Somebody obviously has money on one of these islands. It is most likely the Lebanese who have built some vacation homes on some of these islands. They own all of our grocery stores in Ghana. I couldn't resist the contrast of the old fishing boat with the new jet ski. 

They still work the river like they have for centuries. These men are hauling sugar cane.

Their sail is made of rice sacks. It feels like we've stepped back 300 years. 

Here we are landing on an island with our friends the Murrays and Deanne Krieger. They are getting acquainted with the children. You can see our tour boat behind them. Pretty basic! 

We had our picture taken with some of the children and our basket maker. The kids were so cute. 

These are some of the villagers fishing boats.  

The villagers are bringing in the catch of the day. 

Any of the grandchildren want to live in this tree house? 

This is how they pile a lot of the public transport vans (called tro-tros). It is no wonder that we see so many of them broken down by the side of the road. No load is too heavy if it means a fare for a tro-tro driver. This is an untypical road through a village because it has so few potholes. Walkers, sellers, and tro-tros all share the same road space. 

This is a mango tree with hanging mangoes and we can't wait until they ripen. They say the mango season starts again in about 1 week.  

This is Cedi, the man who owns the glass bead factory. He is a real artisan and was giving us and up close demonstration of the technique to make the different style of beads. It is painstaking work. 

Cedi is showing us the drum they use to turn the glass shards into powder. The pestle he has in his hands weighs about 50 pounds, and with that much weight even I was able to smash the glass into powder, but I certainly couldn't have done it all day long. Once was enough for my arms 

Here is a close up of Cedi filling the molds with the powdered glass mixed with pigment. He designs the bead by the way he pours in the powder. Kind of like pouring sand into a bottle creating a design by the way it is poured. The little pouring spout is also made from recycled tin cans. These Africans don't waste a thing! 

These are two of the painters, painting the beads after they have cooled from the fire. 

Here is a close up of the painting. They do this so fast doing the same stroke all the way down and then turning the stick slightly to do the next paint stroke all the way down. 

These are some of the freshly painted beads waiting to dry 

This is another booth of beautiful beads. This little boy was such a cute salesman that I had to take his picture with his mother and tell her what a good salesman he was, but it wasn't easy to get him to smile for the picture. See any color beads that you like? 

For those of you who are still feeling sorry for us I wanted to send this photo Tam took of me asleep under a little grass umbrella at Tills Beach. We haven't had a day off since we returned from General Conference so we drove 63 km (about 40 miles) down the coast, over dirt roads with gigantic potholes, through innumerable African villages, and landed at Tils Beach where we had a marvelous lunch and spent the afternoon snoozing, reading, and wading in the bathtub temperature water. We were all alone except for the two little boys who wandered by, an elderly white couple from Europe and a Ghanian couple. The sand is soft and beautiful, the ocean is spectacular, the breeze was blowing. You couldn't ask for more, except for the horrific traffic that always engulfs that road and turns a 40 mile trip into a 2 hour stress event. Oh well...the beach was worth it.

A beached whale sleeping it off at Tils Beach.

Two young Ghanaian boys playing with homemade cars at Tils Beach.

Just a sample of the beads at this stall. Enlarge the photo (click on it) to see it up close so you don't miss the beautiful colors. We have got about as many beads at our house as we do baskets. 

Deann and Mom doing their thing at the village bead market. This market is about an hour out of Accra in a little village. It is close to the bead factory Flat Stanley and Geo Gnome visited. You can see just one small stall of beads but there are dozens of stalls like this one. 

These two lads were at the bead market helping their mums and as I was taking pictures they began smoozing to have me take their photo. I couldn't resist. 

Mom practicing the fine art of bargaining to buy a basket. We love African baskets. They are so colorfull and sturdy and useful. We must have 20 baskets around the house and today we bought another five. They cost about $5 each. Hopefully we can get a bunch of them home as gifts for people on our gift list. 

Hmmmm! You are probably wondering why anyone would paint this message on a wall. Well...you can see the fellow in the white shirt just at the top of the wall on the right? Guess what he is doing? Isuppose it is because he is on the other side of the wall and can't read what is on this side. The Ghana MTC is the building you can see through the trees behind the fellow in the white shirt.