Money, Food, The People …

We thought we would give you a birds eye’s view of how close we are to our office and the temple. The first two pictures are taken from the window of our apartment looking out toward the main road that runs in front of the temple compound and into the heart of Accra. The road is called Independence.

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We have included a couple pictures of our apartment as well. We hope to have our wall hanging the Garland Third Ward gave us up on the wall soon but since the walls are solid concrete we are still working on that. We seldom hear any noise except an occasional chair moving upstairs. That’s nice.

The currency of any foreign country is always fun to see. Most other countries have colorful notes denoting various amounts of money. Below you will see pictures of Ghana’s 3rd series of notes and coins. Their unit of currency is the Cedi. The currency sign is ₵ and the code is GHS.

1 US Dollar = 1.59735 Ghanaian Cedi
1 Ghanaian Cedi (GHS) = 0.62604 US Dollar (USD)

The pictures below show the notes in the amounts of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 & 50 Cedi. The coins present 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 & 100 pesewas. 100 pesewas is equal to one Cedi.

For more information about the history of their unit of currency known as Cedi go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghanaian_cedi

Saturday morning we were given a piece of Ghanaian Yam. So we decided to make lunch using it. Not knowing much about it we decided to boil it like we would potatoes and see what it tasted like. It is a root vegetable that to me resembles a turnip in texture but once boiled is similar to potatoes. The outside looks like elephant skin. When potatoes are boiled the water is a little cloudy with starch but the water is thick with starch after boiling the Ghanaian yam, even after rinsing it off once.

We made a soup by adding small carrots (from frozen), onions, peas (canned) and bacon bits (frozen), salt (it comes in bags) vegetable powder, garlic and herb (you have to get experimental in your cooking). It tasted pretty good but I’m sure there are better ways to use it. Reading on the Internet you learn more about it. It is a staple and is used to make a popular food called fufu. So this is a picture of our soup, crackers and crystal lite lemonade (brought from the states.) Today we had our Sunday meal of hake (fish), rice, green beans, pineapple and lemonade. This is a Sunday meal we began in Dallas but we had salmon there.

Saturday afternoon we were invited to Elder John B. Dickson’s home for lunch and some games. We ate pizza and played a game called “chicken foot” - a fun game you play using Dominos. The picture below is of Elder and Sister Dickson, Sister Sitati and Stephaney. Elder Sitati was away on a Mission Tour.

This morning at church Stephaney and I gave the lesson on Chastity for a combined Relief Society and Melchizedek Priesthood meeting. Afterward Stephaney got some pictures of the young women (ages 12-17) in the ward. The picture with four girls shows four sisters, two sets of twins…and they also have twin brothers! The Ghanaian people are friendly, warm and generally smiling and happy. The girl in pink asked me to give her the pictures. I asked if she has email, and I was surprised when she said yes! Internet service that would be $79 in US dollars would cost the Ghanaians over 3,000 cedi a month. Few could afford that (who of us would pay such outrageous prices?) so most use Internet café. Many read well and they prize education, with many getting higher degrees.