Summer in Ghana
What the BBC and World Vision will not show you
APOORVA BALAKRISHNAN
On a bench, having a picnic. Gari (dry cassava meal), cabbage, onions, and eggs, we’re eating quietly while watching the darkening horizon — its going to pour. My sister Megan and I make bets — she says it won’t rain in the daytime. Mme. Janet (my host mother) and I say it will rain within the hour. It starts spitting, and we gather up the utensils, pots, pans, brooms, and firewood, to stow away in a dry place. We cover up the boiling palm oil with corrugated tin sheets and run inside.
Now it’s 11-year-old Krofiye’s job to put the huge shallow metal basins under all the rain gutters to “catch” the water so we can fill the 400 gallon black plastic tank with water. The rain looks deliciously inviting. I think to myself how nice would it be to just strip down to my skivvies and dance in this spectacular shower? But there is work to be done. So, I get to work with Krofiye. Soon, its pouring, and we are getting soaked to the bone, singing, dancing, bailing out all the shallow basins to put into the black tank — turns out, everything in this house, when filled to the brim, leaks. Water spouts beautifully out of unseen holes, like some invisible cowboy has come in the night to shoot small bullets with an antique pistol into every water storage basin we own. As we work, the rain gets heavier — it begins to just pour! Quicker than we think, the tank is full. The huge 100 gallon steel oil drum is also full — our work is done! We are laughing, shouting, spinning, dancing Gonja style (stick your neck in and out, like a chicken, while moving your arms and shuffling your feet to a beat that only you can hear! Voila! You are dancing Gonja style. Or rather, you are doing Krofiye’s version of ancient dancing. Somewhere, someone is playing “Awesome God” with steel drums and Gonja drums and Krofiye has internalized this forever, as she sticks her neck in and out, grinning that crazy toothless grandma smile of hers!
We stand under the water pouring off the tin roof, taking turns to let it hit us full force; better than any shower, any massage therapist, in the world! The game is to dance while standing there, being hit with this powerful stream, and so I am grooving to old school disco, and she is doing her gospel chicken dance. In the off-times we are kicking water at each other. Soon we are shouting for 16-year-old Megan to join us from inside, inviting her to come play with us — crazies in the water!
Megan comes into our game and we retreat to the lower part of the courtyard, where the sun had hit all and my dirty cheap flip-flops are finally getting clean. We decide to pull out my old skipping rope (a random purchase in Tamale’s equivalent of a dollar store), and continue our skipping game from last night — in the ankle-deep water. Oooh! New
The water tastes so good, and we stare, mouths open to catch the raindrops, at the sky! Krofiye is holding her nose, hoping she won’t drown like that story about the chickens.
And we are puddle-jumping, with no rubber boots in sight, making large splashes, splashing each other, seeing who can kick more water! We are laughing and singing and I think to myself, if I was thoughtful enough to photograph this, if my camera were waterproof — this would be a Kodak moment. This would be the perfect translation of everything I have ever been trying to say about Ghana, about Africa, about joy, spontaneity, family. It’s a beautiful thing — to have sisters, crazy ones (just like me) at that, who are ready at the drop of a hat to hike up their skirts and jump around in the rains. It’s a beautiful rainstorm, it means Mme. Janet’s akulonku — groundnut — farm next to our house will germinate. It means farmers across Gonja-land will begin to plant yam (cojo), cassava (banshi), akulonku, okru, sorghum. The rain is letting up. I dig out my old clothesline from my now-empty hiking bag, and we string it up so we can hang up our soaking wet clothes and change. As we walk past Mme. Janet, nursing Boncat, my little peanut brother, almost sleeping, looking as content, and small and perfect as can be, we are grinning crazy smiles. The rain is dripping down our backs and our fingers are wrinkled and she says — “You have done well. You have done well.”
It’s funny, nothing I have done has contributed to this moment — to this joy, to my two sisters, Krofiye that sprightly little toothless imp, and Megan, calm, placid, smiling, lovely, to my baby brother and Mme. Janet, to rain, and to the quick warmth with which this offbeat family has accepted me as one of their own. They tease me when I run screaming out of my room because of flying ants, they pile extra fish (oh no — not the extra fish!) on my plate to “make [me] fat and beautiful!” they humour me and won’t slaughter my favourite chicken for supper until I leave (its name? I have aptly called it favourite chicken, or sometimes lazy chicken because it’s too stupid to sit on its eggs nicely). And these people, this is why I’m here; this is the Africa that BBC and World Vision will not show you. It is not pathetic; it’s not full of villages of skeletal people, kwashiorkor and malnutrition. People don’t sleep in trees or wear only leaves; they are a smiling, joyfu people full of laughter. Even in the smallest village, if they only know a few words of English, those words will be “You are welcome, sister! You are welcome!”
This is the Africa of old toothless Nanas, shelling pumpkin seeds and telling stories, of “Guinness is Good for You” advertisements and Nigerian movies with strong women booming “If it's not on — it's not in!” on a rickety bus from Tamale to Accra, it’s the juxtaposition, however unlikely, of the oldest and the newest; it is resilience, difficulty, pride and wonder.
American Baptist missionaries, who stayed in my courtyard with Mme. Janet, used to wear sunglasses and taking pictures of the sun. “Why,” Megan inquires, “would they take pictures of the sun?” The sun is the same in America!” It is Megan, it is — but something, some small magic tells me that here, it’s a little rounder, a little warmer, a little more perfect, and far more reflected in the bright teeth of 10,000 smiles.
Apoorva Balakrishnan is a thirdyear honours genetics student at the University of Manitoba who spent this past summer in Salaga, Ghana, with Engineers Without Borders Canada on the Junior Fellowship in International Development. If you are interested in spending a fantastic summer working to end poverty overseas, living with an incredible family, see http://umanitoba. ewb.ca. For more stories from Apoorva’s summer, please visit http://apoorva-inghana. blogspot.com.
