The Newness of Familiarity, A Post From Ghana 2011

Written on Nov. 2, 2011 Around Accra, Ghana

 

Greetings and well wishes to you and thanks in advance for your time while reading this message. 

A bit of background: I moved to Ghana in February of 2011 with my boyfriend on what became an extended feasibility study. Our joint aim was to travel to West Africa, look for work, a place to stay and a community to thrive within- all within 5-months time. By the end of the five months, we found all of those things and so much more. 

Nothing here is acquired without its price and serious emotional, physical and psychological pressure that takes a toll on us as individuals and as a couple. However, we are doing it and in our own ways creating ways to make the environment work to our advantage. But, its not easy-O! 

This post is coming after a long absence from writing in this form, the last time being while I was physically and mentally transitioning in The States after a year of living in Busan, S. Korea. By the way, it feels like I am always transitioning in one way or the other... I'm not certain if its a 20's trait, but it feels like some sort of a personal disorder. 

Living in Ghana has been an experience, incomparable to any of the five other countries I have had the pleasure of spending a significant amount of time in. Life on the Continent is mind blowing and eye opening. We all learn about ourselves as we travel, but as an African-American woman returning to Africa for the first time, I believe the experience I am having is supremely distinct from my presence in any other international destinations. All of this has been said and done before by other women of the Diaspora, but the experience naturally feels distinct as I undergo it all personally. 

 

This process of adjustment has encouraged such feelings of connectedness and isolation, awareness and endless ignorance, acceptance while known to be never understood, power and like proletariat- love, often times hated. No matter what I say or do, whether my intentions be noble or self-serving I am viewed differently and respected and/or disrespected as a result. Not just by Ghanaians either. I now live in a land where everyone has a "boy" or a "girl" that regardless of age is called just that and is paid (or unpaid) to work for them. A kind of "personal assistant" or "sister-girl," as I call Joy, my source of support. 

 

I now rest in a land where its a daily norm to sit for hours in car honking, tro-tro corner cutting, "million-hawker-march" traffic- no matter the time of day. The unquantifiable levels of toxic exhaust that is pumped into the atmosphere and into the lungs of all, is potentially the single cause of Global Warming. 

 

 

This new place I reside is one where a funeral is not a depressing day of mourning, but literally an event of a lifetime. Where women consume as much, if not more, local moonshine as men and the sound of the rented speaker systems rival those of Japanese award winning Reggae event sound systems!

 

In this place I have just began to call my home, I feel tired, heavy, perplexed, and also saddened...and then the sun rises again and all the potential for each new day is fully illuminated and I regain my will to forage onward- determined to not waste the opportunities that have blessed me over millions of others, even though...I still feel lost.