News from Jessica

Jessica was just able to email us so here are some excerpts from emails that she wrote on Oct. 6th and 13th:

Valerie and I went to the Market a week ago Sunday. The market here runs every 6 days (the old African Calendar) so it is always a different day of the week. On Market Sundays there are always a lot more people in church as they come from all the surrounding villages and the evangelists that usually go out to preach at those villages don't go because they expect everyone to come in to Gbintiri for the market. The market was lots of fun. Pretty hot though. We both got sunburned. They have very low grass woven roofs on sticks that they sit under. So low that I would bump my head on them. Everyone just walks between them or bends under them. The market has a lot less variety than there is in most other countries I have been in. There just isn't a whole lot that they can grow here. They grow peanuts and yams similar to yucca, okra, and peppers, and tomatoes and we did find a few oranges. They also sell a few different grains and flowers, besides salt and soaps and other dry goods. There are some food items you can buy to eat at stands a fried bean dough and yams fried and they did have plantains deep fried that tasted just like Ecuador. There is some bread but I guess it is just one town that makes the bread so it just comes in on market day.

We actually have electricity here... it is solar powered but we don't have to conserve much. We will start having to conserve on water more when it stops raining here which will be any day now. It has been really hot and humid probably about 90-100F. Today we had a storm roll through about 5 pm which was sooo so nice. It cooled down and brought a breeze and it is very comfortable right now.

A girl comes and washes laundry and does a lot of the housework so I don't have to do too much of that. She also makes most lunches (she makes Ghanaian food). It is good but fairly different from other stuff I have eaten. Twice we have had a peanut soup poured over cornmeal mush that has been let sit until it sets. We also had kind of a yam stew thing. The yams that they have here are actually yucca or something very similar. They seem to be a bit less strong and less stringy than yucca was but have the same look. We eat more American food at supper so we have had tacos, pasta salad and sandwiches for supper