Buses, Brooms, and a Chemist

Sunday, 19 August 2018

9:00 A.M.

I stared down at my folded arms. Tanned skin, blushing with a day-old sunburn, glistened solidly with a full layer of standing sweat. Hairs disagreeing over blonde and brown thrust themselves through this shining film into the stagnant air above. My body teetered on that familiar edge of warm and hot, where a shaft of sunlight pushes you into sticky overheated uncomfortability and a soft breeze soothes that stifled suffering, if only for a moment. I sighed.

The luggage-laden white man I’d come to this station with, the last companion of a troop of nineteen I’d set off with two days ago, boarded the rickety bus next to mine and disappeared – maybe for months, I thought. My eyes swept melodramatically over the vendors, wanderers, and loiterers, searching for familiarity. Nope, no obruni here.

A hunched old man, white hair sharp against his midnight skin, reached a shaky wrinkled fist towards me and rapped hard on the window. I started and glanced down at him then looked away – but it was too late. Eye contact achieved, he implored my right ear in miserly tones, cupped palm held upwards. I winced as I always do. As his syllables blended with the Babel-talk buzzing in the station’s shops and corners and engines and dust, my mind grasped for a response in a language the man likely knew even less than I did. Maa kpa ilik. I don’t have money. But why lie?

He moved on and was replaced by a woman my age balancing a large punchbowl full of chilled soda bottles on her head. I smiled as kindly as I could and waved her away, shaking my head. A small boy with a similar bowl full of crackers and dry snacks stepped into her place. I did the same to him. Then a young girl with meat skewers, and then another with chilled bottles again, then a man in his late twenties with a two-foot stack of folded brightly colored fabrics. I faced slowly forward as the gracious smile decayed on my face. From the corner of my vision I saw a young man approach my window selling small electronic accessories. Unconvinced by my open-eyed nap, he reached up and palmed the glass with a soft bump. Frustration burning in my eyes, I wheeled around and accosted him silently. He stared right back at me – but not at me. He swept over my backpack, my watch, my headphones, my hair, my skin, my country. I was glad I didn’t need anything he was selling.

10:00 A.M.

The sound of an ancient engine clearing its throat, over and over and over. Wanna-wanna-wanna-wanna. We idled at a police checkpoint, in a line of vehicles waiting to pass through the bottleneck made by a blue-uniformed man and a line of cinder blocks in the road. Every few seconds the diesel growl surged into a hurried roar as we inched forward heavily in the lowest gear. Finally our turn came, but instead of speaking with the driver, the guard simply waved us forward. The driver nodded and pushed us into second gear, then into third, then into fourth as we picked up speed and wind. I laughed to myself. I might never understand this country.

The air and the ground were dark with recent rain. Grasses and trees surged to life hastily and determinedly, stretching out across the gently rolling flatness in the lush greens and woody browns of a wet season. Above, the sky ambled by in a thousand shades of blue and gray – clouds of wisps and cotton and wool and iron drifting lazily in front of a sapphire stage. There was the smell of water and leaves, earth and grains, skin and engines.

We passed a small stone monument which read “Diepo – 66”. Sixty-six more kilometers to go on this ride, how wonderful!

I smiled as I leaned a bit out the window and inhaled. The wind was strong against my face but fresh in my lungs. The sun was yellow and intense but the day below it was new. The tires below me were bumpy and rude but they pushed me forward. Forward! How special, how different – to be moving on my own with no schedule tomorrow. No lessons, no lectures, no rules or structures or bindings, not even any meals I was obligated to eat. It truly was a clean slate for me in this place. Today was a real start, a circle on the calendar, and I knew it. I leaned back in my seat, drenched with the euphoria of travel and adventure.

“Diepo – 63”.

Sixty-three kilometers! What luck, that I have time for twenty more such moments of breeze and plains! Oh, how I hope these two hours become two years in this country. No pothole or rainstorm can drain this surging tide of free-wheeling optimism this morning brings.

3:00 P.M.

Fishing the key out of my pocket and turning it in the lock, I was aware of a nagging in the back of my mind. Something I knew but had forgotten about. Something I’d been pushing away from my notice since I landed at the airport in Accra in early June. Something … something … hmm.

I pushed at the gray-painted door. Nothing. I shoved against it with my shoulder and it skidded open, scraping against its misshapen wooden frame.

Dust wafted sharply into my sinuses. A new tin roof, glinting dully in the dim light, sat out of place above old wooden rafters. Plaster walls painted lime green cast an eerie light on the hard concrete floor. To the left sat a foam-mattress bed on a sturdy old wooden frame, topped with a blanket and a duvet cover of mouse droppings. Holes were scattered throughout the room – rotting chunks missing from wooden beams, a pair of rough four-sided gaps in the walls (a door behind and a window ahead), potholes in the thin floor exposing the soil below. A fine layer of dirt lay on every square inch of the bed, the rafters, and the ground, even clinging loosely to the cobwebs lining every edge above and below.

The nagging grew stronger and more insistent. Rising from a murmur in the back of the crowd to a buzzing throughout to an up-front clamor, it raised a silent fist and knocked on my bus window. Too slow, I realized I was turning my head to listen.

“What now?”

Oh. What now? For ten weeks I knew – no, for the past year I knew – this moment would come, when I would walk into my strange room all alone with all of the things I’d brought to live with. I would stare at everything I had and ask, “What now?”

In the dusty silence the question reverberated off of the four walls, demanding, urging. What now, what now, oh no, what now?

First I should sweep the floor. I laid hold of a bundle of straw in the corner tied together with a decaying string and, working from the opposite corner back to the door, pushed the piles of dust towards the door. What now?

I was hot and sticky from that work in the draftless room. Opening my suitcase, I removed a change of clothes, soap, a towel, and a sponge. I filled a bucket with water and took it all to the shower area, washing myself with hurried desperation. I dried off with dismay. The question returned. What now, what now?

Well, that blanket with mouse droppings should be replaced with the bedding I brought. I carefully folded the blanket to capture the droppings and took it outside to pop it out, then rummaged through my things and brought out the clean sheets. In a few minutes the chore was done and I was staring at my success with mounting panic. What now, what now, what now?

There was the mosquito net to put up, but what after that? I could begin to organize my things on the floor, but what would that do? I could call Colleen and my family, but what would happen after I hung up? How could I make it to evening and to bedtime? What would I do at midnight, and at two in the morning, and at sunrise? How could I bear to wake up in that bed, or even get out of it, and lay back down in it?

Outside, the bass beating of music broadcast at full volume matched with the thrumming in my chest. My attempts at finding positives fell like tiny drops of rain on parched ground. A sense of agitation and confusion made my knees weak, and finding no chair to sit on, I sank to the floor and stared back out the doorway.

Monday, 20 August 2018

10:00 A.M.

I was sitting again in the same place, mindlessly playing a game on my phone. The three days of travel insured that I slept hard, if not well. Hunger gnawed dully at my stomach but an empty appetite kept it firmly under heel.

The dim sounds of morning activities drifted in through the open door and window. Children playing and calling to each other, livestock bleating and baahing and lowing and crowing, motorcycle engines droning, Afro-pop music booming distantly. Every few minutes a conversation faded in, climaxed, and faded out as a group passed by. I realized with a wry smile that I was hiding from them.

Getting up and grabbing the straw broom again, I resolved to sweep the whole compound. From the edges of my small shared porch I gathered the dirt and dead insects in growing piles, then pushed it all to the drain. I was just standing up from this last part, noticing a dull ache in my back and head, when I saw a young man and woman about my age walking past my compound with apparent excitement. Both of them staring at the phone the woman was holding at chest level, they wore smiles full of glee and … wait, is that mischief? Pausing in stride, the woman held it higher, pointed it directly at me, and … oh.

So my community has discovered the zoo animal that’s just moved in.

That, more than the growing hunger, more than the boredom, more than the sense of confused abandonedness drove me outside. The secret’s out. They all know I’m here, of course, and I’ll be damned if they think I’m a recluse.

I’m just going to drop by the small shop across the way and then buy food off the street. If the conversation at the shop fizzles out, I’ll just say I’m going to get food and then I can go back and eat by myself. Yeah, that’ll work. Oh but that’s so terrifying. Why?

My feet slid into sandals and traipsed towards the gate of the compound. Wait, wait, I’m not ready. What will I say? What is the greeting in their language? What was the local name I wanted for myself? But my deaf hand reached out and pushed on the gate in front of me. Oh, but if it goes badly I’ll start off as a fool here – here in my new home for two years! I paused at the open gate. Where in these mud-walled homes is my deliverance from the hurdles I’m putting in my own path?

My deliverance, it turned out, was thirty feet away.

1:30 P.M.

I stood in the doorway of my small room, staring with new eyes at its walls and webs. A meal in my hands and a small smile on my face, I soaked up the relief surging like waves over me.

The small shop I went to – a pharmacy, or chemist’s, as it turned out – was run by a kind middle-aged man with surprisingly good English. Talking with him and with other community members who were dropping by, my anxiety melted away and the panicked alarm bells finally quieted. Then after chatting for almost two hours, I went to buy food from a street vendor, had a hilarious failure of a conversation in the local language, and returned to my room laughing at myself.

I’d forgotten, in all those weeks of cultural, language, medical, security, and even culinary training, that the first thing I need is something only I can do for me. I need people. I need people here that I live with, that wake up to the same roosters and hide from the same rainstorms and duststorms, that feel and breathe the same everyday life as me. Travelling so far from everyone I knew, I hadn’t realized how important it is to have a network, a community, right here that I can call my own, as well as those connections back home. I hadn’t realized it until I was perched on the low wall outside the chemist’s shop, chatting about goats and bicycles. Returning to my luggage, I had the same feeling as on the first day of kindergarten, clomping through the door in my new tennis shoes saying, “I made some friends today!” Is it silly? Maybe. I think it’s just human.

So then, what now? Now it’s more walking and more open gates, more chemists and carpenters and tailors and shopkeepers, more failed conversations and more laughs because of it. This newness will be at times exhausting and at times jarring, but I’m lucky to be here in this time of giving, and learning, and living. Thanks for staying with me, y’all, I’ve got a lot more to share.