“When you are sitting in your own house, you don’t learn anything. You must get out of your house to learn.”
Ahoy, me maties. Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The sea is ruffled and the sails are billowed. Tis’ a great, grand ship and ye are all welcome aboard. Grab a flask of grog and hear me story.
This is the last of my Ghanaian saga. I spent five days in Bolga and three nights sitting and laughing with my students. One day three of them took me shopping in the market. I just sat while they haggled for my baskets and for the smock I bought. We then visited craft places, and I watched the making of the leather goods. At the dress shop, I picked out the one I wanted and Florence bought it. I protested and she just ignored me. Afterwards, I suggested lunch, and we went to The Diplomat where we all had goat and fried rice. It seems fried rice has become a Ghanaian staple. I treated the bargainers to lunch in thanks for all the money I knew I’d saved. They promised to be back that night, my last night in Bolga.
Six of my students came that night. They drank beer and malt and the table beside us gave us a half bottle of champagne they hadn’t finished. The students brought kelewele, my favorite dish and one I suspect I have mentioned many times. They ordered Guinea fowl without pepper so I could eat it. We all ate with our hands and shared the meal. I didn’t eat the bones, and my students couldn’t understand why. I explained we only ate the meat, and they lectured me about wasting food and they finished off the bones. It was a grand night, and we all shared memories. They did imitations of me in the classroom which were right on target. They were me frustrated about what I was trying to teach, and they repeated exactly what I used to say then roared laughing. They told me how the watchman wasn’t really asleep when I’d come to the school at night and find the gate locked. He was just ignoring me and he told the students how funny he thought it was that the white lady kept yelling, “Watchman, watchman,” and he just didn’t move. Most times I ended up climbing the gate, so much for the security of the watchman. I never did understand how he couldn’t hear me as his dog was barking and barking as I yelled. They remembered the one time I walked out of class as they were not prepared, and how they crammed then begged me to return. I did. They sang me a song they had learned from one of the cassettes I had brought with me. I cried when they sang Leaving on a Jet Plane perfectly. One of them told me she often sings it and always thinks of me when she does. That did me in.
We hugged and kissed and exchanged addresses and phone numbers. Three of them have called me already, and I have called a couple. This time we will not lose touch with one another.
I left Bolga the next morning. Thomas and I made it to Kumasi and we stayed there for the night. When we arrived, one of the students who had completed school before I arrived in Bolga was waiting for us as the principal of my old school lived in Kumasi. The talking drums of cell phones had found her through that graduate who was kind enough to meet us and take us to Madame Intsiful’s school. It was named St. George’s, after her she told me. Her name is Georgina. When I walked into the room, she looked at me and said, “I know you,” but she didn’t remember my name. She is quite old now so I understood and reintroduced myself. We chatted a short while and then she walked us to the car.
My hotel room was on a noisy street, but it was clean and had a shower and air-conditioning and was pretty cheap. I didn’t roam Kumasi as I didn’t know it in my day and certainly didn’t know the large city it had become. When I lived in Ghana, I went there just to visit Ralph and Michelle. I was country mouse visiting city mice.
Thomas and I left the next morning, and I arrived back at the Triple Crown in the early afternoon, welcomed by the staff. For dinner that night, I had Lebanese food. It was in Ghana where I first tasted hummos as Accra used to be filled with small Lebanese restaurants. Tahal’s was a Peace Corps favorite spot. I watched some of the Nigerian soap opera then took a shower, a hot shower, and fell asleep early.
On Friday, my last full day in Ghana, I hired the van and Isaac and I did a bit of riding around Accra while I picked up a few last-minute gifts. I had him take me through Adabraca, the section of Ghana where the PC hostel used to be, but I couldn’t remember where. That night I met another former volunteer for dinner. She was staying on Ghana a bit longer.
The next day I packed and then mostly sat around until it was time to go to the airport. I was sad to leave and wished I had planned a three-week trip instead of a two, but I suppose at the end of three weeks I would have been wishing for a month.
The flight was amazing as I went home first class and had one of those sleeping pods which make you feel a bit like an astronaut. I decided I had been substituted at birth. My real family had money and always traveled first class.
My trip back to Ghana was everything and more than I had hoped. I found my Ghana then met the new one, no less wonderful but a lot bigger and noisier and filled with far more people. The Ghanaians are warm and welcoming. I was greeted everywhere and waved at when we were on the road. I fell in love all over again with what I have always called my other country. I had always promised myself I would go back to Ghana. I finally fulfilled that promise.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings, UncategorizedTags: Accra, Bolgatanga, Florence, Ghana, kelewele, Kumasi, Peace Corps, Peace Corps Ghana, Student
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
September 19, 2011 at 1:56 pm
you gave your students a great gift..being able to thank you for what you gave to them. being an army brat and going to lots
of schools, there were plenty of folks that i can only thank in
memory, we certainly never saw each other again. i’m pretty sure you get this all the time from your students that are neighbors,
but i’ll wager your african students never dreamed they’d
have the chance to thank you…
September 19, 2011 at 6:50 pm
greg,
It was so amazing to me that they had such vivid memories forty years later. That last night, Francisca made a wonderful speech about our time together and how they had often thought of Miss Ryan. My heart overflowed.
September 19, 2011 at 2:13 pm
I´m so glad You did go there again! It is impossible not to feel the happiness Yoiu feel when reading this!
Soo funny with that watchman 🙂 🙂 🙂
So You´ve been substituted as well, I know I must have been meant to live on a tropical island living on coconuts and fish and never have to see any snow in my whole life 🙂 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
September 19, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Christer,
That watchman used to come to my house for cold water many nights during his rounds. If I had only known about being ignored!
Last night I was really cold and got up to find a blamket, put it on my bed and nestled, but after all that Ghanaian heat, I still wouldn’t chose anywhere tropical.
September 19, 2011 at 3:43 pm
I’ve really enjoyed reading about your adventures. When you said they sang you a song, I wondered if it was going to be Jet Plane. I teared up for you when you said it was.
Thank you for taking us to Ghana with you. We might not learn as much when our view is of a computer screen, but it sure seems like in the last week the horizon I can see from it is more interesting.
September 19, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Thanks, sprite,
It has been wonderful for mne to preserve my memories by sharing my adventures with you. If you could have seen me when they sang that song!
It was my pleasure to bring you all along with me.
September 19, 2011 at 5:22 pm
I’m sure you were glad to go back. It was fun for us too seeing the photos and reading your diary of company and events. I don’t think I ever got over my daughter eating chicken bones. She said over there it is because the marrow strengthens your teeth. I thought about Africans having those white teeth and wondered. But eating the bones to me gave chance to choking on one. That’s how my Dad died. So next time in Ghana remind your friends of people in the states choking on chicken bones. And yes, I’m sure you will go back. I bet you are saving for it already.
September 19, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Z&Me,
The Ghanaians chewed thin pieces of wood and used the chewed, frayed end to clean their teeth. They must have had the strongest teeth as I saw them many times open a coke bottle with their teeth by widening the cogs on the top.
I won’t even give Gracie chicken bones as they can be so dangerous.
September 19, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Your journal has made me cry every day since you’ve been back. I want to chastise you for it, but am, instead, grateful for the vicarious emotions. Welcome home.
September 19, 2011 at 8:15 pm
im6,
Thanks for the welcome home.
I think it lovely that you found my emotions all connected with the words and descriptions and shared them with me. That is friendship!
September 19, 2011 at 8:56 pm
You are a bloody marvel Kat. Can’t tell you how much I loved hearing & seeing your Ghana return. Even more wonderful was it was more than you hoped & expected.
So lovely to see a country with the two religions all getting along with each other & so many happy people.
As somebody with a keen interest in reptiles, have to ask if you saw any snakes.
“EXCEPT THE LORD” (rofl)
September 20, 2011 at 10:06 am
Pete,
I roared when I read that window. I just had to snap the shot.
Admittedly, I was a bit nervous about going back as 40 years is a long time and I had the most wonderful memories. Now, I am thrilled to have made the decision.
No snakes on this trip but I saw many when I lived there. My favorite was a Boa which hadn’t yet crushed a chicken and he had a huge bubp in the middle where the chicken was.
September 19, 2011 at 10:33 pm
Thank you so much for the journal and the photos of your trip. It’s obvious that you made a difference in the lives of the woman who were your students. I doubt that I will ever go to West Africa but your posts made me feel as though I had experienced your adventure and peaked my interest in Ghana.
September 20, 2011 at 10:08 am
Bob,
I loved being able to tell you all about my trip. It was just so wonderful I had to share it.
As teachers, we always wonder if we made a difference as your students move on, and you never know. I was floored by their memories.
Ghana is a wonderful country. PC has been there uninterrupted for 50 years even through coups. The Ghanaians are amazing.
September 20, 2011 at 7:20 am
Goodness, Kat. You made me cry with this final report. What an experience you’ve had. You CAN go back again!
September 20, 2011 at 10:10 am
Cuidado,
Yes, you can go back and relive memories and make so many new ones. I am so ever grateful I made the decision to go.
September 20, 2011 at 8:07 am
I doubt there is a nary a dry eye in the crowd. Thanks for sharing your life with us all Kat. You have made the world so much smaller and better with your words. Next Summer my oldest doll will spend 2 weeks in Senagal with the Muhammad Ali Scholars program and we are all so excited for her. Everything you say has reinforced my desire for my children to travel and see the world, to meet people from everywhere and to know that we are really all the same inside. This is the path way to peace I believe. Thanks so much for coing into my life Kat. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
September 20, 2011 at 10:12 am
splendid,
I think travel has so enriched my life and given me the most tolerant perspective of the world and its people. Your oldest doll will love Senegal, and I am thrilled for her to experience it.
I have always believed that person to person gives us an understanding that highlights are so very similar we all are.
September 20, 2011 at 8:49 am
Just love the full-throated story of the time spent with the former students. How gratifying it must be to know you are so well remembered! As to Kumasi: I confess I recognized none of the scenes in the pictures. It must be unimaginably bigger now. Hummos: Michele and I had a favorite meeting place in Kumasi, another Lebanese restaurant called the Chicken Bar. You could go there and get half a chicken cooked on a grill, and English-style fries. On their menu, hummos was spelled “homos,” and we knew no better, this being our first and only encounter with the dish, so we just ordered “a plate of homos,” pronounced exactly the way that word looks. The fact that we were asking for homos in a chicken bar was a private joke no Ghanaian or Lebanese would ever understand. (And neither would most Americans, for that matter: in American gay culture, a “chicken bar” is a place where older men go to find young ones.)
September 20, 2011 at 10:15 am
Ralph,
I’m roaring at your homos story.
I went through quite a bit of Kumasi and the only part I recognized was the area around the Catering Rest House which is still there and still open. I stayed there once on my way up north with a couple of other volunteers heading to Tamale. I remember it was the first place (and the only) I ate tongue. There it was an appetizer.
Kumasi is as huge as you imagine, but I sispect you would find parts of it you recognize as i did in Bolga.
September 20, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Kat,
I cried also. What an incredible teacher, person, woman, you are. That’s why they had such fine memories. I wish you could have taped them singing Leaving on a Jet Plane. It’s hard to write when I have big crocodile tears dripping down my face on to the computer.
I often wondered if I was substituted at birth, my parents often told me I was. Yes, you kept a wonderful promise you made to yourself.
Do you intend to someday return?
Waving and ( wiping croc tears from my face)
Lori
September 20, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Lori,
I was so taken aback by how much they remembered after all these years, and I was so happy I had gone back to visit. I would love to go again, but I don’t know if I can afford another trip. This was pretty expensive given the business class and the car rental. but I would love another trip to Ghana. It was spectacular.