they’ve come. On the way back big groups of young men dashed backwards and forwards yelling and chanting and drumming. That bit reminded me of football fans.

We couldn’t always spot the twins because the groups were moving so fast, except if they were children dressed identically in festive clothes and carried on adult’s shoulders, or babies – also dressed identically, on backs or in arms. However it’s clear that there are a lot of twins amongst the Gas. I don’t think a similar sized area in Sydney could come up with that many. But then, in Australia we don’t make that much of a fuss about them either. In Ghana you even have a special name if you’re a twin. Amongst Akans it’s Ataa, I don’t know about other tribes.

And what festival would be complete without the street performers? I’m not sure if they were connected with families or were independent buskers; perhaps a bit of both, as only one held out his cap for dash when I took a photo. He was the guy who parodied the police, in short white shorts with padded bum, military shirt and hat, colourful epaulettes and a painted wooden rifle. Another guy wore stylish shades, carried a small pot on his head, and was panted white from head to toe, except presumably for the bit that was covered by a red & black G-string. Sorry everyone, that was the only cheeky bottom I captured on film. There were others but the crowd was moving so fast it was hard to get pix. (What pix I have will be posted when I have better badnwidth).

When it was finally, sadly evident that no more parties would be dashing up the street, we farewelled our hostesses, promised to come back the next day, and moved on through happy crowds to catch a taxi to Oxford St for a burger and chips. Well, where else would you go, in a night on the town? It’s surprisingly similar to Sydney’s Oxford St, except a lot less gay, with fast food joints, restaurants, nightclubs and bars and according to Nii, “anything that happens at night is here”.

Over dinner we talked politics, world affairs, upcoming Ghana elections, corruption, economics. Nii’s a smart, sensitive, aware young man who sells clothes on the street for a living. I will never look at another hawker through the same eyes. It’s the kind of knowledge that makes me nearly explode with rage at the unfairness, at the waste, at the lost opportunities both for him and for his country.

After dinner we went to a nightclub. It was not on Oxford Street, but closer to home, so we caught trotros back towards Dansoman, where I was staying, and I got a brief glimpse of the market that has grown up around Kwame Nkrumah Circle. Circle, as it’s known, is a roundabout and interchange so vast and congested that – especially at night – you can hardly see the other side. There’s a market spreading along the foothpaths surrounding it that even consumes the pedestrian overpass on one side. Displays of shoes, dimly lit by kerosene lamps and torches, spiral up the ramp. On the other side you wind through a tarpaulin-covered warren of stalls selling as usual everything from deodorant to peeled oranges, before coming out at the taxi park.

caught a trotro straight away, but missed out on the good seats and Nii, who is very tall, had to sit hunched in one of the fold down seats, his knees almost up to his chin. I can’t help wondering if the short stature of most Ghanaians is a result of natural section by trotro seating. My brother, who is also tall, used to pay for two seats every time he caught a long distance trotro in Ghana, so that he could travel in relative comfort.
My Oz friend had already filled Nii in on my taste in music, so we went to hear a band that played more old fashioned Hi Life style of music. I say old fashioned, but the crowd was still young and groovy. I’m just trying to distinguish between older style music and the new Hip Life, which is Ghana / hip hop fusion. Some of it’s pretty good, but I’m more interested in Hi Life.

band was dressed all in white, with the men wearing weird fluffy, feathery caps that looked like a twenties cloche gone horribly wrong. But if you could get your mind off that, the music was good and we had fun. And an early night, I can’t shake it like I used to.

We missed the Homowo activities the next day because neither of us was well informed enough to realise that all the cultural stuff – dancing, performances etc – was happening early in the day. I admit, I’d seen a banner for a Maggi Homowo cooking competition, but I hadn’t paid attention to the details. Pity. (Stay tuned for my post on Ghana TV’s Great Maggi Moments).

However I also had an appointment with some Ghanaian re-evaluation counsellors (RCers) in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to miss that. RC is a kind of peer counselling in which you take turns to listen to each other in pairs or groups, and I find my life goes much better if I have regular counselling sessions. They help me let off steam, plan and make decisions and keep a positive perspective. Before I left Australia I’d made contact with an RCer in Kumasi and after arriving had met up with him a couple of times (and gone to his graduation) before he came back down to Accra to stay with family. We kept in touch and he invited me both to a group on Saturday and a workshop later this month.

So off I headed, braving Accra transport on my own for the first time, and safely arrived in Osu for the group. Here I shall draw a veil over the proceedings because it being counselling, I must of course respect confidentiality, but I can reveal that it was lovely to be so welcomed by a bunch of smart, young, committed counsellors, feel like I was in familiar territory, have some fun, shed some tears and make new and different connections with Ghanaians. Oh, and I spotted an Irish pub in the suburb. (Colleen and Mick, I have photographic evidence).

Me sampling the special Homowo food.

For perhaps the first time in my trip, the meeting was running on African time, and didn’t kick off till quite late. This was mostly due to Homowo disrupting traffic but starting late meant finishing late. I had to leave early to meet Nii back in Jamestown before dark. We rendezvoused at the same place we’d watched the twins festival, and quickly realised that all the action at this time of day was in private homes or nightclubs, so before heading off in search of a club (they open really early), we visited our companions of the night before. They were delighted and sat me down to a meal of special Homowo food: palm nut soup with fish and a special dish of corn meal mixed with palm oil.

There’s always a risk with this kind of impromptu meal that the food will be alien to western taste and full of something I don’t want to eat, like offal or smoked fish, but I was lucky and the meal was delicious. Our hostesses were a family of sisters – Letitia, Augustina, Elizabeth, Dora – and their mother and brother and presumably a whole lot of children and grandchildren who were mostly out partying. They had a Kumasi connection (mother came from there) and an Australian connection (a sister’s living there but they’ve lost touch). I took pictures and an address so I can send them the photos – of them, of homowo, and of me savouring palm nut soup.

there we headed to another nightclub. This one was on a cliff overlooking the sea, and at night it was a good location because you just see the dark waves breaking and don’t see how dirty and polluted they are. Unless you take a closer look, and then you can see, where the waves wash onto the beach, whole schools of black polythene. Uuurgh.

The music, again, was old style. A different old style. To my untrained ears it sounded my like palm wine music, with rolling, flowing melodies and twangy guitar. I liked it a lot, but by this time, after two late nights, a conference, a festival, and an awful lot of time going backwards and forwards in trotros, I was a bit tired. My spirit was willing but my flesh was very, very weak, especially when songs went for about half an hour each. But the dance floor wasn’t crowded, so we could sit back with our drinks (me: pineapple juice, Nii: Malt) and watch the performance.

Once again, the band had white clothes and fluffy caps – people I’ve spoken to reckon it could be a Homowo thing, because these outfits are normally worn by Ga priests, or chiefs, depending who I talked to. The band was fronted by a group of women who danced as well as sang. So even though I may have missed it in the morning, I still got my dose of Ghanaian dancing, and went home satisfied.

Homowo is continuing at other Ga communities around Accra throughout August and even, apparently, in the US. Although it’s over for me, at least for this year, it ain’t over yet. So in the words of the banners strung over the Jamestown streets: Happy Homowo.

I’m so excited

I’ve come to the realisation that I’m hooked on three things: Ghana, conferences and knowledge. I got to feed all three addictions at the Our Media 7 conference these past few days.

Our Media is a gathering of academics, community workers and activists in the field of community media. This year’s theme was Identity, Inclusion, innovation – Alternative Communication in a Globalised World, and it was held in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

I attended Our Media 6 in Sydney last year and that was also a great conference – new ideas, inspiring projects, powerful stories. OM7 offered all this but with the benefit of African perspectives and in particular, a strong injection of Ghanaian culture. Ghanaian culture, as I’ve mentioned before, is rich in symbolism. I’ve realised it’s more than symbolism, it’s non-verbal language, and these non-verbal communication systems are widespread in West Africa. Adinkra I’ve mentioned before, but these systems include dance and of course talking drums. I had a fascinating conversation with a Nigerian academic who has been working on a voice recognition system that will understand Yoruba. Yoruba is a tonal language so as a first step, he set up a system that can interpret the language of talking drums. He also told me about a Yoruba divination system that he believes was originally a maths calculator.

You’ll be hearing more of this, but for now I need more time to process the absolute overload of information I’ve been taking in this week, and to make sure I can provide some useful links to some of the projects and theories I’ll be writing about. Not sure when that will be as we are embarking on a bit of tourism and sight seeing, starting with the Homowo festival today. Well, it’s only a ‘we’ if I can drag AM away from online Manga.

So just briefly, other highlights of the conference were:

• Watching and then dancing with the Ghanaian National Dance Ensemble.
• Hearing a Ghanaian woman with some clout talk about the necessity of preserving national treasures (like cloth)
• A number of presentations on how alternative media (such as community radio) is used in conflict zones.
• A community radio program in Kenya that has resulted in adults listening to children’s concerns and also in development of the local community
• Research on YouTube and social movements
• Digital media projects in marginalised / emerging communities in Sydney and in the UK
• Talking with lots of smart, interesting, committed people.

Going native

You'll have to read to the bottom to find out about this.

The main reason you have been getting to read about our adventures in Kumasi, Mensakrom and the north, is that for the past month we have stayed in Asuoyeboah. For the first two weeks we ventured no further than the internet cafe. It’s only in the past two weeks that I’ve gone into the krom (city) a few times. Ah, the freedom!

Not that I regret spending so much time at home. It’s just been a different, more domestic focus. One of the reasons for this was that I discovered that there was no point in sending ActionMan to school. By the time he’d been sick and we’d traveled around a bit, there were only three weeks left until the end of term, which would be mostly taken up with exams.

I was torn between disappointment at an opportunity lost, and relief. I admit it, I’m prejudiced against Ghanaian schools. I’ve heard too many reports of caning to feel happy about sending my child to such a school. Even though the school we were looking at professed non-violent methods, it seems – at least according to AM’s brother 50 Cedis – that this is its philosophy rather than its practice. Beating children is still a fairly accepted practice in Ghana, although that’s gradually changing.

If it hadn’t been such bad timing I would have enrolled him for a couple of months. I could have vetoed physical punishment for AM and it would have been a good opportunity for both of us to get a better understanding of the system here, plus for him to meet more people his own age. But it was not to be.

I decided that although he can probably manage a few months without school, I could not manage another seven weeks of him lounging in front of action DVDs all day every day. So I am home-schooling, with his co-operation. It started well but got derailed by illness, and the fact that all his brothers are home on holidays now.

I have a very flexible approach. Last week he was learning lost wax bronze casting at the Kumasi Cultural Centre. The week before he spent a couple of days building a wooden dog kennel for Gye Nyame and Angel, the family dogs. It’s unlikely they’ll use it, but it was an excellent project, which he accomplished with Owaruku’s assistance. Perhaps the family will buy some chooks for it instead.

The rest of the curriculum is basically lots of reading: New Internationalist, BBC Africa, National Geographic, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, plus maths and spelling online. Oh, and learning to cook with Serwaa. And swimming.

I got a list of hotel pools from the Ghana Tourist Board a few weeks ago, but it took a while to get around to going to the pool. Finally Owaruku finished school early on a Friday and the three of us caught a trotro to Sofoline, which is the name of the big roundabout on Sunyani Rd. We changed for a trotro to Santasi, which would drop us in Patasi, where I planned to hop in a txi and ask them to take us the the Rexmer hotel. On the way to Patasi I got cold feet about this idea, and was wondering if it was really going to work out so smoothly, when I spotted the hotel. It was right on the road we were traveling!

It was wonderful to have a swim after so many weeks of being hot and sweaty, but it was the hotel restaurant’s menu that really got ActionMan going. Hamburgers, bombe alaska, spaghetti bolognese, fresh orange juice … he even got excited about pizza, which he normally doesn’t like. So after splashing around for a while and trying to persuade Owaruku to venture into waist deep water, we headed for the restaurant and AM gobbled down pizza chips and fresh OJ faster than you can say tomato sauce.

We came back the next day with 50 Cedis and nearly drowned both of them in a foolhardy attempt to piggyback them across the pool. Oops. However it did prove the Owaruku that he could push off from the bottom and survive in the deep end. And I’m exaggerating. 50 Cedis was not really in any danger, he just liked to capitalise on the possibility that he may have been (typical).

We celebrated their survival with hamburgers and chips and bombe alaska, a meringue coated pudding I’m in no hurry to try again. I don’t think watermelon works in baked puddings. We were lucky that AM brought his pocket money because they couldn’t take Mastercard even though they’d assured me they could. Seems to keep happening here! So we didn’t end up washing our own dishes.

You are probably wondering by now why I titled this post ‘going native’, and in fact there is scant evidence for me to make that claim.

I do not pound fufu, fetch water, carry impossible headloads or chew bones. I avoid offal, malta (it’s a drink) and Nigerian soap operas. I am not born again and never will be. I’m hopeless at bargaining, a soft touch for cash and a shameless consumer of luxuries.

But … I can claim to be:

• A competent baby carrier. In the mornings I often tie Treasure onto my back and we go to buy koko and akosi or bofrots at the local mini-market. Until ActionMan vetoed it because I’m destroying my knees.
• A dutiful daughter-in-law (you’ll hear more about that soonish).
• A lover of fine cloth – who wouldn’t be, here?
• Chief toilet flusher for those too small to lift the bucket up to the cistern
• A good dancer. Well, AM might disagree, but everyone else seems to think so. They all have a good laugh with me anyway & tell me I “love life”.
• A responsible parent & citizen. I went along to the open day for Obaaku and Daniel’s school. I put up with children shouting into the mic and bad acoustics, felt clucky about the cute kindy kids and took photos of Daniel’s dance group performance (sound familiar?). The unfamiliar bit was how all the mums and dads went up the stage and stuck red one cedi notes over their child’s foreheads before depositing them in the donations bowl. Yes, I did that too, plus made a larger donation later.
• Getting better at the lingo limbo … slowly. I still don’t have very sophisticated conversations, but I can shop, make jokes and understand when Nana scolds me for forgetting to buy her dokono (also known as kenkey, a steamed cornmeal wrapped in corn husks and eaten with chilli, fried fish and okra stew). “I told you to buy me dokono, I expected you to bring it. They didn’t give me enough to eat for lunch but I didn’t worry, I knew you’d be bring my dokono, but you didn’t bring it etc. etc.” Oh dear.
• Able to chop ampesi, waakye, redred and jollof with the best of them – and even fufu, if I have to and it’s not sheep soup.
• Beneficent provider of funding for fruit, chewing gum, phone credit, bofrots, bread, chocolate, birthday cakes and most recently, a new roof for Afia Serwaa’s braiding salon.

And finally, perhaps most significantly:

• Hair fashion victim! Yes, after almost 20 years of more than nodding acquaintance with Africans, and five trips to the continent, I finally took the plunge and had my hair cornrowed. Afia Serwaa bought some red hair extensions (auburn, not scarlet) and did a fine job of braiding my hair one relaxing afternoon under the oil-palm tree beside her little salon.

I’ve always resisted this before. I don’t really think many white people look good in the style. I don’t like how our white scalp shows through. ActionMan shares this opinion and I wish I’d had a camera on hand to capture the horror, disbelief and dismay that chased each other around his face when he saw what I’d done. The only other people who didn’t gush “wo effe paaa” (you look gorgeous) were Gyamfi and DadaK (who approved in principle but wisely didn’t comment) and 50 Cedis, who sniggered whenever he looked at me and took me aside to tell me – in that open and frank way that somehow reminds me of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, that it really didn’t look that great and I’d “made a wrong decision”.

Well, I thought so too, but mainly because of the pain and itching, which didn’t stop until I’d taken them out, and the fact that it all started to unravel very fast. Oh that obruni hair, difficult paaa. Tufts of mousy brown sticking out of the auburn braiding – not a good look! It would have been better if I’d still had long hair, but it’s currently a bob, & didn’t work well with long braids.

So it’s cornrows, never again. I’m still undecided as to whether I’ll try ‘rasta’ braids before I leave. I’m not keen. I think I’ve stepped outside my hair comfort zone quite enough for now. Perhaps forever.

Technology Blues

I left Australia with high hopes that technology would make my trip to Ghana very different from previous visits. And to a large extent, it has.

My digital camera has enabled me to show people their photos immediately.

Like in Australia, everyone has a mobile phone, so DadaK can call if I’m late home to make sure I’ve not been kidnapped, and ActionMan and I can call our friends (and theoretically, they can call us – still waiting, guys …) 

Having a laptop makes it easy to write and edit my blog before uploading and it also provides entertainment for everyone – from impromputu slide shows in Nana’s room to gaming to watching DVDs when the TV is dedicated to Nollywood soaps or Christian video hits. I’ve also been using it to teach Martha to type.

Internet access, although sporadic and painfully slow, means I can blog, stay in touch with friends and do some online research. I do feel a lot more connected to home and the world than I have on previous trips.

Sadly, most of this is now in the past tense. After threatening to blow for several weeks, the cable on my laptop finally did so a few days ago. All the above laptop related activities, plus my late night binges on Zuma Deluxe, have come to an abrupt halt.

Fortunately, I’d already asked Rich, the techie at my local “Yankee Cyber Cafe” to see if he can track down a new cable. He told me this morning that he thinks he’s found one, so my worst case scenario of no laptop for the rest of the trip is looking like it won’t happen. Fingers crossed. But if blog posts become shorter, less frequent & perhaps less coherent, you’ll know what’s happened. I’ll be at the Zuma Deluxe Anonymous 12 step program. Well no, not really. But it takes a lot of time to write blog posts and edit photos and it’ll be hassle to have to do it all at the cyber cafe, instead of at home whenever I have some spare time. (like 5.00am before the kids come knocking on my bedroom door) Ah well. On the bright side, the cyber cafe has air con.