This blog is about our family: Maria & Herbert (mum & dad), and les kids: Marthe, Eskil, Krister and Bente.
We’re sharing about our everyday life, thoughts, activities, jobs.
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Not only missing my sweeties at home, but now also the orphans in Nsoatre :-(
Joseph, Theophilus, Benson, George, Clement, Sarah, Martha, Mercy,
Amanda, Sarah
1. In Ghana people need to have a warm meal 3 times a day, because they work harder.
2. Eating chicken bones is healthy for you, it gives your body calcium which makes you stronger.
3. A good friend has heart problems and difficulty breathing sometimes. After some scans, and (luckily) not being able to find any heart problem, the doctor gave him:
4. When we handed out clothes in the village, some people were obviously not happy with what they got (even though it was the right size) and (almost aggressively) told us what they wanted and instructed us to get this for them. When we, shocked, looked at our Ghanaian cleaning lady Lucy, she informed us that “that is just how we are”, leaving us even more shocked. Fortunately she told us she didn’t like that way of behaving either, but unfortunately people were jealous which made them act that way.
Thursday July 14th – a trip to a plantation. Since Herbert is in the coffee- and cacao business, it is
very interesting to talk to the workers at the cacao plantation, see the process and take pictures.
Through a very muddy bush road we arrived in the center of the plantation where the 10 workers and their families live.
By the look of their clothes we could tell that those people were very poor, the people in the village surrounding the
orphanage look rich compared to those people here at the plantation.
Even if they don’t always smile on pictures, I know they were very happy for the clothes we brought for all families.
Not all of the children and women were there at the moment, but we left clothes for everybody. All the children were boys, so we could leave the girls clothes in the car.
From a sponsor in the Netherlands, we got many red T-shirts which we could give to all workers and their wives.
Then it was time for me to play journalist :-) I talked to a nice man who was known to be the cacao expert on the plantation.
My brother Solo translated, but the man spoke some English so the interview went very well.
He told me a lot about the process from planting the tree to selling the dried beans.
They also showed us around the plantation.
Besides the cacao they have lime, orange, banana and tangerines.
When leaving, we were given a big box of all kinds of fruits.
On our way back, we stopped along the road to hand out some more clothes, since we had some girls clothes and baby clothes left. It is so nice to see how happy those people are with the attention and some new clothes.
What made my day, apart from the very interesting visit to the plantation, was stopping the car at a very small
village (if you even can call it that – there were no more than 5 or 6 houses) and giving all the children a toy and holding the very cute twin girls! :-)
2 years ago when I was here in Nsoatre, Ghana, I met Halimatu, a cute 6 month old baby, and her mother. We became friends, I visit her quite often and she visited me. She taught me how to carry a baby on my back.
Being back here in Nsoatre, of course I visited her. Found out first the family had moved, but a neighbor showed me the way to her new house.
My little ‘chocolate baby’ (as Krister called her 2 years ago) is now a little girl and has a baby brother.
Here are the pictures of then and now.
