Monday, August 5
This morning Tony decided to pull out a Frisbee to see what would happen. It's amazing how quickly something like that will pull people out from everywhere! It didn't take them long to get the hang of it. In the photo, they can be seen in the distance, many of them in their school uniforms of orange and brown.
As the older kids were busy with the Frisbee. I pulled out my camera. When the younger kids discovered that they started hamming it up on the sidelines.
The drums that have been ordered for us arrived. Four sets of four drums. The smallest of the set are both the same size, but tuned differently. These are peg tuned, which means you can tune them while playing them using a rock. These were made a few miles up the road where they are sold on the side of the road by the carvers.
About 12 of us sat in the small bed pickup truck for a ride to a village nearby with many Kente cloth weavers. At times we had to hold on to each other to prevent being ejected :-) Akpene and Mama were in negotiations for quite a while in the hut on the far left, as we looked on. They would have to continue, since they were not satisfied with the price. It was wonderful to see the village though. Many of the weavers had samples of their work draped on their shoulders.
For lunch, Mary prepared yam with a red sauce. These are real yams - similar to American potatoes, but slightly more grainy. I think she called it Delique. Mary normally makes it loaded with palm oil, but Akpene insisted that Americans probably wouldn't like so much oil. So, they compromised, and Mary a batch as normal, and one light on the oil. Personally, I preferred it the normal way. Less oil made it seem a bit bland.
The kids did another amazing performance for us. This time, pairs of girls came over to us one at a time and tried getting us to the dance they do with their shoulder blades. They had such a good time watching us Americans try it :-) They roared laughing when Tony tried it!
A few of us were hoping to get some much needed sleep. but then Bill got up and said looks like party night, since *someone* had made another Akpateshie run, and the volume of chat coming from the porch was increasing. The Goddess was back!
The people of the village were so accommodating for us. The entire village of Jordan Nu does not drink, yet they honestly didn't mind us hanging out on the porch until the wee hours being loud and passing bottles of Akpateshie around. One night some (who I won't name :-) stayed up till 5am - just as church was starting!
