Ghana is testing me!

So, yesterday was a very trying day for me. I woke up fairly early, I think about 6am (the first time was around 4am but I did manage to get a little more sleep). I made my way to the bathroom to fill my bucket with some water to heat and.... No water. Darn it. The water that runs through my tap comes through a reservoir. When this water empties, it needs to be refilled, sometimes with a truck that the caretaker has to order to bring in new tanks of water. This is not something I can do myself. So, I waited a little while to call my caretaker, Tony, so as not to wake him up (although I am pretty sure everyone in Ghana is normally awake by 5am :) )- his phone was switched off. I called about once an hour and at 3pm, his phone had still not been switched on. At this point I was really wanting a shower, and the ability to wash dishes! I decided to call the landlord, who isn't normally around for things like this but I thought he might be able to help me. He said that he did indeed know where Tony was and could contact him for me. I thanked him and waited a few hours to hear back- no response. I called the landlord again and was told that I "should have water by evening". Normally, that sentence wouldn't worry me. Here in Ghana, I was thinking "uh oh, should have water by evening? I hope it doesn't take a week!" Now in the middle of all of this, my project coordinator Lawrence had not shown up for work or called to tell me why he was not in the office, one of my volunteers is not feeling well, and my house filled with smoke. Yep, you heard me right, smoke.

I was sitting at my desk working when I smelled it, and the house quickly began filling with it. You could see the smoke everywhere. My house has lot's of windows. There is no a/c but usually the breeze from the ocean and all the airflow makes it cool enough. In these circumstances it also meant that when a man decided to burn an entire field behind my house and the wind is blowing off the ocean toward me, that all the smoke filled the house pretty quickly through the windows. As soon as I realized what was happening, I ran through trying to close the windows on that side of the house, but most of the damage had already been done. One of my curtains is even black on the side facing the window now! I also had some ash on my bedroom floor... basically it was just a mess. I put a fan facing out toward one of the windows on the other side of the house to try and draw some of the smoke out and when the field stopped burning I opened them all again and it cleared out pretty quickly. Water finally came back too later in the evening although it was coming out brown last night... today it seems to look a little better.

Yesterday was frustrating, I admit. But it didn't seem to end too badly, and I survived with most of my wits intact ;). The picture above is what I mentioned with my little water heater burning up.

This weekend I am not entirely sure what I will be doing, other than making snickerdoodles for the kids at the orphanage on Sunday.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.