I’ve been so busy lately that my list of things to do has reached 2 pages. Remember accomplishing one thing a day is a success here so it’ll take a while to get it back down. Definitely not complaining however, it’s been great. The rubbish bins will be installed July 16th, out constitution is finally completely complete, and they said the basketball court proposal should be filed in like a week.
We ended June with 52 guests and over a 42 day stretch had 75 guests. We had 8 in January and February combined. This is the peak of summer volunteers but even the weavers have said this has been a great summer. Bright was down to 6 strips left to sell last week, that’s a good thing.
A group of students from Ohio State was in Ho and their supervisors wanted Julie to talk to them about PC. Julie didn’t want to do it alone and knows I love a reason to go to Ho so had me come too. They bought us dinner, a beer, and then we talked and answered questions for like an hour. After basically talking about how much we love our lives they handed us an envelope for coming. They gave us each 30 cedi which is like 5 days pay for us! Be great if it ended there but 2 days later they called me back via my business cards that other PCVs tease me about (they work though, instant Big Man status if you have them). “Can you bring like a lot of kente to sell to us?” Is the Pope Catholic? Julie brought the necklaces she sells and I brought an entire “Ghana Gucci” (cheap bag the size of a suitcase) full of kente. Kente sales alone were over 200 cedi. The weavers were so happy when I came back that night; they took me out for a beer and then bought me pasta, tomatoes, and onions because they know that I love to make pasta. That they trusted me enough to take basically their entire inventories/savings meant a lot to me. As I was finishing up packing up each weaver’s best stuff a van of 10 tourists pulled up so we had to hang everything back up and ended up having to redo the inventory too, the gusy thought that was really funny.
My buddy Benchy from back home sent me a Chelsea package including a scarf, real replica Essien (Ghana’s best player) jersey and a tote bag. People shouldn’t spend money on me, wait until the basketball court gets approved and give to that if you have to, but I’ll admit this package was the talk of Kpetoe. No one has ever seen a jersey of that quality, like the letters stay on after you wash it! So many people felt its quality. It was Republic Day and Mukaila had come over to tell me they needed a program made up for the presentation that started in an hour (we got them made up just in time) when he saw the stuff. Mukaila, like 98% of Ghanaians, LOVES Chelsea so I wanted to give him something. He sure as heck wasn’t getting the jersey or scarf though so I parted with the Chelsea tote bag. I should have had my camera at the presentation; there in the middle of the front table was the District Chief Executive and District Director in suits and Mukaila in shirt, tie, and Chelsea tote bag.