Auntie Rose's Ice Cream

My home stay Mom owns a “store” of sorts. It is about the size of Red’s Eats (for those of you in the know), or about 12x8. She sells a variety of items including sandals (otherwise known as Charlie’s), women shoes, candy, water, food items, laundry soap and ice cream. Her original goal when she started her business was to make $1 Ghana Cedi per day. (This would be equivalent to about .70 cents US). She has met her goal and has asked me to help her with a new vision for the store. 

There are a couple of different brands of ice cream she sells.  I use the word “ice cream” very loosely. It is more like frozen ice. Since I’ve been in Ghana, I have not seen milk, let alone cream. Plus, most places do not have freezers, or, for that matter, electricity. My Mom has no power at the store, but has a freezer at the house and brings  the goods to her shop frozen. The ice cream is in bags, (stay tuned for a blog on “Life in a bag”), similar to popsicles. There is a generic brand, that basically tastes like flavored sugar water. The flavors include cola, pineapple and cocoa and this sells for .10 pesawa (cents). The top of the line is called Fan Ice and that has three flavors; strawberry yogurt- it actually tastes like that, vanilla- tastes like frozen frosting and chocolate, which I think is pretty tasty. Fan Ice sells for .40 pesawa. 

My Mom also makes her own ice cream. She makes it with powdered milk, flour, nutmeg, sugar, vanilla and other things. I can’t tell you everything in it, otherwise I would have to kill you. Because she uses powdered milk, it is more creamy than the other brands. It is far better than the generic one and as good as the Fan Ice, tasting more like frozen pudding.  She only had one flavor, vanilla and was selling it for .05-10 pesawa. I asked her how she came up with the price and she told me that she thought is should be the same as the generic. When I asked her how much it cost her to make it, she had no idea. Welcome to Ghana....

I helped her with an inventory list, figured out the pricing and found that it cost her about .08 pesawa to make. She usually makes one batch a week, on Sundays, and sells out by Tuesday or Wednesday. I encouraged her to increase the price to .15 mainly due to the fact it is so much tastier than the generic, but we also knew that she could not sell it for much more than that. She decided that she would do 2 sizes, one for .10 and the other for .15 and she is still selling out. 

I asked her why she does not make more than one batch a week, and she said that she did not have time, it takes about 3 hours, and she is busy at her store during the week. So, I did the math with her; we figured out that doing one batch, she is making $12 Ghana Cedi, that is profit!!!!! I asked her how long would she have to work at the store to make that kind of profit. It was then we had a “Peace Corps Moment”. A light went on inside her head, she smiled and said that she will make another batch mid week, opening the store a little later one day. It was great! She figured it out by herself, I didn’t have to tell her, I just merely showed her the dots and she connected them. 

I also thought back to when I used to make vanilla pudding when I was a kid, and how my Mom would add some coffee to it to make coffee pudding. Since there is only instant coffee here available and, a bunch of white folks in the village for a few weeks, I suggested we make some coffee ice cream. It is a big hit, and we are selling it for .20 pesawa. She is now thinking about making her own pineapple flavor as well and, selling it to someone else in another town. 

I am so proud of my Mom, she has a great business mind and open to learning. She is a far cry from her original goal of making $1 per day. I hope that my work in Wenchi will be as successful as “Auntie Rose’s Ice Cream”.

To Kill A Rooster

Move over, Harper Lee, Mocking Birds have nothing on Roosters. Instead of Mr. Lee, my book would be more like a Stephen King novel. “The cold sharp steel edge of an axe makes a dull thud as it separates  the head from the body of the accused rooster....” Yes,  I think that is how I would start it. After many nights awake, staring up my ceiling thinking of ways to kill my fowl feather fiend, I have decided to write a quick blog on the experience. 

I usually am in bed by 9:30 and wake up around 6:00 am. I have read other blogs that have talked about the noise in Ghana. It is not trains rattling on the tracks towards their destination, or the angry sounds of taxi horns, or the high shrill of sirens. No, it’s the sound of sheep and goats bleating all night keeping them awake until all hours of the night. I considered myself lucky that my room is on the second story in the front of the house, away from the four legged animals. I have instead a demented, possessed rooster, whose only goal in life that I can see is to keep me from sleeping. 

I can remember back in the States watching a commercial for a sleeping pill, where a rooster is perched on the  window sill, as the early morning sun makes its way up the sky, crowing and keeping the poor lady in bed awake. Well, the thought that the rooster only crows at the crack of dawn it a terrible myth, at least here in Ghana. This loud, obnoxious creature from Hell, crows whenever he damn well feels like it. 

He starts about 1:30  in the morning, just when I am getting into my deep REM sleep. He crows once, waits, and listens for a response. If there is no response,  he tries again 15 minutes later. Please allow me to describe the noise this wretched wraith makes. If he where a singer, he would be one of those singers that just screams the whole time. You can’t understand the words, you can only feel the pent up rage and anger the singer is conveying. Compared to him, a regular rooster would be Barry Manalow, or Mister Rogers. My rooster makes this unearthly scream for prolonged periods of time, and confirms to me that he is not from this world but from the deepest darkest pit of Hell. 

He will do this three times, and, when no other rooster responds, he will wait and hour and do the whole process all over again. Usually by 3:30, he strikes pay dirt, and some other rooster will respond. At that time in the morning, voices travel quite a distance, and from somewhere down the street, I hear a faint cock-a-doodle-doo. That is all he needs. It’s like a person drinking 20 large extra bold Dunkin’ Donuts Coffees. He explodes into a series of crowing, screaming and hacking that continues for the next 2 1/2 hours. 

Now, I consider myself a fairly easy going person, even keeled, and there is not much that gets under my skin. But, lying awake at 3:45, or 4:20, listening to this has tested my patience. Yes, I have my ear plugs in. Yes, the pillow is over my head. Yes and am drugged with Tylenol PM. All to no avail. I don’t think there is a way that I have not thought of on how this dreadful bird could die a long and painful death. I have developed an unhealthy taste for chicken. Every time I am served chicken at home I think, “Could this be Him??” I bite down hard, chew with extra vigor, shredding the flesh with my teeth. But, alas, the next morning the cycle starts all over again...