October 17 to October 23

The Mission President thought it would be a good idea to have all the apartments equipped with rain ponchos and a place to hang them when wet.  We considered the alternatives such as the very useless plastic bag or the very hot more durable raincoat, as modeled by the missionaries below, and decided to put the project on hold till stronger ponchos can be found.

We went with  Bishop Fred Aboyge to help pound  hooks in the cinder block walls and distribute ponchos.  After we had done a couple of apartments we received a call from the missionaries saying that the hoods of the ponchos were coming off at the slightest pull.  

 

During the same day we bought a study table for an apartment that only had a very small table.  When the table was set up the missionaries were wondering how they could use it to play "ping pong"!

Some of the apartments are in a sorry state of repair as illustrated by this droopy fan.

 

Never mind, Elder Pace, the mission financial controller, has lots of money to spend on repairs and we are going to do our best to spend it.

On Saturday about 14 Senior Missionaries traveled about 60 miles east of Accra to go down the Volta River to its estuary where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  We went onto the long boat which came with a boy with a bleach bottle to bail out the water as it was coming in.  We were not worried because there were some life jackets in the tightly bound white bundle at the front of the boat!

George, who is from this region was our guide and he took us to an island in the river to visit a primitive village where the houses had thatched roofs and mud walls.  Of interest is the merry-go-round which acts as a dynamo to charge batteries to provide some light in the homes.

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The villagers treated us to fresh coconuts.  We drank the milk and some ate the slimy coconut meat which was only about 1/8" thick

 

This big turkey was strutting around causing the American missionaries to consider returning later in November for a Thanksgiving visit.

 

We journeyed 10 miles down the river to a nice beach on the ocean and had some lunch.  There were some very nice homes along the river bank.

This is a pile of oyster shells.

We started our river tour at a launch point where the people were doing a lot of harvesting of fresh water shell fish.  There were a number of real cute children running around.

We went back to Accra to the Alema Court apartments, where a number of senior missionaries live, and cooled down in their very nice pool.  They have a pool party once/month.  We will have to attend the next party.