Emily and Joey: Stephen's Birthday and Adventure to the Farms

Yesterday was a wonderful day. The first day that we arrived in Abomosu, Stephen Sr. showed us his "garden" behind his house. He has told us that he has multiple farms in the area and that when the Rhino (heavy duty golf cart) got fixed he would take us to see all of his farms.

All loaded up in the Rhino- Don't worry we all sat down after the picture was taken.

The Rhino was finally fixed a couple weeks ago but Stephen has been very busy, until yesterday. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. so that we could eat breakfast and be ready to leave on our grand adventure by 6:00 a.m. We all piled into the Rhino and were off to see ALL of Stephen's farms. We soon arrived to an area where we could no longer ride any further (because of weed overgrowth during the time the Rhino was being fixed). We all hopped out of the Rhino and headed out on foot. We walked through many farms of people that we have met while we have been here. Farms in Ghana or at least Abomosu are very different from American farms. Most farms don't have fences around them, boundaries are marked by a particular tree that is different than all of the other trees in the area.

First we arrived at Stephen's father's farm, which has been split up between Stephen's siblings. Each sibling received 9 acres of their father's land. Stephen was the only child that was very serious about the farms so he was lucky enough to have the family house on his part of the property.

Stephen's Childhood Home

We were able to see where Stephen grew up and hear some of his childhood stories. He truly had a "walked uphill both ways in the snow to school" story. The house is very far away from the village, Stephen and his siblings would wake up at 5:00 am to start walking to school, their father would walk with them with a headlamp and a shotgun until they could see a light (the forest was so dense that is was very dark at that time of morning) then the children finished walking the rest of the way. The rainy season can be very bad, especially where they had to go near the river that is overflowing often. The most amazing part of this was that they did not have shoes. Stephen received his first pair of shoes which were flip-flops when he was 16 years old.

After we passed the family farm we walked quite aways farther and we reached Stephen's far away farm, which is 60 acres. It is amazing to see the difference between Stephen's farms and the other farms that we saw. He has hired many people to help him with his farms because he is unable to do all the work himself. Stephen's farms were cleared of weeds while the other farms…were very weedy, in those farms you could barely tell what was weeds and what were crops.

I had to use a machete to get through the thick weeds

On this farm he has plantains, cocoa, cocoa yams, sugar cane, corn/maize, and a lot more. Stephen told us that in 3 years he will be the largest cocoa farmer in the region. We visited quite a few more of his farms, I can't remember how many we stopped at but he owns 7 farms with over 100 acres of land. We stopped at his citrus farm where he has hybrid oranges that will grow in the "off season". They tasted so good. Lastly we stopped at his farms that had bananas and peppers.

Gloria with the Sugar Cane on her head

Joey found himself a tie - it is part of the plantain plant

Joey found a cute little chick

Another reason this day was so special is because it was Stephen's 67th birthday. We were so glad that he took us to his farms on his birthday and spent the morning with us. After we arrived home, Abbie and I went over to the Terry's house to make some snickerdoodle cookies to celebrate his birthday. We have made many treats (brownies, chocolate chip cookies, no-bake cookies, snickerdoodles, doughnuts) but because the Ghanaians don't really enjoy really sweet foods they have enjoyed our cookies the most. Then that night Margaret, Gloria, and Nana (who came up to celebrate) made a big meal and invited all of our friends over to celebrate Stephen's birthday. We had fried rice, fried noodles, chicken, watermelon, hard-boiled eggs, sugar cane, cake (made by the Terrys), snickerdoodles, minerals (soda), and soy milk. It was such a fun night just being surrounded by the people we have grown to love. We were especially glad that we were able to celebrate Stephen's birthday, he has been so helpful to us and we were glad that we could have a day to celebrate him and thank him for all that he has done for us. He and Margaret are our Grandpa and Grandma. We are so grateful to consider them as our family.