Posted tagged ‘Bolga’

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“After enlightenment, the laundry.”

July 10, 2012

It’s another beautiful day. The sun is bright, and it’s not yet too warm. The weatherman says low 80’s for today.  I have a bunch of errands to do later including sending for my Ghanaian visa. I’ve already bought a few things to take with me: wipe on insect repellant as last year my feet got eaten, wash cloths which start out in a small pill shape and a personal fan, hand size which runs on batteries. I don’t think I need anything else as I still have a few things I bought and never used for last summer’s trip, a first aid kit being among them.

When I was in Peace Corps training, we had two choices for washing clothes: a bucket for hand-washing or finding someone to wash them. I, of course, chose the latter as did most of the other trainees. I remember Winneba, our first training site, and following a dirt path among trees to the house of the woman who washed our clothes in buckets for a small amount of money. I have no idea how she was found, but I was thrilled not to have to bucket wash my clothes. I don’t remember the rest of training or my laundry, but I also don’t remember washing my own clothes. I’m thinking we found someone everywhere we went.

When I got to Bolga to live, I didn’t wash clothes there either, except for what one might call my personals. Thomas, who worked for me, washed the rest of my laundry in metal buckets then he’d iron my dresses using a charcoal iron. I noticed the seamstress who made my dress last summer uses that the same type charcoal iron.

At the hotel where I stayed last summer, I asked about someone doing my laundry. They recommended a woman who washed my clothes for not much money. She barely spoke English, but she filled in the gaps by smiling a lot. Always on her back was her small daughter. My clothes came back in one day. When I left Ghana to come home, my clothes, except for the personals, were all clean. That has never happened on any trip before, but I expect it to happen again this summer.

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“Life is like a B-movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it but you don’t want to see it again.”

June 23, 2012

 

Today is cloudy and only 71°. I’ve put the screens in the doors and opened the windows. After three days of the AC and isolation, the world is back all around me. I can hear the neighbors next door chatting on their deck, lawnmowers, cars and voices from down the street. The breeze from the windows is a delight and welcomed after the horrific heat of the last three days. It will be in the 60’s tonight and by Tuesday down to the 50’s. Gracie isn’t even panting.

The world is in danger of a new ice age on syfi because of volcanic eruptions in Iceland, but an ice age mightn’t be all that bad an idea as alien insects will be by later, and the cold might deter them from world domination. Today is disaster/bug day on syfi all leading up to an earthquake unleashing monstrous spiders on New Orleans in tonight’s movie. Where’s the popcorn?

It won’t be long before the deck movies start. My friends have never seen Ferris Bueller so it will be the first movie. After that, I’m in a quandary. My taste is different, and I have no ideas as to which movies they’d find entertaining. I struck out last year a few times, but I do have some musicals, not to my liking, but I can sit through most movies as long as I have popcorn and nonpareils. I’m thinking West Side Story which is the one musical I actually like.

In Ghana, the Hotel d’Bull in Bolga, used to show movies on the white wall in the courtyard. I always bought super seats for about a quarter and sat on roof  which had patio chairs and tables. I ate kabobs, mostly beef but a few liver, and saw really old movies: American westerns and Indian movies, pre-Bollywood but still filled with singing. When I went to Accra, I’d always go to the movies. West Side Story was one of the films I saw. Is Paris Burning and The Thomas Crown Affair were a couple more. They too were old but at least were in color. The theaters had seats you placed wherever you wanted, and the screen was outside. If it rained, you picked up your seat, moved to the overhang  and continued watching.

When I traveled in other countries during school vacations, most American embassies had a movie night. I remember being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Niamey, Niger while I was watching a really bad WWII movie, but my standards back then were pretty different based on the rarity of movies. I’d watch just about anything.

Now that I’m thinking about it, my taste hasn’t really changed all that much.  Nothing better than a B movie to while away the day!

 

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“Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliar voice”

May 15, 2012

It’s an acceptable day: not too cool, not hot, and varying between sunny and cloudy. Rain is predicted for this afternoon but right now the sun holds sway. I have a bunch of stuff to do today, a listful, and it’s been a while since I’ve needed a list. A couple of the errands are for tomorrow, but I figured I’d add them anyway while I was listing, so to speak.

I need a little excitement. Over the winter, my life was a bit humdrum. Okay, it was hugely humdrum. I didn’t go anywhere. Even my night out for trivia was sporadic. The one social event I could count on was on Sunday nights when my friends and I had our Amazing Race evening together. We’d play games before hand and eat dinner while watching the race, but that was the sum total of my excitement.

In Ghana, there was little to do at night. The occasional movies were shown at the Hotel d’Bull and many of them were Indian with all the singing that goes with them. It wasn’t Bollywood back then, but all the pieces for it were in place. Mostly we played games, but I was never bored. Life was never humdrum. All around me was Africa with sights and sounds I never knew existed. I couldn’t have dreamt them as I had no idea what Africa was like. I had to experience those sights and sounds, absorb them and etch them into my memory so I could draw on them and bring them back.

I brought them back often. I’d close my eyes and remember. I’d see the road to town and all the stores across from the post office, and I’d remember market day with all the bustle and noise and the stalls filled with fruit and vegetables. I remembered the beautiful colors and patterns of the cloth and how women carried babies on their backs and baskets on their heads. I kept my memories vivid.

Last summer I saw all of those things again. My town was huge compared to forty years earlier, but its essence hadn’t changed. The market is enormous now but still filled with color and with women carrying baskets on their heads and babies on their backs. I heard the sounds of FraFra, the local language, everywhere I went. I greeted people just as I used to but in Hausa, the language the Peace Corps taught me, and the Ghanaians always greeted me back. I didn’t have a TV, and there is no more Hotel d’Bull with its Indian movies, but none of that mattered. Just as before, I wasn’t bored once.

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“Where is the good in goodbye?”

April 26, 2012

Yesterday was a bad day all around. A friend died in the morning. She had been sick a long while, but I had come to think of her as Superwoman surviving against all odds. That was the worst part of the day. Later I heard from my dog sitter that she can’t stay when I go to Ghana this summer. That one I’ll put away for a bit as it is four months until my trip. The last was Gracie jumped the rail off my deck, landed in the herb garden and started a fight with a dog being walked on the street. There had been a bamboo barrier on the top of the rail to heighten it, put there just in case, but it had fallen apart the other day. The deck is off the second floor of the house so the jump is a long one, but that didn’t faze Gracie. I could see where she had landed: she left a similar mark in the herb garden to a long jumper’s mark in the sand, and I half expected two guys out there with a tape measure. I ran out front when I heard yelling. The woman had Gracie and one of her two dogs by the collar. It seems Gracie had attacked one and the other had attacked Gracie. I grabbed Gracie who wanted nothing more than to go after that dog and dragged her into the house. I called Skip, my factotum, who came right over to help. Luckily I had boards, all the same size, and Skip constructed a wall to replace the bamboo. It is mighty ugly, but I dare Gracie to jump that one.

The one bright spot in the day yesterday was Grace Awai, one of my favorite Ghanaian students, called me from Ghana. She was not in Bolga last summer so I didn’t see her though I asked about her. They told me she lived in Accra and they didn’t know her number. A while back Grace visited Bolga, was told I’d been there and took my number. We talked a long while. Grace says she’ll meet me at the airport and come north for a while. I reminded her how I used to visit her mother’s pito house and have pictures of one of my visits. Pito is a wine made from millet and always served in a gourd. I thought it a bit sludgy but drank it any way being the courteous type that I am.

Well, I have high hopes today will be a better day. Gracie is still in the yard though she has taken to digging in my newly planted vegetable garden. I’m thinking she needs to be hobbled.

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“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”

January 5, 2012

This is the strangest winter. Yesterday was freezing, literally. When I went to the dump, an open area all around, I thought I’d been whisked to the steppes of Russia. The wind was so cold my hands nearly froze when I got out of the car to toss the trash, lots of trash, in the bins, and by the time I got back into the car, my breathing was as heavy as if I’d be plodding through drifts of snow. Right now it is 36° and feels almost balmy. The paper says 40’s today and 49° by the weekend. I don’t quite know what to make of this winter.

My Christmas tree is gone, lying outside waiting for pick-up. I miss its aroma but most of all I miss its colorful lights and decorations. Winter is drab with its dead leaves, bare branches and early darkness. It is only Christmas which gives winter life and color. Now we’re stuck waiting for spring.

I have these weird bursts of energy. The other day I put away the rest of my Christmas decorations, did a load of wash, watered all the plants, dusted the shelves in my room, changed my bed and filled the bird feeders. I felt accomplished. Today, however, is a day of lethargy. I knew it as soon as I woke up. I didn’t have a single concrete thought, and I just stayed a while comfy and warm under the covers. Gracie sensed my mood. She didn’t move; she just stayed asleep at the foot of my bed.

I don’t know why we pick one road over another. I know I seem to have chosen the right ones for me. My life continues to be a good one. I have found the best of friends and have had the most wonderful experiences. I enjoy every single day even the most mundane of them. My former student, Francisca, is religious. She finds great solace and comfort in God and believes it is God who directs our footsteps. She said I had faith that I would find my students when I went to Bolga. It wasn’t, according to her, mere coincidence that Shetu was at my hotel for the first time in a few years the very night I had dinner there, and that we would find each other. Francisca believes it was God’s will. I would never dispute her. Even if I did, she’d laugh and tell me I was wrong. She’d say she knows better.

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” I take care of my flowers and my cats. And enjoy food. And that’s living.”

December 31, 2011

The sound of the pouring rain woke me up this morning, but it was a quick downpour which had stopped by the time I went to get the papers. The day is mild, in the 50’s, despite the missing sun and the dampness. Gracie and I have a dump run later.

Another year ending. They go quickly now, but this last year I’ll remember. It was a favorite. I finally fulfilled my promise of getting back to Ghana and what a joy that was. I remember being 20 minutes away from landing and getting butterflies. It had been forty years, and I hoped to find pieces of my Ghana, and I did. I fell in love all over again. Finding my students was an amazing part of the journey, but that they remembered me was the most amazing. We spend all but one of my Bolgatanga evenings together eating and drinking and laughing. We shopped in the market and ate goat for lunch. They had so many memories of me, and I cried when they sang Miss Ryan’s song to me my last night in Bolga. They sang Leaving on a Jet Plane perfectly and told me they always sing it when they are together. I hated to leave, and I have promised myself I’ll go back again, and I never go back on a promise.

When I was young, I used to wonder how it would feel to be old. I sort of know, but I think of myself as older, not old. I have to admit, though, nothing works as well as it did. My knees groan and complain, and my back hurts. My hands get stiff. My hair is getting grayer. My word retrieval skills are less than satisfactory, and I hate getting to the kitchen and forgetting why. The one bright spot is I’m retired and have been since the day I turned 57. That means I have had wonderful years of owning every day, of doing whatever I want. I even banished my alarm clock. Every morning is leisurely, and I can spend the whole day reading if I want. I don’t even have to get dressed.

The new year starts tomorrow, and I’m making no resolutions. I’m not very good at keeping them anyway. I’m going to enjoy every day the same as I have been. Maybe that’s a resolution, but for me, it’s just living my life, and I love it.

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” If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!”

November 12, 2011

The dampness has gone and so have warm days, but nicer weather will be back later in the week. This fall has been beautiful and really doesn’t deserve a complaint just because today is seasonably cool, but it seems weather is always worth a complaint or two and a piece of most conversations. It’s either too hot or too cold, too windy or too damp. Today is too overcast.

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the eaves and found a bag filled with Ghanaian cloth and a few smocks, called fugus, all of which I had brought back forty years ago. One piece of cloth reminded me of a few dresses I had had a seamstress make for me. In Ghana my style of clothing wasn’t in the sort of dress but in the patterns and colors. The cloth market was one of my favorite places. I’d roam through the lines of sellers looking for just the right piece of cloth for my next dress. The cloth was sold from carefully built piles composed of rolled cloth, each rolled piece usually being three yards and placed in the pile first in one direction then in the other. The colors were easy to see, and it was easy for the seller to retrieve a single roll.

I am not a seamstress yet I made curtains for my bedroom in Ghana. I figured out how many yards I needed and bought the cheapest cloth I could find. It was brown with patterns in beige, pretty enough for curtains but never for a dress. I cut the cloth to fit across the three windows about halfway up then turned over the edges and hand sewed them. I then threaded strong twine through the edges and tied the curtains to hooks on the windows. They looked far better from the outside than the inside.

I even made a lamp shade. The one light in my living room hung down on a long wire from the high ceiling. It looked pretty ugly so I went to the market and bought a basket. Similar baskets, called Bolga baskets, are now sold for big bucks in the US., but in Ghana they were and still are fairly inexpensive. I took off the handle and cut a hole in the bottom of the basket then used pieces of a metal hanger to make a holder for the lightbulb. It worked wonderfully except during the rainy season when it became a bug magnet. In the morning, below the lambshade in the same size circle as the bottom of the shade, was always a pile of dead bugs. No big deal in Ghana.

I learned so much when I was in Ghana but I don’t count home decorating as one of them.

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“A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.”

October 27, 2011

Today is an ugly day. It’s been raining all night and it’s dark, four in the afternoon dark. Gracie poked her head out the door earlier and didn’t like what she saw so she turned around and went back into the kitchen. I didn’t blame her, but I did suggest she try again so Gracie finally braved the elements, performed admirably then ran right back inside the house. The ordeal was so horrific she is now sleeping on the couch and snoring quite loudly.

My sister has about eight inches of snow. They showed the streets of Denver on the local news last night, and it looked like a winter wonderland, but this is only October (okay nearly November), but it is far too early for sleigh bells ring, are you listening.

My student Francisca Issaka just texted me to say she was at the gate ready to board her flight to Reagan and from there she’ll fly to Logan. I’m going to pick her up at 2:45. She has been in the US visiting her daughter so we missed each other when I was in Bolga. Francisca was one of the youngest students in T2, the second of four years of training college. She was sixteen. My students my first year ranged in age from sixteen to thirty two. It’s difficult to believe that Francisca is 58. I still picture her as the tall, thin student she was when last I saw her. I’m beyond excited to see her.

Francisca believes that everything happens for a reason, that there are no coincidences. She said I had faith I would find my students in Bolga, and she’s right. That Shetu Mahama would go have a beer in a place she hadn’t been for two years and that I would have dinner there at the same time and meet her was destiny, not mere coincidence. I don’t doubt it at all.

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“Swinging on delicate hinges the Autumn Leaf Almost off the stem”

October 24, 2011

The morning has a crispness. The grass was wet when I went to get the papers. Across the street, painters are working on my neighbors’ house trim. It’s sunny but not warm. It is, after all, fall.

The birds need feeding. I miss watching them from my window here in the den. Their latest seeds of choice have been a mixture of fruits and nuts, and I have only a small bit left. Tomorrow, at Agway’s, I’ll have to buy more and also another case of canned dog food. I might also mosey over to their garden section and buy some bulbs. Last year the spawns of Satan found many of my new ones in less than a day. My garden was pockmarked with holes. It looked a bit like the lunar surface.

A former students is coming to visit from Thursday through Tuesday. She has been in Cincinnati with her daughter so we missed each other in Bolga. Her name is Francisca Issaka, and she was one of my favorite students. She and Francisca Ateere, another favorite, often visited my house. I remember how much they laughed and how much they enjoyed life. Both of them were sixteen when I first met them. They were the students I told all about Halloween during one of their visits, and they remembered and came trick or treating. Francisca still remembers and said she wants to be at my house for Halloween. On Sunday she is cooking a Ghanaian meal for my friends and my nephews. We are not having bush meat or goat though I wouldn’t mind either. My sister was appalled that I eat goat. She talked about The Lonely Goat Herd and the Billy Goats Gruff. I didn’t think about it, but I should have reminded her about Ferdinand the Bull.

Today I have one errand then Gracie and I are going roaming. I’m taking my camera as it has been a long while since I’ve snapped pictures of the cape, and I think it is especially pretty this time of year. I never really noticed the fall changes until my first year home from Africa. I always thought the cape this time of year was a bit dull compared to the rest of the state as there are so many pine trees which just stay green. I was wrong. The marshes turn a beautiful red, and up and down Route 6A towering, long standing trees turn a different color red than the marshes, and here and there are spots of yellow. The bogs are flooded to spare them the worst of winter. Bushes are bright with color and stand in contrast to their old white houses. The cape is an amazing place in the fall.

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“Faith is a passionate intuition.”

October 20, 2011

For the last two days it rained. Sometimes it poured so much I wished for a tin roof. At night, with my bedroom window open, I could hear the rain flowing off the roof and pelting the deck. My house has no gutters so I was surrounded by rain. It was a delight.

Today is summer. It’s already 71°. The sun is streaming through windows, and Fern and Gracie have a short truce so they can share the warm mat by the front door. I was out on the deck earlier just looking at the world. I always feel lucky to be alive on days like today.

Today I am the featured speaker at the South Dennis Library’s Thursday at 2 series. I am talking about my return to Ghana. I hope the people brought dinner!

One of my students is coming to visit. She has been in Cincinnati with her daughter so she wasn’t there when I was in Bolga. We called her while my students and I were at our last dinner together, and she said she had been looking for me, and now she is missing me (which is Ghanaian English for she didn’t get to see me ). How strange, she said, that I am there and she is in the US. When we spoke last week about her coming to visit and our reconnecting, Franciska said it was God’s work. She said I went to Bolga with faith knowing I would find some students, and I did. It was God’s work that Shetu went to have a beer at my hotel for the first time in one or two years, and that I would speak to them in Hausa and that she would recognize me. Franciska decided it was God’s will that we reunite, and who am I to contradict God’s will.

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