what to do

its 7 a.m., obed and i have been up since 4. the kid is burning up. hes telling me his head is burning. and i can feel it! the one thing i forgot was a thermometer, so i cant take his temp. the room is really hot (even for ghana) but he still wants a bunch of covers. he was hot last night too. he took tylenol twelve hours ago but refuses to take it again. he has eaten CONSTANT , im only slightly over-exaggerating. every 10-20 min. "mommy, i want to eat!". hes also had very frequent diarrhea. i havent changed his diet much, hes eaten mostly fufu and bottled water. he's got a cough and i think the overeating is his way of soothing an upset stomach. im not sure if hes just dealing with transitional anxieties, or if its something more serious, like malaria. its POURING down rain here. when it rains like this, it washes roads out. im 4 hours from accra (where we fly out), my ride wont be here until friday. ive pretty much decided to eat the cost of two nights prepaid at the hotel, to get to accra so that we can fly out early or go to a better hospital. still, i have to wait for the rain. im waiting for anita to tell me if she thinks i should take him to the hospital here. i hope it isnt expensive. im in auto drive. i have had no sleep since i got here. obed does not sleep very well or very much. im complaining. sorry! ill save it for my husband!
yesterday we went to the canopy walk. i wasnt scared at all. it doesnt seem very high because your in the canopy, which gives the illusion of ground. the walk was also shorter than i thought. "abrunis pay nine and if you are "black" you pay one" the cashier told me. the driver insisted on coming with us, he had me pay for him. then, he insisted on holding obeds hand, which i did not like. when we got to the canopy he put obed in front of him and was pretty far away from me. at the third bridge i told him to get in front of obed and go ahead because i wanted to be with my son. the driver kept telling me to take video of him. when we left, the driver asked me to send him money from america. i had a 30 minute talk with him about the difference between ghana and america and how i'm not rich. we dont have money flowing out of a well in our back yard. so then hew moved on to asking me if i could get him a "friend" in america.
after that, we went to the monkey sanctuary. its run by a dutch man and his wife. obed was pretty happy....until we got to the first monkey cage. the monkey went nuts. he was a baby and very excited to see his owner! obed got real scared and started crying. the dutch guy was like "come on. you are o.k." and my driver was irritated that obed was upset. i was ready to leave. obed stated throwing a fit and the driver heavily insisted for me to go and obed to wait in the car. i did. which was really dumb, i realised later. i just dont really know what to do when ghanaians get soooooo PERSISTANT! im starting to learn that ill just have to be rude. sometimes people wont take no for an answer here if they dissagree with you.
we stopped at hans botel (crocodile restaurant) on the way back. i bought our driver lunch. saw some crocs. the driver kept, very passionately, trying to get me to go out and touch one of the HUGE crocs. "you go touch him. he will not bite you. they are very gentle. it is safe. go and touch." on and on, with me saying "no thank you, i dont want to" "no thank you" "no thank you". at this point i was irritated with the man for being so pushy most of the day. so i told him "you want someone to touch it so bad, then go out and do it yourself.". he looked at me for a minute and laughed. good, because i felt bad immediatley after saying it.
we had agreed on thirty five cedi before we left the hotel. we made two stops on the way back, so when we got to the hotel he hiked it up to fifty. this new fee did not include the luch i bout for him for 9 cedi. cost me almost as much as my drive for four hours from accra. he said he raised the price because we stopped twice. mind you our stops were both on the same road going to the hotel. aaaaaaaaaahh. i now see why the mall and koala mart are soooo crowded. id much rather pay more than to go through all this haggling and dishonesty. I CANT WAIT TO GET BACK TO ACCRA!!!
of course after obed woke me up at four, hes sound asleep now. poor little guy.
enough bad news and complaining.
better update later.....i hope