Floods, Vacation, and A Road Block

The past two weeks have brought a new unique challenge in our lives. A road block. Literally!!
                            

Haiti has been having a lot of unrest and missionaries have been evacuated. I don't know what their road blocks are like but I think I would rather deal with our minor one! The road block is in Abbina. Abbina is where the shop is. Abbina is where the church is. As a matter of fact, almost every time we go anywhere, we drive through Abbina because it is the village between us and the hard top road.
 In the dry season we go straight and pass by the edge of Abbina. In the rainy season, the mud holes get huge! I tried it one time and basically sank into a puddle, in the middle of a puddle, almost up to the axle. Thankfully the back tires were on more solid ground and I could back out. So when  it is rainy season, everyone takes the other road that by passes the big mud holes and goes through the center of the village. One spot it is very narrow and there is a water pipe that goes under the road. They don't bury their water pipes very deep and one place it was on the surface of the road. All the extra traffic broke it. They fixed it, but it got broken again.

  So in protest to their bad roads, they blocked the road going throught their village. After heavy rains recently the road with the mud holes is impossible. They made sure to block any other trails you might hope to fit a car through. So, no cars can pass that way.
  So instead of ten minutes to the shop and church, we can either drive 20 minutes on rough dirt roads and then ten on hard top. Or we can walk 25 minutes. I am starting to feel a bit house bound. It isn't uncommon for us to run over to the shop twice a week or so, so I can use WiFi and to visit Daddy. But when it takes a good half hour, you think twice before going anywhere!
  But as I said before, I will take our little annoyance over what the people in Haiti are going through!

One night I woke up to a thunderstorm at 1:45. The rest of the night hours were spent waking up frequently as one thunderstorm after the other rolled through. The children crawled into our bed several times!

  In the morning, Mama Ese's son called Kenny and said because of the flooding she can' t come. We had already got word that the church had 6 inches of water in, so we weren't surprised. The town of Abbina lays very low. They had water at least three feet deep flowing through the village several places. Kenny's shop sits high enough that although there was water near it, none came inside. Our neighbors house is built out of mud but the outside is smeared with concrete and painted. However, this rain was just too much and two of the walls fell out.

  The river was very high again!

The school had a two week break. Kenny spent the first several days doing shop work. Things never take a break from needing to be fixed! We had planned on travelling over the weekend and I was so glad we had. It was the only way to get a break from the phone calls of people needing things fixed! We left Friday morning and made a few stops in Accra. Then we went to Tema to see the port.

Kenny was amazed at how modern and new everything looked! We drove around a bit in the area. We found a fish town. Next to it were big warehouses and fish packing plants.

But they still dried their fish the old fashion way. Good old sunshine!!

These are full of cocoa beans! Possibly headed to become  Hershey's chocolate since we saw a Cargill sign there. I got just a whiff of cocoa!
  From there we headed north into the mountains. Saturday we toured Akosombo Dam. Most of Ghana's electric comes from there.

The actual dam. A company from America headed  the project with money coming in from several different countries to fund it.

They have 6 turbines.

The Volta Lake is the biggest man made lake in the World if  you measure just surface area. It was beautiful! They don't allow people to live along the shores to keep the water clean. I had never seen clear water like that in Ghana before!

Then we made our way over to Boti Falls. Down 250 steps to such a beautiful falls!

The only thing I didn't care for was how commercialized it was. You had to have a guide with you at all times. But at least then you can easily get a picture with the whole family on!

We bought a cocoa pod. That was a first for us. She told us to suck it like toffee. Once I got over the odd texture, the flavour was good! A little like watermelon Jolly Ranchers or something!

This was the children's favorite part of the trip! We managed to find a hotel that was a shadow of the beautiful place it used to be. That means not too expensive prices........ and a still, a swimming pool!

Sunday we went to Aburi Gardens.

These tall palms lined all the roads in the park. So beautiful! When the British ruled Ghana, this was the officers weekend retreat. Definetly not what it once was, but still had many interesting plants.

Such  as this tree that is actually a vine that choked out the original tree.

Looking up the inside of the tree.

An old helicopter. Possibly from WWII.

Monday we did some shopping in Accra and then were all happy to be home again late afternoon.

One of the things I did for Kenny recently was put together this invitation for graduation. Let me know if you plan to attend :)

I also did some cleaning at the shop. I had never looked at their First Aide kit and was almost embarrassed that we had a collection like this for this term! Almost everything is outdated and dirty. Kenny told me to do what I need to do, but have it better stocked! I need to make a trip to the pharmacy this weekend!

Our creek is back down to almost normal levels. The sun shines bright and hot most days. I can already feel hot season around the corner! Kenny has just five more weeks of school. They really needed this break and students and teachers came back ready to dig in again! He is in the process of interviewing two different Ghanaian men for a possible helper for next year. One helped two days this week and did a super job. Kenny is really excited about him! The other is coming two days next week and then he needs to decide what he wants to do. 

The rest of us are finding a routine again at home. Kelsey is counting down school days too since we plan to take the month of December and possibly half of January off. We are getting company and the schools in Ghana take a three week break for Christmas. Life is busy but full of rich experiences! With the holidays fast approaching I will admit it is easy to be a bit homesick. We plan to have an American celebration for Thanksgiving the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Have you ever realized how all American that holiday is? I never really gave it a thought before! With company coming in December and January, it really helps the homesickness. We might not see all our family and friends but at least we get to see a few!