Grant Dobbe

I’m attempting to push my posting/emailing schedule back to Saturday; thus, this week’s missive comes on a Thursday.

I’m not going to lie — I’m a bit frazzled. The end of the term is fast approaching, and I have all of the requisite paperwork, grading, and maintenance that comes with it. Plus, I’ve been trying to keep the house in order and trying to plan for two back-to-back weekends of traveling. To top it all off, I’ve got another mouse in my house.

This one at least has the good sense to keep quiet. I’ve seen him more than I’ve heard him. He managed to startle the crap out of me two days ago by running out of my closet when I was going into it. I found his nest under my bookshelf, and his likely entry point in my guest room. I’m hoping to get the ceiling plywood replaced soon, but I’m not holding my breath — slow is the new fast in Ghana. I’ve plugged it as best I can with steel wool and duct tape for the time being to prevent further mouse entry and egress, but that does not resolve the problem of my current rodent roommate.

Thus, I’ve resorted to trying to catch the little bugger. Ideally, I’d like to poison him so that he can’t find his way back, but the closest mouse poison is in Berekum. So, I’m trying a live trap. This morning, I placed a scrap of bread with some peanut butter in an empty powdered milk canister, and balanced it on the edge of my table/countertop with a  tall bucket underneath it. My hope is that the mouse gets curious, goes to investigate the snack, and gets trapped in the bucket. After I get a chance to rough him up a bit (meaning a bicycle ride out of town), I’ll let him go somewhere very far away from my house.

In other news, the KSO Thanksgiving Extravaganza is actually *this* weekend. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up extra super-duper early and head for Kumasi, stopping in Berekum and Sunyani on the way to run errands and resupply. I’m hoping to find a new cogset in Kumasi to replace the well-worn and skip-prone one that my bicycle currently has, as well as some muslin or cheesecloth so that I can try making cheese at home. I also plan to fill my innards with turkey and other goodness.

Next weekend, I head for Bunso, where I will reside in relative comfort for approximately 5 days while eating meals that someone else cooks, playing cribbage with my fellow PCVs, sitting through a number of Peace Corps-oriented plenary sessions, and wait out the Ghanaian Presidential and Parliamentary elections in security and obscurity. It sounds nice, but it means I have to prepare lesson plans that allow me to not be at school. Personally, I’d rather stay close to home and work on growing my stockpile of rice and canned goods. Oh well. It’s a free vacation.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got. You stay classy, folks.