Tamale!

Dear America,

It isn't tamale like the Mexican food. It's TAHmahlay. Kind of. Anyways, it's been a good week. I didn't really have a lot of time to say goodbye to all of the people I know back in Dwumoh, which is sad. Transfers had extra short notice this time around, so I only had Monday to pack before I left on Tuesday morning at 5:30. Usually we wait until Wednesday. But not this time. I had to go to a meeting in Kumasi on Tuesday morning (a three-hour tro ride) and then I just sat around the mission home all day without doing anything. Which was super boring. But they do have air conditioning there, which we made sure to use. On Wednesday morning we started off for Tamale. The first bus depot that we stopped at told us that they wouldn't have room on the bus for most of our luggage after making us wait for an hour. So we packed over to a depot across town and caught a slightly sketchier bus. Which broke down in the middle of nowhere. So what was supposed to be a six-hour ride from Kumasi turned into an 11-hour adventure in the middle of the jungle between Techiman and Tamale.

But we made it and I'm really enjoying Tamale. It's bigger than Techiman. And A LOT of people here speak English. It's fantastic. The drive was interesting because I watched the landscape move from jungle to the kind of dirt hut/grassland/termite mound Africa that you've seen in nature films. Not quite, but it's similar. I'll take some pictures for you. My companion is Elder Austin, the first white companion that I've had. He's fun to be around and a really good missionary even though he barely finished his training. The next few transfers will be a lot of fun hard work.

The branch here is slightly bigger, and it's under the Tamale District, NOT under the Ghana Kumasi Mission like the ones in Techiman. So we have a real district president and everything. The people here are very friendly. There are several large families that provide the base for the branch. It makes me feel comfortable to be around a lot of large families with crazy children and overworked mothers. Haha that sounds familiar.

It hasn't been very hot yet. Mostly it's been raining. After this, we'll go back into hammatan, the colder season. So I think I'll be fortunate to avoid the majority of the legendary northern heat. But there have been a few occasions that the sun beats pretty hard. I'm out of Twi range. The biggest language up here apart from English is Dagbani. But almost everyone can speak English really well, so I don't have to worry about it as much. Strangely, I'm missing my Twi. That's completely unexpected because I think Twi is an inferior language, but I'm finding myself looking for people that I can converse with in Twi. Weird.

Love,

Elder Nelson