The road home goes through...the mailbox

Yesterday, I decided to look at my mail which had been dutifully collected in a box.  For the first two and a half days I was home, I mostly ignored the mail.  I knew where it was; I knew that is was, but I had a hard time coming to grips with the idea that the box of mail was for me and perhaps I should do something...like look at it.  Open it maybe.

So I began the painful process of sorting through bills, cards and various correspondences from various entities that had collected over three weeks.

Guess what?  Despite my awesome trip to Ghana, Visa AND American Express want to be paid.  Blue Cross Blue Shield wants me to fill out a form. I have appointments to confirm, places to go and people to see. I have decisions to make. And lots of things to read.

Reviewing my mail was like reviewing and grounding myself in my real life.  When you're gone for a long time, I think it's common to wonder if you'll be forgotten. Will people remember me and what I do and how I fit in to things? Will things change>

Certainly for Visa and American Express it's like I was never gone.

What is means to be twins in Ghana: Peter and Paul's story

These kids don't smile much. And most have never had their picture taken so they really don't know what to do in that circumstance either.

In the U.S., the arrival of twins is mostly looked upon with delight.  "Double the fun" as they say. Parents and grandparents scurry around buying 2 of everything and the next several years are spent oohing and ahhing over the twins. Twins are stars here.

It's a little different in rural Ghana.

People have a lot of superstitions in the Upper West.  Twins and triplets are many times looked upon as a curse to the family. Surely, the mother (almost always the mother, not the father) has done something horrible to bring the curse of multiple births upon the family.  Many twins are killed at birth. Some are abandoned in orphanages, or along roadsides.  Many mothers run away because of the shame of having twins.

Which is what happened with Peter and Paul.  Their mother ran away shortly after they were born, leaving them with their grandmother.  There are a LOT of grandparents raising their grandchildren in Ghana, with varying degrees of success.

Peter and Paul's grandmother is a seamstress. She's doing as much as she can for her grandsons but that's not all that much.  She struggles to keep the family fed and clothed. Most days, they can eat one meal. Most days. She used to keep the boys hidden in the house for fear of what may happen to them outside. One of her former neighbors told her twins are demons.

The grandmother was fearful when she brought Peter and Paul to school the first time. Fearful that they would not be allowed to attend. But she was relieved when the head teacher welcomed the boys, even though they were a little older than a P1 kid should be.

Peter and Paul are doing well in school. Peter would like to fix cars (and also ride a motorcycle) and Paul would like to build car engines like he saw in a book once.

Sounds like double the fun.

There and back again

If this was anything other than a blog, I'd get sued for that title because it belongs to Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. But Bilbo's probably not reading this blog.

I'm not sure what it says about me as a person, but I feel better than I thought I would.  After a 12-hour sleep, I feel acclimated to home.  I have unpacked everything and washed about 1/2 of everything. I've watered my flowers and put my pots and dishes back were I like them.  Where I like them - do you hear? I can travel to Ghana and live with bucket showers and winged worms but I can't live with my favorite cereal bowl and mug in the wrong cabinet.  Hey! My favorite cereal bowl and mug were in the wrong cabinet.  Do you hear? Woe to the person or person who try to hide my favorite cereal bowl and mug from me.  Woe.

I drove for the first time today in almost three weeks and did a good job.  I expected to feel weird but I didn't. I enjoyed the relative orderliness of the traffic. How people used turn signals, stayed in their lanes, and obeyed the speed limits.

I also remembered how to use the washing machine (after having to learn what "bucket laundry" is all about), the dishwasher, and my flat iron.  Even though I learned to live without them, I love having my appliances back.

Do you hear?

The Road to home goes through Heathrow: Oatmeal by any other name

London Heathrow is the most entertaining airport I've enjoyed.  Miles and miles of shopping and interesting food choices. You can buy Gucci and Prada at Heathrow, or a bagel, or visit Starbucks, like me.

In Ghana, I had the traditional Ghanaian breakfast of egg and bread almost every day.  After a 6-1/2 hour flight which was delightfully frigid, and still smarting over the disappointment of no oatmeal at Shugar's the previous morning, I was determined to find some oatmeal at Heathrow.  Oh, they call it porridge. Even at Starbucks.

After an hour of security screenings,  I found my faithful Starbucks just where I left it when I had flown through 19 days earlier, and I was thrilled to learn that they did indeed have porridge, honey and a decaf, no whip light cinnamon cappuccino ready in less than 5 minutes.  Tastes like home. How I savored my simple cardboard container of porridge.  I don't want to see an egg for awhile.

Heathrow is the intersection for a lot of travelers going to a lot of places, so there is the constant chatter of various languages permeating the air. The airport was quite cold and porridge was the common order, both at Starbucks and at the place next to it, Pet's Perfect Porridge.  I love that name.  But not as much as I loved the pre-loaded Starbucks card, you know. Anyway, my point is that people from many countries were enjoying their porridge, or whatever they called it...

Oatmeal
Porridge
Havernut
Farina
Zobena
zabpehely
Yulof

...while sitting the sun-soaked splendor and hearty air conditioning of Terminal A.

The road home goes through Kotoka Airport: Sir, I am a Princess!

I spoke a little too soon on the wonderful amenities of Kotoka Airport.

While the customs and check-in areas are fully air conditioned, and that was greatly appreciated after a 1-1/2 hour sweaty drive in  Accra's rush hour traffic with Bea's younger brother, the rest of the place isn't air conditioned at all. This change was most noticeable as I left the toilet paper and running-water free bathroom and went up to the first of many security checkpoints at Kotoka: the eye and fingerprint scan.  Picture about 300 crabby people in a cavernous, un-airconditioned hall waiting to have red and green lasers flashed into their corneas.  The only good thing about the 45-minute wait was that I met up with a man from India who I had stood behind in the customs line for 45 minutes. You know, before I declared my "clothes and stuff." He was friendly and funny, so we easily passed the time  waiting in a very disorganized line.

In the eye/fingerprint scan area, there was a well-dressed African woman standing several rows behind us who was complaining loudly. She wore a brightly-colored sash across her left shoulder which Bea had explained denotes coming from a chief's family.  The woman left the line and went straight to the Ghanaian Army guy at the front.  This was a bad idea. You know how security people are in airports.  Line jumping gets everyone all excited.  The army guy started yelling at her to get in line, which prompted this response, "Sir! I am a PRINCESS!"

The Indian man I mentioned, who was sweating so profusely, lost his cool, his calm, and his much-appreciated (by me) sense of humor. He also started yelling, "I do not care what kind of princess you ah. In dees airport you ah a passenger, jist like everybahdy else here-ah. Please get back in line you foolish woman." 

And then 2 other army guys came running out, grabbed our princess and made her go to the back of the line. And gave her dirty looks. She was quiet after that.  I think the AK47's across their shoulders had something to do her sudden subdued demeanor.

My issue at this checkpoint was that my pinky fingers are so short they could not reach up into the box where they are supposed to be scanned.  The army woman kept telling me to move up my finger, but because of the way the machine was made, I couldn't. A second army woman came over and tried to stretch my hand to get my dwarf pinky fingertip up to the box. I don't know if the army woman got the pinky fingerprints or not.  I think that, exasperated by the obruni's short fingers, and not wanting to bring in the guys with the AK47's again, she moved on, hoping that the princess ended up in a booth other than hers.  Dwarf pinky fingers, cranky princesses.  What a day at the office for the folks at this checkpoint.

I have never been to an airport where I've had to flash and ID 9 times between entry and leaving. And where there are no washrooms past the final checkpoint that gets you to your gate.  That last security guy eyed me suspiciously as I came back out, used the bathroom and bought what I knew would be my last Malt for awhile.

Then there was the matter of what to do with my leftover cedis.  I thought I might eat before I got on the plane, but I wasn't that hungry, so I purchased: a magnet, a key chain, that last malt, 2 large bottles of water, 2 Cadbury milk chocolate bars and...well, I hadn't had my daily ice cream bar yet.

At Kotoka Airport

I have to admit the Departures Terminal is better than the Arrivals Terminal.

1. It's air-conditioned.


2. The washrooms are almost normal. Almost. There was no toilet paper and no running water from the faucets.  I don't know why I expected there would be these little amenities. But I did.


It took 45 minutes to go through customs - to get to the front of the line, only to be greeted by a Ghanaian army woman who sayed "Aye, obruni - what do you have in your suitcases?"  Wow. I could have said anything.  Explosives. Aerosol cans. Liquor.  I said "Clothes and some other stuff."


And that was that.

I am preparing now to go through Security to get eye-scanned (again) and finger printed (again), and get my backpack x-rayed and myself x-rayed too.

More from Heathrow, where Blackberries work and bathroom faucets have running water.

The road to...home

The day did not exactly get off to a brilliant start, you know.

I awoke this morning to thunder, lightning and heavy rain at 7:00 a.m.  I didn't see much point in getting up, so I dozed for awhile and finally rolled out of bed around 9:30 to begin the process of getting home. Normally, I consider this to be scandalous, and in my normal life, I have lost the ability to sleep in this late unless I'm sick. Realizing that this is most decidedly not my normal life, I decided to cut myself some slack.

I thought the road home would best begin with a shower.  And I was thinking that with all that rain, the problematic "water pressure issue" that was interrupting running water at the Osaken Beach Resort would be corrected.

Pleased at the steady stream of water flowing from the shower, I decided to give my hair a good washing and lathered up. And shaved my legs. And washed my face.  And then, just like that (snap fingers), it was gone.  The water. Not even a trickle.

No problem, I thought.  I'll simply switch to the bucket-shower-method to rinse my extremely-lathered head. Sadly, there was no water in the lower faucet either, and that posed a problem for this shampoo-full obruni.  I grumbled about how I had spent 2 years growing my hair long, only to have it end like this - a bunch of split ends and a head full of shampoo.  You know, like all dressed up and no place to go.

Fortunately, once I stopped grumbling I remembered I had 1-1/2 bottles of water on the table in the room, and that's how I managed to rinse my hair.  I'm not saying it was a great rinse or even a good rinse. I'm just saying that, except for standing outside naked in the rain, I exercised my only option.  Just sayin'.

Once past that crisis, I knew the deserted and rain-soaked Osaken Beach Resort would not be an option for food for awhile. The rain stopped, so I decided to try the snack shop Bea's brother had recommended in a building down the street. Shugar's. That's Shugar's. With an H.

While people are expected to give extra money to everyone for everything in Ghana, waitresses are the exception. Tipping  the waitress just isn't something Ghanaians do. Service is slow because there's no real incentive to be fast. Customers grumble, the waitresses grumble back.  It's not a good system.

The "omelet, toast, cheese, grilled tomatoes, sausage, oatmeal and tea/coffee" breakfast sounded like the best of the two options.  Of course, as is common in Ghana, the restaurants are often out of a lot of the menu. So it was omelet, bread (toaster broken), no cheese, no tomatoes, no oatmeal (big disappointment), no coffee but tea (better anyway), and sausage = a hot dog.  I rarely eat hot dogs even at home, and I was certainly not going to try one here. 

The breakfast was OK.  A bit pricey at $5.50 cedis for all the options not available, but what's a hungry obruni gonna do. I reminded myself that I was not in Wa or Ho anymore.  Accra is an expensive city. Heck - Wa doesn't even have a place go for breakfast.

I came here, to the Vodaphone Internet Cafe to check in for my flights, but the online check-in keeps coming up "error on page."  So I will call them when I get back and perhaps try again later.

Hoping for just a few more travel mercies...