Last time I asked you what you would like to see. This blogpost contains your requests and some more pictures of my life in Bolgatanga. I also have some photo’s of the food here, but I have to warn you: some are not that appetizing.

It has been a while since I wrote a blogpost. Now Rob is with me and we started travelling, I really have to find the time to edit my pictures and write a blog. I did not finished the pictures of our travels together in Ghana, but the next post I will show you where we have been and what we have seen. Tonight we will fly to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and we are planning to spent 6 weeks in Tanzania, Zanzibar and Malawi.

Requests

For Behrooz: The market/bazaar

For Behrooz: A group activity: A football match & a training given by the NGO I worked with

For Behrooz and Miranda: At the market in Bolgatanga they sold fetishes, used by the local medicinman!

For Eline: The office and the ‘desk’  I worked at. I worked in the library, so there are a lot of vacant chairs, which were occasionally used for meetings and most people had lunch here.

For Eline: Schools and students in their uniforms

For Eline: The house I lived in with my Host Family. On the first photo you see the entrance of the compound.  Then you see the yard of our neighbour, which you enter when you go through the entrance. The wall you look at, is the wall of my room. My room is actually a seperate building. After their yard, you enter our yard, the third picture. There are four buildings: one room where I slept, a room where grandma and the two oldest children sleep, a room where father, mother and the youngest child sleeps and where there is a television (but no couches or something to sit on, we just sat on the floor), and a building that functioned as a garage/store. Then there is a small hall with the kitchen on it and the shower AKA place to urinate at the end (4th picture). On the 5th picture you see the kitchen and on the 6th the view from the front door.

For Sascha: some birds. More will follow in the blog about our travels in Ghana, because we have seen more birds. Near my house, there were primarly birds held as stock.

For Nicole: Games the children play. There are not a lot of real games or toys, like we know in Holland. A lot of children play with things they find around the house, for example a plastic bag and a stick can function as air guitar, microphone, sword and walking stick. Some kind of blue rubbish can function as a toy and an old videotape is fun to just drag behind you. And one of the favourite games is to play with the ‘ Solemio’ (me). The older children have to do a lot of chores in the house, for example preparing the fruit. An other favourite activity is dancing!

Food

Some food is very nice, other ones I would rather skip. In this pictures you see: Banku with hot pepper soup, Rice balls made from local rice with groundnut soup, my mom stirring the TZ (very dificult!) Rob eating TZ sith a soup made from Bitto leaves and groundnut and Paw Paw, fresh from the tree in our garden.

One of the food that doesn’t look so appealing: an animal my father catched at the market, killed himself and prepared. They said it was not a rat, but I forgot what it was again. Everybody was very happy with the meat, but I just told them I will leave it for them.

People

In the following photo’s you see:

• The ‘ John Mahama can do’: a motortricycle used to transport people. John Mahama was the president and for some reason this tricycle is named after him
• Selling shoes at the home: once in a while someone comes in with goods carried on their head, and sells this from home to home
• Rob at my host family!
• Buildings at the market
• Goats waiting to be transported with the bus

Then I will end with some more of the beautiful people of Bolgatanga

It's only fair to share...