Our last 2 weeks in Ghana!

Okay, I've definitely put this off for way toooooo long! When I think of our last 2 weeks in Ghana, I just laugh. So much happened, and not good, that it was as if Ghana wanted to say farewell to us too! About 2 weeks before we left, we were winding down on buying souvenirs, saying goodbye, and finishing research and interviews. My friend, Susan, and I went for our last cloth shopping excursion so that we could still get our seamstresses to make some clothes before I left. Of course it's the rainy season, so what starts happening? It started RAINING! It only lasted for about 30 minutes, but it I think it only rained on us in that one market because once we returned home, my husband said that it never rained there. So, back to the market. We're standing there under the shelter of a building and a thought occurred to me, "my emergency rain coats!!!!" You know, the little 88 cent plastic rain coats you get at Wal-Mart? Well, I bought some for us to have in Ghana and had never used them! I was so excited! I lifted out my nifty rain jackets and handed one to Susan. We put them on and as we did so. The Ghanaians that we were standing next too started laughing. They seemed fascinated and yet puzzled. We ignored them and stepped out into the rain to go about our merry little way. However, it wasn't merry because everywhere we started walking, people started either laughing at us or yelling at us. Two blonde white women get stared at a lot in a local market, but this was absurd. EVERYONE stared at us. If they weren't laughing or yelling, they were scowling at us, ashamed! They shouted, "Eh! Obruni, buy an umbrella! Take an umbrella!" They did so shaking their heads too. We finally understood the problem when one said, "Hey! buy an umbrella and take the rubbers (pronounced rubbas) off!" Rubbas is a word for trash bags. They are only to be used for trash and carrying things. They were just soo shocked that we would put trash on us, that we would shame ourselves by wearing a bag!! It made sense, but we weren't going to take them off. And we certainly didn't want to spend $$ on an umbrella that we didn't need. So we just kept walking. Some people didn't really wants us entering their shops either. They didn't acknowledge us like they usually do. Oh well. Once it stopped, we just took them off and put them away and laughed all the way home!! I just wish that I had a picture of us dressed in our "rubbas" to show you!

So out of order, but this is saying goodbye to Ana.
This is Susan and I in some of the dresses that we had made by our seamstress. Just imagine clear plastic raincoats on us with backpacks and that should be enough.

Saying goodbye to Sally Murray.

My dirty dishes piled up because of the water going out. You can see that the sink is chuck full too.

I think almost every dish that we owned in Ghana was dirty by the time the water came back on!

The whole rubba incident happened on a Thursday I think. The next day, Friday our water shut off late at night. Our water tap worked Saturday morning. We could hear Godwyn, our "building security" guy, if you can call him that!, filling his water buckets. We quickly joined in because we knew that it could easily turn off again. Sure enough, after an hour it shut off. It was a hot day too. I know that we all wanted to go swimming one last time before Ana left for the US but I can't remember if we went that weekend or not. So no bath Saturday night for church the next morning. After church, still no water. You can imagine how bad we smelled, I don't need to go into details. Let's just say we wore lots of perfume and cologne. Monday morning dawned bright and early and still no water. I went to scripture study after almost 3 days of no bath. We planned to go swimming at Sally's, (the kids and I), to bathe ourselves in the pool water, but the pool was shut down for repairs! It was also the last time that we were able to see Sally. We had to say goodbye and give our hugs, knowing that we might not ever see each other again. When we got home, it was too a very unpleasant sight. The dishes were piled everywhere, it smelled from the dirty dishes, and sorry to have to add, the toilet. Even though we had bucket water for it, when the water was shut off, it just smelled from the pipes and obviously we couldn't flush it after every use! GROSS!!! There was just no hope. We had dinner plans that night and afterwards all our friends were to come over for dessert. We were taking Ana out to say goodbye. We ate Mexican food at the only place that served it. It was fun and I know I already blogged about it. Afterwards everyone came for decadent triple layer mud pie. Mmmm. It was worth the expense of the imported food items to use for it. We all laughed and hugged and cried and vowed to see each other again soon. I took Ana home and planned on getting up early to take her to the airport. Tuesday morning dawned bright and beautiful but still no water. There was some sort of celebration going on. I think a celebration of health or something but people were marching and dancing in the street like a parade. Fun to watch but couldn't really enjoy it because we didn't want Ana to be late. I dropped her off and headed home knowing that I had work ahead of me.