Tuesday Feb.10

 What a treat yesterday to have Felicity open the café early for us so that we could Skype to family at home.  Some of the kids were already in bed but we visited for 1.5 hours to the rest of family.  By then other patrons were coming into the café, and truck noise from Kwadaso Road was getting quite bad.  We lost connection only a couple of times and remained fast enough to support a 3-way conference call for most of it.

            Since it was after 8 AM I had an abbreviated run because I had to take the car to the mechanic to fix the exhaust system that had the catalytic converter hanging down to give us only about 2.5 inches of clearance.  He asked for 5 GHC advance in case they needed to buy hangers and I had only a 10 GHC note which I gave him.  Later in the day I got the car back and the charge was exactly 10 GHC.  Here, we don’t take the car to a garage.  There are some dealerships, like Toyota, to which one could go but so far we do not go to the dealer.  We call the mechanic and arrange to meet Kenneth where he works near the Bekwai roundabout and I fetch him there and come home and he takes the car to his place if it is an oil change or something he fixes, but if it is A/C then he takes it to the air conditioning shop for repair, or in our case to the muffler shop, and then returns it to us later and we return him to his area. 

Shops is a misnomer because most of them don’t have shops as such but may have ramps or a pit and just work on the vehicle in the open.  Last week in downtown Adum there was a 1-ton van in a regular parking spot in front of Melcom’s department store, jacked up and on blocks with both front wheel assemblies removed and major repair happening.  Many vehicles get fixed where they stop.

We needed to do a major grocery shopping and blew about 15 GHC on the way home.  A half sized fridge shared with the Pastor’s family keeps us shopping about every two days.