November 1st


I mark the passage of another month in Ghana – less than ten months remaining in my service to Ghana. 

 Last night was Halloween and I enjoyed seeing all the pictures on Facebook of “trick or treaters” back in the states. The children here don't go trick or treating and Halloween passes without much notice.


Roger and others continue to work on harvesting their crops. The corn, millet, and peanuts have pretty much been harvested. I saw yams and sweet potatoes in the market so those crops are also being harvested. Rice is the last major crop to be harvested I think.



Dry season garden



My garden has been grazed by the goats and I lost the last of the beans. However, I did complete the fence around the dry season area where I will be try to grow beans, okra, and kudzu. This will double or triple my daily water demands. I normally use about two buckets of water a day – the bore hole being about a city block away. Watering will be more of a daily chore – but such is the life in the village.


Fence around the mango seedling

My dry season garden.  I'm using rabbit wire for the fence - traditionally maybe millet stalks would have been used.

All the kudzu plants I was nursing died and the mint and oregano seeds did not sprout. I think that soil that I'm using has too much mulch from the teak leaves. (The teak leave inhibit germination and root growth of other plants.)



School



We finished painting the computer room. A new coat of paint is required after installing the security gates. This week we also saw the electricity connected. We just have some minor work left on the computer room. We are doing what we can to have a nice room for learning. I hope that we will be using the room for more than just computers – as the projector will be useful for other subjects as well.



Painting with the headmaster supervising

Mr. Thomas, one of the teachers, painting

Once we have everything ready we will move up the computers and then I will need to check them all out and figure what needs to be repaired and what can be used. I may need to reinstall the operating system on some of the computers. I know I need to replace one hard disk and maybe some memory in another. So more work....


We need to turn our attention to the library. Right now the room is used to store the millet and peanuts from the school farm. I think we are going to move the harvest down to one of the classrooms in the old school. We don't have that many books, but we do have enough that we should get another bookshelf or two. I'm counting on the library to be a place for the students to practice reading as English comprehension is needed to succeed in school.



Rabbits



Still no rabbits. (still a sigh – and still the way it is. The farmers are working hard to get their harvests in so I don't want to be a pain, but I would like to have some time to demonstrate the method to raise rabbits.)



Health



Nothing new to report. Shoulder pain, cough, and congestion is still present – nothing serious – just annoying.


Love always,

John

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