Garrisons in Ghana

This is a picture of a fairly typical meal here in Ghana.  It is Kenkey.  (The dough-like ball in the plastic) It is basically  corn meal mixed with corn starch and water.  Then it is fermented  in a warm place for 4 days or so and then partially cooked and then wrapped in corn husks, or banana leaves and steamed.  It is served here with shito . They eat shito here like we eat ketchup or hot sauce.  Shito sauce consists primarily of  fish  or  vegetable oil ,  ginger ,  dried fish ,  prawns ,  crustaceans ,  tomatoes ,  garlic ,  peppers  and spices. These ingredients are usually blended together and cooked in vegetable or corn oil for a little over an hour to create the sauce.   It can be very spicy!  So this meal had an added whole deep fried FISH!  Bet you won't be finding this at McDonalds!!  By the way, you would eat this whole meal with your hands. Just take a wad of Kenke...

As I have mentioned before, it is rainy season here in Ghana so everything is so beautiful and green.  As we drove up to Sunyani this week, I couldn't help but snap a picture of the beautiful landscape here.  It is really always green, but now it is just especially beautiful.  Ever since we got here, I have observed various symbols on gates, fabric, signs and pottery.  I didn't really know what they all meant but I was just fascinated by them.  In a way, they reminded me of Chinese kanji.  So I started to ask various people here what they meant, and came to the realization that they are very culturally significant.  They are called Adinkra and they are Ghanaian symbols that express ideas or aphorisms.  From what I can gather, there are about 122 known symbols.  One of my favorites is the first one in the second row above:  on this chart it says supremacy of God, but many people here just say:  except God.   I jus...

Last Saturday afternoon we went to see Joseph, he is the man that we used to teach while we were in Saint Thomas on our last mission.  He worked in STT for over 20 years and would send his money back to Ghana to support his family.  He wanted to come back to Ghana once he retired, so he now lives with his sister in the house that he owned all along.  While we were there, there were numerous children and women coming in and out of the house and I asked them how many people lived in the house and they counted:  21!  10 chidren and 11 adults.  That is not at all unusual here.  He is always glad to see us as is his sister and her kids.   This is the house that Joseph lives in with the other 20 people.  You can see that just the first floor of this house is finished.  This is so very typical here.  People will start to build a house and just build it as they have money to do each part.  Many times, they cannot afford to finish ...