Rain season & new stuff

Rain season has started. Yesterday we had biggest storm we saw here in Africa. It lasted several hours and caused big damage to the city. Several parts of Accra were flooded (remember how many trash are here everywhere and open sewers?), water destroyed many shops and warehouses. I found link to article about yesterdays’ rain storm:

Accra flooded article!

Anyway storm had direct influence on us, since it damaged power line and electricity was cut off for about 24h;/ (which sux – we really need to buy power generator). Not telling storm caused only bad things I have to say it did some good too.

First of all it helped with water shortage problem (we are after long and really hot dry season), even our well was short on water recently – which made us save it hard. To give you the picture our well is over 6 meters deep and recently there was only really little water at very bottom of it. Having in mind that many households in Ghana don’t have access to water and must buy it, it is really hard time for everyone.

Another good thing is rain cleaned everything. Now streets, houses, plants are cleaner – red dust getting on everything every day is gone for few days, plants are green again – they even started growing rapidly.

Below I’m posting 2 pictures:

On the left one you can see how green everything got after one rain! Right one shows our well - we have already pumped most of water to our water tower which provides whole house with water. Thanks to rain we will have water for at least 4-5 days, not for part of 1 like for last week;/

Let’s move on – our puppies are getting bigger (we kept 2 of 6 we had) – I don’t have to write how cheerful and happy creatures they are, so here I’m presenting for the first time Mars and JJ (Jupiter Junior – he’s almost like his father was, that’s why we gave him this name).



One the left one - Mr. Mars, Mr. JJ on the right one.

We’re still fighting with malaria – I’m thinking about introducing some table on this blog showing our current number of parasites in blood;) – Long story short Ana’s ok atm, I have malaria parasites again.

Finally last but not least – new feature on my blog. Short movies! Recently I remembered my photo camera can make them, so I decided (after learning how to compress them to avi) to present some movies here for you to enjoy Ghana and Africa even more!

If you find quality to low – tell me plz I will try to use smaller compression, I also cut the sound off to cut the size of files (I have crappy upload here so don’t blame me for doing that). Nothing more to add – enjoy and till next note.

PS. I will add my movies gallery to links on side bar – just have to decide how to make it even more sexy – so stay tuned. BTW if anyone knows how to set up online camera and implement it to blog plz contact me – I have internet camera here which I would like to use somehow to improve this blog.

Ghana 50th anniversary & Malaria

Today we have big celebration here in Ghana. It’s been 50 years since Ghana got its independence. Everybody hail to Ghana! :)

Celebrations started few days ago and will probably last few more days (naturally whole year is special). Today we have big event on Independence Square (hopefully I know the right name) with many VIP’s present from Ghana, other Africa countries and over the world.

People here have really strong patriotic spirit since I heard yesterday people came to Independence Square and stayed there during night to get good spots to watch main celebrations. Whole town and I suppose Ghana is celebrating. For couple of weeks we were asked to buy patriotic items such as: flags (whatever size you want), armbands, necklaces,
T-shirts, hats, etc; all in Ghanaian national colors. They are mostly made in China, quality is rather poor, but price is low so almost everyone can buy something!

Anyway at the moment TV is broadcasting live celebration from Independence Square, VIP’s are giving speeches – all should last till late afternoon. Than I suppose people will be walking streets and dancing (we decided no to go and see it own eyes because of traffic jams and part of city being closed for car traffic) – Accra will be crowded place today and tomorrow (today and tomorrow are free days so everyone can celebrate).

Below two pictures which hopefully will bring you a little bit of Ghanaian Independence Spirit.

I have counted 4 such flags just on adjacent buildings, imagine how many are there in whole Accra;). Being nice person;) I bought one T-Shirt, counting on modern medicine I hope to live next 50 years and come back to Ghana for 100th anniversary and sell this T-Shirt for lots of money;P

Let’s move on to second part of today’s’ note – malaria.

We (me and Ana) have it for the second time (I don’t know if I wrote about first, which was in November, last year). First time was, so to say, easy. We had our blood tested – it turned out we had malaria parasites in our blood; we took medicines and after one week all was fine, we did not even feel bad at all!.

This time is different. We had our blood tested about two weeks ago and since them we can’t get rid of parasites. Also this time we are taking different medicines but so far they did not help. Next Friday we are going to test our blood again – so cross your fingers!

Anyway this time we feel much worse – I would say malaria is like flu, strong flu;/ I really would not recommend trying it out. At the moment we feel much better so maybe it’s over:) Like I said on Friday we will know.

Local people have born resistance to malaria which is mainly caused by mosquito bites. We as “obroni” (white people) have 0 resistance to it, so each mosquito bite can cause infection – sweet isn’t it? Also there is no 100% working medicine which cures malaria – so you usually take 2 kinds of medicines hoping they will work.

Side note: from personal experience I recommend taking blood tests each time one goes to Africa, it’s safer to cure it here, than back in Europe…

On the pictures you have medicines we are currently taking. They are both made in India.