Almost everyone in Yendi is scurrying around today trying to buy a sheep, find a sheep, or buy some meat for tomorrow’s Muslim festival. I think the name of the festival is Eid-Ul-Adha but it could very well be Eid-Ul-Fitr because I always get the 2 mixed up. Anyway this festival celebrates Abraham sacrificing his son and if possible the Muslims are supposed to sacrifice a sheep. If some cannot afford a whole sheep they can join with their family and share a sheep. The celebration is supposed to be tomorrow. Since the ladies that work for us are off on Friday already they took today off which means they will have an extra long week-end. Mr. Iddrisu will take his holiday on Sunday and Nazo will take his holiday on Monday. There is a whole other schedule for the watchmen. We told them that we did not care which day they took off just don’t leave us without a watchman!
Zorash went with us this afternoon to the market to buy some wooden stirring sticks and to take more pictures. Our son Aaron and wife Melissa are working on a picture glossary for the website. It is looking really good! If all goes as planned when you read the Yendi notes and want to know more about something we mention you will be able to go to the glossary for a description and a photo. Who knew such a thing was possible? But how neat is that? We are excited about it.
We have a few mice at the Child Center. They come in to eat the dried beans and weaning mix that we give the mothers to feed the malnourished children. We hate mice; they are so nasty. We decided to buy some poison and try to get rid of them. The workers told us that there was a safer way to get rid of them. They said there was a certain type of medicine that comes in a capsule that will kill the mice if they eat it. They also told us that the mice love smoked dried fish! Please! I can tell you the Ghanaians love smoked dried fish but I am not sure that the mice love them. Of course they are Ghanaian mice so anything is possible. We went to the pharmacist and bought some of the medicine; it is called “Indomethacin”. Steve looked on line to see if it could possibly work and sure enough there were articles about the medicine. It is supposed to deplete the stores of Vitamin K in the rodents’ stomachs and cause them to bleed out. The medicine is sold to people as a pain killer. We are going to give it a try and see how it works.
It has drizzled off and on all day which has made it a little cooler. We are enjoying the cooler weather but our Ghanaian friends have pulled out their stocking hats, long sleeves and jackets. The low temperature today was 75 degrees; of course that was in the wee hours of the morning. It is “bitterly cold”!
Take care and have a great rest of the day.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
