There are no barriers in life, only challenges.

Feeling a bit like Phinnaeus Fogg from around the world in 80 days, I decided to pucker up and join Victer on his trip to Benin. He hates doing the trip on his own as he spends twelve hours in the car and has no one to talk to. So, I behaved like the perfect wife, once again, and crossed three countries in one day. What a horrific drive. Never mind the traffic, watch out for the swimming pool potholes, chickens, goats, children, bicycles, and the worst of course, the Okada’s (scooters) They are like ants and are everywhere. It is like playing a dangerous and frightening play station game and you are the spaceship dodging the obstacles that threaten to blow you up. I was so car sick. We woke up early in the morning to get going, so on my way out the door I grabbed my pillow off my bed, thinking I could steal some shut eye in the car. I was wrong. I could not get my eyes to obey and stay closed. The scenery is so busy outside that I spent most of the journey watching the roadside movie; a little bit of horror, lots of comedy and definitely a tearjerker and thriller all rolled into one. To get to Benin, we had to cross three borders. That is an experience. Get to first border, get out the car, wait in queue, present passport, get interrogated, pay a bribe (Why…I do not know …. It’s just what is done…. ridiculous). Walk through the boom (just to get to the other side…so you have walked three paces and you are in the next country) …. wait in the queue…. present passport, get interrogated, pay bribe…. this we continued to do a further 8 times! As you travel the stretch of road between borders, policemen jump out from the side of the road, for no reason what so ever, you open your window, he asks you how your day is, you say “Fine, thank you” and you pay him. The corruption is beyond me. Once you finally reach Benin, you enter a strange world of African scenery, African people, but when they open their mouths, they speak French. Hardly anyone speaks English, so sign language becomes the communication skill of the day, and once again business becomes painfully slow. The whole time you sit in meetings, you are constantly checking your watch…. the border to return to Accra closes at 22h00, and believe me, you do not want to be stuck at the border in one of those cockroach infested hotels.

Another graffiti sign on a wall shouted out to me – “Beware Trouble dey come”. What trouble could possibly be coming I wondered to myself. I should have taken heed. Vehicle trouble. We have two land cruisers and two drivers. One driver belongs to Victer for his business purposes, and the other driver and vehicle is mine, for collection of children, grocery shopping etc. Well, at one stage last week, we had no vehicles. It started with my vehicle on the way to collect Christopher from school. In the school parking lot, my land cruiser decided to give up the ghost and promptly packed up. Christopher is fondly referred to as “Boss”, by Kwesi the driver, and as Bobby jumped into the car, grumpy after a hard day’s work, realizing he was going nowhere, shouted at Kwesi, “You are fired!” I should mention that both vehicles cost a fortune in petrol. You can imagine how much it costs to get a mechanic out to fix them. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after coughing up for fuses and towing, we were back on the road again so to speak. The next day, Victer had to travel to Togo, and his land cruiser also surrendered somewhere between a village called Afienya and no man’s land. There he sat on the side of the road for four hours waiting for a fan belt. As the familiar song goes “On the road again” …. not for long, the wheel nuts were stolen off my vehicle, and back to the grinning mechanic we went. Finally, we are back to normal, however, Kwesi’s job still hangs in the balance. After a rainstorm the other day, he failed to take the umbrella with him when he collected Chris from school, Mr. Grumpy got soaking wet and Kwesi got fired again.

Morgan and Chris are doing splendidly. It seems to be the season for birthday parties, and with Morgan’s great love of a good party and birthday cake, she is in her element. Chris on the other hand loves to go and choose the gift for the birthday boy or girl, however upon arriving at the party begins to negotiate that he is not too sure if this friend is really such a good friend of his, and maybe he should keep the present. His confidence continues to grow along with his reading. He excels in the numbers department (definitely not a talent he has inherited from his mother, maybe from his uncle Matthew, who got to every intelligent queue first, and he would argue, the good looks queue too) Morgan has become a delightful little actress. Maybe a diva is probably a better choice of words. She creeps into hearts, performs, and delights, bosses, and instructs, and emerges on top. They have shown some signs of missing home however, especially when they receive news from Granny and Grandpa and their much-missed dog, Tess. All in all, they are keeping their chins up and are achieving way beyond our expectations, so we cannot ask for more.

About four weeks ago, I contacted Rob and asked him to get some items together that we need and longed for from home, and courier them to us. We waited in anticipation for our bottles of Mrs. Balls chutney (A great love of mine and Morgie’s), some decent bath sheets (the ones we have here cannot absorb the damp fast enough), some descent music CD’s (need I say more), some mouth maintenance for Victer (once again need I say more. Need to keep those pearly whites looking pearly), and some of our post. Days turned into weeks, and it eventually arrived yesterday. No sooner had the parcel entered the office building, Victer and myself were like children at Christmas ripping at the tape, watched by staff members in utter shock as we excitedly pulled each item out one by one and held them in the air for all to see. As the last item was pulled from the belly of the box, tears set in……oh boy…nothing like a little bit of home.