"Let me tell you about my boat"

I actually do not have a boat. This is the name of a song from the Life Aquatic soundtrack, which comes from the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou directed by Wes Anderson (probably my favorite Wes Anderson film). This song narrates a scene in which Bill Murray shows you around his massive expedition boat and describes life on the sea.

So, let me tell you about my village.

The market square in Besease

I spend almost all of my time in Ghana in two places: Besease (where I sleep and teach) and Kissi (where I go to see friends and hang out). The area is mostly farmland, probably not the type of farmland you are thinking of, but farmland full of plantain and banana trees, orange trees, cassava trees, coconut trees, yam plants, tomatoes, peppers, pineapple, onion, and yes, even corn (but not sweet corn, feed corn that is soaked in salt water and sold with coconut pieces). The next biggest city to Kissi is Cape Coast. This is where I do most of my shopping, go to the hospital, and get 3G internet.

Kissi, Flooded

Komenda College

Each community in the stretch from Besease to the ocean, has a very different character and feel to it. Besease is furthest inland, sitting highest among some low rolling hills, with hard packed clay earth that gets dusty in the dry season. From the government school in Besease, you can look out across the farmland and see the waves of the land, like a frozen terrestrial ocean, and the scattering of silk cotton trees towering among every other tree in the area. It’s really beautiful. You can watch the sunset there. As you walk south to Kissi, you walk into flat, waterlogged land. Kissi was basically built in a giant, shallow bowl. When the heavy rains come, it floods, and trash and debris and refuse get washed all over town. But it’s more lively and bigger than Besease, being closer to the highway. Heading further south still, after crossing the Cape Coast-Sekondi highway and driving through a flat, green stretch of undeveloped land with tall grasses, you reach Komenda sitting on the ocean. It has the distinctive laid-back feel of a beach town. The ground is a mixture of soft sand and dark dirt that sifts between your toes when you walk.

The road to Besease

To get from Besease to Kissi I have to walk along a pot-hole ridden, dirt road that no taxi in his right mind enjoys driving down. Taxis do come to Besease but it’s not without a price, which is why I walk or bike (if I have someone’s bike at hand). In fact, from the highway to Besease a taxi will charge 3 cedis, which is rather outrageous and too much for most people to afford considering it's a really short distance. Also, once darkness falls, good luck finding anyone to come to or leave Besease no matter how much you are willing to pay them. So, where I find myself when night hits is usually where I will sleep. If I find myself stuck all the way over in Cape Coast at night for whatever reason, getting back to Besease becomes a great, expensive adventure. One night, another volunteer and I hired a taxi to take us all the way to Besease for 15 cedi. After driving halfway up the road between Besease and Kissi he stopped and refused to go any farther saying, "This road is shit." And he made us pay him 17 cedi. Another time, after I was released from the Cape Coast hospital at one in the morning, due to a lack of taxi's, Sampson and I had to walk all the way to the highway. After an hour of waiting we got a car that only took us as far as the police checkpoint near Ayensudo. After waiting there for 45 minutes, and being heckled a bit by the police, a large truck decided to take us to Kissi. And from there we walked the 35 minute walk home. I love transportation here, but sometimes it's not easy. Or the safest.

The sun sets at almost the same time everyday: between 6 and 6:30 pm. When I was here last year and missing out on summer in Minnesota, I found this agitating and felt robbed of my summer evenings.

I stay in a renovated Cocoa shed/factory. It’s rather nice since it has a flush toilet, kitchen and shower room, and running water fed by a large tank. Most people in this area live in one room houses and store their bath/cooking/drinking water in large buckets with lids. Sometimes the style of the living quarters reminds me of older motels who have a one level strip of rooms all connected to each other. Except that the buildings here are made of clay and cement blocks with tin roofs rather than plastic siding and asphalt shingles.

Science at the government school

Dancing at Star of the Sea

Star of the Sea School

During the day I go to the Besease government school, which completely lacks electricity (except for one classroom that has a single light bulb wired to the nearest house for a church which makes use of the room in the evenings), to teach science to unwilling JHS (high school) students. After dusk, I go to Sampson's evening enrichment school (called Star of the Sea), where many children from the day school come for further studies and other children that can't attend government school come to learn. I teach what I consider a genius mixture of ICT (computer) and science lessons at Sampson's school. Sometimes Sampson teaches the children culture, and we sit in a circle with the drum and sing and dance until we feel like falling asleep on the ground.

Goats at the governement school

Goats, sheep, chickens, and dogs roam the village free as can be. At night I sometimes see packs of dogs playing with each other in the market square. During the day, I see goats nearly walk into classrooms up at the school. I see sheep sleeping in the shade of houses. They are ubiquitous, and I barely notice them anymore, unless there are baby goats around. I luuuurve baby goats. Sometimes the puppies here are afraid of white people (like the small children that think I am a ghost and cry when they see me) and their sharp teeth snap at me, but baby goats don't bite no matter what color I am, so I can chase them and hold them and pet them as much as I want. If I can catch them, that is.

Toilets. I know you are all wondering about toilets. But I will save that for a later post because it requires quite a lot of description. Let me describe shopping instead. In Besease we have a very small market (Kissi’s is larger) that consists of people selling things at tables under a lean-to, or from small three-sided shacks. Most items don’t have prices and it is up to the owner to tell you how much things cost. When it comes to fresh food, you buy based on how much money you want to spend. For example, “ I would like 1 cedi of onions.” And the shop owner will grab what she deems is 1 cedi worth of onions and put them in a bag for you. My favorite is street food. People at taxi and trotro stations (these are like minibuses) sell things from pans and boxes they balance on their heads. Anything from boiled eggs, ice cream that comes in plastic wrappers, baked rock cakes, loaves of bread, goat or chicken kebabs, fresh crabs, even toothpaste, can be sold this way.

Food being sold to people in Trotro's

I eat with and and am hosted by a wonderful family that lives in Besease. They are the Yahans family. Here are the usual suspects so you know who I am talking about in future posts:

Ama, Gladys, and Efua preparing fufu for dinner

Sampson Yahans– My number one. He started Star of the Sea School and has been an amazing friend and guide in Ghana. He is my age.

Ama – Sampson’s older sister. A wonderfully shrewd and smart woman. She cooks dinner for me in the evenings while I teach, and makes some of the best food. (Francis is her husband and Ryan is her 1 year old son.) Her dream is to own her own restaurant one day.

Rockman and JJ – Sampson’s younger brothers. Rockman is 15 and JJ is 9.

Efua- Sampson’s mother. An extremely awesome, self-sufficient, hard-working woman that reminds me a bit of my own mom.

Elkana - Sampson's cousin. He helps out with the school a lot, and since his parents are no longer alive, Sampson's family helps him out too.

Gladys - Sampson's younger sister who can be a bit moody

Also, here are the teachers I work with and the friends I have in the area:

George – My fake facebook husband from my last visit. Also one of my very good friends and confidants.

Justin – My teaching mentor. He is the Ghanaian science teacher in Besease. He is probably one of my best friends here.

Janet - One of the only woman teachers up at the government school. She is a very smart, popular, driven woman.

Michael, Gabriel, Fred, Kampoh, Twumbee, Patrick, Ike, Pizzaro, JJ, Stephen, Eric, Clara – Other awesome people, fellow teachers, and friends


This is my home and my family while I am here. This is my boat. My crew keeps me afloat.

I am Bruni

If I am going to be honest, sometimes I really Really REALLY hate being a bruni.

Bruni means foreigner (or white person but anyone who isn’t black can be called a bruni). I’m tired of being noticed for the color of my skin. I’m tired of being pointed out and singled out. I’m tired of the assumptions that come with being white. Usually I like being different and I honor the differences between individuals, but here I would prefer to be like everyone else. I would prefer to be black. I would prefer to know how to cook every Ghanaian dish. And I would prefer, above all, to speak the language like a local. At least if I could speak the language, my white skin might not glow so bright.

I can’t even begin to imagine how Black Americans, Latinos, Hmongs, Indians, and so on feel living in America surrounded by white people who are told not to be racist, but inwardly harbor such sentiments and outwardly show it in some hostile or demeaning way. Or worse. Because at least the type of racism I experience here isn’t detrimental to my well-being.

The more I experience being a bruni, the more questions I am asked, or facts I am told about myself or where I come from based on my skin color, the more I think of the Regina Spektor song, “Ghost of Corporate Future”:

People are just people. They shouldn’t make you nervous. The world is everlasting, it’s coming and it’s going. If you don’t toss your plastic, the streets won’t be so plastic. And if you kiss someone nice, then both of you get practice. The world is everlasting, put dirtballs in your pockets and take off both of your shoes because….

People are just people like you.

Please remember this. There might be some things that are inherent to certain races, such as skin color, certain diseases, even certain practices and beliefs based on culture and tradition, but in the end people are just people like you. We might not be able to understand everything about each other, but we all love, and lose, and feel pain, and laugh. We all eat, and shit, and have sex like the animals we are. And we are all individuals with our own realities, so generalizing doesn’t do much good. Just because you're a certain color and someone else is the same color, doesn't mean you'll understand them, feel solidarity, or get along with them any better than you would with someone who is a different color. In fact, I am white but I am utterly confused by many white people in America right now. I may be able to speak the same language, but I have no idea what you are saying when you speak racial slurs or commit hate crimes.

You know? Life should be sweet. We are all people, made of the same cells and atoms. We are all trying to get by and survive, because even though there is beauty in our flesh and five senses, living in the flesh can be a struggle. So why the hate? This is something I don't understand. If your small mind can't comprehend the difference between you and someone else, that doesn't give you the right to ostracize that person. Open yourself up, set aside what you think you know is true, be a part of a different culture, try to understand. And if you can't, learn some respect or tolerance. Because it is our differences that make the human species beautiful.

People are just people like you.

Notes on Healthcare

Afterthoughts: All I have to say is thank god for Sampson. And for Justin. When you’re sick the last thing you want is to go it alone or have some stranger help you, especially in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar language. So thank god for my friends. Thanks to Sampson for everything he did to get me to the hospital and back out. And thanks to Justin for taking care of me until Sampson came.

Healthcare in Ghana has its shortcomings (like many healthcare systems). The places and clinics I have been lack the shine and modernity of developed America, but in some ways I find it more responsive and proactive than what I'm used to back home. And the system lacks the crazy maze of red tape and paperwork that wastes so much time and resources in America. Which I don't understand at all because we use computers and many clinics in Ghana do not...how does that work? So, kudos to Ghana for that efficiency.

The only other healthcare system I've experienced was at Otago University in New Zealand. And even they score higher on my healthcare rating scale than America. So, if you find that I am in the hospital again, please, rest assured that I am being taken care of. Maybe the nurses need to work on their bedside manners and listening to their patients, but the doctors are knowledgeable, there is good medicine, and frankly I like being fed fish soup with rice for a hospital dinner more than I like being fed some microwaved airplane meal with jello at a hospital in the midwest.

The only thing that hasn't changed from all the places I've been is the waiting. Unless you're dying, you will always have to wait.

Adventures in Hospitaland

I had these grand plans not to get sick again. I was going to exercise regularly, take probiotics, do after dinner yoga, and use sheer mental strength to fight any parasites that might come my way. But less than three weeks in, I have gotten malaria and enteric fever and landed myself in the hospital.

I haven't quite been in my right mind the past few days. Within the span of three hours, I went from feeling like "maybe I just overdid it a bit yesterday", to feeling weak, to having severe body pains, to severe fever, to frequent and sporadic vomiting. I had to be carried from my room to a taxi and then wheelchaired all around a hospital and then made to stay there for four days.

 It is seriously the closest I have felt to death through an illness.

The fever did it. I could barely stand by myself. I was trying to sing the pain away or moan it away like a tone-deaf dog. And I found myself lost in thoughts of Scottish highland streams when people were asking me questions. The fever was causing me to lose my faculties and motor control, so when the vomiting racked my body, I couldn't help but urinate on myself. While leaning out the taxi door. In front of the hospital. I didn't tell anybody. I was embarrassed. I find it funny that I at least had the mental capacity to feel embarrassed, if not to control my bladder.

The funny thing about the worst of the fever was that my mind would occasionally fall into lucidity.  For 30 minutes I would cry and sing and then my brain would suddenly become alert enough to think, "You are really sick. Find the phone. Call Sampson. Say you need help." And then I would start acting on this command and fall back into delirium. When Sampson gathered me up for the hospital, my mind cleared briefly, and like a champion remembered I had all my Ghana clinic cards in my first aid kit (important stuff, as they use the cards to locate your records). My memories of that time are odd. I remember seeing Justin's face through the taxi window before we drove away, but not how I got into the taxi, or what anyone said. I remember needing to vomit and seeing a bedpan on the floor, and the extreme amount of focus it took for me to make sure I made it to that bedpan. I remember people asking me questions, and in my mind I understood how to answer, but other curious statements would come out my mouth. I remember laying in the fetal position in the taxi with my head on Sampson's lap as we drove to the University hospital. I remember getting an injection and an IV and then I don't remember anything until my head hit the pillow of my bed in the women's ward. And then I remember thinking that pillow must be the cloud bed of a heavenly angel, it felt so wonderful and so welcome.

I remained half-conscious for a few days. I would get up and shower now and then with a green bar of soap. I would poke at my food (which almost always contained fish). I would vomit. I would sleep. I woke up lucid enough to check what was in my IV bag. Metronidazole. Quinine. I remember thinking, "Why in the world quinine?" There is supposed to be a resistance to Quinine in this part of the world. Additionally, I thought I remembered reading that is was the more problematic of the anti-malarials, causing a larger number side effects and complications. Then at some point my ears began to ring and sounded like they were full of cotton. And when someone spoke to me, I heard three voices talking at once. Then my eyes stopped focusing. And around my IV injection site, my arm started to swell like a shiny buttered loaf of rising bread. I poked it and prodded it absentmindedly even though it hurt. To my addled brain, it looked like the Pillsbury doughboy.

Sometimes I would get a strange nagging sensation and wake up to find students at the foot of my bed praying. A few girls brought me fruit and asked it it would be okay if they said a prayer over me. And though I'm not religious, I let them. I don't know if it was more for their sake or mine. Becasue although I was really sick, my mind never thought of turning back to religion or God or prayer, like many people in times of trouble find themselves doing. However, there was comfort in knowing someone was wishing me good health. And after the prayers I noticed this poor fragile woman, who couldn't be much older than me and who was in the bed at the end of the ward,  watching me. One day her skinny arm grabbed mine as I was going into the bathroom and she gave me her bananas, telling me I needed to eat more fruit to help the vomiting. Then the next day she gave me her bottled water and told me I shouldn't drink the sachet water that is so common in Ghana. She also tried to give me her toilet paper roll since I had none and hadn't been lucid enough to remember to bring money with me to buy any of these things (since the hospital doesn't provide soap or toilet paper). When all was said and done, she was in far worse shape than me and we could barely speak each others' languages, but she gave and helped nonetheless. I haven't met anyone like this woman in a long time. Selfless is the word that comes to mind. (When I was finally discharged from the hospital, I came back the next day with a bag of food and said to her in Fante, "God bless you. Please get better." I don't know what was wrong with her, but she was in such pain, the look on her face nearly made me cry.)

My arm wouldn't stop swelling. Slowly, I started to realize something wasn't right, and as I became more concerned, I became more adamant the nurses pay attention (which they weren't very good at). They finally realized, after the fourth time my IV quit dripping and the fourth time of painfully forcing it to work, that the IV needle had poked through my vein and was pumping into my tissue, hence the swelling. So they pulled it out and switched arms. But I didn't want the quinine anymore. I had the suspicion it was causing problems, an allergic reaction called cinchonism . Despite this, I got the full treatment and the kind words, "It'll be okay." But my eyes and ears got worse. So when the doctor came by on his one-time-a-day visit and noted I was having an allergic reaction, I scowled at the nurses (despite the fact they had a hand in saving my life).

Four days has felt like a strange eternity. It is my first day since wednesday night being able to get up and walk. I found the door to the women's ward and escaped outside for a bit. I feel like a baby toddling its way in the world. Im dizzy, my vision is blurred, my ears are ringing, but I found a patch of bouganvillea that I coudn't stop touching and a spot of sunshine to sit in. I feel like a baby penguin. Don't ask why. And I feel this strange calm. Right now everything looks nice, brand new, and just plain wondrous. What a curious planet we live on. What a nice place. I completely and totally own this moment right now, it is the only one that matters until the next one comes. Be here now.