chapter 31: 'ghana' daddy gone (the epilogue)

for the last month, i've been looking forward to seeing family and friends on my post ghana travels in europe, and then at home in canada.

i'd had enough of ghana. it was time to go home. but then, a funny thing happened. i spent my last day in ghana wishing for one more day, a week, a month, to see friends i'll dearly miss and places that were on the to do list, but never crossed off.

i'm excited for the next chapter, but i'm also kind of dreading it. will europe and canada seem cold and boring by comparison?

obviously, ghana has a galaxy of problems, most related to poverty. but on leaving, i prefer to remember the good things.

i'll miss feeling special wherever i go, and hearing "you are welcome", "you are invited", and people caring, really caring, if i'm enjoying their country.


i'll miss watching young men in filthy clothes joke and laugh while hauling balky old wooden hand carts through streets clogged with traffic.

i'll miss goats. stupid, endearingly dopey goats, wandering everywhere.

i'll miss the cheerful honking of fan ice vendors and the industrious way street hawkers seemingly take over every corner of the country. as i was coming into accra on my way to the airport yesterday, one of them had his wares hanging on the razor wire separating the six lanes of traffic entering the city. making the best of things. that''s ghana.

i'll miss the dancing. not mine, theirs.

i'll miss the way nobody, from the youngest kids to grown men, has a problem putting their arm around a friend for all to see. not a trace of self-consciousness.

i'll miss watching strangers run unbidden to help push a broken down old trotro through traffic in the blazing, stifling heat.

i'll miss how ghanaians call eachother brother or sister, regardless of which of the country's 100 or so ethnicities they belong to.

sunrise, sunset.

finally on my way out, on the plane at 30,000 feet, i'm glad, sad, and a little guilty. i've taken a lot more than i've given. i've seen things most people will never have a chance to see, both good and bad.

ghana has become precious to me, no longer simply an unknown part of an unknown continent, the hoary, cliched, "dark continent". i wonder if i'll ever see it again.

below, the land is shrouded in the blackest night. but i'm quickly leaving it behind, that much is sure. the land is receding outside my window, and in my mind. it already seems like i've just woken up from an incredibly vivd, ludicrous dream.

and like all dreams, the events of the past 8 months already seem unreal.