A common form of transportation in Ghana is called a Tro Tro.  It looks kind of like a Volkswagon bus or mini-van, and they jam as many people into them as physically possible, and pile people’s stuff (goods to sell, baggage, furniture, goats) on top.  At some point during our trip to Ghana, Nate decided that my new name was Tro Tro. 

When you are driving on the roads in Ghana, there are always people selling things along the side of the road and at intersections, especially in Accra, the capital city.  But Steve and his friend Joseph had told us how even though you see the same stuff at every single intersection, the second you decide you actually want something and get your change ready, that thing is nowhere to be found.  And then we experienced this strange phenomenon ourselves.  One evening when we were driving back to Steve’s village from Accra, I said ice cream sounded good, and Steve said, "Ooh, let’s get FanIce!"  So we got our change all ready, and what do you know, no FanIce anywhere!  Even though we could swear we had been seeing it up until that very moment, there suddenly was no one selling it.  Watching our efforts at finding FanIce from the back seat, Nate commented that it would make a great children’s book, "Tro Tro Wants FanIce". 

And so, on Valentine’s Day, this was his present to me:  "Tro Tro wants FanIce", story and illustrations by Nathan Schroeder.  (the first one is the cover, then you sort of have to read it right to left and then down, the images are a little tricky.)

In real life we never did find FanIce on the road, but we stopped at a petrol station and got some there.  I think he thought this might have been too harsh of a reality for the kiddies. 

So basically, coolest present ever!!!  That kid is so creative, and so talented… I still have hearts popping out of my eyes just thinking about it! 

My present to him, though pretty darn cool, couldn’t even begin to compete with this.  But in case you are wondering what it was, it had 3 parts:  this book, 

this super awesome fair trade cookbook of street food from around the world so we can learn to make some of the yummy things we’ve eaten during our recent travels,

and the remedy for our jealousy over Justin and Juliana’s ping pong table: 

We can now make any table into a mini ping pong table!  Our dining room table is perfect for it.  You are supposed to be able to suction cup the net to the table, but we haven’t quite gotten that to work yet, so we just kinda laid it across our tealight holder thingy. 

All in all, not a bad Valentine’s Day.

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