The Weeks Just Fly By!

Today was a nice relaxing day = )  I got to meet Paa Kofi (Mandy’s youngest brother who’s boarding at the senior high school…but came home for the weekend to see Emmanuel and his family) and talk to him for a bit.  He’s super cool…a typical teenaged boy, listening to Kanye West and eating more than you’d think is humanly possible = )  I also got to meet Natasha (Emmanuel’s wife) and talk to her for a long time = )  It’s weird to not have to think about how I’m speaking and know that I’ll be understood…haha = )  She’s from Alaska and so sweet and adventurous…and I really admire her.  And of course I love that on Saturdays I get to like spend the whole day with Mandy because it seems like we have so little time during the week.

Today I normally do laundry…but Mandy had to do a load, Natasha had to do a couple loads, and Paa Kofi had to do a load (when he’s away at school he has to wash his clothes by hand!).  It’s crazy how much more time-consuming and difficult it becomes when you have limited water, so you don’t know if doing another load of laundry will mean no water to shower, and when you have to hang everything, so you have to wait to do more laundry until other clothes have dried so that there’s room on the rack or line.  The simple things I used to take for granted.

Something else I take for granted is our police force.  Mandy was describing a recent, really cool episode of Columbo (one of her favorite shows = ) and we were talking about how cool it is that he notices the tiny details.  I wondered aloud if that’s how it is for real life detectives…and she said, “Maybe in America, but not in Ghana.  They just, ’We’ll leave this to God.’”  She even said that cops and judges will take bribes from criminals and acquit them!  She told me a story about how her family called the cops one evening because they had heard a gun shot sound coming from the neighbor’s.  They were told by the police that they’d check it out in the morning.  So, she said that people take things into their own hands.  She’s seen, on numerous occasions, a person being robbed yell, “Thief!” and other people catching and beating the thief to death.  Now, she says, there aren’t really thieves anymore, but armed robbers = (

And then tonight, Mandy did my nails for me = )…and tomorrow she’s gonna do my makeup…she went to cosmetology school in the year between high school and university - talk about jack-of-all-trades!  She also got down a dress she designed and had made, but never wore, for me to try on - and it fit perfectly (well…a bit snug…thank goodness tomorrow’s fast Sunday…haha = )  So yeah…it was a fun night of being a girl = )