Oops. I goofed.

I forgot to bring my camera to the dinner (it wasn't at my house). I'm currently waiting for other people to send me their photos.

It came out really well. I would have preferred the red red to have come out spicier, but some of the volunteers can't handle much spice. Both the red red and kelewele were fairly easy to make, but the red red took a long time. My guide for this was Quarshie, who is the resident handyman and city guide at Ikando.

It took about 5 hours to cook the beans. In a different pot, I made a sauce out of red palm oil, tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic, shrimp bullion cubes, tomato paste, and a couple of mild peppers. When the beans were fully cooked, the sauce was mixed into the beans. It turns out that with this dish that rice is optional, and it really isnt needed. It is very filling. I am planning on making this again soon, although next time I plan on adding some spicy sausage to the sauce, such as andouille or chorizo (yes, I can get that here). I could probably cut down the cooking time by using canned beans, but canned beans have been hard to find.

The kelewele was just plaintains fried in red palm oil with some salt. I've seen this prepared with other spices, and i'd like to make it with some ginger and smoked paprika or chili powder.

For dessert, the pineapple ravioli consisted of cocount cream in the middle of two slices of pineapple, with a papya sauce on top. I thought I had bought whipping cream, but it turns out that I didn't. I usually top it with a mango sauce, but mangos are out of season now. Not exactly the taste I was going for, but it came out great anyway.

After dinner we went to the Cocounut Grove hotel for some salsa and soca by the pool, then to a reggae party on the beach of Accra. All in all it was an awesome night.

At work, I drafted a grant application for the GIM business plan competition to help cover some of the costs, and worked on assessment criteria and a plan for capacity building. I think I may finally be able to start contacting sponsors next week, but that depends on if my boss actually gives me the go ahead on Monday.

I'm not doing much of anything this weekend. The other volunteers decided that they wanted to see some of the museums in Accra. Last night we stuffed ourselves at a really great Chinese restaurant, then had some drinks at an open air bar called Lizzy's. We ended up running into a friend of Quarshie at the bar, who then took us to an awful club called Centra. I was hoping to go to a club to hear some Ghanian music such as highlife or afrobeat, but instead got to hear American pop & hiphop. Yuck!