We spent the day in Tamale; well most of the day considering it takes a couple hours to get there and a couple hours to get back. We met up again with the Americans we met a couple weeks ago at the little outdoor restaurant SWAD. They live a couple hours away from a health facility and had no ASV on hand. When we bought ours we got a couple vials for them. We took the ASV to them today. They were happy to get it. They have 3 small boys; the youngest are 5 and 6. The older one looks to be about 10. If anyone needs to have ASV on hand it is them.
We took advantage of being in Tamale and did some of our errands. We ordered rubber stamps for 5 of the churches. The Ghanaian officials love rubber stamps. When you do business it is good to have a rubber stamp. Last year we decided to have rubber stamps made for the churches. We also went to immigrations and got the forms we will need to renew our resident visas and non-citizen cards later this month. Steve figured it would be easier to have the forms filled out before we went to the office instead of wasting time filling them out there. It was a good thing that he stopped by the office because they have change the method of payment for the non-citizen’s card. Now we have to go to a certain bank, make the payment, collect a plastic card, present the card and filled form to the immigrations officer before they will snap our photos and renew the card for another year.
We also had to get the motorcycle insurance today and we did a little grocery shopping. Many more canned foods are available in Tamale than in Yendi. We tried to buy bottled cokes but none were available. We have not been able to get any in Yendi either. Most likely they were all bought up for the big Muslim holiday last week. Hopefully a truck will run soon. We love an ice cold coke!
Mr. Iddrisu and Nazo, a couple of the Child Center workers, hired a man to start raising cassava mounds on the back part of the mission property. The cassava (also called yucca) is a large root that the people here use to add to the ground corn to make TZ. Cassava is also where we get tapioca from. The Ghanaians do not use tapioca. Cassava has very little food value but it is filling. The cassava is planted in mounds that are about 3 feet tall. The guy raised 100 mounds today. Mr. Iddrisu thinks he will be able to make 2,000 mounds on the property. Each mound only produces 1 tuber of cassava. They will mature in either 2 or 3 years depending upon the type they plant. They do not actually plant the tuber, they cut a stick off the mother plant and stick it in the ground and it grows. Isn’t that amazing?
It is time for supper so I will close for now. Have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
