Thanksgiving

In the morning I slept in until 7am, rather than my usual 6. Worked at home until about 11, then headed out with Sammy for some holiday shopping. Wild Gecko was an easy stop for shopping.



Around 3 in the afternoon, headed out to Goi, a small fishing village about an hour east of Accra. I wanted to deliver photos I'd taken on a previous trip, and to see if the birds from Europe had arrived.



Jacob (right) was waiting when we arrived, with a big smile, happy to receive a copy of his pictures. He accompanied us in the car for a short drive out to the salt ponds.



The surface of each little pond is covered with about an inch of salt water. Underneath, the mud is fine and squishy, a few inches deep, on top of a harder supporting layer. When harvested, each large sack of sea salt fetches about $3.



On the return to Accra, we sat on the rooftop terrace of Southern Fried Chicken in Tema, with a fine view of the Tema roundabout and motorway traffic below. Moses (center) was particularly impressed. "In my village in the North, this would serve six people," he said, holding up a rather large chicken breast. "This is just like Christmas. In my village, we eat chicken and rice on Christmas Day, and then we don't eat chicken and rice again like that until the next Christmas."



Happy Thanksgiving.

Spare Parts

An advantage of a Toyota Rav4 is that there are many of them in Ghana. Many cars means more spare parts. This one braces the rear differential to the chassis, if you know what I mean.



The hardest part was figuring out what to call it. If you don't know what it's called, you can't order one. My mechanic sent one of his workmen into the central market -- there's a section just for used and new car parts. Still, this particular part proved particularly difficult to find. Took several days. I was offered a used one for $150. My mechanic finally found a new one for $80.



Having a driver means I hear about all this by cell phone. Samuel stays with the car and reports on progress.