Posted tagged ‘Peace Corps’
July 11, 2014
The morning is a quiet one with only the songs of birds breaking the silence. I am part of the morning. A calmness seems to take over, a slowness with no need for haste. I stood outside leaning on the deck rail for a long time. I could smell the freshness of the morning air. I watched the birds at the feeders and the slow sway of the leaves from the slight breeze. It is a familiar feeling for me, the sense I am alone. I remember being in Maine on vacation, and it was pouring. I took my book and went to the car, got comfortable and read for hours. I loved the sound of the rain on the car roof, and I loved being alone. When I’d get home from school on a rainy day, I’d take off my wet clothes, put on cozy pajamas, get in bed and read. I snuggled in the warmth of the blankets and loved the quiet of my room. I used to be a night owl, and I was always the only one awake in my neighborhood. I remember being outside at one or two in the morning watching the meteor shower. I oohed and aahed as they lit up the sky. Every other house was dark, and I felt sorry for them. I wanted to run up and down the street waking my neighbors so they could share the glorious sight of all those meteors. I didn’t, which was probably the right choice.
The first time I ever lived alone was in Ghana. We were altogether for training so someone was always around who was sharing the same experiences I was. At the end of training, the transition to my post, Bolgatanga, way north and off the beaten path, was difficult, especially the first few months. I was terribly homesick and had no one to talk to about it. I was also having trouble teaching. The students didn’t understand my American accent, and at the end of the class they would tell me they heard nothing, a Ghanaian term for not understanding a word. I felt like a failure. Here I was lonely, miserable and a complete failure. I made plans to go home by Christmas if things didn’t change, but happily for me they did. I began to love being alone, to having all this time to myself. I would read for hours. My letters home were filled with everything I saw and did, and I took pleasure in the descriptions. I didn’t have to lie any more about everything being great because it actually was. I learned how to teach, how to enunciate. No more did students not hear me. Everything had fallen into place, and I couldn’t imagine leaving.
I bought my house when I was 29. I have lived alone the entire time. Sometimes I’d like some company, and I always miss my guests when they leave, but I am content living by myself.
Categories: Musings
Tags: being alone, Bolgatanga, clamness, Ghana, living alone, lonely, meteors, miserable, morning, night owl, not hearing me, Peace Corps
Comments: 14 Comments
June 5, 2014
I woke up at eight but stayed lolling in bed for 45 more minutes. I just didn’t want to move, and neither did the animals: both Gracie and Fern stayed with me on the bed while Maddie dropped by for some pats. You can blame it all on the rain. It is falling lightly, gently, the sort of rain which holds me thrall, and I stop often to sit and listen. I watch the drops fall from the overhang above the window. The house is in cozy darkness. I’m still wearing comfy bed-clothes, and I think I might just do that all day. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
We always walked to school. Almost everyone did. The weather didn’t matter. We walked on the coldest mornings and in the heaviest rain. The school was our refuge, and we hurried to get there. On rainy days we didn’t have to wait outside for the bell, the nuns or the lines. We could go right to the cloakrooms, get out of our wet coats and boots and then go into our classrooms. I remember how quiet everything in the classroom seemed on a rainy day. It was as if the rain had blanketed all sounds except its own. Each the classroom had long windows on two sides, and the raindrops tapped the windows. I was a reluctant learner on those rainy days. I wanted just to hear the rain.
When I arrived in Ghana for Peace Corps training, it was the rainy season. Our first stop was on the coast in a town called Winneba where we stayed for two weeks. I remember sitting on the top step of a classroom block watching the rain. I can still see it all so clearly even after all these years. The steps were concrete and they and the building behind me were painted white. The top step was out of the rain, under an overhang. The rain was steady but misty and blurred the buildings as if they were a painting maybe by Monet. I had my travel umbrella with me but I hadn’t opened it. When my left my step, I forgot the umbrella. When I went back, it was gone. I didn’t really care. Nobody in Ghana used umbrellas in the rain.
Categories: Musings
Tags: drizzling, Ghana, laxy day, lying in bed, mist, Monet, Peace Corps, rain, rain on the windows, umbrellas, walking to school
Comments: 14 Comments
May 24, 2014
It is really late, I know, but I slept in. It was a mirror under the nose to make sure I was still alive type morning. It was nearly eleven before I got out of bed. Excuses? I need none. I do have a few things I could do but nothing of any importance, and I am a bit afraid to go out as the traffic to get on the cape was backed up for miles so the roads will be heavy with cars. I’m going to practice all my traffic curses to get ready for the season.
When I was a kid, we never came to the cape. We went to local beaches in Gloucester or we went north to Maine or New Hampshire. I was in high school before I first came down here, and it wasn’t with the family. It was with the drill team to march in a parade in Hyannis. We parked on a side street at the northern end of Hyannis. It was right across from what would become my father’s office in a couple of years. I noticed it was the Hood plant, but it didn’t make a big impression. Had I been a soothsayer, I’d know that plant meant moving and leaving all the friends with whom I was spending the day. After we marched, we spent the rest of the day at a beach. I think it was Scusset Beach right on the canal. It was a fun day.
When I first moved down here, I hated it. It was my first time in a public school, I didn’t know a soul and the guidance counselor had persuaded me to take Latin 4. Even though I had spent all of my school years in a Catholic school my parents made me go to CCD at the church which happened to be across the street. My brother also had to go. The class met in the kitchen of the church hall as all the other spaces were taken. We convinced the priest teaching the class that my brother and I were twins so he’d only have to suffer through one year of CCD. It was an unruly group and the poor priest was at wits end. Eventually we took pity and quieted down. I have no idea what we learned, if anything.
My parents decided that my brother and I didn’t really like them all that much. When we first moved down here, I went to visit my friends at home at least one weekend a month and more if I could scrounge up the money, but over time I made friends and came to love the cape. When I was in the Peace Corps, my parents moved off cape back to the town where I’d grown up. They thought I’d probably join them, but when I finished my years in Ghana, I came home to Cape Cod.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cape cod, CCD, curses, Hood, Latin 4, parade, Peace Corps, Scusset Beach, sleeping in, traffic
Comments: 15 Comments
April 10, 2014
I want a weapon which uses projectiles. I’m thinking a potato gun. My target is the red spawn of Satan who is constantly at the big feeder. I chase it away but it always comes back. This morning, after my second chase, I was thinking of putting barbed wire across the part of the deck rail the spawn uses for its take-off to the feeder. I’m also giving a bed of nails serious consideration or a metal cylinder. I chuckled at the picture of the spawn trying to get a paw hold on the cylinder but sliding every time. Buying a Have-a- Heart trap is another idea. I’d catch the beast and drive it so far away it would have to learn a new language. That spawn has to go!
The sun is out, but the morning is chilly. It is only 45˚ right now though it is supposed to get warmer by afternoon. I opened the front door and Fern is sleeping on the rug, sprawled in the sun streaming through the storm door. When the sun shifts, Fern too will move to the rug by the back door for the afternoon sun. Maddie is still sticking her head up under the lamp shade for the warmth from the lightbulb. The house isn’t cold, but I guess it’s not cat warm.
Today is my only lazy day, and I’m taking full advantage. Granted, I did make my bed and change the cat litter so I haven’t been a total sloth. I’m really just saving my energy as tomorrow is such a full day.
I always hated people asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had so much trouble figuring out what I wanted to be at Halloween that choosing a profession for my whole adult life when I was ten was ridiculous. I had pat answers: teacher or nurse. Which answer I gave depended upon my mood and the asker. I actually hadn’t given a thought to either one. I was a kid, not a long-range planner. No kid ever was.
I did end up a teacher but hadn’t planned on being one. I was going to be a lawyer. My dad told me law was not for women so he was against it. That didn’t matter to me. I got into law school and was also offered a teaching job, but I turned both of them down for the Peace Corps. Law school was willing to defer my admission so that was my plan after Ghana, but it never happened. I became a teacher. It seemed I had been prophetic at ten.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barbed wire, bed of nails, Bird feeder, blue skies, cats in the sun, cold day, Ghana, growing up, have-a-heart trap, lazy day, long range planning, Peace Corps, red spawn of Satan, sunny
Comments: 8 Comments
January 23, 2014
The blizzard did not live up to its hype. The Cape Cod Times reports this morning we have 7 or 8 inches of snow here in Dennis though it looks like more in some places because of the drifting. My car had very little snow on it, but my back step had so much snow Gracie chose to jump over it rather than step into the drift, but she had no problem going down the stairs into the backyard as the snow wasn’t too high for her. Today is sunny and cold with a temperature around 19˚. Tonight will be in the single digits, but by Saturday it will be in the 30’s. Maybe I’ll even sit on the deck and catch the sun. I’d have to shovel first of course.
This is only our second snow storm so I suppose complaints aren’t warranted, but I hate how cold it is and how cold it has been from all those incursions by the polar region. Given a choice, though, I choose being cold over being hot. When it’s hot, there are only a few ways to get cooler, excluding central air of course. You can sit in front of a fan going full blast, take cold showers or go swimming, a temporary reprieve at best. But when you’re cold, you can bundle up, snuggle under a down comforter, layer or just stay in the warm house with the heat cranking. It is just so much easier to get warm.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, the heat in the Upper Region was interminable this time of year. I’d sit in my living room reading, and when I’d stand up, my sweaty imprint would be on the chair cushions like the chalk outline of the victim at a murder scene. I had no fan so a cold shower was my only way to beat the heat. I’d take one just before bed, not dry off, go inside to sleep and let the air dry me, sort of my own cooling system. Most times I could fall asleep. During the day, though, I lived in a condition of perpetual sweat whenever I did anything. It wasn’t pretty.
I’ll complain about the cold now and in August I’ll complain about the heat. That seems to be part of the human condition, the complaining I mean.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blizzard, bundle, central air, cold, cold versus heat, cozy, drifts of snow, fan, Ghana, layer, Peace Corps, single digit, Snow
Comments: 16 Comments
October 11, 2013
Today is cloudy with a chance of rain. We have been and will be in the 60’s the whole of the week. This is fall.
I never learned to play the piano though I took lessons for a short time when I was in the second grade. A nun was my teacher, and I used to walk across the street to one end of the convent for lessons. But because we didn’t have a piano, I could never practice. The nun suggested I might want to explore other interests. I figure she must have told me delicately as my psyche remained unscathed. I never did try another instrument, and a year later my singing career ended when the nun told me to lip sing. I became a listener of music instead of a participant. I have never been disappointed.
I have the soul of a wanderer. Even since I was really young, books of faraway places held my imagination. When I was eleven, I vowed to travel the world. I knew I’d go to South American, the Sahara Desert, markets in African and places where not a soul spoke English. I was never afraid but self-assured. I knew what I was meant to do.
During my senior year in college, I pursued a few different future avenues. I applied to law school and got accepted, and I was even offered a teaching job, but neither of those fit where I saw myself in the future. They were too staid, floating too much in the mainstream. I applied to the Peace Corps in October. That’s how soon I knew what I wanted to do. Where I went wasn’t important. It was the going that counted. That I ended up in Africa was like a dream, a wish come true. After all these years, my heart is still filled with a love for Ghana, for its people, its sounds and smells, its sights and amazing colors. My old vow, my promise, the one I made when I was eleven has been fulfilled not only in Ghana but also in so many other places.
I have always been an idealist. I consider it one of my best traits. I took tap dancing lessons a while back. I’m still filled with dreams.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Africa, fulfilling a dream, Ghana, Peace Corps, piano playing, poor singing voice, promise of an eleven year old, soul of a wanderer, tap dancing, the going counts, travle the world
Comments: 17 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
February 24, 2013
I heard the most welcome of sounds when I woke up this morning, the sound of rain on the roof. I didn’t hear people shoveling or a plow working its way down the street. I heard heavy rain, and I was glad. The day may be dismal and dark, but the rain is a bright spot, sort of oxymoronic I know, but that’s the way it feels.
I am going to Hyannis today. It is really not very far, but I sometimes think of the journey as a trek of sorts. I’m attending a luncheon with the Cape Cod Returned Peace Corps group. We get together every now and then. The last time was in October for the dedication of a stone we’d purchased with a plaque on it celebrating fifty years of Peace Corps and honoring all who served. This luncheon is to recognize Peace Corps week. It starts early so I should be home early which is perfect as I have promised Gracie we will go the dump even if it’s still raining.
When I was younger, not young, but younger, never did I imagine I would pamper myself so much. My groceries were just delivered by Peapod, and they’re already put away. I didn’t have to go up and down aisles silently cursing the aisle hogs or make three or four trips from the car to bring the groceries into the house. When snow fell the last two weekends, I waited for Skip who plowed out my car, the driveway, the mail box and the place in front where I usually park. He shoveled two walks. My front lawn is covered in small, broken pine branches felled by the winds. The back yard has several larger branches on the ground, also victims of the wind. I know in a few months my landscaper and his crew will come and spring clean both yards. Roseana and Lee will be here this week to clean the house. They come every two weeks. I do cleaning in the off-week but usually as little as possible. I have had cleaning people for years, even before I lived here. They date back to when I had a roommate and we shared a house. We both worked, and that was our excuse for housecleaners. She got married and sold her house so I bought my own house. For a long while I cleaned it myself due to finances, not a work ethic, but as soon I could afford it, I hired housecleaners again. When I stopped working, I still kept the housecleaners. Age and a bad back finished off my shoveling career. When I redid the yard, I used a landscaper and decided he was the best choice to keep the grass green and free of weeds. I am, for the most part, a woman of leisure though I am still stuck making and changing the bed and doing laundry. I guess we all need a bit of suffering to keep us humble.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cleaning, dump, landscaper, Laundry, leisure, Peace Corps, Peapod, plowman, rain, returned volunteer, suffering
Comments: 24 Comments
December 18, 2012
As I was walking downstairs this morning, I could smell the Christmas tree. I smiled. I love that smell and can’t think of no better way to greet the morning. Right away I went over and turned on the tree lights. They brightened the room and chased away the clouds and the rain.
Yesterday Gracie and I went about doing a couple of errands. She got her nails trimmed, and while I waited, I bought her a few surprises for Christmas. I also stopped at a favorite bakery to get cookies to bring to the library for this week’s Christmas open house. The bakery owner, whom I see all the time, was there and asked what I was looking for. I told him about the open house and the library. He said he loved libraries and then he gave me three packages of his cookies as a gift to the library. How kind that was! How generous! I am forever thankful for the goodness in people.
I got a call from my friend Bill who had somehow managed to track down Patrick, another volunteer with whom we had served in Bolga. I had looked for Patrick for a while but never found him. Bill found a story in an Iowan newspaper about Patrick and send an e-mail last September asking if the Patrick he’d found was our Patrick, but Bill didn’t get an answer until now when Patrick called him. Pat’s memory is a bit fuzzy. He barely remembered Ghana let alone any of us. He asked Bill if there wasn’t also a gal in Bolga. I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone say gal. Bill told him I was that gal. I had to chuckle as did Bill. I have Patrick’s phone number and am aimin’ to give that galoot a call. I’ll introduce myself as a gal he knew from way back when.
I have a story I like to tell this time of year about my first Christmas in Ghana, my very first ever away from home. I was homesick and sad. My mother tried to help so she sent me a small tree, ornaments from our family tree, brick crepe paper so I could make a fireplace and a small stocking to hang. I decorated my house but it didn’t help much. Besides, the weather was all wrong. It was the harmattan, the driest time of the year with a hot, dusty wind which blew each day and covered every surface in my house with sand. The heels of my feet cracked from the dryness, and I had to walk on tiptoes until the skin hardened. The only redeeming parts of the harmattan were the nights. They were cold, put a wool blanket on the bed cold. I’d leave all my windows open so I could snuggle under my blanket. It felt a bit like winter.
The nights in Bolga were quiet. They were bright with stars which seemed to blanket the sky. I was in bed trying to fall asleep on a night close to Christmas when I heard a small boy singing. His voice carried though the night air. It was the only sound I could hear. He sand We Three Kings, every verse. His voice was beautiful. I don’t know where he was. I guessed he lived in a compound near my house, but that didn’t really matter. He gave me one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received. He gave Christmas.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Bill, Bolga, Christmas, Christmas tree, cold nights, Ghana, harmattan, holidays, homesickness, Peace Corps, sand
Comments: 40 Comments
November 20, 2012
It was not a hallucination. I swear when I first woke up this morning there was sun. I smiled, turned over, went back to sleep and missed it. By the time I woke up for good, it was gone; however, these familiar clouds have proverbial silver linings. On the weather last night we were fifteen degrees warmer than Boston and Southern New Hampshire. The weatherman said it was a combination of the warmer ocean and the cloud effect so I have stopped complaining about the lack of sunlight. I’ll just take more vitamin D than usual.
With Thanksgiving being an American holiday we still had to teach when I was in Ghana, but that didn’t stop us from honoring the day. We had a huge Thanksgiving dinner one year with several guests, one turkey, a few chickens, side dishes and pies. The owner of the turkey was a hard bargainer and Thomas, the cook, had to follow the man all the way to his village before he’d sell the turkey. When I was in Bolga last summer, I was amazed by the number of turkeys wandering around. In my two years living there I saw only that one which ended up being the showcase of our feast. The chickens you bought live, still do. You get to pick yours like we pick lobsters from the tank. The man hands you the chicken by its bound feet. I used to hang them from the arms of my moto (motorcycle) to get them home. Someone else always sent the chickens to their heavenly reward. I never could. The year of the giant feast we plucked the chickens. All of them, already having met their demise, were brought to us in a huge bucket. All of a sudden a few of them popped right out of the bucket onto the ground. No, they didn’t run around without their heads. They just popped. I knew scientifically why that had happened but it was still sort of amazing in its own weird way.
That was the year I made my very first pies ever, pawpaw pies. I made the dough, cut up the pawpaws and then added sugar and cinnamon. The cookbook Peace Corps had given us, Ghana Chop (chop being food), said that pawpaw pie would taste just like apple when you added the spices. I brought the two pies to the school’s beehive, clay oven. The cooks put them on the side of the oven away from the intense heat of the middle, but they still took only about 15 or 20 minutes to cook. They were delicious and they tasted exactly like apple pies.
That Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorites.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Chicken, cloud effect, couds, Ghana, Peace Corps, sun, Thanksgiving dinner, warm ocean
Comments: 7 Comments
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