Round One in the Land of Nod...

As Emily will gladly attest, I am not a very peaceful sleeper. In fact, my own sister refuses to share a bed with me. But Em, you will be happy to know, I think I've met my match...

Like a true soccer fan, Mus is a kicker. Every night he manages to kick all the sheets free from their nice, neat hospital corners and wrap them around himself like a cocoon. Without fail.

Although, on second though, maybe he isn't my match. After all I did manage to deck the cement wall the other night with a fierce left hook. That wall never saw it coming. Then again, neither did my knuckles, which are now sore and covered in scabs.

On Wednesday my new friend Maya stopped by for a chat. She's a fellow obruni who came here from Germany to volunteer as a French teacher at one of the schools and she lives just two houses down from us. She is a trilingual 19-year-old who is about to start her university work. And she made a startling revelation.

She doesn't know how to type! She's of the hunt-and-peck category of computer users. She told me that in the schools that prepare you for university work they don't teach you about computers or typing because they assume that whatever job you occupy in the future, that you'll have a secretary. She was the first to admit that this was stupid, however, since in college she's going to have to type her term papers.

But still, can you imagine meeting a 19-year-old in America who couldn't type reasonably quickly?

And speaking of friends, the other day we received a call from our friend who's known to have some influence in the spiritual realm here. He had heard about the robbery, and wanted to offer us his sympathies. He also said that if Mus searched hard for the computer that he would find it and that he has asked the spirits to punish the thieves. Personally, I am enjoying a mental picture of the little dwarves surrounding the robbers while they sleep and poking them with sharp little sticks.


On a more mundane level, Mus is off this weekend to Accra to take more of his end-of-semester exams. His parents are here in Obo, though, and his mom is staying with me. Mus's great aunt died and so they are here for the funeral. I'm going with them, and believe it or not, it's my first Ghanaian funeral, which are supposed to be very different and interesting to us Westerners. I went to the burial today and took some video- generally speaking, funerals here are much less somber than they are in America. This funeral in particular is not so sad- the lady who died was 100 years old- but at all funeral there's dancing and stuff. It's a three day event, so I'll keep you posted on the rest.