The global infrastructure is an incredible thing.

I already been to Paris, I already been to Rome
And what did I do but miss my home?
Oh, New England!
- “New England,” Jonathan Richman

This is my home, this is my only home
This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known.
- “Gentle Arms of Eden,” Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

And now I’m in Cape Coast, the nearest city to Kakum. It was the colonial capital until the late 19th century, when the Brits moved it to Accra, so unlike Ho (which was irrelevant to the colonial powers), it’s full of crumbling European-style buildings. And, of course, it’s right on the beach. It is both as beautiful and as squalid as you can imagine. The high-tide line is a trash heap, but the lower beach is smooth and gorgeous: that’s Cape Coast in a nutshell.

I visited Cape Coast Castle this afternoon, which was the site of the governor’s palace as well as housing the dungeons where slaves were kept before being shipped off to the Americas. The whole thing has been well preserved, and there’s a very nice museum and knowledgeable guides. There’s also a traditional shrine as well as wreaths from people all over the world commemorating the horrors of the slave trade. All I could think was how much it was like visiting Dachau – except that Dachau was all sanitized and museum-ified, unlike this place, which hasn’t been adapted for tourists much at all except to add the museum in a side room of the castle. “Never again,” indeed.

There are white people all over this town, so I get much less attention here. It’s kind of a relief. On to Accra tomorrow morning to meet back up with my guys, and then flying out Saturday night! I can’t even imagine how strange the Western world is going to feel.

Bathing: Fill a bucket from the house water barrel. Use a smaller pail to scoop water and dump it over yourself. Soap and shampoo. (The most common soap is Key brand. It comes in long yellow bars and you cut slices off as needed, for dishes or bodies. Since everyone uses Key soap and washes it down open drainage, everything kind of smells like the same chemicals.) Use their version of a loofah, if you’re so inclined, which is a long net-like thing. Dump more water. Honestly, I’m pretty used to it now, and I think showers will feel like an unnecessary luxury for awhile when I get home. At least, for the rest of the summer – cold buckets of water would be much less pleasant in a Boston winter.

Toilet: Some houses have toilets – both of the ones I’ve stayed in, in Ho and Tanyigbe, do. But neither actually flushes. If you pee, you just leave it there. If you poop, you fill a bucket of water and dump it directly in the bowl to flush the poo out to the drainage gutter out back. Toilet paper, if you bother with it (and sometimes it’s just newspaper anyway), goes in a trash can. But most people don’t have toilets, and no public places seem to. When we’ve gone out to bars (“spots” or “joints”), the toilet has been a small cement-floored room where you just squat. Sometimes there’s a urinal cake on the floor, which I find hilarious. I’ve gotten pretty good at the whole thing; it’s not as bad as it sounds. (Most guys just go on the side of the road. The dwarves think nothing of, when we’re walking somewhere, saying, “I gotta pee,” and stopping while I carefully look away.)

Housing: Traditionally, houses are made out of mud brick with thatched roofs and a separate kitchen house (usually out of wood with only three walls or maybe just a roof on stilts). Many village houses are still made this way, and when there’s a huge rainstorm, sometimes they cave in. But more modern dwellings in villages and almost all city dwellings are cement with corrugated tin roofs. People with enough money to do so paint them pink, blue, or yellow. Windows tend to have screens with translucent plastic horizontal shutters/blinds that you can push open or closed, but everyone leaves doors open all the time so it’s pretty poor bug protection.

City Layout: Houses aren’t in neat rows along streets. Only a few streets in Ho are paved (and none in the villages), and those are the main commercial roads. People live sort of haphazardly jumbled together off dirt lanes that connect to the main roads. It feels like you’re walking through people’s backyards all the time, since there’s no obvious distinction between dirt lane and dirt courtyard-between-houses, but that’s just how it works. No one gets mail delivered to their house or shop because no one really has an address; everyone who wants mail has a PO box.

Transportation: There are two main types of transport (besides walking): taxis and vans. Taxis are painted two colors (white and yellow, usually) and drive mostly around cities, though you can get them to take you to villages, too. They usually have some sort of religious slogan decalled to the back. They’re usually shared – you flag down a cab that might already have someone in it, and if it’s going in the same general direction as you, you get in. You pay per person based on how far you’ve gone rather than splitting a total cost, more like a bus than like our cabs. I haven’t done this alone yet, so I don’t know exactly how it works.

Vans (or “tro-tros,” which are sort of more like cattle cars than the regular vans – you sit on benches in rows facing each other in the back, under a low ceiling; these seem to do more village routes and the vans seem to be more for inter-city travel) are owned by some guy who decides he wants to be a van driver. They go between cities or along village roads (there are comparatively few roads in the country, and they’re kind of like subway lines: Amedzofe Road, which I took this morning, goes from Ho to Amedzofe, stopping at a number of villages along the way, but there aren’t really turn-offs). Much like cabs, only even more so, they look like they’re held together with duct tape and prayer. These are some tough roads to bounce along every day. But somehow they do hold together – I’ve almost never seen a broken-down vehicle, and only one vehicle I was in broke down, and that was a taxi in Ho after we’d gone three feet, because the driver hadn’t put enough petrol in. The key thing about tro-tros is that they don’t leave at a set time. You show up at the station, where everyone has their vans parked, and people are shouting their destinations, or asking you where you want to go. You find someone who’s willing to go that way, and then you wait for enough other people to want to go there to fill up the van (and I do mean fill). This can take 5 minutes or it can take an hour or more. But it does work, and the country would totally fall apart without these things.

There are modern metrobuses running a few routes (like the one from Ho to Tanyigbe) – bright orange buses purchased within the last couple of years from Italy. They come at a set time (a couple of times a day, in the case of the one I used) and cost a flat fee (mine was 2000 cedis, about 35 cents, but significantly more in buying power – 15 minutes of time at this cafe, for example). I can’t imagine they’ll hold up very long to these roads, but they sure do look nice now!

Food: I’ve talked about this some already, but there is not a lot of variety. For every meal, there is starch and there is sauce. The starch can be rice, a ball of sticky cassava or yam dough called fufu, a ball of sticky cassava-and-fermented-corn dough called banku, a ball of corn dough that is basically polenta but called akple, or sliced yams. (Yams, in case you don’t know, are not the sweet potatoes we call yams at home. They’re large, brown and hairy on the outside, white on the inside.) The sauce is usually tomato-based, though sometimes it’s groundnut (peanut)-based, and can have fish (usually smoked) or sometimes meat of some kind (beef or chicken or a rodent called grasscutter, which I think goes in sauce sometimes but I know goes on sticks as street food; goats and sheep are running around all the time, but no one makes cheese from them and only eat the meat on special occasions). There’s usually hot pepper involved, and a shitload of palm oil to cook it all in. Everything is hot (temperature-wise), but people always eat with their hands. I think they must have no nerve endings left on their fingers by the time they’re five. The other main dish is bean stews of various types. People also eat a lot of loaves of basically homemade Wonder Bread. And there is street food: meat pies, little sweet fried balls of dough or dough-with-plantain, fried plaintain chips, roasted corn, fresh coconut, oranges, bananas, popcorn, little baggies of groundnuts or unidentifyable liquidy things I haven’t tried yet, meat-on-a-stick. So I’m pretty much over spicy tomato sauce with smoked fish for a good long while, in case you were wondering. What I’m wondering is where their calcium and green-veggie vitamins come from, since I’ve had no green veggies and no dairy (save some condensed milk with tea for breakfast) since I’ve been here. There is plenty of food, people enjoy the food they have, people eat a lot (everyone’s always teasing me about how little I eat, because I can’t eat an enormous platter of rice at every meal)…but Americans are used to a ridiculous variety of food, so it feels monotonous to me. On the up side, almost everything they eat is local, so all the thinking I do at home about sustainable eating is completely irrelevant here.

Oh, since a couple of you asked – I did mention to the dwarves early on that I don’t eat meat at home, but was happy to try whatever was put in front of me here, since my reasons don’t apply here (see above). But they want me to feel comfortable and to feed me things I’ll like, so I really haven’t had any meat, except to try some street meat once (so gristle-y) and some of the chief’s chicken, and a couple of meat pies (which are usually yummy). Mostly it’s been lots of salted, smoked fish. I’m looking forward to getting to Cape Coast in the middle of this week, where I can have some fresh seafood.

Big news of the week: I got malaria! I have now officially visited the tropics, I guess. (RT told me later that people assume “malaria” here the way we assume “cold” and immediately go take a course of anti-malarials anytime they’re sick – you don’t need a prescription for anything here.) It was the worst fever I’ve ever had and I had to ask the guys to take me to the hospital, which involved an hour and a half of finding a car and a driver and driving to Ho. I was pretty scared, I have to admit – it could have been so many truly awful things. The nurses sorted me out pretty quickly, though, and by the next day I was basically fine. One of those things that sucks untreated, but that modern medicine can pretty efficiently take care of. I am confused about why I bothered taking my malaria prevention pills, though…

My project finished yesterday! The books are classified, labeled (by hand on tape), and entered into a logbook. The students all came in for an orientation. B is more or less trained. (He’s not really a librarian by training, btw, which maybe clears up the confusion about why he had trouble with alphabetizing. He’s an electrician who said he’d take charge of the library because the school needed someone to.) It was unquestionably the hardest thing I’ve ever done professionally, possibly the hardest thing I will ever do, because if I ever do a project like this again, at least it won’t be the first time. It was an exercise in stripping library work down to what really matters: it matters that books by the same author are together, it doesn’t matter if “Saint-Exupery” is alphabetized by “Saint” or “Exupery,” for example. (Or at least, so I decided.) I had some very tough days where I heard the voice of my Very Critical Co-worker in my head telling me that I was a disgrace to the profession, but I think I did pretty well under the circumstances. At the least, focusing the school’s attention on the library for a few weeks has to be a good thing!

The school gave me two local outfits with necklaces as goodbye gifts, which was so generous. They are beautiful. I’m wearing the dress now, and it’s like an invisibility cloak. It cuts the obnoxious calls of “yavoo!” and requests by young men to “be my friend and have my contact” down by half, which makes walking around town ever so much more pleasant. (RT, btw, insists that they aren’t being rude or inappropriate; they just want to connect with me in some way. I’m sure that’s true, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I just didn’t want to give the impression that it’s a rude country – it is in fact an extremely friendly, beautiful country, and I’m looking forward to coming back with as many of you as possible!)

So now I’m back in Ho for the day, then starting some traveling tomorrow. A week from today I’ll be back in Accra, getting ready to fly to London, where I’ll spend a couple of days, then HOME! Besides being excited to see you, there is a grilled cheese sandwich and a green salad with my name on it. I haven’t really had anything fresh and green since I’ve been here (or cooked and green, for that matter…I’m sure I’m vitamin deficient in some awesome ways right now), and there’s no cheese in this country (except for this nasty Laughing Cow spreadable cheese food stuff)! Barbarians, I tell you.

A guide to some of the people in my life here:

RY, M, DJ, and RT: My Keepers, the guys at the NGO. They rotate in and out of Tanyigbe, in and out of stewarding me. After a good conversation with RT (“We want to treat you well and take care of you!” “But part of the point of being here is to experience what life is really like!”), he got that I don’t like feeling helpless and want to be able to do things like get some of my own meals, wash my own dishes, etc., and seems to have passed that on to the others. That coincided (not coincidentally, I think) with a shift from Keepers to friends; they horse around with me more now and treat me more like a person and less like the White Queen, and I’m infinitely happier as a result.

B: The electrician/librarian, a very smart man with some odd educational blind spots. Alphabetical order presents a problem, as does the concept of surname coming second. He says that’s because surnames are given first in Ghana, but the Ghanaian books in the library give names in the same order as ours. He’s often unable to tell fiction from non-fiction, or to look at a book and tell what it’s about (though once he does get that, he’s pretty good at classifying it). I’m in no way confident that this library will stay organized after I leave, but I’m doing the best I can. Some days are more optimistic than others.

The paramount chief of Tanyigbe: He likes to invite me to interminable ceremonies, because it “adds value” (according to RY) to have a white person there. I went to one such ceremony last week, the commissioning of a child welfare NGO, which involved my sitting and listening to people talk in Ewe without translation for four hours. Never again. Later that same day, a couple of his representatives showed up at the school headmaster’s office to pay their respects to me and give me gifts. Of fruit. And a live chicken. The students who carried the food back to the house for me were amused that I was so baffled by the chicken. She sat on the floor of the kitchen, her legs tied up, and managed to lay us an egg before two students came to “deliver justice” (in the words of RY) with a knife. So now there’s a bag of chicken parts in the fridge, and I have no better idea what to do with them now that they’re dead.

I: The school typist, who does some cooking for us at the house. She unfortunately hasn’t gotten the message about treating me like a person, and won’t sit at the table to eat with us or let me help her with the dishes. She made an awesomely Chef Andy salad for lunch the other day: chopped lettuce, carrots, spaghetti, sardines, mayonnaise, and vinegar. Apparently that’s what “salad” means in Ghana. Wow.

G: The senior prefect, who was the first kid to reach out to me, and still comes to visit me in the library and takes it upon himself to make sure I see the interesting things going on on campus or in the village (like the first rehearsal for a traditional drumming/dancing club they just started, which I saw on Thursday).

The headmaster: A lovely and intelligent gentleman who clearly cares about his school and wants to do the best he can for it. I have a great deal of respect for him, and for what he’s done with what little he has. RT and the other teachers seem to share this sentiment.

The headmistress: A lovely and intelligent lady who I’m sure is also very good at what she does, and is very interested in and knowledgeable about the library, but our main interaction so far involved her shock that I wasn’t a Christian and her promise to pray that I will come to Jesus.

The bugs: They get their own entry because they are omnipresent and impossible to ignore. I can’t actually see them, but the red welts they leave behind all over my body are certainly visible (and irritating). I feel so very attractive right now.

There is a vast supporting cast (and plenty more to say about this bunch, especially the guys), but those are the main players. And I’ve been here for 2.5 hours already and should maybe go do something else with my day. Hope all is well at home!

The school is very much like my school: I’ve done dorm check, study-hall supervision, weekend duty, etc. (They call them different things, of course.) I love that being a high school teacher is enough a part of my identity now that I can be one on any continent. Kids are basically the same anywhere. They had a hip-hop dance contest Friday night, and the senior prefect, Gilbert (who is my friend – one of the first and only kids to reach out to me; he’s taken me on a couple of walks around the village), pulled me up to be a judge. Very silly.

(Heh. The dude next to me is having chat sex while researching rap stars. Ah, internet cafes.)

Yesterday one of my keepers (the other 3 having returned to the city; he’s an agriculture teacher at the school, so he has to stay) and I walked over the mountain to Atidze, a neighboring village. One of our students who lives there showed us around. We saw their water source, a ground-fed river which he said flows strongly even during the dry season, and no one ever gets sick from it even though it’s not purified. (I decided not to test, though so far assorted local fruits and whatnot haven’t made me sick. Whew!) There’s a big white snake that lives there who is supposedly the wife of the river, and if anyone killed her, the river would dry up. The student said he’s a Christian and doesn’t believe that, but a lot of older people in the village do.

Then we hung out under a tree for awhile talking to assorted passersby. I bought “ginger ice cream” (little plastic bags of ice with bright orange ginger syrup) for some kids, at 200 cedis each (about 25 cents). They got rewarded for being a) brave enough to talk to me and b) able to pronounce my name, which is hard for a lot of people for some reason. I also tried cocoa seeds in the cocoa plant – you suck white goo off the seeds, which is tangy-sweet and doesn’t taste the chocolate at all. But I saw cocoa seeds drying before being sent off to be ground up for chocolate, and it is indeed the same stuff. (According to my keeper, it’s all “fair trade” here because the government is the only cocoa buyer, and they always give a fair price, as well as extra bonuses: free tuition for the farmers’ kids, free pesticides. I asked about environmental concerns for burning the bush to plant cocoa trees and then spraying them with pesticides, and he said no one really thinks about that.)

My work: I’m organizing the Tanyigbe Senior Seconday School (high school) library. They have an 8th edition Abridged Dewey (so old it doesn’t really have a section for computers), and I’m teaching the school electrician who volunteered to run the library how to use it. It’s slow going, but he actually seems interested in the problems of classification! Which is kind of a miracle; even among librarians, that’s pretty nerdy. Apparently he wanted to go to a workshop to learn about library work, but the school couldn’t afford to send him. So the workshop came to him!

Unfortunately no one really uses the library except to look at their textbooks (there aren’t enough for every student to have one, of course). Partly this is because there doesn’t seem to be a culture of reading – in Ghana in general, but particularly among villagers. But it’s also partly because the books suck. All those books you give away when you don’t want them anymore…this is the end of the line. Yesterday I saw People of North Carolina, a textbook for (I can only assume) NC elementary school kids from 1973. Oy. So start collecting books that you don’t want that you think some Ghanaian kids might want to read! I’ll say more about what that would be when I get home.

Ok, I have to go in a minute. Back to village life. Hopefully I’ll spend all of next weekend in Ho, so I should be able to check my email again on Sat. But no promises. I miss you all!

Richard taught me my first Ewe word today: yavoo (not sure how it’s actually spelled), which means “white person.” I hear it a lot, as I’m the only one for miles and miles. Sometimes it’s said in wonder (small girl on the street), sometimes clearly not as a compliment (guys outside the bank).

In Tanyigbe my job is to set up the high school’s library, basically, and then synch it up with the community library. Both are apparently in total disarray. They need some sort of organizational system, record-keeping, etc. (all on paper, of course – no computers in the libraries, no internet or even phones in Tanyigbe, I’m told). And if I have more time I’ll teach computer basics, since their regular teacher is in Accra for some reason. Sounds like another American woman is coming mid-July to work on this project too (she specifically wants to teach computers), so for the last week I’ll have a fellow yavoo. I wish she were coming sooner!

The weather is hot and sticky, but no more so than July in Boston and every building I’ve been in has a ceiling fan. (This may or may not be true in Tanyigbe – they seem to be easing me into ruralness step by step.) The sun sets much earlier, though – it’s quarter of 8 and has already been dark for over an hour. I haven’t changed time zones much (Paris, London, and Ghana are all within 2 hours of each other), but this moving up and down latitudes is almost as disorienting. Oh, and I’ve been eating and drinking Ghanaian food for 24 hours and I’m not sick yet! Woo! Let’s keep it this way.

Not sure how often I’ll be back to Ho for interweb access. It’s an easy 15-min. bus ride from Tanyigbe, I’m told, so maybe a couple of times a week or maybe just on the weekends. As I suspected, I can’t check my Parenthetical mail from here, so send stuff to bonneyanne at yahoo *and* to Parenthetical (so I’ll still have copies of your emails when I get home).