Firstly....a quick apology for being so pokey at posting....this entire last week, the internet in all of Ho has been either painfully slow or out completely.

Secondly, some news about the library!

We have bought all the supplies we need (apparently with the exception of one lock) and the wide assortment of local carpenters, electricians, masons and steelbenders are all hard at work to complete the project.

This past week, the carpenters finished all of the tables and shelves. This took them two days of work. (The carpenters work by communal labour...they donate their time for free but can only do so when they can all give up a day from their jobs. Ghanaians like to work by consensus so everyone has to help out.) To the carpenters reading this, two days to build all this furniture may not seem like an overly impressive feat...but people should know that they have no electric tools....or air compressors...or anything else that would speed things along. The boards are not even cut to the appropriate size, only the width. They must be sawed down the entire length of them, measuring all the while. They also have to be made smooth, they were all ruff. This is done mostly with some kind of hand blade that makes shaving over the board and makes it smooth....this works the same way one shaves their legs. They also go over everything with sandpaper after that, to get whatever the shaver-sliverer thing didn't. Its incredibly slow and tedious and amazing to watch them create something so beautiful out of such rough materials.

Its not like Canadian carpenters like my dad have it easy....but the shape that even your basic materials come in and access to certain tools definitely make the job easier.

The masons and the steelbenders have a short job, unlike the ongoing work of the carpenters. They are needed to cement the iron bars into the windows. After that is finished, the carpenters will install the glass slates....they are like gigantic glass venetian blinds. This is a popular way for windows to work here.

The electrician is also working this week. He and his apprentices are coming from the neighbouring village so their work isn't being done communally. This is a lot more costly, but he has a good reputation in Nyive and does all the work for the Nyive Development Association. This will give us the lights, the fans and the electrical sockets that we need to use the library (especially for the computers). Computers are a vital part of the library since no one in the village can really afford one. Also, the high schools make it mandatory that students need to know how to use a computer in order to go to highschool and its even becoming part of the curriculum. If there are no computers, there will be no highschool education.

Speaking of computers, we have our donated laptop all up and running properly now. I'm typing this post from it in fact. I want into the computer store across from my hotel room which I had been eyeballing a few weeks ago. I went in and found a lovely man named Martin who took the computer, fixed everything that could possibly have been awry with it (the drivers were all screwed up when it was bought) and then installed about $200 worth of software on it (including Office 2007, Adobe, a program to teach typing, burning software and antivirus software. All of it awesome!!!!), pretty much for free. Because I badgered him into giving me a price, it cost us a toal of 20 cedis (about 15$) for the work. I came back an hour later, the computer was runing magnificently, and I got away without giving my number to his colleagues who wanted to take us drinking and dancing (the most forward proposal we've received yet...) We also bought some software based on the Ghana Education Service science syllabus. Computer wise, it was an awesome day.

Oh yeah...I should mention....we're in Accra again. We randomly decided to come and try once more to gt things done this week....and then last night, randomly bumped it up again. We got up at 5:30 this morning so that we could be in Accra nice and early. Its been a good days work. Its also been relaxing to be able to do something and to have it go our way...in an easy matter....without the dustiness of crowded Nyive trotro twice a day.

On our way out to dinner, we also managed to find a place we'd missed in our last visit-Gladys'. Gladys' is like the Body Shop, but actually all natural and also Fair Trade. It was small but full of some wonderful things. Even the prices were more reasonable than the Body Shop....Fair Trade is a lot cheaper without having to pay shipping and customs. Among other things, I bought a large tub of 100% shea butter. Its difficult to find 100% in Canada...and when it is there, its expensive. What might have easily cost 60-100$ in Canada, cost me a lot less. I think because I bought in bulk.

Dinner was supposed to be an Indonesian restaurant called Banana Leafz (we were foiled at this in our last trip to Accra) only to be foiled AGAIN! By a change of owners! Who are not selling Indonesian food...and don't actually open until tomorrow. Then we tried for Vietnamese up the street...also strangely closed. We went for the most delicious lebanese food (with the exception of Joe's shwarma, which I miss with a tahini based passion!).

There is no other food on earth that is more unlike Ghanaian food than Lebanese food. Every true Ghanaian meal consists of a boiled-and-pounded-no-need-to-chew-steaming-mass-of-carbohydrates, which is used to scoop up a tomato based stew (or if you're /un/lucky, okra), that has something dead in it. Not the meat of a dead thing....A hunk of bone with lots of gristle and a touch of stringey flesh....or intestines with the consistency of , I kid you not, Eric's/Kira's hedgehog. I wondered about the meat for a few weeks...until I got questioned as to why I wasn't ever eating my bones. This food is, especially the tomato stew, is delicious on every possible level! But Lebanese foof seems just so entirely different....the meat has no bones, even the skewer is gone. The eat it with pita, which if you didn't know, is not boiled and the tomatoes are entirely optional. I have also never seen okra shwarma.

I could describe more....but really, experience is better. Outside our hotel was akid selling his art on the street. I think he was the brother of the artist I met last visit to Accra. I recognised some of his paintings from her stand. I caved and bought a second painting. They are really beautiful.

For the rest of our trip to Accra, we plan to be buying books, both from the University of Legon (to those faithful readers, you will remember that our last attempts were soundly foiled by some misplaced and unwanted weekend) and the rest of the week will be spent in Cape Coast...also buying books.

Anyhow....I'm going to get on with some neverending computer/internet related busyness now.

Hope all is well with everyone!

-The Jessicat