It’s 7:10 in the
morning. The sun has shot through my
barred windows and the tiny window shade slits.
I’ve showered, eaten, and buttoned my collared shirt all the way to the
top. My satchel over my shoulder, I checked
my carabineer for the third time to make sure I have my three house keys for
the various outside gates. Herminia
stops me and looks me in the eye with the most sincere smile I’ve seen her have
since we met, and says in Spanish, “Have a wonderful first day of classes,
Robert, good luck!” I wished her a good
day too, and buzzed the outside gate.
While walking up the street, I was overcome by a feeling I hadn’t felt
in a long time, some sense of pride and readiness that I just don’t have when
I’m at Pitzer. It took me a while to
realize just what the feeling was, but then it became clear: My “mother” wished
me a good first day of classes. Simple,
concise, but a luxury I haven’t had since I was a teenager. Living with a family again, has really rekindled
a lot of emotion and comfort that I haven’t felt while living alone or with a
roommate; it’s one of the most wonderful hidden treats that I never knew how to
truly explain while casting my left hand out on my Office of Admission tours.
The day before, Sunday, I woke up late. Considering the fact
that I had gone to bed at around 9pm the previous evening, waking up at 9am was
an incredible amount of sleep for me, and quite late to wake up. I immediately felt guilty; I had told Sam
that I would walk over to her house and show her around town before the ICADS
lunch at noon, but realized that there was little time to do so. After showering and a cup of tea, my host
father Rafael and I found Samantha’s house, and talked to her mom for a little
while; Sam wasn’t home, she was told to wait in the park for us. By 11ish, we’d found each other, and still
quite guilty, I was determined to make it up to her, so I suggested that she go
to lunch at ICADS with us Pitzer folk; in addition, she’d get to see the town a
bit and learn the way to walk to school.
Thankfully she was happy to do so, and we all took the ~30ish minute
walk to the school. One of the
interesting differences between here and the US, and indeed in Ghana, is the
lack of pedestrian rights and infrastructure. Sidewalks are plagued with
“gringo traps” AKA pitfalls or general disheveled concrete. One has to look farrrrrr down the streets in
all directions, even at stop signs, for cars, for at best the sign means “Yield
to other cars, if you feel like it.”
Unfortunately for Sam and my conscience, once we arrived
at ICADS, our director promptly brushed Sam aside and told her that the lunch
was a special Pitzer only meal, and that she couldn’t eat with us. So, she walked back with Cora’s host mother. I quickly changed moods, however, with a
delicious lunch at an Italian restaurant and conversation with the Pitzer
folks. After walking back to Curribadt,
Sam rejoined Lauren, Sarah, and I, and we walked all around town, exploring
streets and shops. While checking out at
the super market (I got some prime new shampoo and ginger), a small, older
woman noticed Sarah absentmindedly swaying to the beat of the nearly inaudible
dance music playing overhead in the market.
In Spanish, she said, “You gringos have no idea how to dance, here,
check me out!” She swayed and “danced,” although her age certainly had an
effect on her movement. “Hey, come to my house, I’ll give you lessons, we can
dance to whatever music you’d like!” she exclaimed. We politely said maybe, and headed outside to
meet the rest of the group, but the woman followed and really persisted asking
us to dance with her. After a quick
check-in in English, we all agreed, and walked a few blocks to her house. She exclaimed with pride, “Here, this is the
auto shop…and this door, this is my house!” pointing to a grey sheet metal
door. Needless to say, all of us were
waiting for the other to exclaim that we had to go. No one peeped, and we all entered the
doorway, the woman locking the door behind us.
All of us uneasy, she turned on the stereo, and handed us each a heavy
CD case, a good 300 CDs in total. For
the next hour, the tension dissolved, and Rosario
(the older woman) showed everyone how to dance to the different styles of
music. It was awkward and silly,
especially given the fact that a young man in his mid 30s passed by a few times
with small comments and no official introduction.
The following day, Monday the 27th, was the
first official day of school. The
logistics are unremarkable – introductions of around 15 students from across
the country (and one from Kathmandu, Nepal!), a Spanish placement oral exam,
and an afternoon of program overviews, safety information, and interactions
with the other students. We have three
girls named Katie and two-named Sarah, and the schools represented vary from
Chapman, University of Michigan, University of Massachusetts, Grinnell, and one
student on a gap year, attending Middlebury in the fall.
As the group of Pitzer students and Sam walked back from
ICADS together after a somewhat exhausting 8 hours of class, I felt the same
eerie feeling that I was just a young schoolboy again. When I was younger, I really did envy the
children I’d see in cartoons who exercised a degree of autonomy, walking to and
from school with their school books in their backpacks and their mothers
cooking dinner when they arrived at home.
True, there is a healthy degree of idealization, and the “grass is
always greener,” but just like my time in Ghana, I feel like this life outside
the US is more simple, a bit more calm, and to me, romantic. We’ll see how, as the workload increases, my
idea of walking for almost two hours a day to and from school fights against my
naïveté, but for now I’m quite content.
A note on blogging for
the next five weeks – the program I’m enrolled in is quite time consuming, and
although I’d like to write every night, I’ll most likely only blog on the
weekends. In addition, I’ll be heading
to Nicaragua for a week the Saturday after next, and will be inaccessible for a
little while. Until next time!
