Kirsten decked out in her funeral dress (I got a shirt made out of the same material - it was chosen as the fabric our community would wear to the funeral).

Kirsten and Kalulu! I picked up our new puppy from a friend when I was traveling down south. The dog was found abandoned in a pile of bricks and was in need of a home. The nine hour bus trip with her was not nearly as bad as one might imagine. Kalulu seems at home now and has even started barking at strangers that come over. She is extra cute when trying to play with the cat (who wants no part of her), and when she interacts with the goats and chickens that stop by. She is not so cute when attack our feet while we sleep.

Work party building our wall outside our house. Unfortunately the wall still isn't finished, but we are getting there. So this is the same process that most people use for building their houses and the same that built our house. You roll mud into balls and stack them up and mush them together (its actually really hard work and more complicated than that, but that's the general idea.) When its finished we can start work on a garden and get chicken to live in the chicken houses.

The wall inside of our handsome abode. I painted a mural over the door and another painting of mine is on the left.

The beautiful beach at the green turtle lodge on the western coast of Ghana. It took a couple days of travel to get there from our desert home, but man was it worth it. After not seeing a body of water for months, swimming in that ocean was glorious. We played in the waves for days until we were thoroughly beaten down by the surf and our hearing began to suffer because of all the sand in our ears.

Good times at the beach bar.

Kirsten looking all good at the hotel we stayed at near to cape coast and karkoum national park. The hotel was interesting, it looked like a place that was probably elegant and nice at some point in the distant past, but is now crumbling and a bit rundown, though still nice. It is built on stilts over a lagoon full of crocodiles. We were eating lunch and saw a guy touching one of the crocs, so we thought we would join him. A hotel employee ensured us that they were freindly crocodiles and that they dont like to eat people. So we touched its tale. And I totally recommend touching a croc to everyone the next time the opportunity presents itself. You get a sort of rush of adreneline being so close to a reptile with such a big mouth full of sharp teeth.

Had to take this picture of the real croc hanging out with the croc statue.

Karkoum national park canopy walk was super cool. Karkoum is the biggest rainforest preserve in Ghana, and unfortunately one of the few. Most forests in Ghana have been logged and over hunted. As a result you don't see a lot of wildlife around in general (except for lizards, ants, bats, spiders, scorpions - yay!) In the bush around where we live there are still many hunters who go into the bush with their bows and arrows, sling shots, clubs and kill monkeys, antelope, etc. As a result you dont really see monkeys or cool animals unless you go deep into the bush and are good at tracking animals - sad. Karkoum has a healthy population of cool animals (monkeys, forest elephants, antelope, etc) but unfortunately we did not see them.

View of one of the bridges on the canopy walk.

Kirsten and giant tree she befriended in Karkoum National Park.

A view of Cape Coast castle, on the coast of the town of Cape Coast. This castle was mostly built by the British in the early 1600s (although it was begun by Portuguese and taken over by dutch before British took it over and built most of it). It was mainly used as a store house and market for the slaves they were taking out of West Africa until the slave trade officially ended in Britain in 1807. Altogether some two million West Africans went through this one castle, over half of those died while in the castle or on route to their destinations. It was especially unnerving and emotional when the tour took us into the dungeons where the slaves were kept, conditions were unspeakably bad for them.

Inside the castle. A pile of old cannon balls.

A view from the upper part of the castle overlooking a stretch of the coast.

Cape coast is a big time fishing town, here are a group of fisherman doing their fisherman things. While Kirsten and I were staying on the beach we walked over to a small fishing village and came across a group of twenty or so men pulling a giant net out of the ocean from the shore. We joined them for about twenty minutes pulling and pulling and singing the work song they were singing. They must have been pulling that net in for over an hour. It was full of all kinds of fish and a couple of sea snakes, which one guy thought would be funny to take and thrown down at our feet.

Kirsten looking super african (or as african as she can get) in front of our house. The cement looking area she is on is where we usually sleep. However, the rainy season is fast approaching and that will bring us some cooler nights.

A view of our wall in progress on the side of your house. We plan to have a garden and then a chicken hangout area in this space.

Our super cute puppy is extra super cute when she is hanging out in the little mud cubby hole built for our future chickens.