I’m actually serious about the title. Ants eat blood. They
crave it. I’ll spare you the details on that one.
So, I did go to Eguafo on Saturday and it was good to hang
out with my friends there. They’re all doing fine. I husked corn with one of my
best friends there for a long while, as she explained to me how she would end
poverty in Ghana if she became president. She’s so smart, she really is. Then I
talked with some of my other friends and they gave me some food called ampesi,
(sorry for butchering the spelling on that one), took a walk around the farm
and garden – I got to see some cassava plants that I helped plant last year…
they’re big now! – then talked with my brilliant friend again and then I went
back to Cape. I had been feeling a little bit depressed before, but going back
there and just having a change of scenery made me feel a whole lot better
again. The daily grind, you know? Gotta switch it up…
By the way, if you’ve ever been to Eguafo and worked at
Sankofa, the kids remember you. All of you. They remember your names and what
you did and how you treated them and everything. Maybe this makes you feel
really good, and it should because it means you meant a lot to them. But it
also means you meant a lot to them. One of the boys said to me, “The white
people… whenever they come here, they go. If I ever go to the U.S., I will
never come back. Except on Christmas. And to get my sisters if I get enough
money.”
My fertility beads became untied and fell off my waist. Good
riddance. They were beginning to remind me of somebody irritating to me.
And now I have to tell you this story:
It’s Saturday evening. We’ve finished dinner and Emily (one
of my housemates) and I decide to watch a movie on her laptop. Usually we leave
the light on in the living room all night, but today we turned it off to see
the screen better. Around 9 pm, she gets tired and goes to her room to sleep.
Then I decide to take the laptop into my room to finish the movie in bed. As
I’m leaving the living room, I notice Emily’s tablet charging and lying on the
ironing board. I turn off the switch on the outlet so that the tablet doesn’t
charge all night and get overheated, then I go to my room.
The movie is over so I call my parents. Then Kayla comes
home from the village on stilts trip around 10 pm, so I hang up and listen to
her talk about how it was. Then she goes to get ready for bed and I call my
parents back. I go to sleep around 10:45 pm. By 12 am, all the lights in the
house are turned off.
In the morning, Emily asks where her tablet is. I say I last
saw it on the ironing board. Some of the things that were also on the ironing
board are gone too, so maybe our host sister moved them or something. So Emily
goes downstairs and asks has anyone seen her tablet. Our Auntie and two host
sisters look at each other.
There were marks all over the wall outside, like dirty
fingers trying to climb up. The screen on one of our windows had been sliced through.
Someone had broken into our house and made off with the tablet and charger.
But we were lucky in a lot of ways. First of all, nobody was
hurt. Second of all, Emily and I were sleeping with our doors open, so if the
person had wanted to, he/she could have crept into our rooms and taken other
things, or potentially even kidnapped one of us if you think about it. Good
thing I had brought her laptop in my room, because they didn’t go in there.
Emily even said though that she’s almost glad that the tablet was out in the
living room. Because what if it hadn’t been? Would the thief have left empty
handed, or would he have entered one of our bedrooms? She actually took the
whole situation really well. She went to an internet café and changed all of
her passwords, so at least the thief can’t get onto her email etc.
There have been other nighttime robberies in the
neighborhood, too. Our Auntie is installing an electric fence today. And you
know that we’ll be putting all of our things in our rooms from now on… and
keeping our doors locked when we sleep.
Despite this scary event, I still have to say that I feel
very safe here and in my homestay.
I finally got some fufu. I practically had to beg for it,
but I got some. My host mom said that the soup would be too spicy for me. Maybe
it was a little. But fufu is so worth a runny nose and tingling lips.
In other news, you can’t gossip here. Even though you know
people are talking about you behind your back, you seriously can’t say anything
about anybody, even if you aren’t saying something you intend to be mean. If
you aren’t saying something 100% nice about someone, don’t say it. The person
will find out and take offence. I guess that’s a good rule in general to
follow, no matter where you are.
I bought a really nice painting today from one of my
favorite vendors. He’s really chill and a Rastafarian. He has pet cats that
walk around his shop. And he doesn’t try to pressure me or hurry me to buy
something. So I like buying paintings from him.
And so now, my dear readers, I will leave you with four quotes
that have been on my mind recently:
“Life is what you make of it” (My Auntie)
“If not me, who? If not now, when?” (On a poster I saw at a
boba shop once)
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second
best time is now” (An African proverb in one of the books I read for my Early
African History class)
“So long, and thanks for all the fish” (The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy film)
PS: At the present moment, I am eating pancakes that I bought off a woman's head. I couldn't be happier.
Yoh, yen koh!
Ekuwa
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