Eldest son Tom is in Ghana for a week doing his fair trade chocolate stuff at a kid’s camp in Kumasi. This is a huge city in the Ashanti rainforest region and is apparently called ‘the garden city’ because of its amazing flowers and plants. I wish he would email to say he has got there but I suppose he is very busy having fun and forgetting those of us stuck in showery Devon – boo, hoo. One minute we have sunshine, the next violent hail and rain.
I have a very bad headache, the result of drinking to many glasses of wine at a do organised by our vets to talk about health schemes for infectious diseases in beef and dairy cattle. It was extremely interesting particularly the risk assessment computer programme that looks at the animals, the people, the machinery and the buildings. These evenings are held at a local pub with a big function room that was full. Several neighbours of ours were there and it was excellent. It was hosted by the boss Dick Sibley and he had invited Peter Orpin from the Park Vet Group in Leicester to talk about Johnes disease in cattle, our vet John Schiles did biosecurity and infectious diseases in the South West, Ian Glover did infectious disease control and Ibgrid Bijker fluke and lungworm. They are also setting up discussion groups and training courses so it is all about herd health and the prevention as far as one can of infectious diseases. We of course are the outsiders in all this as alpaca breeders but Chas asked if they could adapt it for us and they were very positive about the idea.
Tom A –
Sorry for not getting in touch Mutha! I tried to call you at the airport to let you know that Chas’s stuff arrived in the nick of time, taxied up from the office to the flat with ten minutes spare for me to repack it all and then leap in a taxi onwards bound…
Ghana is good fun of course. I’m getting lots of lovely local food as we are feeding the 70 children at the Kids Camp with three hearty meals a day. My favourite dish so far is sticky rice balls with palm nut soup. You break off a chunk of rice with your fingers, dip it in the palm nut soup, and occasionally fish out a chunk of boney meat from the soup to chew on. Marvellous!
It’s very easy to get online now compared to my last visit one and a half years ago. Vodaphone has taken over the national telecom company and there are a plethora of 3G mobile broadband offerings with network access spreading all over the country. The digital divide is very severe of course, mobile phone usage is much more democratic, but the internet seems to be finally arriving here.
xxx
Tom