Volta Romps and Sad Goodbyes

So the next morning I get up and cook us breakfast.  Then my chief comes and brings us fish stew, red rice balls, and bananas.  Mom and dad tasted the red rice ball…it’s completely bland, and then I take the stew and rice balls to Francis cause even I don’t like this food, but it was really nice of NaNa to bring it.  I’ve only ever had the red rice ball at weddings.  Today we board a tro and head to Wli Waterfall.  We drop in Bakua to wait for the Wli tro and Chris goes on to HoHoe to go back to his village.  We sit and wait under a tree..and wait…and wait…and finally a Wli tro comes.  We drop and then go to waterfall.  It’s about an hours hike in and an hour out.  Wli is said to be the highest single drop waterfall in West Africa…whether that’s true or not I don’t know…they make all kinds of ridiculous claims here. It was a nice walk and the falls really are pretty, I think mom and dad enjoyed it.

After we came out we stopped at Sister Kafui’s store and to shop at the woodcarver’s shops.  I know all these people well, as Sister Kafui sells my women’s products and the days I take her products I spend the afternoon sitting around and talking with them and trying to make earrings.  So mom starts shopping and dad goes around and talks to the carvers.  Koku makes these really cool leaf trays out of wood.  A long time ago I ordered one big one, 2 mediums, and 2 smalls.  He had them finished and ended up kicking in an extra small one as a “dash” for my mother.  So I got 6 hand carved wooden leaf trays for 40 cedis…about $25 USD…eat your heart out World Market!  Mom bought some beads and carvings and Kafui threw in a carved bottle opener for dad.  We left and waited for a tro to Bakua, and then pretty quickly got a tro to Todome.  I had Confi cook us her delicious jollof rice while we were gone, and it was waiting at my house when we got home…yum!  We spent the evening hanging out at my house, the electricity went out again. “Just don’t move and you won’t be so hot.”  I liked that mom and dad got to see how it is to live here.  Lights randomly going out for undetermined amounts of time, filling water from the one spout and carrying it where needed around the house, the internet/phone not working all the time, water shutting off randomly…welcome to my life.  We settled in for sleep.  Apparently at some point in the night a pack of dogs was barking around outside and kept mom awake.  “Did you hear those animals last night? What were they?”  “I have no idea what you are talking about, I didn’t hear anything.”

Next day we went down to the school to give the headmaster the heavy duty pencil sharpener that mom and dad brought to donate to the school. After that we walked through the village to greet and I took them to the “new” reception center and griped about my problems trying to get the thing open.  On the way back we stopped by the old man who’s a blacksmith.  Dad really liked seeing his setup; “it’s like medieval times.”  I took them to our current tourism reception building and then to get beans at my bean lady’s hut.  They loved them!  It was their favorite thing they ate in Ghana.  We went back and hung out at my house and tried to start packing our stuff.  In the afternoon we went down to have my afterschool class with the kids.  Mom and dad carried over the letters from my nephew’s class; his teacher and I have been working to set up a penpal exchange with our kids.  So about 30 kids showed up and were all super excited to talk to mom and dad and get their letters.  It was chaos as expected.  Yelling, running…me screaming.  Mom and dad went around and tried to help the kids read their letters as I organized who would have who as a penpal and scheduled small groups of kids to meet me the next week so we could really work on their letters.  Questions the kids had for mom and dad: What do you like to eat?  What work do you do?  They are not overly comfortable asking questions of strangers.  They liked watching mom and dad though…seeing how they look different than people here.  I think we all had a good time.  We went back home and I made banku and groundnut soup for dinner.  Enoch, the kid who always helped Rhoda, from Mate came and had dinner with us.  After dinner we relaxed in the dark again, but the lights came back on 3 minutes before the Ghana soccer match was to begin.  Throughout the evening you could hear the village erupt in cheers whenever they scored.

“Did you hear all that drumming and singing last night? It was at like 3 in the morning and it lasted a long time.”  “Nope, I didn’t hear anything.  I’m used to hearing the animals and drumming, and loud prayer meetings.”  “Oh.  Well ask Francis what they were doing in the middle of the night.”  I forgot to ask him.  So today we jumped a tro to HoHoe to visit Auntie Felcia’s store and also Kofi and Enoch’s store.  We sat and talked with Kofi and Yao for a while and mom bought a painting.  Then we took a taxi to the silversmiths and I waved as we drove by Sister Divine’s seamstress shop.  She called me a couple days later and was very unhappy with me that we didn’t stop so she could greet my parents.  “They are old and white and they were hot and grouchy so we didn’t stop. They were ready to go back the village. Sorry-o.”  I can never keep everyone happy.  So mom picked some jewelry and then I took mom and dad to the market to get food to cook for dinner.  We came home and cooked fufu and light soup with Francis.  I showed off my cutlass chicken chopping skills and mom tried her hand at pounding fufu a lil’.  Mom strongly believes we should add salt and pepper to the fufu; dad thinks you need to turn it into dumplings instead of a big ball you eat with your fingers…yevu take on fufu.

 After this we went to say goodbye to Nana and give him his gifts.  Mom and dad got to sit on elder’s stools and take pictures with him in his fancy chief hat.  As we were walking out the door, “Don’t step on that scorpion!”  Just outside the chief’s gates mom spotted a little black scorpion.  They came and killed it, but mom was spooked for rest of the night.  We stayed up watching episodes of Modern Family since we had electricity that night.  The next day we went into the village to say goodbye and then went back to wait at my house for the driver I arranged to take us to Accra.  The bastard was over 2 hours late and we therefore did not get to go have our planned delicious burger at Honeysuckle and instead had to sit at the airport bar and have a half tard burger that cost too much.  I was mad.  Then we wheeled all their stuff (and a 50 lb bag of my crap to send home) into the airport, got them checked in and then had to say goodbye.  We did quick hugs and goodbyes to keep from tearing up.  I made it into a cab, teared up a little, and then stopped.  But once I got to the PC house I stood outside talking to Chris on the phone and just cried.  Seeing mom and dad really made me realize how much I’m looking forward to going home; things that I didn’t realize I missed so strongly.  I’m really am so happy that mom and dad came; I don’t know if they’ve ever done anything that’s meant so much to me.  This is something that they did FOR ME…not really for any other reason, and I love them for that.

So now, mom and dad are home and I’m still here.  On Monday we are having our GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp in HoHoe.  I’m taking 4 junior high girls from Likpe for a week long camp that us PCV’s are putting on in HoHoe.  Hopefully I will be going to Togo and Benin in March, we have our All-Vol conference in April, and our Close of Service conference in May.  After the COS conference I should know the dates I’ll be coming home.  I have a few beach trips planned with friends.  I’m gonna try to make my projects as sustainable as possible and pass my duties on to the villagers these last 6 months; but I’m also gonna try to travel around and see people and really enjoy these last few months…I know they’ll go by fast, and man, I’m ready to come home.

Love

j