Backyard Menagerie

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Greetings From Buswa The Parrot

So in my first entry I mentioned the host of characters we have in the backyard and their supposed identity crises. Well I’m happy to report that at this moment they’ve all resumed their roles as proper parrot, goat and dog. Buswa, the parrot, can now speak more languages than I can. He speaks a mix of Fante, English (American and British mind you!), Dutch, and hopefully will be speaking some Korean by the time I leave! Every morning he greets us with a “Hellooooo! Bek houuuuuuuuuuuuuuden!” (which means “Shut Up” in Dutch). I am just trying to get him to finish his lovely morning salutation with a loud “Hah ji maaaaaaa” (which means “Stop it” in Korean). If he succeeds, I think his greeting will be just perfect.

Cabbage Is Dead!

So while the parrot grew on me, the goat definitely did not. In the beginning Cabbage the goat was so cute. He thought he was the dog and would try and play with us, but as the weeks went on, he became completely unruly. Some of us think that he just grew frustrated at not having a female partner, since his male organs started to resemble that of the dog from Van Wilder. Cabbage was a poor frustrated little goat and took out his aggression on us. Once he tried lifting the skirt of my housemate, Alice, and definitely made some obscene gestures towards her. Cabbage just got so crazy, baaaa-ing from 5am onwards, and got so petulant that going into the backyard was like a race to see if you could get your laundry while dodging the puddles of goat urine and feces and return to the house before Cabbage ran his horns into the side of your leg. So last week, we had enough, and now Cabbage is now resting peacefully in our freezer. It is amazing how little sympathy we feel for this pseudo pet. Kiley, a vegetarian for 3 years, is nothing but happy about Cabbage’s freezer status and was even contemplating cooking some goat stew to celebrate. Most of the time I just think Cabbage disappeared, but then Sarah mentioned that it might be like “The Telltale Heart” and we’ll hear him baaa-ing from the freezer! Creepy! We are now trying to get Buswa the parrot to say “Cabbage is dead!” Maybe the parrot has some decency that we do not have, because he does not seem to want to pick up this phrase…

I Love Togbe

Togbe has restored my love of dogs. Unlike the mangy critters I saw crapping on the boardwalk in Cannes and yelping at Sunday brunches in New York, Togbe is big, so cute, and so well behaved. Getting a dog will definitely be at the top of my list of things to do once I manage to stay put in one place! This is Togbe, a South African Bauer dog, and can you believe he is still growing?! He’d be a really good guard dog but he couldn’t hurt a fly. When we had guests over for dinner, he stayed in the house and growled from the living room and was so distraught he peed on the floor. Definitely a new tactic for keeping intruders at bay; just make a pee puddle for them to slip and fall in! What a smart doggy. He is just so cute, I am really going to miss him!!!

The Bullfrog Bordello

Whoever said the countryside was peaceful has clearly not been to Elmina. I have never had such trouble sleeping as I have here! Every night I wake up every two to three hours to the sound of about a hundred bullfrogs mating right outside my window. Now with the rainy season, the bullfrogs are out in full force, and it’s almost offensive at how crazy they are while I’m trying to get a good night’s rest! Add to that a few hundred crickets, and a few roosters, and you’ll get a pretty good picture of my sleepless nights here. It makes the time I lived right next to the Queensborough Bridge seem like heaven. At least I could get through most of the night peacefully until the noises of rush hour and road rage woke me up at 7am. Perhaps I have been here too long, because it seems like a good solution to the problem would be to just catch them and put them in the freezer for dinner, served along with Cabbage. Hmmm. After these events at the house and witnessing how they keep meat here (what, you think they have freezers here or something? Try a big plastic bucket, and if you are lucky, a sheet to protect it from the swarm of flies covering it.) I think I just might be a vegetarian for life after my stay here! I’m not sure if even Mom’s special kalbi (Korean barbecue) could even bring me back to the other side. Aside from gross meat, the local dishes here are just so tasty, and the woman who cooks our dinners, Elizabeth, is a fantastic cook and has become my Ghanian mother! More about her and her scrumptious meals in the next entry…

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