Posted tagged ‘Ghana’
September 6, 2013
Last night was put an afghan on the bed and close the windows cold. It was a delight. I slept soundly and late, didn’t wake up until 9:30. My mother would have said I must have needed the sleep. I watched the Sox and Yankees until 11:30 then read for an hour. Fern and Gracie stayed close to me in bed. They must have been chilly.
Today is a beautiful day with a feeling of fall about it. The sunlight is sharp and warm, but it drifts in and out of clouds. Fern is stretched in the sun by the front door.
It is so quiet here. The kids are all in school, not a single lawnmower can be heard, the house next door is empty for the season and I don’t think I’ve even heard a car go up the busy street at the end of my road. I like the silence.
My life has been amazing and now and then I think about it and give thanks. The other day I talked to Grace in Accra for a long time and last week I called Rose Atiah in Bolga. I just picked up the phone, called Ghana and spoke to students I taught in 1969. It is still a little mind-boggling to me that I actually lived in Africa for a little over two years. Who gets that lucky? I worked for 35 years doing something I loved. Granted, I still groaned when the alarm went off at 5, but I never really minded going to work. I never considered it a grind. Every day was somehow different despite the sameness of the tasks. I got to retire early, nine years ago, and I love every day and am seldom bored. I can to sit outside on the deck in the morning with my papers and coffee and linger as long as I want. Who gets that lucky? I have traveled many places in the world and have seen the most glorious sights, pages of my geography books come to life. I dreamed I would travel, and my dreams came true just like in a Disney movie. Cinderella went to the ball. I went to Machu Picchu.
I have one errand left over from yesterday’s long list, but there’s no big hurry. I have all day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Africa, cold night, Dreams, early retirement, every day is mine, fall day, Ghana, lucky life, quiet day, sharp sunlight, students, sun, travel
Comments: 17 Comments
August 30, 2013
Somewhere off in the far distance, I can hear a dog bark, barely hear that dog bark, but Gracie feels it is her responsibility to respond. That she is standing on the deck directly under my window is of little importance. A dog does what a dog wants to do.
Last night was so chilly I shut my downstairs windows. My feet were even cold. Yesterday was fall. I don’t care that it is still August. Fall drops in now and then to get the lay of the land and last night was one of those visits. Today isn’t much better. It’s still chilly and damp. School should start on a day like today.
My friends are leaving for Ireland on Tuesday. My other friends are going to Ghana in the middle of September. I feel like the poor relation. I haven’t even been to Hyannis lately.
I called Rose Atiah, one of my students, this morning. I needed a Ghana fix, and Rose is always good for a conversation. She said it was getting ready to rain, and I could picture exactly what Bolga looks like with an impending storm. Rose said she was doing nothing, and I told her I was doing nothing as well. We chatted a bit more, and Rose said she would pass along my greetings to Agatha, Francisca and Bea. Hearing a Ghanaian accent always gives me a bit of a lift, and I love that Ghanaians pass along greetings.
Sometimes I feel like a bit of a hermit. With no reason to go out, I don’t bother to get dressed. I make my bed, brush my teeth, do a cursory wash of hands and face and then let the day while by me. Today could easily be one of those days, but I have no choice but to go out to the pharmacy. Gracie gets to come because it will be cool enough in the car for her.
When I finally got to my house in Ghana, I was living alone for the first time in my life, and it was a difficult transition. During Peace Corps training, we had been herded and kept in large groups, and we had each other, but now I had no one to talk to about how I felt, no one who understood what I was going through. I was homesick, doing a rotten job in the classroom and an object of curiosity for my students and just about everyone in town. I fled to books and checked for mail every day at least a couple of times. I was starved for conversation and companionship. I was miserable. I don’t know when that began to change, when I knew I was home, but change it did. I loved living alone. It was fun going into town and to the market. People greeted me all the time, and I returned their greetings. I was madam, a teacher at the school, and that was all.
Talking to Rose today brought a lot of that back. She still calls me madam.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dogs, Bolgatanga, BWTTC, difficult transition, former students, Ghana, greetings, homesickness, living alone, madam, market day, Peace Corps Ghana, Rose Atiah, teaching
Comments: 8 Comments
August 18, 2013
This morning I woke up early to go to the bathroom. The bathroom window was open so I rested my arms on the small sill and looked out. It’s the same view as from this room but so much higher, a third floor view. I was in the trees. I could see movement in and around the branches, but I couldn’t see the birds. I could smell the morning air, a combination of so many things. I could smell dampness, not the sort a moist cellar brings, but the sort which comes from humidity and a wet driveway and dewy grass; the sweet aroma of flowers was strong, mixed as it was with the dampness. It seemed to circle me on all sides and come from all the gardens. The best smell of all, though, was the one only a morning brings. It was the smell of freshness in the air, the smell of a new day, of another start. I stood for a bit at the window, took it all in then went back to bed. The morning was still too new, too early. Fern and Gracie hadn’t moved. They were both still asleep in the same spots on the bed as when I’d left. I slid in between them and fell back to sleep.
Today is dark, cloudy dark, with a chance of rain, but I don’t think it’ll rain. Today will stay humid and close. Right now nothing is moving in the dense air, and it is quiet except for Gracie’s every now and then bark. She sounds so loud I keep wanting to hush her. I want the quiet I love so much.
When I was little, my dreams were enormous. I thought I could do and be anything. The worse part of growing older was learning I had limitations. Math was out of reach. Once it got too complicated for my fingers, I knew it wasn’t for me. I loved nature and bugs and snakes and all sorts of crawly things, but I didn’t want to learn about them from books. I wanted to watch them crawl and slither. I learned early, third grade, that I couldn’t hold a tune so singing was out. I had begun whittling the list of what I could do and be. Amazingly I wasn’t disappointed that some doors had closed for me because I figured there were plenty out there just waiting for me to find them, and when I did and turned the door knobs, I knew I’d find treasures. I started to like some things over others and was better at the ones I liked. I tolerated the ones I didn’t. Soon enough, I got to pick, and I chose to study English. It was the best of all choices for me. It gave me the world.
The first time I ever taught was in Ghana. I remember those first few months. I was awful. I stood in front of my students day after day, and they had no idea what I was saying. I spoke too quickly, and they couldn’t hear my English accent though they spoke English. I was having the same trouble but in reverse. Somehow, though, over time, I stumbled into teaching so that we all learned. Franciska still remembers much of what I taught her. The best thing she said was I told them the sky was their only limit. They could do and be whatever they wanted. They just had to keep reaching.
I still do that-I still keep reaching.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dog, Bolga Women's College Students, closeness, Clouds, cloudy dark, Dreams, flowers, freshness, Ghana, humidity, limitations, morning, opening doors, reaching, smells of the day, stillness, studying English, teaching
Comments: 22 Comments
August 13, 2013
Mornings are my favorite part of the day. While the coffee is brewing, I go out on the deck just to look and listen, a sort of greet the day ritual. Mornings, I’ve decided, have their own smells. My favorite is when I can smell the ocean in the dampness of the air. On warm mornings the scents of flowers fills the air. I usually hear Gracie walking on the leaves in the backyard and the songs of a few birds. Most times I don’t ever hear people, only a car or two going up the street. Chickadees dine early and they are the only birds at the feeder. I’m seldom out there all that long, but it is a ritual I have come to love. When I get back inside, the house is filled with the aroma of coffee. I grab my papers and start the rest of my morning.
When I travel, I love to be up early to go out and see the mornings unfold. I think that gives me a greater sense of where I am. One early morning at Gettysburg, I was there when they opened the gates and was the only car on the road. The morning fog shrouded the battlefield. It wasn’t eerie but rather seemed solemn, quiet, as if even the fog recognized this was a holy place, a place where men died because they believed in something bigger than themselves. In the cities, I walk the streets and see stores opening and goods being delivered. I can smell bread and coffee and even exhaust all mixed together but not unpleasant. I see the delivery trucks and people on their way to work. In Santa Fe, I got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun then sat on a bench and watched the Indians set up their goods in front of the Governor’s Palace. The rest of the plaza was just about empty. In Marrakech my mornings started just a bit later. I sat on the roof of my riad eating breakfast by myself. The Atlas Mountains were in front of me and I was surrounded by the roofs of other houses. Women were hanging laundry and a few were cooking using a tagine over charcoal. I watched them every morning. In Ghana the mornings bustle. People are up early. Roosters announce the day. I could always smell wood fires and hear voices from the compounds by my house. I loved those mornings.
This is a busy week for me. My dance card is filled every day but Friday.
Categories: Musings
Tags: birds, Gettysburg, Ghana, Marrakech, mornings, ocean, Santa Fe, smells
Comments: 16 Comments
August 8, 2013
Unlike the past few days, the weather this morning is humid and cloudy with intermittent rain, a soft rain you barely notice, but the paper does say a chance of thunder showers throughout the day and has predicted them for tonight and tomorrow, but right now the sun is working its way from behind the clouds seems to be struggling, maybe even losing the battle for today’s weather. The breeze is a bit stronger, always a bad sign on a cloudy, damp day.
Yesterday I earned a blue ribbon. I did my laundry, finally, all two loads, watered the inside and outside plants, paid all my bills, did four errands, filled the bird feeders and took all the stuff off the walls in the bathroom which is right now being painted and then around 6:30 met my friend for dinner. Today I have one stop, to buy more flowers for the front garden and some bird seed, then I’m going Peapod on-line grocery shopping. I think I have been the ant, not the grasshopper, for the last two days and deserve a few days of rest which I will gladly take.
We never needed back to school clothes except for a new pair of shoes and one outfit, for the first day, as after that we wore uniforms. My mother was glad for those uniforms as they saved her so much money. Outfitting four kids was expensive. We didn’t care about wearing them because that’s all we knew and all our friends wore them too. Even in high school I had a uniform; all Catholic high school students wore one sort of uniform or another.
My students in Ghana had three different uniforms. Most bought the cloth and had the dresses made. The classroom uniforms were lilac and all the students wore same style and color, regardless of which level they were. I remember watching students iron the uniforms using a charcoal iron. The uniforms were always stiff with starch and wrinkled easily. The students also had their afternoon chore dresses, and there were four different patterns, each one designating the graduation year of the student. The dresses were simple: one piece. Their Sunday bests, wore for church service and into town, were traditional, generally three pieces, and were also four different patterns. You could identify whether the student was T1, T2, T3 or T4 just by the pattern. The patterns followed the students from one year to the next so they only had to buy whatever they had grown out of or worn out. The incoming T1’s would have their own patterns.
I thought of my students when I saw Harry Potter and his friends go into town for the day, for the one day they were allowed off grounds. For my students it was Sunday. They could have visitors come or the older students could go into town to do some shopping, and usually a photographer or two came to the school and took pictures of students into their spiffiest clothes. I have a few of those pictures which were given to me as gifts so I wouldn’t forget my students. They did the same thing at the ceremony last summer. They had a photographer come and take pictures of the event and individual pictures of me with one of them, and they ordered copies. This time it was so they wouldn’t forget me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: back-to-school clothes, bird feeders, Bolgatanga Women's Teacher Training College, errands, Ghana, humidity, Laundry, rain, school uniforms, sun, working
Comments: 12 Comments
July 23, 2013
The paper says thunder showers today, not the probability of showers, but real rain. When I was out on the deck with my coffee and papers, it was humid and thick. I could feel the moisture in the air. Luckily a breeze was strong enough to keep me from wilting. I decided not to bring my laptop into all that humidity so I came back inside which doesn’t have the benefit of that breeze. The room is close.
The birds flew in and out at the feeders while I was there. Because no birds were at the suet feeder, I checked, and found it empty so I brought out a new cake and filled it. This one is peanut butter. I hope the birds are appreciative. No amorous doings on the deck or in the yard this morning. I do think I saw a red spawn lounging on a limb having a cigarette.
Hyannis will be filled today, and I have a doctor’s appointment there. This is when I wish I was Samantha and could wiggle my nose and be anywhere or had floo powder like the Weasley’s and Harry Potter. One toss in the fireplace, and I’d be there.
The entire neighborhood sounds deserted. I hear a bird now and then but no voices. I wonder where everyone went.
It is getting lighter out so now I’m going to start cursing the Cape Cod Times weatherman. I want that rain and that thunder. I’m hoping I can be outside and stay dry under my umbrella while it rains all around me. I love the sound of rain hitting that umbrella. In Ghana, it was the sound of rain hitting the tin roof of my house and my classrooms. The sound was so loud it made teaching nearly impossible. That is one of my strongest memories of the rainy season in Ghana. It is also one of my favorite.
My friends Bill and Peg are going to Ghana in September, and I am totally jealous. My having been there the last two years doesn’t count. Peg hasn’t been since 1972, but Bill was there on business sometime in the mid 1990,s, but he didn’t make it to Bolga where we all lived. I’ve given them my tour books and my phone, and I’ll give them our students’ numbers. They, as I was, will be surprised by the size of Accra and the huge number of people and how unfamiliar it all looks. Bill has a map from 1970 so he’s going to look for our favorite places and for the Peace Corps hostel which I couldn’t find. He has promised to take pictures. Bolga, though much bigger, will still feel like home to them.
My life has been so amazing yet here I am complaining about staying home this summer. I do have Grace (if she gets her visa) to look forward to in August and Bill and Peg will be down in October. I suppose I’d best stop carping though I am still jealous of Bill and Peg!!
Categories: Musings
Tags: Back to Ghana, deack, Ghana, Harry Potter, humidity, magic, rainy season, Samantha, sounds of rain, thunder showers, tin roof, Umbrella
Comments: 15 Comments
July 15, 2013
When I let Gracie out this morning, I couldn’t believe how hot and humid it already was at 7:15. When I went out for breakfast later, my glasses fogged as I was walking from the car to the restaurant, a matter of only a few feet. It was already 82˚ at 8:30, and I suspect it will get hotter. My plans for the day are to stay inside the cool house and look out the windows if I want to view the world.
Yesterday I heard squealing from my deck. I feared Miss Gracie had found herself another friend who was objecting to Miss Gracie’s attention. I went to go out to save the creature when I saw Gracie was asleep in her crate so I went to the window instead to see what was happening. I felt like a voyeur. The spawns of Satan were spawning right there on my deck. The Mrs. was doing the squealing whenever the Mr. was doing his business. It went on for a while as I could hear the squealing. When I looked again, I saw the Mrs. jump on a branch hotly followed by the Mr. I assume they went somewhere more private than my deck.
It must have rained a while last night as everything was still wet this morning. The flowers and herbs looked perky. They give the deck so much color. I still have to replace the third broken clay pot. I’m buying a larger one than I’ve had hoping it will be too heavy with potting soil and flowers for the spawn to break it again. I’ll do that tomorrow. I like having an errand or two each day now that I’m allowed to drive. I’ll go to the farm so I can pick up some fresh vegetables at the same time, and on the way home I’ll also stop and buy some fruits. I’m thinking cut watermelon, strawberries and maybe some honeydew. Sounds like a great lunch to me.
My friends Bill and Peg are leaving September 14th for Ghana. I am envious. We traveled together all the time in Ghana, and it seems strange not to be with them. Bill has a 1970 map of Accra so he is going to try and find the old Peace Corps hostel in Adabraka, one of the districts in Accra, and Talal’s, a Lebanese restaurant which we volunteers loved. It wasn’t far from the PC offices. Talal used to make a sandwich with pita bread, tomatoes and melted cheese. He used to call it the Peace Corps pizza. Talal’s was where I first tasted hummus, and I usually ordered it every time I was there. The first time I went back to Ghana in 2011 I tried to find the hostel but I just couldn’t remember where it was, and most of the landmarks have changed. I told Bill to take plenty of pictures when he found our old stomping grounds.
I’m going to get changed from my outside to my inside clothes, and I’m going to read while lolling on the couch. I will have no productivity whatsoever today. I wish you the same!!
Categories: Musings
Tags: 1970 Accra, Accra, Adabraka, clay pots, fresh vegetables, Ghana, heat and humidity, Hummus, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel, Peace Corps Ghana, rain, spawning, spawns of Satan
Comments: 11 Comments
July 9, 2013
Today is dark with a gray sky. The humidity is high but not unbearable as there is a slight breeze, and a breeze is welcomed however small. The paper says rain with thunder and lightning. I am already looking to it. I love storms, and we do need the rain. This morning I have a doctor’s appointment for a wound check and yesterday the physical therapist signed off on me. That means I can now drive. I can be part of the world again.
All the windows and doors are opened, but I don’t hear anything, a random bird now and then but that’s all. I wonder where everyone is. This small street has kids, lots of kids: eight of them under seven years old, and I don’t even hear them. Not even a dog is barking which is also unusual. Maybe my invitation to wherever everyone has gone got lost in the mail.
It seems strange not to be traveling this summer. The last two summers I went back to Ghana, and if I had the money, I’d go again. I plan on austerity being my life style for the next year so I can save enough to go to Ghana again. Even after 40 years away, it seemed like home, and that connection is even greater after having been back a second time. Most interesting of all was meeting my former students many of whom are now retired and in their early 60’s. They refused to call me anything but madam or Ms. Ryan. I was and still am their teacher.
In the summer of 1969, I trained in Ghana to be a Peace Corps volunteer from June until early September. We had no phones, no televisions and no computers so we knew nothing of what was happening in the world. Letters from home were newsy but only about the family. One place where I stayed during training had a radio, and we listened to Voice of America and the moon landing. That was it for the entire summer. I, who used to read the paper every day, didn’t even care. None of us did. At night, we played cards and drank a few beers (I had coke-hate beer) at the local spots and the wide world never intruded. We didn’t even notice. All of us were too busy learning a new language and learning to live in a culture so different from our own.
Now I read two papers, am on my computer every day, carry my cell phone everywhere and watch news on TV. Sometimes I am very sorry I am so connected. The world at large intrudes on my life. Every bad thing that happens is blasted everywhere all the time, often the whole day on TV. I watch and am saddened by so much tragedy. Sometimes I long for that summer when I knew so little of what was happening in the world. I was blissful and ignorant.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: austerity, Ghana, humidity, lightning, money, new language, news, Peace Corps, quiet day, rain, teacher, thunder, training
Comments: 10 Comments
July 6, 2013
Boston is officially suffering through a heat wave. We aren’t because the cape is a few degrees cooler. Today will be 88˚, but the humidity is making the weather even more unbearable. Walk around outside and it smothers you, draws the life right out of your body. I, however, will never suffer that fate. I have become a hermit in the comfort of my air-conditioned home. Yesterday I went out about three times to the deck. The first time was to water the plants and the other two times were to warm up my feet. Yup, the AC forced me to put on socks. I felt sort of silly.
Gracie loves being in the cool house. She goes outside and squats then runs right back to the door to be let inside. The cats, however, have a different take on the AC. They find sun spots on the floor from the windows and sit there taking in the warmth. Fern, especially, misses the warmth. Usually in the morning she would lie in the sun streaming through the front door and sleep so deeply I could hear her small snores. The poor babies will have to wait a bit before it is cool enough to turn off the AC and open doors and windows.
Where I lived in Ghana was about as far from the ocean as you could get and still be in Ghana. The only fish you could find in the Bolga market was smoked and dried and looked disgusting, almost leathery. I didn’t even try it. It always seemed a bit strange to me that many Ghanaians actually preferred the dried fish to fresh. I used to think it was because they didn’t get fresh fish, but Grace, who lives in Accra, which is right on the ocean, buys dried fish. She won’t eat it fresh, thought the whole idea was a bit disgusting, but for those of us who love fish the Ghanaian seaside is like paradise. Some of the best fish dinners can be bought at small thatched huts along the shore. The huts have a few tables with benches, always a bit unsteady on the sand, and brightly colored umbrellas with beer logos to shield diners from the hot sun. The owners, who are generally the cooks, buy the fish right off the boats. The fish is usually wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over charcoal. The taste is amazing. Red snapper is my favorite.
In Togo, a country bordering Ghana, I had my first taste of barbecued lobster. It was dinner on the patio of a fairly large, sort of posh hotel, where we could never afford to stay but eating on the patio was within the budget of a Peace Corps volunteer: translation-it was inexpensive, maybe even cheap. My friend Ralph and I sat under an umbrella and watched as the lobster was cut down the middle then cooked. It was delicious.
Our mid-tour conference was at Dixcove, a neat little fishing village down the coast from Accra. We stayed in small cottages right on the ocean. I don’t remember anything about the technical parts of the conference, but I remember the rock lobster. We’d went to the village and paid a few guys small money to dive for the rock lobsters then we paid to have them cooked. Eating them was a divine experience I’ll never forget.
Categories: Musings
Tags: AC, barbecued lobster, Bolga, cats and the sun, charcoal cooking, Dixcove, dried fish, fish huts, Ghana, Heat Wave, humidity, red snapper, rock lobster, seaside huts, socks, Togo
Comments: 12 Comments
June 3, 2013
Last night it was a mighty storm. I saw the lightning then came the thunder, booming thunder getting closer and closer until it was over my house shaking the rafters. I fell asleep to that rain, but it was gone when I woke up. In its place was a dark, quiet day, the sort you sometimes get after a storm when all the sounds had been used up by the rain. Right now, though, the rain has started again, and I can hear the drops falling steadily on the trees and the deck. It will be around all day into tonight. The sun will be back tomorrow.
The rain makes me want to do little or nothing today, but my mood is neither lethargic nor somber. It is from the quiet and the darkness. Rain muffles all sounds except its own. My room is dark lit only by the computer screen. The window is wide open, and I have heard the progression of the rain. It started with a few small drops but is now the heaviest of rains. I have no gutters on my house so nearest the windows the rain falls in a sheet from the roof. No shopping for plants today, no planting flowers today.
Gracie is asleep in her crate. Fern is asleep on my bed and Maddie is in here with me sleeping on her chair. Animals know how to be cozy on a rainy day.
When I think of Ghana, I remember the smells and colors. My favorite of all is the aroma of wood charcoal burning. In my mind’s eye, I can still see smoke rising from the compounds behind my house when small charcoal burners were lit in the early mornings. My own burner was small and held only a single pan. First the charcoal was started. Thomas cooked for me and he’d squat in front of the burner fanning with a reed fan. When it was time for breakfast, he’d first boil the water for my coffee, my instant coffee, then the eggs and bread were cooked at the same time. The bread was leaned against the side to make toast. The eggs were cooked in groundnut oil, peanut oil, which gave them the best flavor of any eggs. I think breakfast was my favorite meal.
When I bought my first grill for this house, I never bought briquets; instead, I always bought wood charcoal. I used to sit outside on my little farmer’s deck not only to mind the grill but also to smell that charcoal burning and to remember and relive in a small way those mornings in Ghana.
Categories: Musings
Tags: aromas and smells, cozy day, dark day, Ghana, mornings, quiet, rain storm, thunder and lightning, wood charcoal
Comments: 10 Comments
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