To Do List

Elle loves being the little helper.

Harmaton passed gradually. Day by day the filmy yellow sky brightened to azure. I recognized my own redundancy each time I announced, “Wow, it’s hot today.” Without the sandy fog dulling the sun, the bearable 85-degree waking hours rose by at least 10 degrees. Wet rings lived under my arms and breasts. Sweat droplets traced meandering paths down my dingy legs. The pits under my knees dripped perspiration onto the floor when I crossed my legs like I had wrung out a damp cloth. My hair line, perpetually soaked, seeped salty liquid, collecting in the contours of my face, dribbled into my eyes and lips, and created sweat sideburns. Lines of dirt collected in the creases of my neck and armpits. I incessantly scratched at my irritated jaw line, an apparent thoroughfare for grimy perspiration. If I removed my sunglasses, I felt the brightness of the cloudless sky dry out my eyeballs, and no amount of squinting eased the blinding sunlight. Needless to say, I didn’t need a thermometer to gage this kind of heat. I could only measure it by the bottles of water I had to consume constantly just to keep my head from spinning with dehydration.

The energy required to physically accomplish anything in this heat easily trumped Jillian’s “Last Chance Workout” in my tasks as a stay-at-home-mom in Cape Coast. Scott reported to work most weekdays and Dakota had school from morning until dinnertime every day. Elle and I then, were left on our own.

I found security in domestic responsibilities as those first weeks passed. My fear had been grounded in the unknown, the unexpected. So as I established routines throughout the week, my nerves eased, and swallowing and breathing became unconscious again.

I loosely designated Mondays and Fridays as house work and shopping days. Our to-do list looked similar to one in the U.S.: laundry, dishes, dust, mop, grocery shop, cook, fill water bottles, bathe Elle.  But with no washer/dryer, dishwasher, one-stop grocery store, car, or hot or clean running water, each task was like a new puzzle.

LAUNDRY: True, we hired a man named Alex to take our dirty laundry every Friday. For 22 cedis, he returned our clean clothes clean, ironed and folded on Sunday evening. This included on-call ironing for Dakota’s school shirts (the school counselor had offered to pick up an iron for me next time she was at the market…I understood her suggestion). Most of our dirty clothes went with Alex, but there were clothes throughout the week that needed washing. Elle was having accidents an average of three times per day, so she invariably ran out of dresses and panties. Dakota had only two shirts for his school uniform to last the whole week. My locally-appropriate wardrobe was not large enough to sustain a full week, plus my underthings couldn’t be sent out. So I hand-washed all those items a few times per week using a bar of laundry soap and water. The bar was slimy red and had a kerosene, paint-thinner smell.

I learned through trial and error that it was easier on my lower back, and cooler to wash clothes on the back porch in a bucket rather than in the bathtub. I filled the bucket in the bathtub and hauled it to the back porch. Then I dunked, sudsed, dunked, scrub-brushed, dunked, sudsed and rinsed each piece. After a few loads in which the clothes dried stiff and crunchy, I added a second bucket of water dedicated only to rinsing. Soon, I noticed that the wide-ridged seat on the plastic porch chair made a fine washboard, so I added a step between suds and dunk. Once I wrung each item dry, I draped them on the chair while I dumped the soapy water across the driveway (Scott had suggested wetting the dirt driveway cut down on dust drifting in the windows). Next, I used the kettle to haul the clean clothes to the front yard, hanging them on the clothesline. By evening, the sun’s heat would dry the clothes through.

DISHES: Our kitchen had one shallow sink and minimal counter space. Without a drain plug, I stuffed a washcloth in the drain to fill the sink with soapy water. I stood as far away from the sink as possible, and leaned precariously reaching into the sink. You see, the drain empties into a short pipe that simply runs through the wall then empties into a cement gutter just outside. One day, Scott, Elle and I returned from the market. As always, Big John had gotten out of the car to help carry in our bags. As we swung the flap-flap door open to cart in the bags, Scott stopped short. He pointed to the gutter beside the drain pipe from the kitchen sink. In the cement gutter crawled a shiny, black scorpion, its stinger curled over its back. Its small size allowed it to hide its head in a crack in the foundation beside where the kitchen sink emptied. “We have to kill it!” Scott reasoned. I pictured Scott trying to stomp the scorpion like a bug only to be stung when it jumped onto his exposed ankle.

“No, no, don’t go near it!” I cautioned.

Big John, in the meantime had found a long stick in the brush beside the house. By this time, the scorpion had wiggled almost completely into the cracked foundation. Big John stuffed the stick into the hole, attempting to kill the poisonous crawler. Its evil little body disappeared into the hole directly under where the sink drained.

“Is it dead? Did you kill it?” We asked him.

“I don’t know. To be sure, we should do this.” John completed his rescue by plugging the hole with a walnut-sized rock then retrieving a hammer from his car. He pounded the rock into the hole.

For the moment, the scorpion seemed taken care of, but whenever I approached the sink, I imagined it climbing through that hole straight into the dark corner under the kitchen sink and stinging my unsuspecting feet. So I stood as far away from the sink as possible for those first weeks. I washed each dish on the way into the water. That way, I ended up with a sink full of clean dishes. I pulled out the dishcloth and heard the water falling into the gutter just under the window. When the soapy water was emptied, I turned on the faucet to rinse each dish, turning it off to dry and put away.





One morning, when I was stacking the dishes about to be washed, I turned on the spigot only to hear an ominous hiss. The parched faucet sputtered impotently. Scott lugged our bucket and kettle back and forth to the Polytank, a large cylindrical water reserve tank across the road. I met him on the porch with the dirty dishes, a towel, dish cloth and dish soap. The bucket became my washing sink, the kettle my rinsing sink, a towel spread on the cement porch became the drying rack. Elle was my rinsing girl. She dunked each dish twice then placed them gently on the towel to dry.

At night, Scott did the evening dishes because I cooked. He chose to heat up soapy water on the stove in the big kettle then pile all the dishes in it. “I just can’t see the dishes as clean without hot water. The hot water kills the germs.”

DUST and MOP: I have to give most the credit for mopping to Scott. I swept the floors through the house and mopped with dish soap and water once per week. Within a day, the floor was dusted with a fine layer of sand and dirt. The breeze we encouraged by opening every window brought with it the fine red sand kicked up on the dirt roads surrounding us.  Before mopping one morning, I tidied up, tossing my sandals into the bedroom closet. When I opened the door, a tiny lizard popped out and stared up at me. He was so small, I had to squint to be sure he wasn’t a cockroach. When I leaned toward him, he skittered into the middle of the room. I sprung to action, grabbing a laundry basket in which I planned to trap him. I chased him around the room with the awkward pink basket bouncing against my leg. He slipped under a chair. When I slid the chair away, he looked up at me again before scurrying away and wiggling into a crack in the floorboard.

Scott became uncomfortable quicker than I did when his bare feet smeared the sheets upon climbing in bed. He didn’t complain to me. He simply made time to mop more often. I would say, between the two of us, we mopped the floor at least three times per week even after the Harmaton passed. Sometimes we had one more person helping us mop.

One Saturday morning, a young boy, probably 9 or 10 years old climbed up to our back porch, carrying a long black-handled machete. Scott was on the porch as he peeked his head over the wooden rails. “Hello, Hello?” he called.

“Yes?” Scott answered, opening the gate so the boy could join him on the porch.

“I want money. Can I do a job for money?” He bent down to place his machete by the steps then walked up to Scott.

Scott put out his hand to meet the little entrepreneur. “Wo-fro-e-den?” Scott asked in the Fante he’d picked up.

“Quabenna,” the boy answered, delighted in Scott’s attempt at his own mother tongue.

Scott called in the house for me, asking if we had any jobs the boy could do. I shrugged, conflicted. I really didn’t want to put this child to work. On the other hand, I didn’t want to turn him away empty-handed either. Scott must’ve felt the same way.

“Do you know how to mop?”

Quabenna nodded. As Scott motioned him into the house, he saw the rusted, steel blade of his machete lying on the ground. He reached for the heavy wooden handle, blackened with labor, and set it on top of the porch railing.

“Come look at the floors. How much to sweep and mop all the floors?”

The boy looked at the ceiling for a moment, then at his feet. “40 cedis.”

Scott guffawed, “That’s too much! What do you the money for?”

The boy thought for a moment. “I need money for food, and for a school book.”

“How much does the book cost?”

“5 cedis.” The boy answered.

Admiring the boy’s gumption, Scott made a generous deal. “I’ll give you 10 cedis now. Then when you buy the book, bring it back here to show me, and I will give you 5 more cedis.”

The boy eagerly agreed and began sweeping then mopping each room in the bungalow.

A few days later, Quabenna called from the back porch. “Hello? Hello?” Scott wasn’t home so I answered the door to find him holding up a soft-covered workbook entitled “Christian Morals.” He opened the cover and pointed to a neat cursive signature. “That’s my signature so no one can steal my book.” I read the name. SAMUEL. I assumed his teacher addressed him by his Christian name in school. I optimistically gave him his 5 cedis. He smiled, “I will come back Saturday.”

GROCERY SHOPPING and COOKING: Big John drove Elle and me to the market in Abbra a few times per week to replenish our food supplies. Prepared food and boxed dinners are not an option so I had to buy those foods that were familiar to me until I could find someone to teach me how to use the unfamiliar vegetables, sauces and fruits available. I soon had a standard grocery list. I bought green peppers, red or yellow onions, carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, cabbage and mangoes form a woman named Effui. Her crooked wooden stand was on the outside back corner of the market. I liked Effui immediately because she asked what else I needed, then walked me to stands nearby her own where bananas, roma tomatoes and pineapples were sold. I sensed her trustworthiness as she conversed with each vendor to get me a fair price.

I bought my eggs in the same market, so fresh the shells were dotted with sticky afterbirth, dirt and down feathers. I would walk back to Big John’s taxi and drop off my fruits and veggies, grab the puckered egg carton waiting in the car, and choose a stand near the front of the market. I soon established a standard price of 7 cedis for 30 eggs per week.

Juiceboxes, pasta, Laughing Cow cheese, rice, mayonnaise, mustard and tomato paste were other shopping list standards. For those, Big John drove to several open shops along the road. Chances were I’d stop at at least 3 such stores before I found everything. When Elle became friendly with Big John, I could leave her in the backseat as I quickly ran in and out. Some items on our shopping list were treats. I couldn’t ever depend on finding them but if I did, I’d certainly buy them. Those were shortbread or chocolate chip cookies, canned tuna fish, sliced cheese singles, refrigerated EVEN butter (the only kind that didn’t taste like strait shortening), ramen noodles (which became a culinary celebration due to their familiarity and simplicity) and a chocolate dairy drink that was the closest thing to milk I could find. It held the consistency of 2% milk and I saw the word “crème” on the ingredients list. But the expiration date was one year out and I didn’t always find it refrigerated. I told Big John how much I missed real milk. He said, “Don’t worry. My brother knows a guy with a cow. I will take you there to get fresh, warm milk, nice and thick.” O.K. so I didn’t want real milk. I tried to explain our pasteurized, homogenized, watered-down, refrigerated version of milk I craved, but to no avail. On the way home from the market, we stopped at Goyle, a nearby gas station where I bought bread and water bags.



Who knew fresh eggs should have white yolks



The very first meal I made in Ghana was a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and orange slices. You think you could picture that, right? Wrong. The egg yolks here were white, and the orange peels green. Later I noticed that the longer the eggs sat before I used them, the yellower the yolk became. After a week, the yolks took on a creamy, off-white and yellow hue. I’ve yet to see an egg yolk even close to the dark yellow that we buy in the U.S.. Frankly, based on my hypothesis, I don’t think I’ll eat it if I do.

Green oranges...what the...?

Other favorite meals I concocted were pasta dishes with veggies, tuna melts, grilled cheese sandwiches, homemade coleslaw and vegetable stir-fries with rice and tomato-based sauces. If I wanted to insure a thumbs-up on a meal, I just had to top the dish with Laughing Cow cheese, a soft white triangle that tastes like a combination of Velveeta and cream cheese (I’m hoping I can find it in America).

Having meat with our meals became a specialty as well. I split the broiler chicken I bought with Agnes into two dinners. I de-boned the breasts and thighs for a stir-fry one night then fried the legs and wings the following night. When I tried the same plan with one of the layer chickens, it was inedible. Scott attempted to bite into the flesh on a drumstick and couldn’t even tear it off the bone. He pulled and gnawed with no success. Agnes warned us it would be tough. I decided I must’ve prepared it wrong, and I would need a local girl to show me the proper way. In the meantime, I would only buy broilers.

The farm where I could buy chicken or pork was about a half-mile down the street. Agnes called early one morning, “Molly, I am at the farm. They have broilers today. You should come soon before they run out.” I asked her to request two broilers for me and I would pick them up once we got out of bed. The street on which I walked was a paved one. The cars whizzed by so closely, I could’ve reached out and touched them. With no sidewalks, I had to carry Elle the whole way on my hip. My empty backpack hung off my shoulders.

The butcher had two broilers ready for me when I arrived. On a long shot I asked if he had any pork (the previous few times I asked he informed me, “Next week”). This time, he told me he had ham and chops. I asked for two hams, expecting a familiar round roasting ham. Instead he brought out two mid-sized chunks of white-pink flesh, each under a thick layer of gelatinous fat and rough skin. Course pig hairs poked through the skin. I shrugged my shoulders, “Do I boil it?” I asked the man.

He laughed at my cluelessness, “You can boil it. Or you can cook it like a chicken.” I shrugged and he wrapped them up for me. I could figure it out, right? I loaded the two chickens and two slabs of ham into my backpack and started our walk home. Carrying 15 pounds of meat on my back and Elle on my hip, I walked the half-mile home in 95 degree heat. It wasn’t funny, but I had to laugh out loud as I heaved my load home and Elle asked, “Mommy, will you sing McDonald for me.”

So I sang and I walked and I sweat, “Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm, he had a…” I paused for Elle to fill in her animal of choice, as was customary.

“A LIZARD!” she yelled excitedly.

Giggling and panting between each syllable, I continued, “He had a lizard. E-I-E-I-O. With a …” I stuck my tongue in and out, making a slurping sound, “slurp slurp here and a slurp, slurp there…” The melody served as motivation for each foot to move forward until we turned onto our sandy road and I could set Elle down to walk the last half-block home.

Elle drinking her water sachet

FILL WATER BOTTLES: We had saved our water bottles each time we ate at Sassakawa restaurant during the first three days of comped meals. We knew it would become quite an expense to continue buying bottles of water after our free meal plan ran out. Once it did, we began buying large bags of water. Each bag contained 30 half-liter sachets of water. We could drink a sachet of water by biting a hole in the corner of it then sucking the water out of the pouch.

We could also empty the pouches into large water bottles. We kept some in the fridge and stored the rest beside the small ice box, replacing them one by one until all the stored bottles were empty again. It took three small pouches to fill one large water bottle. With a bag of 30 pouches costing under 2 cedis, we could fill ten large water bottles, which would have cost over 2 cedis a piece. If we refilled the bottles every few days, we’d save hundreds of dollars. Scott and I filled the first batch. After that, Scott delegated the chore to Dakota. He delightedly discovered that the empty sachets could be blown up and popped like a balloon. When we heard loud gunshot-like bangs echoing from the kitchen, we knew Dakota was completing his household chore.

BATHING: I soon found that the morning sun heated the kitchen faucet’s exposed pipe so the water flowed hot by late morning. This became Elle’s bath time every second or third…or fourth day. I could fill one large kettle with the hot water straight from the tap in the kitchen then empty it in the bathtub. The bathtub faucet’s cool water could be combined with the solar-heated water to make a lukewarm bath for Elle. I gaged which parts of her body were the cleanest and washed those first, saving her blackened feet and ankles for last.

By 5 o’clock, Scott returned from work and Dakota from school. Scott would tell me how his classes went. At first he was discouraged and frustrated. The students didn’t seem to understand him but they wouldn’t ask questions. They would talk amongst themselves as he lectured, and when he attempted to lead a class discussion, the students disrupted each other with raucous laughter.  I felt honored when he asked for my advice. I thought of how I handled my incoming seventh-graders each school year back in the United States. I reminded him that it wasn’t personal. The students here weren’t used to his style of teaching yet. I asked if he could observe some other classes to get a feel for what the students were used to. I suggested he use some roleplaying with the students to model his classroom behavior expectations. He could also write his key lecture points on the white board to help students follow along despite his difficult American accent. Scott called a colleague and friend in America to get more advice. Talk slower, distribute an outline of his lecture, start with fewer class discussions and work them in more as they became more comfortable with them. Within a week of applying the suggestions, he became more positive about his classes, and shared stories about what the students discussed with him each day.

Dakota in his University Practice Secondary School uniform

Dakota’s return from school was always unpredictable. Some days he would begin chattering before he was through the door. He described the funny or odd things teachers said about reproductive health or marriage, “The teacher told the boys that when we get married, we need to let our mother-in-law know immediately that she isn’t the boss, ‘When you go in the car and your wife’s mother tries to sit in the front seat, you say no and tell her to sit in the back so your wife can sit in the front!’” He told us about bizarre films they watched, in which homosexuals were shown holding hands, or American rock musicians were pictured pumping their fists, holding up a pinky and forefinger, “The teacher said it was the sign of the devil and to beware of satanic worshippers and homosexuals.” Or he told us about friendly propositions he had received, “This one boy said, ‘You will meet me here in the morning to tell me your favorite bible verse.” He also shared interesting discipline techniques, “This one boy laughed while the teacher was speaking so she called him in front of the class and smacked him as hard as she could on the back three times while the rest of the class laughed at him.” Or he smirked, “I want to buy this girl Esi a bracelet.”

Other days, Dakota avoided us completely by entering the door closest to his bedroom. He strode strait to his room and slammed the door. He was frustrated and angry. He wanted to go home. “These teachers don’t know how to teach. They teach some things wrong. I can’t understand their English. Sometimes they don’t even show up and we just sit in class talking for an hour while another student tries to teach the subject. I don’t understand their goal in this school. I’m gonna fail because they expect me to know everything from first semester. I’m sick of everyone calling me ‘Obruni’ and ‘white man’. I have a name!”

Needless to say, we all had some adapting to do, and we all had our ups and downs. We had our good days and bad days. On good days, I enjoyed my family’s closeness and felt proud of our adventurous teamwork. On bad days I tearfully second-guessed myself and apologized to Cody for bringing him here. With each passing day, we were bound to adjust. I was sure the good days would soon easily outweigh the bad. The everyday routines I’d established had already made me feel more at home here. I predicted that now we could venture out into the community. We’d each find some kind of niche in which we fit and begin enjoying, maybe even loving our lives here.