September 14th – Of mice and men and goats and ants and spiders

Health update.

 I continue to recover and to ride my bicycle.  The new seat works great and I think the exercise along with the sitz baths are helping.  Almost fully recovered.

New bicycle seat for the old man

General nature of the place.

I'm in a nice house by local standards – I have a zinc roof, concrete floors, living room, bedroom, kitchen inside along with a toilet (latrine), bathroom (for taking baths/showers with a bucket), and a storage room with a kitchen sink outside across my patio.  I have my water barrel in the storage room.  I have electricity most of the time although low current sometimes prevents to lights from working or it just destroys the bulbs.  The socket in my living room is not working – so I'll need the school to bring an electrician.  The socket on the veranda kills bulbs (compact fluorescent bulbs are the only ones I can get) about every two or three weeks – so again the electrician will need to check it out.

I'm in a building with four other units.  The typical arrangement is to have two bedrooms and to use the kitchen outside.  Currently, I'm the only resident – but once school starts I'll have an elementary teacher living next door.  I'm not far from the current junior high school.  We are building a new school a short walk up the hill (about 5 times as far as the current school but still a brief walk).  The new school might be completed by November.

I've got two doors and five windows.  The windows have shutters and screens.  The doors also have screen doors.  There are small gaps and cracks around all the screens due to the weather, termites, and such.

I'm surrounded by trees, farms, and small walking paths.  Basically I'm in the country.  When it is dark here it is really dark.  There are always animals around – the goats are supposed to be tied so they don't hurt the crops, but some run free.  Guinea fowls and chickens forage around.  And then there are the mice, birds, ants, lizards, spiders, bats, etc.  I will not have the pleasure of camel spiders until the dry season.

I'm not complaining – and the place really is very nice for a Peace Corps volunteer - but I just want to describe the general nature of the place.  Because …

 Mice in the house ….

On my return from Accra I noticed something had been eating a yam I had in storage and it was fairly obvious with other signs that I had mice company.  So I did a general cleaning of the place - scrubbed the shelves and other more robust cleaning besides the normal daily routine.  Then, with the help of Roger – we got a chemical and some bait to put out.  I no longer hear the mice moving around at night, but they did take another bite of yam before Thursday morning.  I also saw one scurry from the living room to be bedroom Saturday morning (maybe a new one – this is the season they come inside).  I’ll keep the bait and poison out and start looking/smelling for mice bodies

Goats in my storage room ….

I came back from town on Wednesday in the rain and got some water for my sitz bath.  Two goats had decided that they could squeeze past my water barrel and stay dry.  They were there long enough to defecate and urinate.  So more cleaning.  I put up a board to prevent a return so they've decided to use my toilet instead.  However, they have not learned to use either hole yet.  So more cleaning.  Eventually, I'll have a gate put up on the back of my patio to solve the goat problem.

(Note: rather than defecate, dung, or whatever in Ghana the term “shit” is simply used to talk about any type of shit or the act.  It is not a rude or bad word.)

Cleaning and organizing

So I need to get organized and keep the place clean.  I am surprised that I have so much stuff.  I also have things from the previous volunteer.  I don’t have a chest of drawers or closets.  Actually I only have one drawer on a small desk along with three sets of shelves – so not many places for things.  I’ve added a kitchen prep table for my two burner stove and to prepare meals.  That freed up the desk for my bedroom.   I’m working on finding a place for everything and making sure everything taken out is put back in its place.  I’m also scrubbing down things and looking for more cleaning supplies to remove some of the grim and mold.  My daily routine includes sweeping, cleaning, and dishes.  I have to do laundry twice a week or so.

During the dry season the Sahara will blow in on winds called the harmattan (December to March).  This will make this place a bone dry dust storm most of the time.  So I need to be organized now.

Kool-aid break

All of this work in the house, gardening, and riding my bicycle requires calories.  So my mom sent some unsweetened kool-aid packets.  Mix the powder and sugar in a zip lock bag and I can have a cup of wonderfully flavored sugar water anytime.  I don’t have a fridge – so I just mix some up as needed.  I’ve got a good supply of the packets – but this will be something likely on my list for future care packages unless I can find a local option.

Ants, spiders, lizards …..

Then there are the other little things around.  I don't notice them much.  Several times during homestay I was served dinner with tiny ants crawling around on the plate.  The message I sent at the time to the group was “you know you are in Peace Corps when you see some small ants in your food, you think 'extra protein' and keep eating”.    I have an insecticide power and will get some other bug spray as well for the wasps, bees, and other things I prefer not to ignore.

However, I do want to get rid of ants in my worm bin without killing the worms.  So I'm trying to make neem oil.  We have neem trees all around.  (In the past Peace Corps promoted planting the trees for mosquito control but now recommends the moringa tree.)   Neem is reported to be a natural insecticide that is harmless to earthworms.

Neem tree

 

Closer view of neem tree

I collected some neem leaves, cut them up and soaked them in soapy water for a day along with some garlic, onion, and pepper.  The neem seeds, not yet ready, have more oil.  Unfortunately the water extraction method is inefficient, but this is just an experiment to see if it will drive away the ants.  I just dumped the water and leaves and such in the bin.  I also could have crushed the leaves.  Maybe next time if this does not work.

Neem leaves

Cutting and adding leaves to soap mixture

Worm bin.

The purpose of a worm bin is to concentrate earthworms, preferably red worms, to quickly convert organic waste into a rich soil supplement (worm casings).  A balanced bin will reduce a banana peel to worm casings in a few days.

The worm bin itself is rather simple.  I started with a part of the flower bed in front of my house.  It was a barren bit of ground.  Nothing was growing – despite the flowers and plants in front of the other units.  I started by gathering leaves, cut grass and weeds, and discarded food scraps – egg shells, tea bags, peanut shells, etc.  These I left to decompose for a couple of weeks.  The amount of time to wait is flexible.  Next I dug everything and mixed the organic material with the first few inches of soil (my trip to Accra interrupted this project).  Creating a mound on one side and adding more leaves and such to the trench on the other side.

I scrounged some discarded shutters from the building renovation.  The cover serves two purposes.  First, I need to keep the area moist.  It does not need sunlight so the shutters work great.  If (when) the shutters break – kids tend to stand on them – I'll switch over to some plastic.  The second purpose is to keep the chickens and other birds away from the worms.  I’ll have to check frequently to make sure mice and such do not decide to take up residence.

I’ve added enough organic material at this time and now have a nice environment for worms.  As I find worms, not easy around here, I’ll collect and deposit them in the bin.  My house sits on the side of a hill so the soil is washed by the rains leaving pebbles near the surface.  Most of the farming is done in the flat lands around the area that receive the runoff water and soil.  Anyway, finding worms close by is proving difficult.  I’ve put out boards near the tree line and will continue to check them in the morning and after rains.  So far I found a couple of red worms and an earthworm.  It is a slow process.  But then about everything in Ghana is a slow process.

I’ll always have bits of food scraps with cooking and then there is the occasional moldy bread.  I take leftover food I will not eat to the school pigs.  However, I’m still left with yam peelings, and bits of tomatoes, onions, egg shells, and such.  As my worm bin is not up and running yet I need to compost this or waste it.  As mentioned the soil around my place has almost no organic material – so wasting it is out of the question.

Compost trench.

And so the next project is a compost trench – rather than a compost bin that I would need to mix with manure and turn from time to time.  I have an area for a small dry season garden in the back.  Dry season gardening is obviously difficult.  Again - soil is sandy, rocky, with some clay, and precious little organic material.  As I bonus the area is covered with bits of concrete from the renovation.  Therefore, I think my best approach will be to boost the organic material before planting.  With more organic material the plants will have an easier time dealing with the stress of dry season.

So my plan is to dig a trench that I can use to add the compost material over time.  What I clean up after the goats and such that will also go in the trench.  Pig or other manure will also be added when possible.  I have several months before I plant so everything will have time to decompose.  (Note: fresh manure is harmful to plants.)  I’ll add a post as this project gets underway.

I’ve also some ideas for dry season watering that I’ll also post about in the future.

School starts next week.

I talked with the headmaster on Thursday and he had not yet received the list of teachers for the coming year.  Therefore, he cannot tell me how many math classes I’ll be teaching.  School starts on Tuesday.  I’ll spend some time going over notes before a take my next step into teaching.  The first week of school will likely be a light load as many of the teachers have not yet been told the school they will be teaching.  I should have a little bit of time to prepare before classes begin in earnest.

Until next week

Love always – John