The “lights out” or power outages have been frequent and last for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Wi-fi withdrawal is hitting me hard. I am Internet-dependent for everything. Unfortunately, I have not discovered a remedy for this yet. I suppose that time will help me to “unplug” from the Internet with more comfort, but, for now, I am feeling withdrawal pains.

Thursday, Frank and I took a taxi to the West Hills Mall about one hour away to buy some household items. We also wanted to see if we could get a cable for his camera and a sim card that would work for my phone. No luck on either of the latter. We do not need the cable, because the memory card will fit in both of our laptops. For some reason, my Samsung Gallaxy will not cooperate with the sim cards here.

After returning to Winneba, we headed to the Summeryard Café. We met a young German woman, Mary, and her mother. They were staying at the Summeryard for a couple of days. They joined us for dinner. Mary has been in Ghana for almost one year volunteering at a hospital. She said that the German government will sponsor young people who want to volunteer in a developing country. She said that we would be likely to meet many young Germans in Ghana. Her mother was here to visit and bring her home. I caught up a little on the Internet and then we walked home in the still darkness.

We went to a special UEW convocation yesterday where four honorary doctorates were conferred. One was given to the former President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Mr. John Agyekum Kofour, one was given to Evangelical Presbyterian Minister and former acting Chairman of the UEW Council, Reverend Dr. Livingstone K. Bauma, another to Professor Michael Lewis Shattock for his contributions to higher education world wide, and, finally, one to CEO, EPP Books and President of Zenith University College, Mr. Alhaji Gibrine Adam, for his entrepreneurial and philanthropic works. The ceremony was a mixture of present and traditional Ghana with music and dance from both the current day and the more traditional. There were speeches and the conferring of the honorary doctorates. The honorary doctoral regalia are the black packages in the lap of the woman seated on the platform. They were handed down to the stage by the woman standing on the platform.

After the convocation on our ride back home, we learned that the strike by the teaching staff had been resolved. I will report to work on Monday morning.

Today is Saturday. We have been here for one week. This morning, we took a walk on the beach to find lines and lines of people from the fishing village pulling in the nets. Frank went out and helped to pull them in. There were about 40 people working on the net he was on and there were the same number on at least four other lines. We saw our neighbors who live on our property. The mother was holding someone else’s baby on her back and her 3-year old son was running from boat to boat with other young boys.