bedheadchicken

Ok, I'm back. But here's the deal-this is REALLY long, and I don't have pictures yet. I'm lazy and let the girls in our group take all of the pictures and they were gonna send them to me. But I don't know when I'll get them. So I'll post visual aids eventually, but this is how the trip was. At least to me. And thank you again to those of you who donated to this. You made it possible. You'll be very proud when I post the picture of the school you made possible. Anyway....

OBRUNI TALES- MY TIME IN AFRICA


So there we were- 6 white kids (relatively speaking, of course) driving a Toyota across Ghana. We were on a dirt road for much of the time. Cattle and sheep frequently blocked our path. None of our gauges worked-no gas gauge, no speedometer, no odometer, nothing. The lights didn't work and the rear blinker was in my hand in the back seat (it DID work in my hand, but was of very little use there). The sunroof didn't close all the way, neither did the windows in the back seat and it was POURING out-so it was pouring in the car as well. The car stalled if you pressed on the gas too hard. Oh- and our driver had malaria.

Actually, forget that. It's not a very good story. I mean, it sounds like a pretty good setup, and it was all true, but all we did was drive somewhere and get there safely. So it's not very exciting. Ok, so where should we start?

I guess I'll tell you about the people I went with. Ok, listen:


There were going to be 12 of us at one point. Then 10. Then definitely 8. In the end 6 people showed up at the airport to go-the last 2 dropping out at the last minute when one got a job and the other got pregnant. So 6 it was, which was fine as we were crammed into that car as it was. But this is who we had:

First there was Ashley. Ashley put this whole thing together. She was our leader, the person with the plan, our banker, and everything else. She's also the one who got malaria. It was pretty scary. But the whole time I kept saying this to her:

Me: "You have MALARIA!"

Ashley: "I know"

Me: "That's so badass! You got malaria in Africa! You're so lucky!"

Ashley: "No I'm not! I feel terrible. I would do anything to not feel like this!"

-Pause

Me: "You have malaria!"

And so on.

Next there was my friend Christy. Christy used to work with me at Sopranos and is one of my bestest friends. She came to our fundraiser and decided she wanted to go. And so she did. Christy was our group's Jiminy Cricket-like conscience. Every time we became frustrated about something, or complained about something, she would put things into perspective for us immediately. So we hated her. Christy's nickname, by the way, is Kiki.

Danielle was Christy's roommate in college. She's a nurse now and lives in Florida. She was talking to Christy on the phone one night and when Christy told her that she was going to Ghana, Danielle thought for a moment and said, "I'm going too." Danielle was the group's mom. She was the one who was looking over us at all times. She was the one making sure everyone was ok, and since she was a nurse, she was the one we all went to more than once when we were sick.

It came in VERY useful to have a nurse with us since collectively we got rickets, diphtheria, ringworm, shingles, athlete's foot and the aforementioned malaria. Ok, that's not true. But all of us had something weird happen to us at one point. Christy broke into a heat rash that left HUGE blisters all over her face and neck. Lepers were looking at her and saying, "Will you please get out of here. You're gross" Everyone had something bad happening to them at most times, including terrible things that were happening in our lower extremities. I'll tell you more about that later.

John was the only other guy besides me. He's a 20 year old architecture student at Boulder University. He heard about the trip through a fellow student named Frankie, who went to Ghana with Ashley last year, but didn't make the trip this year (she was the one who got the job at the last minute and had to drop out). John was a great worker and always spoke to the people in Ghana with a vague foreign accent that puzzled us all. And he ended every sentence with "Ya?" for equally puzzling reasons. Again, this was ONLY when he spoke to someone from Ghana. For instance he would say:

John: " Sun hot. We work hard, ya? We need water, ya?"

And so on.

Rachel was a friend of John's from Boulder, who decided to come on a whim. Rachel pretty much defines the term "free spirit", but she had more energy than any of us combined and a 1000-megawatt smile. She learned the local language in about two days and was the only white girl that the black women from the village would dance with. Rachel was like our class president.

Then there was me. I'm not quite sure what I brought to the table except that I seemed to like eating chicken a lot. And luckily there was a lot of chicken to eat. Also, I got the most paint on myself while I painted. So I had that going for me too.


So that was our little group. I'm sure I told you how all this came together, but just to recap: Ashley volunteered with Habitat for Humanity last spring and went to Ghana to build houses. Specifically she went to a little village called Kenyasi 1 (or K1, as it's called there). The group she was with built sturdy little concrete houses for people who had to promise to pay Habitat back in bags of cement, which would then be used to build other homes. In total I think there are 64 Habitat homes in K1. It's a great program.

But it doesn't meet all the needs of the community. The kids in K1 are entitled to free schooling, on the condition that they pay for their own uniforms. They have a truly inspiring group of teachers who are as dedicated and giving as anyone you'd ever meet-but they were holding school in 3 buildings that would have to be significantly upgraded to be called dilapidated. They were a mess. The "kindergarten" was simply 3 stone walls-no roof, no blackboard, no desks. Just 3 walls. I kid you not.

So Ashley decided that she was gonna change that. And as soon as she got home she started work on that. She stayed in contact with people from the village and started raising money to send to them to make improvements. She made a plan to go back herself and recruited others (resulting in the group I just mentioned above) to come with her. We held a few fundraisers and she was eventually able to send over enough money to completely rebuild one of the 3 buildings. The brick structure would remain, but be repaired. It would be re-mortared and a new roof would be put on. Finally we'd paint it. There would be 3 classrooms in all. It was a start, anyway. And it's just a start. We've only just begun.

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We landed in Accra, the capital. The first thing that hits you when you land in Ghana isn't the heat, honestly, it's the smell. The sewers are all open and in effect there are rivers of piss and shit running everywhere. I could never quite get over that. The others did. Or so they said. This is what I said whenever I came anywhere near these rivers of piss and shit:

Me: "Ew!"

Rachel, by the way, took lots of pictures of these rivers. I think Rachel is an animal.


Accra was like sensory overload in every way, though. First of all it WAS hot, and there was that smell. But on top of that the city seems like total chaos. The population there seemed to be about 7 billion-gazillion (*according to the latest census). And everyone was on the streets at all times. Cars drove every which way. Traffic was insane. Horns blew constantly. I was glued to the car windows like a dog. I couldn't get over seeing people balance what seemed like ANYTHING on their heads and carry it with perfect balance. The city seemed completely ramshackle to me-there was not a thought given to aesthetics at all-one old, burned-out building seemed to just run into another one. Everything -I mean everything- was in disrepair. The place just LOOKED poor.

And I hadn't seen anything yet.

We were met when we landed by a guy named Foster. Foster works for Habitat and worked with Ashley last year and was absolutely instrumental in helping Ashley arrange our entire trip. He's is an incredible guy. I'll have pictures soon and I'll show you Foster. All the girls had a crush on him, and I think John and I sorta had man-crushes on him. He was just that kind of guy. He seemed to think we were semi-ridiculous at all times. And we were- crazy Americans (4 girls and 2 guys, btw) with cameras, malaria pills and hand-sanitizers, coming to his country to "build" stuff. And he always regarded us with a half smile and he'd laugh and shake his head at most of the stuff we said, but he had a genuine affection for us too. We never really felt threatened at any time while we were there, but when Foster was around everyone just felt a little better.

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OK, PS-I landed knowing nothing at all about Ghana, but here are the basics: it was a British colony until 1957 and so English is the official language. All the signs were in English, but most of the people-especially outside the cities, spoke one of the 9 native languages. Twi was the most popular and what everyone spoke in K1, although even there most people spoke very passable English.

Ghana is a stable democracy and has been for 50 years. I bought a copy of their constitution because I'm a complete geek and in terms of both the structure of government and individual rights it was very similar to our constitution here in the US of A. Property rights, however, are different. More on that later.

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So anyway, we spent the first night in Accra, at a delightful hostel where the toilets didn't flush and there was no AC. You could actually see the walls sweating. That was the best we'd have it for 3 1/2 weeks.

That first night, though, we decided to get to know each other a bit and we went to an American-style bar at another hotel nearby. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. When we walked in they were having a karaoke contest-styled after "American Idol". I'm not kidding. Each contestant got up, did a song (and they were ALL American songs-"The Greatest Love of All", "Easy", "Mac the Knife" and others). THEN the contestant was critiqued by a panel of judges who referred to themselves as "Mr. Jackson", "Ms. Abdul" and "Mr. Cowell". I turned to Ashley and said this:

Me: "Are you sure we're in Africa?"

Odd.

A few songs into the competition somebody did a version of "U Can't Touch This" -which sounds way better with a Ghanan accent, btw- and Rachel simply couldn't take it anymore and got up to dance. Actually what she did was re-create MC Hammer's entire routine as every head turned to watch the crazy white girl in the corner. She was then called ON STAGE where, after some conferring with the judges, she did a version of the Pointer Sister's "I'm So Excited" that made me fall out of my seat laughing, and got everyone else in the bar up and dancing. Even the judges got up. It was my first taste of the insane magic that is Rachel.

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The drive from Accra to K1 was 7 hours-mostly because most of the roads are dirt-at least in parts. Most people in Ghana travel by bus, or "Tro-tro", as it's called there. The average Tro-tro is a 1978 VW van that has 37 people crammed inside. You've never, ever seen anything less comfortable. Trust me.

Luckily Foster (aww Foster) arranged for us to have our own private ride and he hired a friend of his named Kwatchy to drive us. Kwatchy's driving philosophy was this: drive as fast as you possibly can at all times, and if a car is in front of you speed up until you're inches away and then hit your horn and veer wildly around said car. I turned to Christy at one point and said this:

Me: "So this is how I die. Interesting."

She couldn't hear me, however, because she was addressing her video camera and telling here parents that she loved them in a "Blair Witch"-style goodbye.

But we didn't die. Obviously. Not yet, anyway.

K1

I had no idea what to expect from K1, but for some reason I was surprised that there was a paved road through the village. But there was. Just one, but still. The house we were staying in, however, was very far off said paved road so Kwatchy had to drive through fields, brush and between trees to get us there. It was pretty incredible.

Our house was a Habitat House that someone in the village had donated for us to stay in. It looked like this: a concrete structure with 2 rooms and a "bathroom", which was a hole in a cement block over a deep ditch. That was it.

We slept in sleeping bags on the floor under mosquito nets (because malaria is spread by mosquitoes). Girls in one room, boys in another because intermingling was frowned upon. We showered in a cement enclosure with a bucket of water. No electricity, no plumbing. No running water. And we had it good. The Habitat houses were far superior to the shacks with tin roofs that made up most of the houses in the village.

When we pulled up there were about 40 kids and a dozen or so adults waiting for us. As soon as we stepped out of the van all the kids went crazy and started yelling "Obruni! Obruni!" at us. "Obruni," by the way, simply means "white person". It became our names for our stay there. But the intent was different than it would have been here. If a black person here referred to you as "white person" here it would be a taunt and it would likely mean that said black person wanted to do you physical harm. There it wasn't like that at all. And when someone said "Obruni" to us, we just said "Obibini" in return, which of course, meant "black person", and they'd laugh. I'm gonna go to Harlem and just say "black person!" to everyone I see, just to see what the reaction is.

It was overwhelming how excited those kids were to see us. Most of them were too young to speak any English at all (they start learning English in 3rd grade there) so Rachel came up with some game that sort of resembled Duck Duck Goose and that seemed to work for a while until it descended into anarchy. After a few hours it finally got dark and the kids eventually went to bed. Actually we THOUGHT they went to bed, but I was sitting in my room reading with my flashlight and I looked at the window and saw dozens of white little eyes looking through the window. Ashley assured us that our novelty would wear off after a day or so and the kids would tire of us. It didn't. And they never did. Whenever we stepped out of the house we had 20 kids waiting for us. When we walked to the school to go to work we had 30 kids following us-holding our hands, hanging off us, running around and trying to get us to play. John would say this to them:

John: "We play the ball, ya? When we get home we play the ball!"

And so on.


This goes without saying, but the kids there have NOTHING to play with. Nothing at all. Yet they were always out (mostly in front of our house), always inventing games, and always happy. Always. A lot of them wore clothes that were sent from American organizations, but often the younger kids wore nothing at all. We would wake up and guess how many naked babies would be in our front yard that morning. It was a great game.

The funny thing about the kids was how independent they were. They just seemed to roam around the village in large packs without any parental supervision. Or kids would meet us at the school and would walk to us all the way back to our house, which was a good 20 minute walk. I'm talking 3 and 4 year old kids! I kept saying "Don't your parents wonder where you are?" Apparently not. Most of the 3 or 4 year old kids had an older brother or sister who was 8 or 9 or so and that seemed to be enough.

This was strange to see: ANY adult served as a parent to any kid. They listened to any adult figure and obeyed them almost without question. Well except us. They just thought it was funny if we yelled at them. But if someone did something wrong he was disciplined by the nearest adult (again, except us). It was really amazing to see. Still it took me a while to get used to the idea that these people trusted EVERYONE in the village to watch over their children. Including us. The village was like an extended family in every way.

Just thinking about that in terms of how our behavior would be seen back home is completely bizarre.

"There's some white guy over at the school tickling the kids."

"Whose kids?"

"All of them."

"That's cool."

Odd.

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Ok, so this was our typical day there: we got up with the roosters (literally-roosters roam all over the village and wake you up with the sunrise). We'd have breakfast, and then Dan and Kofi would come by to walk with us to work. (I'll tell you about them in a sec) We'd all go to the school and work on it until noon or so. Go home for lunch for an hour. Work until 5 or so on the school again and then eat dinner and do whatever was on the schedule for the night. (And they almost always had something on the schedule for us, but I'll tell you about that later).

The food, first of all, was pretty great. We had two ladies who we paid to cook for us every day and they did wonders with rice, beans, bananas and chicken. We had some more traditional dishes too, which I appreciated to varying degrees (ahem). But all in all the food was good.

Working on the school was pretty hard, I'm not gonna lie to you. Ashley had been sending over the donated money we raised for some time before we got there and the roof was completely done by the time we were there and the walls were ALMOST all done. They sort of left us a token amount of mortaring so that we could feel like we contributed there and take our pictures. And mortaring is HARD, lemme tell you. I never got the hang of it. So it's best that they only left us that token amount, obviously.

This is who we had working with us: Dan, who was like the foreman of the whole project. Dan is the person Ashley sent all the money to all year. He hired the other workers. He was incredible. Ashley sent him enough to pay himself a small salary-about $300 for the whole project, which would probably be the only money he made all year, yet he didn't keep it for himself. He used that money to give the other workers that much more. I can't say enough about Dan. He was probably 5'4" and MAYBE weighed 100 pounds, but like everyone there he was incredibly strong. He worked in shorts and flip-flops and was deadly serious about everything he'd do. He'd put most workers here to shame. (Author's note-workers in America are frequently lazy)

Michael was the painter and worked just as hard as Dan did. It was incredible to see how they preserved EVERYTHING to make it last as long as possible or stretch our supplies as far as they could be stretched. The paint was watered down. The turpentine was reused again and again. If we got too much paint on our hands or clothes Michael would shake his head and yell, "You waste! You waste!" The idea of spilling ANY paint was unimaginable.

If we paused for a moment when painting to stretch or wipe the sweat away Michael would somehow always be there. "You tired?" He'd yell. He'd come by to critique our work, take the paint brush from our hands and do a bit for us then say, "Your work, my work-different. Make the same."

Finally there was Kofi, Dan's nephew. Kofi was kind of the swingman who did whatever needed to be done. Kofi was another guy who looked so slight that a stiff wind would break his spine, but he regularly picked up loads weighing 100 pounds or so, put them on his head, and walk long distances without showing the slightest stress. The whole carrying-stuff-on-your-head thing never ceased to amaze me. First of all most people didn't even use a hand to steady anything up there. They just balanced it. And they had such a natural grace about everything that I just kept staring. Woman would walk by with 50 pounds of somethingorother on their heads, a baby on their back, and another one in their arms and never look less than completely poised and at ease.

The name "Kofi", by the way, meant "Friday" in Twi-which was the day Kofi was born. Ghanaians often incorporate the day they were born into their name. It's often their first name. I was born on a Friday too, so I became Kofi Chris the whole time I was there. About half the people there had Christian names-like Dan or Michael. The missionaries had clearly gotten to Ghana before us. Ghana is Jesus CRAZY, btw. Jesus is everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE, and everyone takes religion very seriously. Sunday mass regularly runs 4 hours. I'm not kidding. More on that later, too.

But like I said-work was hard. It was hot ALL the time and we almost never got the rain we hoped for to cool things off. And the school we were working on was on the same campus (if you will) from the other dilapidated monstrosities currently being used as schools. So during break and recess and after school we'd have kids all over us again as we were trying to work. Kids LOVED petting my legs, since leg hair is non-existent there, which was fun when I was up on a ladder or something.

Everyone knew were we were all day, so people came by all the time to see how the work was coming. Some people picked up a paintbrush and helped for a while. Some brought us presents of fruit. But almost everyone wanted to teach us Twi-while we were working. All the time. I'd be on a ladder in 90 degree sun with sweat stinging my eyeballs and below me 5 or 6 people would be telling how to say "nose" and "ears" and such in Twi. I was like "Could we do this later, guys?"

The funny thing is that Rachel picked up Twi incredibly quickly and could seriously carry on a short conversation within a week, which delighted everyone there and made the rest of us look really, really bad. Michael didn't speak much English and spent most of the days quizzing us on Twi words. Poor Danielle was hopeless and couldn't remember a thing. I would walk in on a room where she and Michael were painting and he'd be pointing to her hair and saying "Utrimi" and she'd try to parrot him with laughable results. I'd come back an hour later and they'd be having the same EXACT conversation. In fact, for the rest of the stay Michael just called her "Utrimi", which I thought was funny.

Walking through the village was an experience every time, btw. We felt like the Beatles. We had 20 kids following us all the time, not the mention Dan, Kofi, and usually Michael and some others walking with us. And EVERYONE ran out of their houses to wave at us, or wish us well, or give us stuff. Every day. It was insane.

The most popular of all of us, though, was Christy, who went by Kiki there, and wherever we were at any time we heard a constant chorus of "KIKI! KIKI!"

If we were there any longer she would have been made chief.

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Oh, we met the chief, by the way. It was pretty great. Yes, the village had a chief. He had a place right in the middle of the village and people went to him to settle all disputes. The chief also decided where everything in the village would be built. He was sort of the guardian of the land. When we went to see him he was sitting on a big chair in gold robes surrounded by the elders of the village. It was everything you'd expect and really something to see.

So says me.

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Ok listen, you wanna talk about intimidating? Let's talk about dancing my lame white-boy dancing in front of an African village. Fer real. First let's recap, ok? We'd get up at dawn and work outside in the sun all day. And we had a million kids around us at all times, everyone in the village wanted to talk to us all the time, and frankly it was all exhausting. We were all completely spent at the end of the workday. Well, except for Rachel. Seriously. I don't know how she did it but at the end of the day when we were all sweaty and full of paint and our skin was all gross and we had heat rash and rickets and whatnot, Rachel would be running around the fields with 30 kids, or leading them in some kind of game, or teaching them all songs. She was incredible. Naturally I hated her.

But then we'd walk home and shower with our buckets of water and wanna just hang out and unwind a bit, but almost EVERY night the village had something else planned for us. They had quite a few dances, or they had traditional dancers come perform for us. Or a choir. Or drummers. Or something. There was something every night to show their appreciation. And every night ended with the same thing-them getting us to dance. And it was still 80 degrees or so at night. And all the kids would want to dance with us. Some nights I felt like I was gonna fall over. I sweated through so many t-shirts in a day I don't wanna begin to count them. And we were all TERRIBLE dancers-except Christy and Rachel- but nobody cared. The first night they had a dance for us I sat myself down in the dirt for a bit and was content to watch. But a bunch of kids were pulling my hands and legs. "I don't dance!" I tried to protest. Rachel just looked over at me from the middle of her pack of kids and said "In Africa you do."

And she was right. It was funny how liberated from my own personality I became there. I danced! Every night! We danced with the traditional dancers. We danced with the drummers. We danced at the "jams" they had for us (where they wheeled a generator in so that a DJ could play songs off his computer. Odd, I know)

But who was that? Was it me? I don't dance! I guess in Africa I do.

PS- when we had our dances John would say this to people:

John: "We like your music, ya? We dance, ya?"

And so on.

There were a few nights where everyone would leave and I'd just sit outside our little house with 5 or 6 kids in my lap, and I'd just watch the stars until they all fell asleep.

Again, not normal for me.

Wait a sec. I have to tell you about this one kid. His name was Yaw (pronounced "Yow"). Yaw was probably 3 or so and may have been the cutest little kid I've ever seen. But he never, ever smiled. He just stood at a distance and stared at us sullenly. All the other kids were bouncing around at all times like rabbits on crack, but Yaw just hung out and sort of watched us suspiciously.

So I became obsessed with breaking Yaw-like a horse. I just wanted to get him to smile. I started with little gestures-I'd run over and touch his nose or his belly, but leave before he got the chance to run away from me. Or I'd just wave to him when I got up in the morning and he was wandering around the yard, away from the other kids. But I wasn't getting very far with him.

But the first Sunday, after our first full week of work we were walking to church when I heard "'bruni! 'bruni!" and I turned around to see little Yaw running across the field at me with his little legs carrying him as fast as they'd go. From that moment we were inseparable. Wherever I went, Yaw was just a few feet behind. Smiling. He was my little bodyguard.

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Every story needs a villain, right? Well maybe not. But this one does. Here's the bad guy here: Newmont. Newmont is an American gold company that is digging in Ghana. Again, there are no personal property rights in Ghana-the government owns the land you build your house and your farm on. So Newmont has been coming in, paying off the government, and pushing people off their land to mine for gold. Why does the government in Ghana agree to this? Mostly short term greed. Ghana doesn't have the equipment to mine itself, so it may as well take the bribes from the American company. And Newmont hired most of the workers from Accra, so there is the additional payoff of some jobs.

But what does that do for the people of Kenyasi? Nothing. Dan and Kofi told us that the blasts from the mining were cracking the foundation of their homes. Newmont was buying off farmers by offering them $150 for their farms. $150! Granted that's a lot of money in Ghana-where an average worker-if he's lucky enough to get a job-earns $4 to $8 a day. But $150 is certainly not nearly enough compensation for your entire livelihood! And if a farmer didn't want to sell, then Newmont simply burned down their farm.

Newmont had a big meeting with the village while we were there to explain themselves and deny all of the ugly rumors that had been circulating about the company. They offered the town a few trinkets-a wheelchair for their medical clinic, a few balls for the kids. Crap, basically. They denied that their blasts could possibly be cracking the houses foundations-even though we saw it with their own eyes.

Nobody from the village was buying anything Newmont said, but there was nothing they could do about it. The government already had given the company access to their land.
I was talking to Gloria, a 13 year old student at the school who spoke perfect English. She said "They come in, they give farmers a bit of money, and steal their land forever. And there's nothing we can do."

Just about sums it up. This is what I said:

Me: "yeah"

Cause that's all I could say. John and I both told the Newmont representative that we would love to talk to him after the meeting, and of course he smiled and said sure-and of course he beat it after so that NOBODY could meet him one-on-one. John later went up to the Newmont headquarters and tried to get in, but didn't get anywhere close. I didn't go because I had extra-terrible things happening in my lower extremities.

After the meeting we were sitting around with some people from the village and heard the story of a farmer who didn't want to leave his land and sat outside every night with a knife trying to keep Newmont away. But he could only last so long and when he finally fell asleep his field was set on fire.

Foster happened to be in town the night of the meeting (Foster came and went. He always had something to do somewhere) and he said that the entire village was slated to be dug up by Newmont eventually-in 10 or 15 years or so, which absolutely broke my heart. And that wouldn't even mean jobs for the people of K1 either. Newmont tended to hire people from Accra, who were less invested in the land and had more skill with machinery. "They only hire the troublemakers, locally" Foster said. "If you start asking too many questions loud enough they put you on the payroll to make you happy."

He looked at the ground. "In a few years I'll probably be working for Newmont."

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Gloria was an interesting girl because of this: she was the queen bee mean girl of the school. Actually I don't know if she was mean or not, but she certainly had her clique and they were certainly the popular girls in the school. It was funny knowing that was a universal phenomenon. The other kids called her "Glorious Lady", which was better than the nickname of her right hand girl, Linda, who was called "Linda The Virgin", which was just weird. Presumably they were all virgins, though. There was a VERY Christian influence there and male-female relations seemed sort of awkward to me. With the exception of Foster, who confessed to having "a girlfriend here and there", and Michael, who wished very much to be married, most of the guys were VERY awkward around girls. At least in terms of sexuality.

I asked Kofi about girls a few times and I might as well have asked him if he was interested in flying saucers. And Atta, a carpenter who worked on the roof with us, clearly had a crush on Rachel, but all he could do to act on it was to laugh and hit her on the arm and run away. Like he was 7.

There didn't seem to be any sort of discrepancy between the sexes in terms of equality. Women were certainly not viewed as second-class citizens, but grown men and women simply didn't seem to intermingle much. And boys always wanted to hold my hand, or John's, which the girls wanted to hold hands with the girls in our group. Same went for dancing. It was a little odd to me. And there were all those kids everywhere, so men and women were getting together SOMEWHERE, it just wasn't out in the open at all.

Well I guess it wouldn't, now would it?

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Sometimes when the dances lasted longer than I could possibly endure, I would go away from the party a bit and sit and talk to Michael and Dan and some of the teachers from the school. What I found funny is that normally nobody asked us about America at all. I mean, it was kind of refreshing, but I just expected people to be more curious. They weren't. Here's how much most people in the village thought about America: not at all.

Everyone wanted to know what we thought of Ghana. Cause Ghana was all they knew, I guess. Nobody cared about America.

But Dan and Michael and the teachers would ask questions. Aday, one of the teachers, actually knew more about American politics than most people here. He took the tro tro 2 hours every Saturday to Kumasi, the nearest city, to get online and read the New York Times. But his case was rather unusual. Most of them just knew this: there was work in America.

As a matter of fact Michael told me that he once heard that the government in America paid people even when they didn't work. He found that incredible and confusing. "How do people expect to get money when they did nothing to earn it?"

This is what I said, "I dunno"

Michael and Dan both asked if I would bring them to America. The thought of those sweet, trusting people being brought here almost broke my heart. It would ruin them. I said, "You have a community here, where everyone cares for one another and everyone is equal. That doesn't exist in America anymore. People don't take care of each other."

They said that was sad. I agreed.

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So let's talk about church. This is what church was like: long.

Actually the usual services there were 4 hours. They cut it down to 2 hours for us because Foster told them we weren't used to 4 hour services. Actually, I don't think any of us were used to 1 hour services anymore. But we went anyway. I think it was 127 degrees that day. Or 227. Something like that. And John and I had to wear long pants, and all the girls had to wear long skirts. I remember sitting in the pew (with Yaw, btw) behind Rachel and just watching the sweat pour down her back. It was brutal.

But it was amazing. It really was. It was the exact opposite of what church has always meant to me- it was joyful, it was a celebration. People danced-WE danced. People sang and smiled at one another. The whole community was there. And it was great. Really.

That first Sunday is when I remember thinking "These people have nothing. I mean, NOTHING. But here they are making the most joyful noise I've ever heard. And they're ALWAYS joyful. They're always smiling."

It was then I concluded that all the people there were stupid.

Incidentally, after church we got the rain we all had been waiting for. The wind started up, the skies turned black, and even all the kids ran home. And the 6 of us just stood there with our arms wide open (like Creed!) as the skies opened and danced in the rain. People thought we were insane. We actually ran inside, took off as moth clothing as was considered decent, grabbed soap and shampoo and showered in the rain. I think we were delirious. This is what everyone else said about us:

EVERYBODY: 'Crazy obrunis!"

As it turns out, the church was the last place we saw in K1 before leaving. We went to take one last look at the school and say goodbye to all the teachers, when Father Dancor, the village priest, told us that they had a "surprise" for us in the church. So we went over and EVERYBODY was there. I mean, everybody. All the students and teachers were crammed in and everyone else seemed to be there as well. It was overwhelming. They called us up one by one and gave the guys a shirt they had made for us, and the girls a dress. (Christy's name was met by the loudest call of "KIKI! KIKI!" you ever heard in your life. The church shook.)

And we all sat there and listened to this thunderous applause of these people thanking us for painting a lousy school. It was one of the most touching things I've ever been a party to. I actually cried. We all cried. And this is what John said:

John "It's nice, ya? Good shirt, ya?"

And so on.

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Don't get me wrong it wasn't always great. It was really, really hard a lot of the time. All of us had at least one day where we were out of commission completely. I almost passed out for the first time in my life one day. I was apparently dehydrated and while I was walking home from the school everything just went black. I stayed on my feet, though, and spent the night mostly lying down and drinking water.

We all smelled. All the time. Everyone smelled. We didn't see a mirror for almost a month (which was kinda nice, actually). Rachel didn't shave her armpits. All of us had some sort of rash at one point from the heat. Ashley had malaria. I was jealous. Terrible things were happening all the time with our lower extremities. But I wouldn't trade it for a moment. And I'm definitely going back next year. I have to. I promised those people that I would. And they gave me much more than I gave them, anyway.

I don't mean to make this a clich-white man goes to poor black country and learns valuable life lesson. In fact I hate that I fell into that formula. But I noticed something when I was there for a while-I stopped thinking about myself all the time. I didn't care what I looked like, or whatever. I didn't care what I was doing that night or what my social status was at the moment. I missed my friends from home, but it was ok. Everything was ok. We were in the midst of a community who had nothing, yet acted as if every day was a gift. How could you argue with that?

I'm not sure if I'm being overly sentimental or if I haven't processed everything yet or what. I just know that since I've been back I wish I were still there. And I know that it was the best experience of my life. And I'm eternally grateful to Ashley for putting it together.

We might be overly ambitious for our goals next year, but we want to get another schoolhouse together. We wanna finish a school library that we started. And that's not all- we wanna look into solar panels to try to power a computer lab, which would be open to the adults too. And we wanna try to bring a camera and an able friend to document what's going on with Newmont, and maybe shining a light on that. I have a friend who is willing to go shoot it, and another friend in London who works for a company that finances such documentaries. So we'll see.

We met a number if Americans there. We met American medical students who were volunteering their summers in the hospital when we had to take Ashley for her malaria. We met a doctor who had set up a clinic and was making his 9th trip back. We met a bunch of students who were doing AIDS outreach programs. We all talked about keeping in touch with each other back home and maybe acting in concert next year.

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Kwatchy was waiting outside the church with the van on that last day. Everyone had surrounded the van and we were saying our goodbyes. Kids were literally sobbing and hanging on to us. Christy was wearing her sunglasses, which meant she was crying. Rachel was talking to everyone in Twi. Foster was trying to get us all in the van and get out of there. Kwatchy would take us to Accra again, and we'd have a few days left in Ghana to explore on our own. That's when we rented our car and had all sorts of other adventures, but that's a different story. We finally were all herded into the van and we pulled away with everyone waiving and shouting at us. John stuck his head out the window and said this:

John: "We be back next year, ya? We see you next year!"

And so on.


And we will. Until next year.