Day 4 - Fufu with Grasscutter, Nasty Spider, and Laid Back DayGr

Today has been a fairly laid back day. Jennia and Tara, two of the BYU MBA interns that are over here, are leaving to head home on Tuesday. Therefore, we have spent most of the day helping them work on their final reports and presentations. Although I much prefer to get out of the office and out into the field, it has been nice to not be on the go for the entire day.

We decided to do a lunch meeting today so that Tara and Jennia could present their findings to Andrew and I, and we could give them feedback on their final report. We decided to hold the lunch at a local restaurant called the Linda Dor (supposedly named after a famous place in Germany called Lindor). Being that this is the first opportunity that I have had to eat traditional Ghanaian food, I decided to go all in. I ended up ordering Fufu with Grasscutter (in honor of you Blaine)!!!!

Fufu is a traditional dish made of cassava. Cassava is a starch like vegetable. Fufu is made by taking a cassava and pounding it under it gets very soft. It is then added to some other ingredients and it turns into a bread like dough. It is then put into some type of soup. To eat the fufu, you take your fingers and break off a piece of the dough. You form the dough so that there is a little cavity in it and then dip it into the soup and eat it. It was surprisingly good. The fufu itself does't have a lot of flavor, but the soup is very flavorful.

So, you may be asking what grasscutter is. Perhaps it best described with a photo.

As you can see, Grasscutter is a furry little rodent of some sort. There were two chunks of it in my fufu. It was might tasty!!!! Sorry for all of you animal lovers out there. Don't report me to PETA.

Speaking of unusual creatures, after we ate, I went into the bathroom to use the rest room and wash my hands. As I came out and started washing my hands, I looked over to the paper towel dispenser and saw the following creature.

In the picture is is not very clear to see how big the spider is, but from top to bottom, it is probably at least 3 inches. Luckily this is the only one I have seen and hope that it is my last :)

So this will probably be my last blog until Sunday. The 4 of us are taking off tomorrow to go visit Ho and Hohoe. We are planning to visit a beed factory, the largest waterfall in western ghana, and visit a monkey sanctuary. It should be fun.....