Next to the Center, there are overgrown ruins of a sprawling 16-bedroom estate. Not really ruins, 'incomplete hopes' more less. Ghana is a cash economy, and so to build a house, you just take your mortgage payment and pay the mason to build that much wall. It is quite improper to build a room for yourself and then complete the estate, you must complete it all at once. This house next door consists of two adjacent rectangles, a departure from the standard courtyarded O, but it's only three bricks high on the side away from the road and thus has no roof. It is also overgrown with jungle, though it's slowly being hacked into just plantains, peppers, cocoa yam, and cassava. The very plants growing in the future bedrooms will allow the completion of the house, maybe next year. Further down the road is a complex that only needs a roof, but is house-high in bush as well. These ruins make me feel like a 0-level dorkus as I creep through them hoping not to encounter the 3-HD Black Cobra. The 1-HD Giant Scorpion comes out at night, but isn't neccessarily deadly, and I've got my Boots of Stomping on, blessed by the Patriensa Cobbler with Studded-Nail Soles.

I am sitting on the low wall smoking, and with a SHPROING a grasshopper lands on my hand. It's big but not the standard Ghana Huge I'm getting used to. Uncharacteristically I don't want to eat him, though he fits the biblical parameters he's bright yellow and black, a color combination that either means nasty or nasty-mimic. Oh, what a pattern he has on his skin, the only thing I can say is that it's just like Gieger's Alien, with the frame of the exoskeleton being black and the alternating, tubelike filler being black and yellow. He also appears to be wearing a grey coat and tails, and his mandibles look like jowls and I can't help but chuckle at how much he looks like an old man in a tux.

"Okay, here's what I've figured out," I say, "The only real things in life are the creation and appreciation of beauty, and our interactions with other people. Therefore, one must try to find beauty in all things, and be as friendly as possible to everyone to facilitate a better world."

"Close enough," the grasshopper said, "But there are two problems. The first is that the more real you are, the more you will be aware of the pettiness or evilness in others around you. This is why veterans sometimes can't fit back into society: They've seen too much reality, and can't stand all the bullshit. The second is that the better person you are, the more evil people will resent you and seek to harm you."

"So you're saying that the closer I get to truth, the harder it will be to stand people, and the more some people will resent me? Why shouldn't I just live in ignorance, then?"

"Because you'll never be truly happy. But if you can find happiness despite these two things, you will always be content."

"Aren't you going to lecture me that the only true joy is in parenthood?"

"Nah, there are too many idiots out there making more humans. No need to encourage it. Besides, why would I lecture you?"

"Well, aren't you my conscience?" I said.

"Nope, just a grasshopper," said the grasshopper, and with that he spit chaw on my hand and flew away.