Around two this morning, I was sitting with Jack the cat when the lights went out. They came back on then flickered and went out again then on again before going out again. I could hear Henry growling in the hall. He doesn’t do well with anomalies. The lights then came on and stayed on. Poor Henry was shaking. I petted and reassured him. He stopped shaking.

The morning is dark, and the air feels damp. Rain is predicted, but I won’t hold my breath as it was predicted the other day, the dry day. (It is much later than when I started. It is raining).

I had a dentist appointment this morning to have my teeth cleaned. It didn’t go well. I’ll leave it with that.

I’m going to continue the story of my Peace Corps training. After two weeks, we all broke into smaller groups for our live-ins around the country. We would be living for three weeks with families who spoke the languages we were learning. My group of eight had the furthest to travel. We made our way to Tamale then to Bolga then to Bawku. We traveled all day and into the night and arrived too late to meet our families. The next day I met Imaru Sanda, my Ghanaian father, and his daughter, my hostess. The house had a generator, and the family owned another sort of house close by with a courtyard where movies were shown. I remember a spaghetti western where reel 3 was shown before reel 2. My father was a Muslim and had four wives. They lived a short walk away in a compound with their young children. They cooked all my meals and brought them to the house. I loved visiting that compound. The babies liked me, but the toddlers cried, scared by my white skin. The walk to visit the women was on a dirt walkway between compounds. I always passed small boys sitting on stools under a tree with a teacher in front of them. They were intoning the Koran and memorizing it. I loved that walk.

My stay in Bawku was amazing and filled with new people, new foods, a growing sense of comfort and a recognition that I was strong, able to adapt and was falling in love with a wonderful place I could never have imagined. There is far more to my live-in story, but I’ll stop here and leave you hungering for more.

This entry was posted on August 6, 2024 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.