The three stories Emily Peters wrote about the Baptist Medical Centre have been published on the GoWestAfrica.org website as well as by the Baptist Press. The BP has now distributed it to all its affiliates and the stories are popping up all over the web (and in some newspapers).

I got an email from Mike Mott, our pastor from Seminole First Baptist Church, telling me that she was on the front page of the Florida Baptist Witness!

Here are the stories on gowestafrica.org (I’m biased towards that source since it has more photos):

• 50 year celebration
• Volunteers needed
• BMC Public health

Or you can pick another source:

• IMB.org
• Baptist Press
• Florida Baptist Witness
• Oklahoma Baptist Messenger
• Christian Telegraph
• Mission Network News (with audio version too!)
• Baptist Medical Centre’s website

** a big thunderstorm took out our internet for a day so I was a bit behind on posts. I’ve caught up and posted the last few days photos on the website **

The “sea creature” I mentioned the other day has been slain. I’ve heard varying accounts of how it happened ranging from “they shot it” to the more exciting “it took thousands of men with cutlasses.”

What I know for sure is that after it was killed, its head was sent to the Nayiri as a gift. Hippo meat is supposedly very good (just ask Tommy Harrison who went to the Nayiri to get some) and when I visited the chief’s palace all that was left was its massive jaw bone.

On a not-so-entertaining note, the man attacked by the hippo is still in the hospital and in critical condition. Keep him in your prayers as he is in a great deal of pain and has 8 broken ribs.

Saturday is the big “golden jubilee” event and over a 1000 people are expected to attend. In preparation, the hospital employees have been preparing food all day long. On the menu will be jollof rice with a variety of meats. So far 3 cows, 12 sheep, 15 guinea fowl, and 3 goats have been donated by various villages and VIPs.

Early this morning 8 butchers started the process by slaughtering the animals. I’ve never seen that many animals butchered at once and it was a real mess. It made me wonder what the temple in Jerusalem must have looked like in Biblical times when all the Israelites brought in their offerings.

I’ve got photos but you’ll have to use the link since they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea -> Read the rest of this entry »

I had this edible treat down in southern Ghana. Sanyu is beef or lamb meat that is grilled inside the intestines of the animal.  While the meat simmers inside it soaks up all the flavor from the spices that were rubbed on it. Before serving the tender meat more spices are added.

I must say, I was a bit  skeptical when my sanyu was placed in front of me wrapped in old newspapers. But man, oh man, was it scrumptious!

I gave you a look at the artistic genius that is my breakfast every morning.  Unfortunately Heidi gets the opposite. She eats some generic Ghanaian corn flakes every day and has to stare at a box featuring the Comic Sans font. No breakfast of champions would write the word “champion” in Comic Sans.

For those of you who aren’t font snobs and don’t understand the evils of Comic Sans, I invite you to visit www.bancomicsans.com to be educated. To quote that website:

“…widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built. “

For those of you who would like to become font snobs, I invite you to check out the Helvetica documentary now out on DVD.

In the big West African cities (Ouagadougou, Abidjan, Accra), there are lots of little shacks on the side of the road offering a “fast food” breakfast to city workers. It is common to see people there eating a very simple breakfast of coffee and baguette (French bread).

Sometimes they make sandwiches with the bread. However, these sandwiches usually consist of ground beef or fish spread on the baguette. Most of the time the bread is just eaten with margarine spread on it.

The major difference in their morning coffee and ours in the US is that theirs is instant coffee (usually Nescafe) and they mix it with sweetened condensed milk (and lots of it). Several times when I’ve eaten breakfast in the city I’ve also been served my coffee in a bowl with a large soup spoon to sip it with.

At the end of October when I was in Abidjan I went out with some old friends and had some attiéké. Last week I spent most of my time at the media office in Abidjan working so I decided to grab some attiéké from a joint across the street every day for lunch.

Attiéké is a dish native to the Ivory Coast that is made from ground, fermented cassava. It is quite inexpensive. In fact, for lunch I was paying about 25 cents for a huge plate of attiéké with onions and hot peppers. Then about 60 cents for two pieces of fried fish. Now that is some cheap fast food! Read the rest of this entry »

This is Emily Peters, a short-term missionary in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. She is one of the writers on the IMB West Africa media team that I was working with this past week.

The last night I was in Abidjan the team treated me to a delicious dinner at a Moroccan restaurant in town. The place not only had amazing food but a really cool decor. There was a lamp with a funky shade behind Emily that provided the great backlighting for this image.

Here are some other images from the restaurant: