Stories to Tell

My friend Chris has been working on molding bricks with the help of some of the students recently since he’s planning to build his own small house instead of so he doesn’t have to stay in the teacher’s quarters any more. Last week we walked out to the well near where they’re doing the work to find out if there was water in it he could use. When we walked up there was a very old woman there who was very appreciative and talkative when we greeted her. She told him (and then he translated for me) that she was the only person to survive an automobile accident that killed nine other people back in the day. To which I exclaimed ‘She’s a miracle!’ It was clear she had more stories to tell and I hope we will go back to her house one day to hear more. I was feeling rather sorry for her since she seemed kind of lonely and was fetching her own water despite her advanced age. I wanted to know why someone wasn’t taking care of her and commented so to Chris as we were walking away. He told me that she lives alone and does have family who come by to bring her food stuff and check in- and mused that perhaps that fact had lengthened her life. After all, she only has herself to take care instead of being bothered by other people. It was an interesting perspective and made me think once again (happens often here) about the influence on culture on the lens in which we see the world. While we were walking away, she had her arms raised praising God for having seen us. I was delighted to see and be able to greet the woman from the well again when I went to church Sunday. For a host of rather uninteresting reasons, It was my first time going since I’ve been living in village this past Sunday and I attended the Catholic one which is led by woman from the nearby village Wiega. Thankfully parts of it were in English and it only lasted two hours.

Training was so busy and my internet was less than regular so I have stored up some stories to tell. When I first arrived in Ghana and someone would give me their number they’d ask me to ‘flash’ them! My gut reaction was always to respond ‘No, you creeper’ but I quickly learned this meant for me to call them without them answering. Besides used in exchanging phone numbers, this is a common practice here if you’re running low on credit since you only pay for outgoing not incoming calls. I told this story to some of the teachers at my school and they thought it was pretty fun and it sparked a whole explanation about cell phone plans and service providers in the States.

Another story is from home stay. After washing my clothes I’m sure with the help of a host sister or maybe even nephew, my clothes would often be on the line but invariably the rain would come since it was rainy season. So my family would move my clothes inside the living room to finish drying. One day when my dry clothes were returned to me I discovered a pair of pants was missing. In British English trousers are what we Americans call pants and pants are what we call underwear. After missing my pants, I proceeded to tell my host brother I was missing a pair of pants (read: he heard panties) to which he asked what they looked like. ‘Black with brown stripes’ was my reply. Had I know what was being discussed and then searched for at the time I might have been mortified. When the search for the missing pants was fruitless, one of my sister’s Cynthia offered to buy me a new pair. I was moved by her generosity but assured her that eventually they’d turn up. The next day she gave me a new pair black of black and white panties- at which point it finally dawned on me I’d been saying pants when I meant trousers. I explained the same to them and my black trousers with brown stripes were promptly found. At least I got a new pair of undies and a story to tell out of my silly and slightly embarrassing mistake.