We left Akwaaba house for the airport at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. We made it there with few hiccups, but some mild frustration at the rain and the fact that our giant backpacks weren't well suited for public transit. 48 hours later, we are nearing Tamale, having gotten up at 5am to catch this bus from Accra.
I'm not going to lie, the road is bumpy and the rest stops make me regret any time I refused to go in a gas station, but who cares? The bus has air conditioning!
This one detail trumps any other on my mind right now. I hadn't even known I was capable of sweating this much! I could literally watch the beads form on my skin. The morning heat in Accra was even more intense than last night when we landed. When the door to the plane opened, it was like the world had instantly become a sauna. It was strange to breathe in air that warm and heavy.
I was woken up in the middle of the night by some pretty intense heat rash on my face. That's right. My face! I cannot express to you how itchy heat rash is. Eventually I fell into a less-than-restful sleep with a wet facecloth over my cheeks. When I woke up to even more heat and enormously swollen feet this morning, I seriously questionned my decision to come here.
Now after over twelve hours of air-conditioned transit supplemented by a beautiful countryside and busy markets with great food, I think I am back on board! Ghana's bananas and mangoes are phenomenol. The fried yams and planatins are also unreal. Everything is spicy! I just love it! Plus, some new friends from the U.S. tell us that we'll get used to the heat.
I keep looking out the windows for animals, but I haven't seen any. That doesn't really matter though, the scenery is interesting enough. Everything is intenseley green and occasionally a mountain or two has popped up. The sun is low in the west now and we just crossed a bridge over a an inlet to the Volta Lake. There was one fisherman still out, while the others had brought their canoes in to shore. In the dimming sky, you could only see his silhouette out on the water. It could have been a movie.
The roadside is dotted with little communities, In the really rural areas, there will be stick huts with thatched rooves. In other places, it's mud-brick houses with the same thatching. Still other communities seem to be dominated by aluminum constructions and storage containers painted with some ad or another. These ones seem to be market communites, with lots of people selling goods or food. Every surface in them screams Vodafone, MTN or Coca-cola. Whole homes and shops are decked out with corporate logos and bright colours! It makes me uneasy. I'm not sure why.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Akwaaba
I love looking at houses.
Beautiful or run-down, big or small, new or old - a house is always much more than what you see. Who knows how many people have made their home, for a time, in a given house? For each, it was the main stage for a season of their life. They leave their memories and emotions there. They recall them when they come back.
In that way I always think that people leave a bit of their spirit in the houses they stay, and sometimes when I see one I try to imagine the people who left their love in those walls.
Akwaaba house is an old place with older hardwood floors, a couple of dens, and a few bedrooms - the kind of place you see four or five college kids staying. If I saw this house a week ago, I would have imagined them jamming on the couch with guitars and cooking KD in the kitchen.
This is ABSOLUTELY not the case.
Twenty four West Africa JFs are currently living two of the most emotionally and intellectually intense weeks of their lives. We have seen elaborate family dinners from the Burkina team, rather than the staple KD, and hough there is a guitar there are also two African drums and someone even brought a trumpet!
We are not the only group that have been here. So many have come and go before us, and ALL I'm sure look back with fond and intense emotions.
No one will see it when they pass. No one will imagine it when they look at front door, but the spirit of this house is idealism. Its walls remember our theories, our hopes, our fears and our flipcharts. Its shower recalls our determination and commitment. Its beds remember our exhaustion. Its plumbing? Well... lets just say it won't mess with us again.
Beautiful or run-down, big or small, new or old - a house is always much more than what you see. Who knows how many people have made their home, for a time, in a given house? For each, it was the main stage for a season of their life. They leave their memories and emotions there. They recall them when they come back.
In that way I always think that people leave a bit of their spirit in the houses they stay, and sometimes when I see one I try to imagine the people who left their love in those walls.
Akwaaba house is an old place with older hardwood floors, a couple of dens, and a few bedrooms - the kind of place you see four or five college kids staying. If I saw this house a week ago, I would have imagined them jamming on the couch with guitars and cooking KD in the kitchen.
This is ABSOLUTELY not the case.
Twenty four West Africa JFs are currently living two of the most emotionally and intellectually intense weeks of their lives. We have seen elaborate family dinners from the Burkina team, rather than the staple KD, and hough there is a guitar there are also two African drums and someone even brought a trumpet!
We are not the only group that have been here. So many have come and go before us, and ALL I'm sure look back with fond and intense emotions.
No one will see it when they pass. No one will imagine it when they look at front door, but the spirit of this house is idealism. Its walls remember our theories, our hopes, our fears and our flipcharts. Its shower recalls our determination and commitment. Its beds remember our exhaustion. Its plumbing? Well... lets just say it won't mess with us again.
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