Shea butter:
Market women selling shea butter.
Making "cakes":
Market women making "cosi" (spelling error) with shea butter (it is used as a cooking oil in the northern regions of Ghana). Cosi is fried bean flour mixed with onions and eaten with a crushed salt & dried red pepper mix. It's quite delicious (ask Dave).
Meet the Janvwr women's group:
This is my smallest and most well organized women's group from the village of Janvwr.
Headpanning:
A balancing act that's extremely hard...they carry everything on their heads and they must have skulls made out of steel. I tried carrying water once and had a headache for the whole of the next day...and was only able to get my water barrel 1/10 full...It was a great show for the villagers though.
A balancing act that's extremely hard...they carry everything on their heads and they must have skulls made out of steel. I tried carrying water once and had a headache for the whole of the next day...and was only able to get my water barrel 1/10 full...It was a great show for the villagers though.
Meet Kodu:
He enjoys long walks, chomping on bones, chasing goats, sheeps, pigs, chickens, dogs and children. He's a lover, not a fighter so he's constantly being picked on by all the previously mentioned farm animals (poor guy). He's ungraceful (he face plants often as he's walking and then will proceed to get up and look around as if somebody pushed him) and is often confused by the movement of dragonflies. Even with his faults he's the darnest creature in all of Piina. He sits when you tell him to (in Vietnamese), nudge you as you're reading a book by putting his face right in your lap, sleeps in weird positions (and most often on top of your shoes), he sounds like chewbacca when he greets you and he attempts to tackle you by pawing at your feet. I miss the little guy...
After Dave's visit I came back to site to be informed by the chief that Kodu had died...somehow...somewhere...devastation set in and I still don't believe he's really dead.
He enjoys long walks, chomping on bones, chasing goats, sheeps, pigs, chickens, dogs and children. He's a lover, not a fighter so he's constantly being picked on by all the previously mentioned farm animals (poor guy). He's ungraceful (he face plants often as he's walking and then will proceed to get up and look around as if somebody pushed him) and is often confused by the movement of dragonflies. Even with his faults he's the darnest creature in all of Piina. He sits when you tell him to (in Vietnamese), nudge you as you're reading a book by putting his face right in your lap, sleeps in weird positions (and most often on top of your shoes), he sounds like chewbacca when he greets you and he attempts to tackle you by pawing at your feet. I miss the little guy...
After Dave's visit I came back to site to be informed by the chief that Kodu had died...somehow...somewhere...devastation set in and I still don't believe he's really dead.
Other than the depressing news of Kodu, everything is going fairly well. Slowly but surely. It's peak time for the shea season so the women are busy gathering the nuts and making butter (it's also farming season in the north). Currently we are assessing the women's production capacity. The shea fruit tastes really good: it's a small, green fruit with a sweet pulpy flesh that tastes something like a persimmon and a date.
That's all for now. I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. :-)
