Moving Out, Moving In

Here it is: the post with the photos, the befores and afters, the boxes and dust bunnies.  Compare!


St Michael's Terrace: Before and After.

 The bedroom.

much, much move-out recycling.

Packing up the kitchen!

Packing up the living room. 

Just about the only place in the house where we weren't in the movers' way was between the boxes and the front door.

There it is, all our stuff, ready for storage and then shipment!

a five-page list of our belongings

empty kitchen

 bare, bare bedroom.

Seeing it makes me a bit nostalgic.  It's sinking in: "Hey, wait a minute, I'm going to be waking up to palm trees out the window for the foreseeable future.  This is the HOME I'll come back to... not Dublin.  And it's bitter.  

Moving in!  Oshie Link, before and after!

Jens and Aimee at our locally-bought dining table.

Our container arrives and is opened!

Jens accompanies the movers to the correct floor... as they carry everything on their heads

The guest room/study-to-be

Kitchen chaos!

The finished product, ladies and gentlemen:

Dining area.

Living area with view to the balcony.

Doors to three bedrooms.

THAT'S what a kitchen should look like.

View from the balcony you saw above - the ocean, and the master bedroom's balcony.

Master bedroom.

The study - okay, so it's not totally finished yet.  We didn't bring any bookshelves from Dublin!

Hakuna Ma-Cliché

Jens is off to Tanzania for conferences/workshops.  I'll be following him on Friday, arriving Saturday at 1:45 am, so we can have a weekend to explore Dar and probably a couple of areas nearby on the weekend, then I'll take a scuba course right at our hotel while he wraps up the conferences during the next week.  Finally, on Thursday we take a ferry to Zanzibar for four days of cool sunshine, beaches, spices and World Heritage Sites.  Time to brush up my Swahili- who can help me with a few phrases?  I remember how to count from one to ten and how to say slow (pole pole) and fast (haraka haraka).  Plus "I want" - mimi nataka - and thank you, asante sana!  Cool, too, that the Swahili word for water, maji, is so close to Hebrew, mayim.

I was giving some travel recommendations to a person on Yelp who's visiting Ireland and started to miss it; the fresh-smelling air, the recycling systems, the drinkable tap water and my friend's lovely baby, who's now 19 months old and starting to talk and I'm missing her development!  Though I'm sure Tanzania will be fun, I don't anticipate it being such a huge change from Ghana; traffic, hassling by locals, warm weather, and I think beach holidays are gonna get old pretty soon.  At least in Dublin you could fly cheaply all over Europe.  Flying in Africa, it ain't cheap by any means.  A plus side is that good Indian and Ethiopian food are available in Dar -- though I suppose they are available in Accra as well, just here there's only really one option for each.

Tomorrow I'm giving a women's health training to a local ladies' community.  A CEPEHRG colleague is coming over when she's finished with today's counseling so we can prepare practically everything at the last minute.  Such is life in Africa 96 percent of the time.  The other four percent is arriving unprepared and announcing plans have changed!  Meanwhile, I continue to study the scuba e-learning course, taken at home to avoid classroom time at the dive site.  All I'll have to do once I get to the hotel is a couple of pool "dives" and some instructed dives in the ocean and then I'll be able to head out with Jens any time I want!  He took his course in 2007.

On our way back from Zanzibar we're spending a night in Addis to avoid some crazy layover time and/or a middle-of-the-night flight, to eat some real Ethiopian food and to restock on fabulous coffee.  That's exciting.  I do believe the first thing I'll do in the airport is ask for a sprees (layered multiple fruit juice drink).  We're meeting some of Jens's friends who are either still there or have gone back since he lived there.  All this fun means I have to work hard this week to earn it!  That, and use the spa gift certificate Jens gave me for my birthday as it expires just a month after being issued.  I'm sure the scuba instructors will thoroughly appreciate my mani/pedi when I jump into wetsuit and fins.

Sprees in Bole airport, Addis.  Pineapple, guava, mango, avocado, orange, a lime to squeeze on top... Bliss!

Next post: the batik saga.... cross your fingers it'll be over by the time I post the story.

Accra signage...

In a taxi. Just saw a car with an ad for the no-longer-operating Afriqiyah Airways which had the first two A's removed, leaving FRIQIY Hairways. Intentional or not, I laughed.

Just back from immigration to collect the residence extension in my passport. It wasn't ready yet on the expected due date, to the extent that the employee asked me, "why are you here today?" On the form they gave me, the officer wrote the initial of my first name and my full middle name.  When they called out my middle name, I had no idea they were asking for me until the penny finally dropped on about the fourth repetition.

Got an emergency appointment with the recommended dentist for this afternoon. Bad stuff started happening last night and I'm looking forward to seeing this guy, who's been recommended by friends, guide books and my own embassy. Enough of trying the locals- sometimes you just have to go to the Lebanese.

Taxi driver just said to me, "I want to pass here to swerve the traffic." The things these guys do with the language never cease to amuse!

posted from Bloggeroid

eh?

After two months, I can understand about 2/3 of what people are saying the first time around.  One thing that always gets me, though, is one specific sound, found in all the following sentences.  See if you can figure out what these Ghanaians were saying as I misheard them.


"Is it wecking?"

"Did you have a good Jenny?"

"Don't forget your pess."

"Are you het?"

"It is benning."


Got it yet?



No?


Here are a few hints to make it easier...

"What on eth is happening?"

"It will be ready on Thezzday."



Any thoughts?  Any notions of what these words are supposed to be?

And just who is Jenny, anyway?



Give up?



My friends, it's the "er" sound.

As in...

Is it working?
Did you have a good journey?
Don't forget your purse.
Are you hurt?
It is burning.

And so forth!


I still have a long way to go before I understand people here the way long-termers do.

heeeey, blogger's back!

After a long and eventful two days in which I couldn't post anything but wanted to so much, it's finally available again!

Thursday night I went to the hospital!  A Sprite bottle shattered and a shard hit my foot; I wanted a doctor to tell me if I needed stitches.  (Didn't.)  On the plus side, I got registered with the hospital, then examined and disinfected and bandaged up properly.  It's quite minor and will probably be gone within the week; it's already closing up quite well.  But it did hurt!

Last night we had a really fantastic party.  There was friends, food, music, drinks, dancing, chatting, smiles all round, and everyone LOVES the house.  It's hard not to!  We met the neighbors, too, and overall had a really good time.  I've also now promised to invite people over for breakfast some time to make the best use of our coffee machine.  Louisa started this idea of having people over for breakfast, and it's great.  A low-key Sunday brekkie.  Maybe in a few weeks.  Cappuccinos and huevos rancheros!

For now, I got a lovely African rainstorm around 10:30 which sounds like it's winding up now.  A fresh clean start for a fresh year of life!  AND, the Eurovision finals are being streamed in the expat-oriented sports bar tonight.  What a fabulous birthday I'm having!

Many Fixes

Teeth still bad; switching dentists.  Trish knows a North-American-priced guy who is great.

A/C in the kitchen is working again.  We (almost) have our satellite TV subscription; apparently we're short 44 US cents.  God knows how that happened.

They also say they've fixed the water pump, so we shouldn't be needing them to come and refill the roof tanks for hours at a time every few days any more.

I've ridden my bike a couple times; to the supermarket, the dentist and work.  If you don't think too hard about how crazy the drivers are, biking in daylight is okay.  Still petrified of night biking, so getting to German and back is confined to taxis.  Maybe next week...

We've got a housekeeper, which is a huge weight off my shoulders.  Sadly, on her duty my glass mezuzzah holder fell to the floor and broke (on the same day I wanted to hang it up, no less); Mom's sending a new one along to Jens's colleague currently in the States to bring back with her.

All plans are GO for the party Friday!  We need to start making all the snacks and refrigerating the beers now or we'll never have everything ready.  Looks like lots of people are going to show up.  I'm excited!

So, it's been too long.  And rather than catching up with huge amounts, I will mostly pretend that the gap didn't happen, so it's not likely to happen again.

Our shipment was delivered on Thursday.  We spent the weekend unpacking; it feels a lot more like home and we just need to hang the paintings, get some bookshelves made, and find places for a few last things.  Almost everything survived intact; the glass on our coffee table shattered and then the new bed slats survived the trip but broke when Jens was testing them out in the new bed.

I'm having a birthday bash on Friday which looks to be fun.  We're stocking up and getting ready to go.  We have curtains in our bedroom!  They don't match the (pink) walls, as they are blue and cream, but we're happier with the curtains than with the walls.  Maybe some day we'll paint the walls.

I wanted to hang some art tonight, but we discovered that every wall is built of cement.  We'll have to get some kind of special nails and hooks to hold our stuff on the walls, and I don't know if that will happen before Friday.  Still, the furniture and rugs being here makes it look great.

It's started to rain every 3-4 days; rainy season is upon us!

Stuff!

Our shipment has finally been cleared from customs, and it's coming in at 10 tomorrow!

Computer's still in the shop so this is a short update from my phone.

LL apologized for the water outages; jens was right, the pump was messed up when all the electrical stuff was submerged. Specifically, the wires & equipment for our floor were totally underwater so they'll need to take our power out for a full day to replace and fix everything.

Someone moved into the apartment below us! The whole building's full now. The new neighbors have a young daughter named either Missy or, more probably, Mercy.

That's all for now.

posted from Bloggeroid

Coming together; falling apart

We have a dining room table!  We found and bought it yesterday.  It's a big oval which seats six amply, eight okay, and Jens believes it can squeeze ten!  Word from the agent regarding our shipment, too: Wednesday evening is when it's expected to be available.  We assume that means Thursday morning.  The curtains will be ready next Friday.  Can you imagine, after 6 weeks of having nearly nothing, our house will come together at the end of the week!  Keep your fingers crossed against any last-minute catastrophes or issues.

I took my computer in to get the screen looked at; they told me I need a new inverter but tightened the connection (it worked for about 3 minutes) and gave it back to me for the long weekend.  I'll give it back Tuesday and hope they can get it done on the same day.

LL is on holidays until the 3rd, and in that time the building has suffered.  We had two big rainstorms over the week, and water got under the foundation to the power wires.  The electrician came and got power back the next morning, but forgot to deal with the room where the internet equipment is stored.  The water went out yet again this morning, so Jens has a very plausible theory that the electrician brought power back to the apartments only - no internet and also no water pump to get the water into our storage tank on top of the building.  During the first rainstorm we discovered that one side of the house really isn't sealed against rain; we got a huge inch-deep puddle inside the kitchen balcony door, and Aimee's room flooded from her windows on the same-facing wall.  No water, no power and no internet - all because "Madame isn't here."  Madame, a.k.a. the landlady, man, she makes stuff happen.  She is pretty badass about that!  She left us a list of phone numbers for plumbers, electricians, technicians - but not all the ones we need.  We still need the door and screen specialist to come fix a screen that came off its tracks and seal one of the screens in a window hole that's too big for it.  And one of the drawers in our wardrobe is broken, too.  And the A/C unit in the kitchen trips the fuse every time we turn it on.  Aaaaaand so on.


I shouldn't complain too much.  We're in a self-proclaimed "luxury" apartment, for goodness' sake.  We have air conditioning apart from one area of the house.  We live and get along well with our chill roommate and I have a very cool friend who lives right in the neighborhood.  Also in German class we have a native-speaker intern who I get to chat with; she's patient and friendly and studied linguistics too.  Aimee and I talked to the seamstresses who have a shop at the end of our block and found some dress designs we like; we got some batik fabrics the same day which we're gonna have made into cool dresses.  Jens just surprised me today by showing me our new ice cream maker!  We need some kind of thickener to make ice cream, but could do sorbets already with juice and fruit.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Finally, the choir performance went pretty darn well.  I was so happy to be singing in front of a crowd.  We are hoping to do another show before summertime, when many people get out of town so the choir doesn't practice.

I was committed to blogging a bunch of pictures this weekend, but the main internet is out.  I'm using a dongle a.k.a. internet stick from one of the phone companies now, which has a much lower limit for the amount of data it can transfer.  Also, it gets tiring typing with one hand while the other one presses the "pressure point" on the screen so that the middle of the screen actually shows an image, not white blankness.

My visa is for a year but you need to get your permission to stay every two months; my time's up two Saturdays from now and I'm not sure if I should risk getting tied up in red tape at the immigration office or just take a day trip to Togo and back, and get my new stamp at the border.  It's a shame, in a way; Jens and I are headed to Tanzania two weeks too late but I don't want to know what happens at the passport inspection on the way out of the country if they see an expired stamp.  Ireland I'd risk, Ghana not.  A friend told me to let her know if I run into trouble at the immigration office.  She "has someone there, but he's expensive."  Oh, Africa.