Keep the Coffee Comimg

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.

The heat continues. Today will be in the mid 80’s. It is a still day. Not even a single leaf is moving. We haven’t had rain. I’ll be watering the deck plants today.

The back door is closed because the AC is on so Nala rings the dreaded doggie bells wanting me to let her out. She has been out at least 4 times already. I let her out, let her in, let her out then in again. I swear if the door was open she’d be napping. This is a concerted effort to drive me crazy. She is succeeding.

In August in 1969, I was in the midst of Peace Corps training. We were student teaching in Koforidua. I was at a training college. I have sharp memories of that three week stay. I remember walking from the dorm to the dining hall and stopping to watch a moving column, wide and long, of ants. They carried leaves and flowers and an insect or two. I was mesmerized. For the first time during training, I was sick. I camped, sort of, in the bathroom. I needed to be close. I hitched to Accra one weekend and stayed at the Peace Corps hostel. I wandered the city. I survived an attempted purse snatching. I ate hummus for the first time. I visited the museum. I treated myself to a movie. It was Is Paris Burning?

My final week of training was after Koforidua. We stayed in dorm rooms at the University of Legon. We had real coffee every morning and mostly drank it outside where we sat and chatted. There were dancers and kente weavers. We were only a short distance, a twenty pesewa ride, about twenty cents, to the city. We went most evenings. During that week, we all took language exams. I remember sitting in a room with my language instructor and the tester who asked questions in Hausa like what my name is, where I was from, how I felt and what I liked to eat. I remember having to give directions in Hausa. The last event of the week was the swearing in ceremony. The ambassador had us repeat the oath of service after him. It was the same oath military recruits take which didn’t fit us. We complained but were told it was necessary especially if we wanted our settling in allowance, the money to buy whatever we needed at our sites. We took the oath. We became official Peace Corps volunteers. The most amazing two years of my life had begun.