Coconut Grove Beach Resort, Elmina

Shortly after my parents arrived in Accra, we (my mom, dad, Chloe, our driver, Ben, and I -- Brent was in Guinea at the time) left for a long weekend at the beach! It was my third time out to the Cape Coast area, so I was somewhat relieved to find that my parents didn't want to go see the Dutch and Portuguese Forts that are infamous for their role in the slave trade. The forts are interesting the first time around, but I'm not sure that they are something you really need to revisit.

Without traffic, it's about a 3.5 hour drive to Elmina. Most of that time is spent just trying to get out of Accra...not dissimilar to trying to get out of Manhattan on a summer weekend! The journey is an easy enough route, but we decided to take Ben along with us so that he could take my
my dad out on birding trips in the wee hours of the morning. And, not only would Ben would make overtime, but he'd also get to truly pocket the "driver's allowance" we pay him for each night he's out on the road with us because he could stay at the apartment his sister was in as she was finishing up at the Cape Coast University.


We had stayed at Coconut Grove one time before when Brent's mom was in town. We had learned the hard way which rooms to request. Actually, when Brent's mom was in town, it was Easter Weekend and we were lucky to get any accommodations at all! This time, we had booked one of the family chalets right on the beach. These are two-bedroom little houses--that are actually much cuter from the outside than they are inside, but hey, how much time are you actually going to spend in the room anyway!? The family chalets are definitely the way to go if you have kids with you. The primary benefit? You have a little veranda overlooking the Gulf of Guinea with a 4-seater table -- which enables you to dine outside in the comfort of your own home! The waitress will bring you the menu, take your order and essentially give you room service at NO ADDITIONAL COST! Perhaps this doesn't seem like such a big deal. However, dining out with kids in Ghana has its challenges...the greatest being the wait time between placing your order and getting your meals. On average, you wait an hour -- no matter what it is that you have ordered! I don't know about anyone else's kids, but for Chloe, this is just simply too long!

The waters off the shore of Ghana are very rough, so swimming is not generally adviseable. The undertow is super strong and swimming is the number one cause of death for tourists here. So, when you go to the beach in Ghana, you are usually looking at the beach, but sitting pool-side. Certainly there are exceptions, but in general, that's how it is. You can definitely wade into the crashing waves, and the water is shallow for a good long way out, but swimming, no! We have found that Chloe is fearless! She loves to get totally soaked by the white water and believes that she would have a much grander time if only we were to let go of her.

So, I'm no history scholar. And I'm sure I'll get lots of flack for what I am about to write, however, write it, I will. In the U.S. we don't really get the full story about the slave trade. At least not in the history classes I took. There had been a slave trade going on between African tribes long before the Europeans came into the picture. And, it wasn't the white man going into Africa, capturing Africans and enslaving them. No, no, no...that's not the story they tell you here. Most of the slaves were readily handed over to the Europeans, en route to the US and other destinations, in trade for all sorts of things. The slaves were essentially "prisoners of war"! The African tribes were simply trading their POWs for goods they believed to be more valuable. Trading POWs was a custom they had in place long before the southern plantation owners took on slaves!

I am not excusing the practice in any way, however, it just puts things into a different perspective.

Anyway, a good weekend was had by all. My mom had a rocky start with a 24-hour bug that was quite nasty, but she recovered well, and our seaside retreat was quite enjoyable.

Melrose Place, Pig Roast

South Africans are crazy! In a good way, but still crazy. A bit of advice we got when we first arrived here was "find the Italians...that's where the party is!" (The Spaniards say that's because they Italians lead you to the Spaniards! ) As you can all imagine, this is definitely true...however, if you can't find the Italians, find the South Africans-they party like the Irish.

Well, Melrose Place, Accra has become South African Central! First there were none, now there's a ton! And, as a result, we all benefitted from a pig brai!

South Africans are known for their brai (just a fancy name for the BBQ). They can't live without it. One of the first South African houses here in Melrose Place actually had a brick brai built in their back yard. I haven't actually gone over there to see it myself, but I imagine that there isn't much back yard left!

Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, they organized a whole pig roast! It was an all-day affair that started at 11 AM. I wish I'd had my camera when they came in to the club house with a freshly skinned pig, full head and all! Chloe was intrigued. It was pink, like Wilbur. She didn't really know quite what to make of it. We'd visit the pig ocassionally as it was spinning 'round and 'round on the pig rotisserie...and she would say "guaguau!" -- which is essentially the Spanish equivalent of "bow wow!" No, honey, that would be Vietnam or Malaysia...not South Africa!

My contribution was brownies. Cook's Illlustrated Classic Brownies. I think I screwed up the butter. It's packaged very differently here and the conversion is a pain in the patootey. These brownies were so dense and rich that you honestly couldn't eat more than a 1" square. Brent claims the issue was under-cooking. But given that we have been cursed with the world's fastest cooking oven, with temp readings in C, no less, I doubt that it would have spared the brownies the same fate as every other item we put in there! They couldn't have been that bad...someone came knocking a week or so later asking for the recipe. Of course, with the recipe I had to provide measuring cups and spoons and a lesson in converting "grams" of butter into "cups" as Europeans just don't measure ingredients the way we do...

Good time was had by all. If you have a day to while away, I highly recommend getting yourself a whole pig and roasting it....

The Chloe Chronicles, Little Explorers

So, one of the things that Brent and I were looking forward to when we decided to leave Manhattan was escaping the hell that is pre-school, or rather selecting, applying to and getting accepted to pre-school. Never did we dream that there was such a beast here in Accra! Oh we are so naive!

Now let's all keep in mind that Chloe's still a month shy of her 2nd birthday, so it's all ridiculous from the beginning. Nevertheless, as you read earlier, we decided to put Chloe into Little Acorns. It was low key and diverse, and what it was lacking in cleanliness it made up for in caring teachers. To be honest, I think it was really a glorified babysitting service provided mainly for the convenience of parents whose older children were enrolled in the Tall Oaks International School. But that was fine with us as our whole intention was to get Chloe interacting with other children. We weren't exactly looking for academic progress!

Even before Chloe actually started at Little Acorns, I'd heard the whisperings of a "new" school that was opening called Little Explorers, and as it was opening just at the time that Chloe would be starting Little Acorns, I was getting questioned as to why I wasn't putting her in Little Explorers. Well, you know me...I just yeah-yeah-yeahed...and didn't think anything of it. We were happy enough with our decision, and all the other kids at Orchid Gardens were also at Little Acorns, so it was a really nice place for Chloe to be with other kids, yet still have the familiarity of the neighborhood faces.

Also in the whispers was some gossip/drama about another nursery/preschool called Gingerbread. To date, I'm not even 100% sure what it was all about. None of it seems to make sense. But apparently, some nasty embassy-related Americans who had their children in Gingerbread, and believe me, nasty embassy-related Americans are more common than you'd like to imagine, got their knickers in a twist because Gingerbread would not hire an American teacher that was moving to Accra. And it boiled down to "If you don't hire such and such teacher, we will put you out of business!" And, as if by magic, about 90% of the American families instantly pulled their kids out of the program. And where did they all go? Little Explorers.

There is speculation by some that Little Explorers exists only because of this mass-exodus from Gingerbread. I find this highly unlikely. However, both founders of Little Explorers were at one point or another affiliated with Gingerbread. Some say that they left to create Little Explorers, other say that they had already been gone from Gingerbread long before this huff huff happened. Who knows. Who cares, really. The truly shocking to me is the ridiculous behavior of our fellow countryfolks.

Americans affiliated with the embassy are often cited as behaving badly...threatening all sorts of things (i.e. "I work in the consular section and if you don't xyz neither you nor anyone in your family will ever get a visa to go the US!!"), and as a whole just being altogether unpleasant. But this part really takes the cake...It is common practice here for the private schools to hold you to three months' written notice of your departure, or you must pay for the following school term's fees. It's crazy I know, but that's just how it goes here. So, when the board of Gingerbread decided to fight back by pressing legal charges against this group of families for breach of contract, they simply laughed and threw out diplomatic immunity!

Now, I'm not really sure how it all ended. I heard something about the American Ambassador "having" to uphold diplomatic immunity, but God, how embarrassing for her to have to protect such blatant misbehavior! And most of these families...they were leaving the country/their post at the end of the school year anyway. So all the fuss was made for one school term, April 17 - June 25! No wonder the world hates us!

Luckily for us, I didn't really know most of all that at the time that I was looking into the school itself.

I had heard that Little Explorers was going to have a "summer camp" and I decided to check it out to see if maybe I should switch Chloe in the fall. I mentioned it to one of the Danish gals who lives here in Orchid Gardens, the one who had recommended Little Acorns in the first place because that's where her son was enrolled. And do you know what she told me? That she had just that week already switched her son form Little Acorns to Little Explorers! Huh??? She said that she had taken him there once to visit, and her plan had been to put him there for summer camp as well, but when they went back to Little Acorns he was very disappointed. She felt badly because she's the one who had originally recommended Little Acorns to everyone in Orchid Gardens, and now she was the one pulling out her kid. And it wasn't that she was unhappy with the school, but that her son cried every single day when he was dropped off, even after 8 months! So, she just decided to give the new place a try (it is better, but he still cries every day!). And then she told me that the summer school places were filling up so I'd better head over there.

The next morning, Fuen and I headed over. It was love at first sight. We got there at the beginning of the day, so they had us sit through "circle time" and then they talked to us about the school. Night and day from Little Acorns. It was just simply a different animal. Little Explorers is true Montessori. They do not have a full-blown school attached to them. They focus on early childhood and they do it very very well. The teachers, the assistants, the school yard, the activities and the manipulatives...everything was as close to what you'd expect at home as you could possibly get here. Immediately, Fuen decided to pull Carmen out of Little Acorns. Immediately, I decided that Chloe would go to summer camp there and to school the following fall. But pulling her out of Little Acorns? That wasn't so clear cut to me. Yes, of course I knew it was a better environment for her, but was I getting too wrapped up in the package? Part of me felt like pulling her out of Little Acorns was creating drama where there needn't be any. It sort of felt spoiled brattish--like upgrading your perfectly functioning Bug-a-boo Frog just because the new model Chameleon came out and you could mix and match the colors. (By the way, have any of you seen the Bug-a-boo Bee??) But on the other hand, if I was going to change her anyway, shouldn't I just do it then before she got too attached to the teachers there and got used to the routines, etc.?

The following week, Chloe went to Little Acorns -- but her two best school buddies weren't there. There were tears at drop off where there had never been any before. I weakened. Within two days, Chloe was enrolled in the last three weeks of the Spring term at Little Explorers. An expensive decision, sure! But neither Brent, nor I have regretted it. Little Explorers has been such a wonderful place for Chloe! Her language has developed so much since she's started there! And she brings home little art projects every day that now hang in her playroom.

There's a new building going up across the street from Orchid Gardens. We've been watching it go up quickly. We all assumed it was a house...but the signpost went up the other day...Twinkletots, opening soon...

Nanny Diaries, Part IV

A departure from the Stella stories as the Nanny Diaries are really to give you a full picture of what it means to have staff in general. Because it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Do not get me wrong, we absolutely could not live here without them, they are a fabric of our lives, they are integral to our daily routines, but it's simply just not all fun and games and glamor.

Let me introduce to you a new character: Sammy. Sammy was introduced to me by an acquaintance who has since left Ghana. She'd lived here for three years, and Sammy was her gardener. As he was live-in staff, he also served as much much more to their family. In any event, once my friend's family would leave Accra, the Canadian High Commission was going to stop renting that particular house, so the staff that came with the house, had to find new digs and new employment! When you have good staff who is good to you, you want to take care of them by way of ensuring they have income, etc. etc. etc. So, my friend started putting out the word about Sammy.

Now, you can see by the pictures of Orchid Gardens that there's not much of a garden to take care of, but we have some flower beds and a small green grass plot behind the house. The Orchid Gardens staff gardeners are truly incompetent, and I wanted a major overhaul AND a vegetable and herb garden to boot! So, in comes Sammy. A knowledgeable, youngish guy who is incredibly charming and humble and hard-working. He does his work with such a level of enthusiasm that you know that he truly loves what he is doing or at least loves his life enough to be happy doing whatever it is that he is doing.

My plan was that Sammy would get the garden up and running, and I'd pay him a flat fee for that, and then I'd have him come around for weekly maintenance. Everything was going well, and then he didn't show up one day -- which seemed odd. And he didn't show up the next day. I was going to call him when Ben, our driver, spots Sammy's brother, Albert, who Sammy had been bringing by the house as his assistant. We stop the car and talk to Albert who tells us that Sammy's wife has been sick and that's why he hasn't been by, but that Sammy had been planning to go by the house that afternoon. By the time we got home, Sammy had come and gone and there was a large broken terra cotta pot and a big pile of dirt in our driveway. Very ODD. I then got a call from Sammy, apologizing for the pot, explained what happened and then told me that his wife was sick, they had taken her to the clinic and he'd see me the next day.

Saturday AM, Sammy comes, does a couple of hours of work and tells me that the clinic said his wife had malaria. I was skeptical...I mean, legend has it that if you live past 5 years of age here (and 20% do not), you have built up a resistance to malaria and you don't get it. When I said this to Sammy, he explained to me that while that may be true if you grow up in Accra, if you are from the villages, there are local plants that "scare" away the mosquitoes and the villgers don't tend to get malaria. That was news to me! I mean it's when you go to the "bush" that the malaria medication we have been prescribed is supposed to be the most mandatory. In any event, his wife had been medicated and all was well, or would be. He said he'd see me Monday.

Monday morning came and I left the house to go do a bunch of things. I gave Ben, the driver, money for him to take Sammy out to buy garden things, etc. But while I was out, I got a call from Sammy saying that he was going to the hospital with his wife because she needed to be admitted and he wouldn't be able to come by that day. No problem.

However, I began to wonder. Not seriously wonder, but wonder nonetheless, if in fact, Sammy was going to turn out to be like the staff people you hear about always calling in sick to the ex-pats because the ex-pats will actually give them the day off, etc. etc. etc. (No Ghanaian employer would ever give staff the day off because they were sick! And if so, it would certainly come out of their pitiful paycheck!) I found that difficult to believe because I know who he worked for and she would never have kept him if he hadn't been good. But you do hear crazy stories all the time and you wonder when it's going to happen to you...

Tuesday AM I called Sammy to check in on his wife. Someone other than Sammy answered the phone, which I thought was odd. They said that Sammy had "gone inside" and that they would bring Sammy the phone and he would call me back. Immediately I thought that something very bad was going on. The man on the other end of the phone asked who I was and I told him, and I simply said that I was calling to check in on how Sammy's wife was doing. Within 10 minutes, Sammy called me to tell me that his wife had died the previous afternoon! While I was shocked by the news, I was also not completely surprised because of the earlier phone incident. And, then, of course, I felt insanely guilty for ever having doubted him. I told him I would go by the hospital later that day. I'm not sure what possessed me to say this. I barely know the man. And once I said it, I wasn't entirely sure what I would do once I got there.

Later on that morning, I saw a lady who had been quite friendly with Sammy's previous employer. When I told her the news, she said, "Wasn't Sammy's wife pregnant?" I had no idea, Sammy had never mentioned it!?? And then she had told me a story about how Sammy's wife had somehow been administered 10x the dose she should have gotten of quinine and as a result had gone temporarily blind. Quninine is one of the earliest anti-malarials. It is actually used in tonic water for the flavor and the British Colonialists in India paired it with gin to ward off the malaria...(so, if you ever need an excuse to have another G&T...). However, quinine in high doses can cause blindness...and in pregnant women can induce a miscarriage. Now, if you are pregnant and you have malaria that is resistant to other forms of treatment, you would give quinine to treat the malaria because the risk of the malaria harming the baby is greater than that of the quinine, but...not at 10x the dose!

That afternoon, Ben took me to the hospital to find Sammy. Public hospitals here are not anything like hospitals at home. Yes, there are buildings, but there's a lot of smallish buildings with the waiting rooms outside in the open air, and covered porches where people see nurses etc. There's always a ton of people milling around because you don't get appointments...it's first come first serve. So I go over to the mortuary, where the signpost on the door outlines the fee schedule which includes, bathing, embalming, storage (first three days are free if the person died at the hospital, not free if they came from outside), handling, and get this...an "inconvenience" fee! I'm looking at the numbers and while for us it would seem like nothing, for someone like Sammy who is making about $1/hour the numbers are astronomical...and since you can't collect the body until your hospital bill is paid in full, your "storage" fees can easily add up! All I can think at that point is: Thank God I slipped a $100 bill in my back pocket! Eventually I find Sammy...and about 20 family members.

Sammy is telling me that the Drs are insisting that a "post-mortem" be done so that they can identify the cause of death. Sammy doesn't want the autopsy because he can't afford it and he's not going to press legal charges, so it's useless. He's not pressing charges because he can't afford to. He can't afford to pay the lawyer's fees, he can't afford to miss all the days of work he would have to miss if he takes this to court, etc. etc. etc. At this point, he can't even afford the 3.5 million cedis ($375 or so) to transport the body to her family's village. I give him the $100, which seems so pitiful at this point, but he seems eternally grateful.

He walks me to my car and Ben greets him through the opened passenger side window. Sammy goes to open the door and I think he's going to get in the car to chat with Ben...but no...he's being gentlemanly and opening the door for me! We say good bye. And Ben and I sit there talking for a bit. I'm telling Ben everything. And Ben wants to know where the family's village is. So, we roll down the window and call Sammy over and then a whole conversation takes place in the local language. The family village is in Assin Faso, which is the region where Ben's family lives. Ben has a station-wagon-style taxi. I know Ben and I know what's going on.
He doesn't even have to ask. I give him the rest of the afternoon and next day off.

Can you imagine...offering to transport a dead body in your car for about 5 hours for a person you barely even know? Well, that's what had just happened. Of course, Ben can't afford the fuel for his car if he's not getting taxi fare, so I told Ben we'd pay his fuel costs...Why would Ben do this? I'm not totally sure. He's always incredibly helpful. He lost a baby after about a year, and basically sold all their family belongings in order to pay for her medical care. So, I think his heart really went out to Sammy.

So, that was Tuesday. I hope to see Ben tomorrow, Thursday. I didn't hear from him all day today. So, I'm not sure what happened...and don't think that it's straightforward! The body had not yet been released from the hospital. They were just awaiting the death certificate. However, bribes are ALWAYS involved and who knows how much of a bribe was being asked...
I am quite sure there will be a story...

Melrose Place, Accra

Six months in, I'm happy to report, the decision to live in the oh-so-very-un-African Orchid Gardens (aka Melrose Place, Accra) has proven to be a good one. It's true that behind the gated walls of this 36-family enclave we are sheltered from the vast majority of the daily realities of life in Ghana. However, living inside this bubble actually makes venturing outside of it much easier. Knowing that we will return to running water (hot and cold), electricity (even if it goes off and on with a fair amount of frequency), appliances that generally work (we even have a combination washer/dryer that serves double duty as a floor washer every time we launder towels or bed linens), and for Ghana, a reasonable internet connection, makes anything that happens outside of here simply an "adventure". It's kind of like hanging out with other people's kids before you have any of your own...when the going gets too rough, you can always retreat back to your own space, sans enfants!

Anyway, the picture below, left, is taken from the playground...note the sand and the rubber tire border. The cream wall with black iron gates surrounds the swimming pool area. The veranda will be a bar at some point. (One of the residents works for the spirits division of Guiness, so they will be supplying the beverages, and will be in charge of hiring the barman and running the operation!! whoopie...add a little G&T to the Thursday afternoon playgroup with God's Willing and we'll be set!!) The next structure you see is actually our house! Or townhouse, I guess. It's actually a two family dwelling.

There are 18 such buildings scattered around the grounds. We live in the new section--which opened February 2007. The old section, which is behind the person taking the photograph, opened in August 2006. The veranda is where I teach my vinyasa yoga class on Tuesday nights. We've got the French coach (Claude) of the Black Stars (the national soccer team) living here--when his wife, Eva is in town from Paris, she comes to yoga!! Liz, the Danish consul lives here, too. But that's it for "local celebs"!

The usual suspects are:
Fuen and Miguel from Madrid/London with their 2-year-old Carmen and 5-month-old Miguel.
Lorena and Giacomo from Milan with their 8-month-old Frederico.
Amanda and ??? from South Africa with their 3-month-old boy and 5-year-old Electra (who comes knocking at my door looking for me, and questioning my nanny, Stella about my whereabouts if I'm not in!)
Johanna and ??? also from South Africa with their 5-year-old girl Rulene and 7-year-old boy, Ruen.
Lina and Annas from Denmark with their 5-month old boy and 3-year-old Anna Mia
Stefanie and Andreas also from Denmark with 1-year-old Storm and 3-year-old Thorbjoern (Tobian)
Come September, we will be re-joined by Inga and Alejandro from Peru with their 10-month old little boy.

The point of all that was just to show that while it's not exactly African -- there is one Ghanaian who lives across from me... She's a total riot! If she weren't so busy being a lawyer and being very involved in the Rotary Club, I'd definitely be spending more time with her! And a lady from Cameroon who lives on the other side of our townhouse -- but she's very stand-off-ish...must be the French!! Hee hee! Anyway, while it's not the typical Ghana experience, neither is it exactly "American" either. In fact there is only one other American couple in Orchid Gardens and they are much older, and we rarely see them because she's back in the States a lot and he's traveling for work. It's a terrific place for Chloe -- there's always someone to play with. It's a great place for me -- even if I'm feeling stuck at home, I can go outside and find any number of people who I know, and actually enjoy being with, too. I really do feel lucky because this definitely isn't the same kind of situation as the "mommies in the park" in manhattan.

God's Willing

For as many inconveniences as we have here in Ghana, I am certain that there are an equal number of completely unexpected blessings. One of these blessings is God's Willing. And, no I'm not getting all spiritual on you or anything.

God's Willing, pictured here, is a lovely lady who is also a door-to-door pedicurist. Those are Fuen's toes she working on! What does such a luxury cost?, you might ask...a whopping 60,000 cedis -- roughly $6.50, or $13 for a mani/pedi.

Ok, you Manhattan and LA girls...perhaps that's not such a bargain for y'all as there's a Korean nail shop on nearly every corner and you can get a mani/pedi for $20, but here it feels like one of the few affordable things, that also happens to be completely luxurious.

I had heard of this mysterious woman named God's Willing pretty early on in my stay here, but I never was able to find out how to reach her! And, then, one day, a kind soul text messaged me her number. We've been good friends ever since. With God's Willing, I mean. Said kind soul has left Ghana, as most expats do, eventually.

It seemed such a shame that God (which is how the security guards announce her when she arrives at the gates of Orchid Gardens!), was spending so much time traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood making her house calls. Taxis would be too expensive for her, so she would be using tro tros (the local, privatized equivalent of public transportation), which are not only dangeous -- tro tro drivers are just horrendous drivers, but also thoroughly unpleasant (at least from an obruni's perspective--I'd prefer a crowded NYC rush-hour subway car any day!). So, Thursday afternoon playgroup at Orchid Gardens was born!

What's that?, you say! What does a playgroup have to do with polished nails and pushed back cuticles? Well, numbers my dear friends! Where there is a playgroup, there are captive mommies. Let me rephrase that...at the Orchid Gardens playgroup, there are captive mommies (yes, dear reader, even in Accra, it seems as thought the vast majority of playgroups seem to be nanny-driven and the only mommy in sight is the host mommy!). But not to worry your freshly painted toes...there are plenty of nannies around to make sure that your little one doesn't get into too much trouble before your mani/pedi is good and dry!

The beauty (no pun intended) of this arrangement is that 1.) the women who bring their kids to the playgroup and partake in God's Willing's services are actually totally normal women that are fun and interesting! Definitely not the super high-maintenance gals you might be envisioning. No, THOSE ladies are sending their kids off to the nanny-directed playgroup, so they can go sit at the salon and kvetch about the total "ineptitude" of their staff ("My idiot cook didn't buy ice for the FROZEN margaritas! What did he think frozen meant?" -- I'm not kidding, these folks are amongst us!!). And, 2.) God's Willing makes out like a bandit!

Come to think of it...God is coming tomorrow! Can't wait!

The Chloe Chronicles, Tafi Atome

While my parents were in town, we took a long weekend to the Volta Region. We stayed at the Afrikiko Resort, right on the lake and took little day trips around the area.

This picture is taken in the village of Tafi Atome, where there is a sacred monkey sanctuary. Centuries ago a tribe from the Central Region relocated to this area and brought their sacred monkeys with them. The monkeys are adorable and they are friendly, too. The guide that takes you through the forest bribes the monkeys with bananas and they come out of hiding quite quickly for this delicious treat. Once the monkeys are accustomed to your presence, the guide will then let you offer the bananas...I'm the only one that took him up on it. With Chloe attached to one hip, I squatted down to the ground, banana in had and a little monkey ran up to the banana and more quickly than Chloe-the-banana-eating-fiend could ever do, peeled the banana and gobbled it all up! Chloe was simultaneously mesmerized and terrified!

After the monkey show was over, we went through a walk in the forest, yes, I had to carry Chloe the whole way!! And at the other side of the forest, we walked through the tiny little village where this picture was taken. Chloe is standing in a pile of palm nuts that have been laid out to dry. Chloe had a grand old time destroying the pile...and then, of course, we put it back together.

The Nanny Diaries, Part 3

Things are never simple here. Never. How foolish of me to think that we would just simply walk in to the hospital and pick up the insurance card that we had been waiting for since January!!

The man behind the counter looked through his stacks of envelopes and couldn't find one for Stella. I wasn't convinced that he was doing a good job looking, I wasn't even convinced that there was a method to the stacks, so I was starting to lose patience with this whole National Insurance Scheme. Luckily for me, the district manager of the NIS was there and he insisted that despite my having a receipt in hand, there was no paperwork for Stella. Finally, he pulled out the ledger book -- yes, an old-fashioned, pre-computer ledger book that tracks all activity!! -- and sure enough, on the exact date of the receipt is MY name! The man was clearly confused by this, and it turns out that MY name was in the ledger because the receipt was made out in my name since I had paid for the insurance. However, all of the paperwork that had been filled out, and the picture attached to that paper work, was Stella's. I was told that since the receipt was in my name the card would have been made out in my name regardless of what it said on the paperwork. So, I said, that was fine, to please give me my card! But, of course, thee was no card in the stacks for me either. I definitely made a stink. I big huge stink. Stella, at this point, was wishing she hadn't come in. Ghanaians don't tend to protest about anything, so the fact that I was protesting, and loudly made Stella quite uncomfortable. In the end, it turned out that nothing could be done until Monday (it was Friday morning) because the manager was on his way to meetings outside of the office and he wouldn't be at the office until Monday, and then the card would have to be made, and he swore up and down that we would have the card on Tuesday.

I asked if he could write a note saying that Stella was insured so that she could see someone there at the clinic and he said that it didn't work that way, and without the card in hand, she wouldn't be seen.I was skeptical about Tuesday for sure, but I didn't have any other option but to wait and see.

However, I still had a sick nanny on my hands, so Ben drove us to the Akai House Clinic, a private clinic where I have taken Chloe and myself., and paid for Stella's office visit. It's a strange system here where you pay before you see the Dr. No cash, no visit. It's as simple as that. Anyway, I paid and left to go pick up Chloe from school. I told Stella to wait until Ben could return to pick her up from the Clinic. When I got into the car, immediately Ben said to me, Stella's pregnant! I thought so, too, but wondered why he had thought so. His reason was that Stella was producing too much saliva! HUH???

That was the first time that I had ever heard of excess saliva as a symptom of pregnancy! And turst me, I had done plenty of online research about early symptoms of pregnancy and had never come across that one!! Since then, though, I have seen it in pregnancy magazines, etc. Anyway, it was true...Stella had been spitting quite a lot lately...and other things too gross to go into. So, the car ride home Ben was telling me all the troubles that Stella was going to have if it was true that she was pregnant..especially since she wasn't married. And the fact that Carlos was half Nigerian...OH MY...that was enough to make Ben MAD AS HELL....the Nigerians get an awful rap around here--kind of like New Jersey.

When Stella returned to the house, she confirmed that she was pregnant. Well, she hadn't had the test to prove it, but the Doctor had asked her a bunch of questions and given her an exam and had believed she might be pregnant, and wrote her a prescription for a pregnancy test. Luckily, Stella didn't have that kind of money on her to go to the MedLab that was located in the same building to pay for the pregnancy test -- I just gave her one of the store bought tests I'd brought back from the States. Ben's take, though, was that there was NO WAY that Stella didn't already know she was pregnant...although, to this day, she swears she had no idea. And, Ben was pissed off that Stella had wasted my time and money in taking her to the Dr.

The odd thing was that the prescription for the pregnancy test didn't have her name on it. I asked her whose name it was and she said she didn't know, that it was just the paper that the Dr had given to her off his desk. Hmmm....??? I asked her if she was happy about the pregnancy, and she said, "yes"....which seemed so impossible given everything that people had told me. I did wonder if she was faking this whole thing and had just taken this piece of paper off the Dr's desk. I know it sounds paranoid, but the stories you hear around here about things the staff fakes in order to get away with something...

So, I took the prescription with me and had Ben take me back to the clinic. And I asked the Dr. if he had prescribed the pregnancy test for Stella. And he said he had. When I asked him why Stella's name wasn't on the sheet, he was horrified. It turned out that the woman he had seen before Stella was the name he had written on the prescription in error! He begged me not to tell anyone, and re-wrote the form. Then I tried to have a conversation with him about Stella's "options" because I was afraid that she would go to a "clinic" and abort the baby that weekend...it was just something that she had said that made me think this...and not that I have anything against abortion, but abortion isn't legal in Ghana, and someone without means, like Stella, would be having a back alley, coat hanger style procedure! Well, this Doctor, who is Lebanese, confirmed that there were methods that could be done safely, and obtained legally, but since he didn't believe in abortion, he wouldn't tell me anything else. Seriously??

Well, the pregnancy sure would explain a lot...not just the exhaustion or depressed state Stella had been in, but the middle of the night crying, the erratic behavior, and yes, even the disappearing ring!

Tuesday AM, I sent Stella to the hospital on her own to pick up the card, and was relieved to learn that she actually had it. She said they had spotted her a mile away, remembering that she was the one with the crazy white lady. I told her that that was just fine...she may be the one with the crazy white lady, but she's also the one with the insurance card in hand, while other sheepish folks are STILL WAITING!!!

Well now there really truly was a use for that damned card! The problem was that NO INFORMATION whatsoever came with that card. So, now that Stella had the card, what? I had Ben take me to the district office because I thought for sure they would have some information there. I called first and they told me that they had some outdated pamphlets and that new ones were being printed, but I was welcome to the old ones. When I got there, though, the reception was quite icy. There were stack sand stacks of envelopes just like there were at the hospital where we picked up Stella's card. It's no wonder people are waiting four months and longer for their cards! No one would give me any information. They didn't know what I was there for. They said the new pamphlets wouldn't be available for at least another 4 weeks. They wanted to know who the insured person was and when I told them Stella, they said that they had finished the card the other day and got all defensive. So, again I explained to them that the issue wasn't that we were missing the card, but that we were missing information on how to use the card! I finally left in exasperations. As I got into the car Ben brought to my attention that a lady was calling after me. His take was that she was in charge and got wind that an "obruni" was in the office and believed I was a reporter...again, fine with me if it gets me what I want. The lady couldn't have been lovilier. She did reiterate that the pamphlets were outdated and the new ones wouldnt be available for a while, but that the old pamphlets still had pertinent information, the new ones would just describe MORE benefits.

Through this pamphlet we learned where Stella's "home" hospital was and about what level of prenatal care she would get, etc. etc.

The following week, Stella was convinced that she had malaria, so off to the La General Hospital we went. Malaria and pregnancy just simply don't mix!