Good morning, Tamale

Well, here I sit at 6am, in the computer room at the Radaach Guesthouse, where we are staying. Everyone else is sleeping...for some reason other than jet lag, I keep waking at around 3am. Instead of conceiving it as a curse upon my sleep-deprived self (hear the violins?), I am choosing to receive the early morning hours as a precious gift of time alone.

After getting settled in our rooms Monday, we headed out to the center of Tamale city to do some shopping- electric tea kettles for our rooms, massive quantities of bottled water, juice, and a few other sundries.

We brought most of Audrey's food, counting on adding it to the rice that is readily available (and safe), but had planned on indulging glutinously on the yummy fruits that grow so plentifully here. We were sorely disappointed to discover that it wasn't recommended for us to eat fruit here in the North, at this particular time of year. The dry season, also called 'Harmattan' is when winds blow sands from the Sahara down across the countries below it. The result is massive waves of dust that cloud the otherwise perfectly blue sky. It usually begins at the end of November or primo December and should arrive any day...

Anyway, produce doesn't grow in the Northern region during the dry season, meaning that any fresh products found at market have been trucked up from the South; storage conditions, we were told, are not reliable and can therefore threaten food safety. What looks like a perfectly sumptuous banana or orange can apparently contain invisible pests. So yeah, we were bummin' knowing that our one food-joy here is not an option.

Despite our happiness at having Gail with us, we are also feeling guilty over the fact that she will be spending so much time in a hotel room babysitting, on her very first trip to Africa. (To be fair, we never misrepresented the fact that it was going to be this way...AND, just 20 minutes in the humidity and heat does make an air-conditioned hotel room seem quite appealing!)

So far, we've been spending the first part of the daytime showing Gail around Tamale and afternoons working consulting with our host and client here. Over the past few days, Gail (or GG as she is now called) has been seeing some pretty extreme sites--up close and personal. And what a trooper she is--we're thoroughly impressed.

We've got alot of catching up to do, w.r.t. pictures. For some unknown reason, they're taking forever to upload, despite a quick connection. So you'll get a few at a time...mostly in chronological order.


GG and Audrey (doing her 'smile! blink')
This was at the Radisson LAX, the day before departing


My sexy husband


A very sweet fellow passenger offered Audrey her hat and scarf to play with.


The excruciatingly long plane rides went surprisingly well.


Audrey, her first night in Africa--just before heading out to dinner at Ryans Irish Pub, in Osu (an area in downtown Accra.) She shared some Guiness Pie with mommy.


Walking down to a pharmacy in Dzorwulu (where the SIM guesthouse we stayed at is located)
to get some Artesenate, in case any of us starts coming down with malaria.



Lunch at Paloma's, with our friend Allison Howell...
Allison is an extremely talented woman and a very interesting person. Despite her Australian passport, she's actually African. Born in the Congo to missionary parents, she's lived in Ghana for 27 years. She's a Professor at Akrofi-Christaller Institute (a Bible institute), has extensive church-planting experience and has written several books about Ghanaian culture. Mike's known Allison for 15 years and we saw her last in the U.S. when she was visiting just before our wedding.
Restaurant review: Paloma's. Let's just say that we much prefer our old haunt, 'Champs', an ex-pat hangout just around the corner. You can play pool and eat burgers and brownies there. We ate 3 out of 5 meals here for 6 weeks in 2004. As previously mentioned, local food is not for us so we stick to places like 'Champs', ' La Palm, and Ryan's.