In Quiet Ways

While my back was turned, the trees of Tamale erupted into varying shades of yellow flowers; it is the closest thing to a Western change of season I've seen since I arrived, and it reminds me of how long I've been living, as the locals say, “in Ghana here”. The taxi I take to the CIFS office is driven by a laughing Dagomba man who asks me, after I've greeted him in Dagbani, how long I have been “in Ghana here”.

As July screeches to a close, I find myself in a calm scramble to tie up loose ends. My schedule is erratic and comprehensive, pocked with day-by-day activity notes: day-trip to Sumniboma, EWB report 3 submission, cook for host family, visit primary school, PARED diagnostic...

...As August opens, I find myself in a flurry of activity unexpected in the last weeks of July. Where I thought was a work schedule like an open plain is actually riddled with the moguls of donor NGO visits; where I thought I would have two weeks to wrap up without interruption, I must navigate my wrap-up between entertaining the wonderful people from CARE international, the World Food Program, the District Assembly, and our own CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency). I'm glad for the bustle and business; it keeps me on task, keeps my momentum up, increases the balance on my still-growing bank of experiences. I'm glad for the field visits and the travelling that accompanies them; it gives me an opportunity to say goodbye to the more inaccessible pockets of East Mamprusi that I adore so much.

A former JF in my district a few years ago advised me to “enjoy falling in love with Nalerigu!” Instead I've found myself in love with the small surrounding communities; with the hills and valleys, the rushing sound of the streamwater after a hot rain, the rocky roads, baobabs in Sumniboma and Kusasi dancers in Zarantinga. I feel as though Nalerigu is not home—nothing can stand in for the place where I grew up—but is a benevolent stopping place, full of bustle and enough activity to keep a girl on her toes. Whenever I climb onto the back of a motorcycle, though, on my way out on the dangerous paths and steppes that lead to the small communities we visit, I feel the closest sensation to coming home that I have had since coming to “Ghana here”.

This coming week is my last in East Mamprusi, and as the preparations to leave become more hurried, I look at the people I pass on the street and wake to the sound of in a subtly different way. I am happy—nervous, slightly frightened, but very happy—to be going home, but I am not pleased to be leaving the North. Even as the tension of these weeks becomes tighter, and the small, culture-shocking differences in the way people are grate on me like a steel emery, I think about not seeing the hills and the remarkable blue of the clear West African sky, and it feels strange and hollow. What surprises me the most is my reaction: I have been told many times that I will never want to leave Africa, but not that the prospect of going home would be more appetizing, but less scary. I feel almost as though I could leave the people—but the thought of leaving the land tugs at me in quiet ways...