Soapy

Bayern won the champions league final so that was awesome. Luckily I got to watch via generator in the village. Hm what else has been going on? Im working on a composting/garden project. Its taking me a long time. The reality of clearing land and planting things with a cutlass and no chemicals is extremely difficult. What makes it harder is people coming to tell me it would be way faster if I burn the land or spray it with weed killer. Yeah I could do that, but its the principle of the matter. I want to show people they can do things without chemicals. So I am. Working at a library for the past four years, sitting in classes, and an occasional trip to the gym has not prepared my body at all for the work required of a farmer/gardener in Ghana. I can do the work, yes. But then my entire body will be aching, maybe for one or two days. It is seriously back breaking work. At first I wanted to be tough and not accept help from people, but at this point if someone comes to help me I will let them, and learn from their technique. Its weird because when they come help me they do the same thing I was trying to do, they can just do it about ten times better than me. Its not frustrating, its just humbling. Its just realizing that a 15 year old here can do SO MUCH in the scheme of things. As a 15 year old here you are already entrusted with so much responsibility and you have to help with family work. They may or may not go to school. 

So far in my garden I have hacked down a ton of weeds, made a green pepper/sweet pepper nursery, planted tomatoes and watermelon. I have started to pile up my carbon materials for my compost pile. Ive yet to collect the animal manure for that....luckily the ratio of carbon to nitrogen for good huge composting is 30:1. So this week I hope to work more and wrap this one up, but between my body aching and my stomach hurting I havent felt in a good enough condition to go out there in the last couple days.

Saturday I made a practice batch of soap with the leaders of my soap making group. The soap group has some organizational problems. We have to work on that. It seems that agreeing to meet every sunday is not enough. They need a weekly reminder or something. I wanted to make a practice batch so that I was sure I could do it successfully, and also I figured if we made some then the women would be talking about how easy it is and we would get a better attendance at the next meeting. So we made some soap. I felt a little bit like fight club status but honestly I was terrified of the casutic soda. I mixed it with water beforehand to make sure it was completely dissolved. It was sitting in a bucket in my room. I went to fetch water one day and my little sister saw me going and was excited to help me and ran to my room and grabbed the bucket, poured it into another container of mine, and came down to the water. When I saw that she had that green bucket I had the caustic soda water in I was horrified. Luckily she didnt get any on herself, and she poured it into the other bucket I had designated for soap making. As for the finished product of soap, I am still a little bit afraid of touching it.