An appropriate Halloween?

I went away with friends over Halloween. We left Thursday and returned on Saturday. We went to a place called Big Milly’s Backyard (check it out online: www.bigmilly.com). Let me start by saying that I had a good time. Despite all that will follow, it was relaxing, I enjoyed the people I was with, we ate some good food, I read two books, did some shopping (some for gifts, some for me).

We arrived on Thursday, had a drink at the bar while our room was finishing being cleaned. I wanted a beverage with fruit juices in it since the bar bills itself as the “first juice bar in Ghana”. They only had orange juice, so I had something else. We took a walk on the beach before dinner, took photos of more fishing boats (similar to the ones I have already posted). I am routinely amazed by them – usually no sails, no engines, no oars, etc. They use ropes and simple manpower to pull them in and out of the sea.

Anyway, back to the Halloween story. Thursday and Friday we witnessed several almost-fistfights. Friday we ran out of water in our bungalow in the middle of the afternoon (I think I am the cause of the water problem, somehow. We have not had water on campus for a week). Friday morning Leslie was offered marijuana when she walked out onto the beach (big Rasta community at Kokrobite). Friday afternoon a dead body washed up on the beach. It took the police nine (that’s right: 9) hours to come to collect it. Friday evening, our dinner table was visited by a black cat, and the promised entertainment was a no show.

So I got to see my first non-funeral dead body. Part of me wonders why I went to look. Did I doubt that what people were saying was true? Was it some form of morbid curiosity, like the way people rubber neck near accidents on the highway? I don’t know. I did not get close at all, but the smell was pungent. Thankfully, our table near the bar at Big Milly’s had a great breeze, sufficient shade to appease my general skin-cancer phobia, and was close to beverages should the need have arrived. Big Milly’s also features a small book swap or borrowing library, which is where the two fluffy romance novels I read came from.

I definitely plan to return to Big Milly’s during my year here. I have family visiting in December, if they are not scared off by my experience, maybe they will join me.


The outside of where we stayed, the Sahara Suite.

Leslie and Linda at "our table" at Big Milly's

Last word on water for a while (I promise). I dreamt last night of a bath. I wondered if the Embassy has showers in the weight room I have heard about. I thought about using sachets of water for a bath since I did not have sufficient reserves for anything other than washing a couple of plates and flushing the toilet. [Sachets of water are square plastic bags of purified water that everyone here drinks – no one drinks the tap water. They are sold on the street for 5 pesewas each, approximately 5 cents. They are sold in large bags of 30 sachets each for home consumption.] I have a stash of several bags-of-bagged-water and was planning on using that except the water came on for half an hour this morning before I went to class! Well, it might have been on longer, but I had to go teach, and it was not running again when I returned. I must say, I have not been that excited in quite a while. I was able to fill one and a third of my two reserve cans so I will have water for a couple of days now.