Steve spent the morning and part of the afternoon working with the group from Yendi Hospital that was screening high school students at Dagbon State. Steve’s job was to take blood pressures, pulses, and respirations; others were checking eyes, drawing blood and counseling the students. Steve had a good time.
I spent part of the afternoon working on the books. The government made a change in the minimum wage / pay scale. We thought we had it all figured out before we left but surprise, we did not. The new rules affect 8 of the employees.
The little fridge decided to quit cooling. Luckily we found 20 pounds of thawed meat before it had time to spoil. It was still frosty. I baked half of it and put it in the big fridge’s freezer and made the rest into chicken fingers. Guess what we will be eating for the next few days? I am so happy that it did not go out when we were not here; can you imagine what a mess that would have been?
This morning an older lady came to the Child Center with her orphan granddaughter. She came from Tamale which is 2 hours away. As we were talking she grinned, pointed at me and said, “Mama Cindy”. Mama Cindy was my mother and any of you that know us both know that we have the same face. I asked her if she knew Mama Cindy. She said that she had known her a long time. She went on to explain that she was one of the late Ya-Naa’s wives and that we used to come with Mama Cindy to the palace to visit her and the other wives. When the Ya-Naa died he had 28 wives. She also remembered my niece Lyndie and asked about her. She was happy that the funeral of her late husband had finally been performed and that we have a new Ya-Naa.
We have lived in Yendi for a long time but we are still learning new traditions. Yesterday we had to wait for over an hour for the market lady to come to her shop so we could buy the corn. When she came she wanted to apologize for being so late and making us wait such a long time so she squatted down in front of me and grabbed hold of my ankles and sat there staring up at me with big brown woeful eyes. Zorash said that was their traditional way of saying they were sorrow and she would stay there until I forgave her. I told her not to worry and she got up and started measuring the corn.
I asked Nazo when he was going to start weaving the thatch and he said he could not weave them on Thursday because it was taboo to weave on Thursday. He is going to start tomorrow but he said that he could dig the pit. It took me awhile to get him to understand that he did not have to dig a pit and he could make a small pond with cement blocks and a heavy duty tarp. Finally after showing him how to do it he said, “This is a good idea Sister Kandie.”
Take care and have a wonderful day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
