Where the Reptiles Roam Free

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Most of my time for the past week has been spent at our new home, and I have been enjoying every minute of it. I arrived back in Obo from Accra exactly one week ago. I traveled here with Asantewa, Mus's cousin, while Mus went to visit Kweku for a few days in Cape Coast. Asantewa was in need of a vacation, and I was in need of some company. She's sweet and can clean house like nobody's business, and we had fun making beaded jewelry (a first for her) and doing nails while watching chick flicks. Still, the weekend was not without it's mishaps, which culminated in my whole body breaking out in bright pink polka dots and Asantewa starting a small electrical fire in our bedroom.

Mus returned on Tuesday, and with him he brought a new and much improved power strip, as well as a mixture of allergy medicines and some excellent home remedies for my hives. Mus has become so popular with the family we live with, I'm not sure who was more excited to see him return, me or them. Wasila, one of the adolescent girls in the house, confided to me that she was waiting for Mus to return, and once he returned, the mom asked him to give a pre-graduation pep talk to her two high school seniors, discussing their various post-graduation options.

All in all, things are back to normal, and Mus and I are enjoying our quiet domesticity.

Though we have our mishaps, too. The other night, for example, Mus is all excited about making pizza. He's a wonderful cook and loves trying to cook new foods he has no experience with. And surprisingly, his experiments usually turn out really good. Mus has eaten pizza many times, but he has very little experience baking. We busted out my awesome book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver (brought to me by courtesy of Carol) and found a simple pizza recipe. Mus mixed up the dough, which rose and fluffed up beautifully, and cooked the toppings. Now we were ready to light the oven.

Which we probably should have tested, honestly, before we spent an hour preparing our pizza ingredients. Bygones. We tried turning the knob every which way and all sorts of combinations, but, despite the knob giving us a wide range of temperatures, the oven will only light and stay lit while on the setting “grilling.”

In short, we have an oven that will only bake at one temperature, and we have no idea what that temperature is.

But oh well, we thought. Let's give it a shot. We won't get our hopes up too much on the pizza, but we're gonna try it. So we start preheating the oven on the grilling setting.

“What's that smell?” I ask Mus.

“What kind of smell are you talking about?” he asked. I wasn't surprised he couldn't smell it, since my olfactory capabilities are superior to those of just about everyone. It's my superhero power.

“It smells like an animal. Or a farm.”

Mus shrugged cause he thought I was crazy.

Then I started coughing. Mus eyed me strangely and moved my cutting board out by the door, so I could breathe in fresh air from outside.

Then the smoke started billowing out of the oven.

We had to run outside to breathe. The kitchen took a half an hour to air out so you could walk in it- Mus thought the smell was some spicy peppers burning in the oven. Really, it was a variety of crap that had fallen behind the stove, including some plastic that was melting to the back of the stove. To the cheers and well-wishes of me and the other females in the house, Mus valiantly tied a wet towel to his face and ventured in to pull out the oven and clean behind it. Before going in, he turned to me and said with conviction, “We WILL have our pizza tonight.”

And he was right. We had a candlelit pizza dinner on the terrace, and it was AMAZING.

But before you think I fully deserve my nickname of “A Disaster Waiting to Happen,” I should mention that between mishaps there have been moments of domestic bliss. Last night, driven to confidence by our pizza success, we decided to try a night of fine Spanish food. First, though, I should explain that Mus is really the skillful cook. I bring ideas into the kitchen, taken from my experience of different cuisines, but Mus is just great at culinary execution. While I tend to break omelettes, and roll imperfect Mexican tortillas, he seems to have the patience and the expert hand at details. So last night in our attempt of Spanish tortilla (composed of eggs and yam) and gazpacho, I gave Mus the general idea and turned my attention to blending vegetables. Mus's tortilla was excellent (this is Mus's new favorite food and he made more for breakfast this morning) but my gazpacho didn't work out great. The onion and garlic were way too strong, even though I used less than the recipe called for, but in the end I turned the gazpacho into a decent tomato soup. All this was consumed during our Johnny Depp film fest (Sweeney Todd and Gilbert Grape).

We've also been bonding more with the kids in the house. The girls and I had a jewelry-making night, which was a big hit. Wasila, who is 14, has been hanging out in the kitchen with me whenever her domestic duties allow. Luckily, Mus and I tend to cook around 7 or 8pm, after they've finished both their dinner and their preparation of tomorrow's food. Wasila is fascinated with the things I cook, and is always up for trying something new. She and I have been even having conversations in Twi, which is good for me. The other night she was watching me cook and he older brother came in and started teasing her about hanging there, watching me, as if she would learn something. She then proceeded to recite to him everything I had done so far, as if she was writing a recipe card based on my very experimental process. Then later, I hear the brother repeating the recipe verbatim to another sister. I have no idea what he thought of my spicy peanut butter pasta.

But that same brother was later enthralled by Mus's juice-making, and he has now completely taken over the operation. We give him money to go out to buy fruit, then he comes back and he and Wasila blend the juice in our blender, which we all enjoy. The kids think it's really cool, and the older brother, who's in the midst of a serious flirtation, has been able to wow his lady friend with his delicious homemade juice.

And lastly, I would like to use this forum to discuss a common but unsavory household problem. Vermin. We all have to find some way to deal with it. I'm used to dealing with various varieties; mice, mostly in Wisconsin, and cockroaches occasionally in San Antonio. I've encountered both here in Ghana at various times, but ants have been my main nemesis. But our new house includes a new and interesting strand of vermin- lizards. During the day we have skinks and lizards running across the floor, at night we have geckos. Last night a little lizard even jumped off the roof and flopped around on my shoulder. Now, I'm not nearly as opposed to lizards as other vermin; if you think about it, there's less poop to deal with since reptiles eat much less often and have slower metabolisms than mice. Plus, I also don't have disease-bearing associations with reptiles (other than turtles and salmonella, I guess.)

But I think, more than anything, I'm not upset because every time I see them, I think that the ten-year-old version of Adam would think me so lucky to have such “pets” scampering across my floor.

Crazy Obo New Year's Bash

On New Year's Eve, we were watching Home Alone 2 with two adolescent girls living in the house with us, and they were complaining that their mom wouldn't allow them to go watch “their program” in town. Curious about this “program” and wanting to check it out ourselves, we tried to find their mom to see if the four of us could go together, but she was asleep. In order to keep the peace, we resumed the movie; then, when the girls had gone to bed, we headed out to see what was going on.

What we found blew my mind and my eardrums.

Kids had made something of soapbox derby cars, but without anything that much resembled cars. They nailed together any scrap wood and boards they could get their hands on, added broom handles and the like for axles, and then bought these small metal wheels from auto mechanics. Then they climbed the hill with their creations, had a seat, and rolled down the road at random, giving the whole thing an air of a sledding party.

The sound was deafening- there were about 50 of these carts, each with 4 bare metal wheel scraping against the asphalt. Sparks flew. Real cars weaved in and out of the kids, who wore no protective gear. Kids ran into gutters and fell off.

I asked Mus why the kids only did this on New Year's Eve. He said it's because everyone stays up all night, anyway, so they aren't keeping anyone up. I asked him why the kids don't sneak out and go down the hill on other days. He pointed out that, with the noise, there was nothing “sneaky” about this event.