Empowered

            This week I feel empowered. The personal growth I had hoped to gain while in Ghana is coming trifold. I feel it. I wanted to appreciate my life more. I wanted to gain confidence and independence. I wanted to become secure in my self-efficacy. I wanted to know that I am strong and that I am happy with who I am. This week I feel all those things, plus more, growing in my bones, in my heart and in my soul. With each experience I collect, I know it more and more. I am confident. I am strong. I am independent. I am happy. I am good. I am worthy. Why? Only because I am me.

            On Monday, it rained. It was the first real rain in Cape Coast since we arrived in January. We had had two other days when the sky lowered and thickened dark with storm clouds. We’d had evening thunder and flashes of dry lightning. But it had never rained beyond a few minutes of sprinkling. On Monday, this was a true rain. It was a downpour of cool, fat drops that filled the stone gutter around the house and puddled in the back yard within minutes. As soon as I heard the steady cascade of water sheets on the roof and trees and dry ground cover, Elle and I went out on the magic porch to be closer to the wonder of it.

            I beckoned Robert, the security guard posted outside our bungalow, onto the porch. He carried up his wooden chair. I pulled our baby tortoise, Achachtra from his bowl and set him on the cement floor, and the four of us spent the day on the porch watching the first rain.

            The heavy clouds blocked the sun’s blazing heat and a wet wind whipped around the porch. Elle and I were comfortable wearing our long sleeping t-shirts. Heat would have usually forced us out of the heavy cotton and into a thinner tank top by 10 a.m., but today I elected to stay in our pajamas. Why?  Simply, because we could.

Achachtra crawled on his tiny wrinkled legs to the edge of the porch where water droplets splashed across his serrated shell. Robert and I took turns retrieving him from the edge, setting him back by our feet then watching him wobble back to the misty splashes. Elle tiptoed behind him, hunched forward to watch his every footstep. She reached out her hand as if she would pick him up, then snatched her hand away and turn to us desperately. “Catch him, before he falls off the edge!”

Big, black frogs, bigger than my open hand, hopped and plopped through the puddled backyard. Elle and I squealed and pointed at each splash they created, while Robert laughed at our surprise. The terra cotta dirt road behind our bungalow turned bright red with the rain. Divots from tire tracks created a canvas for potential beauty. Streams of lighter, tan water rushed in rivulets down the slope of the road, creating a two-toned watercolor masterpiece. Soon the air around the porch became full of fluttering, white wings. Robert told me the local name, and explained that the insects’ home was in the ground, so when it rains, they come out and fly until the rain stops. Every inch of space beyond the porch was filled with them. Their flapping wings, iridescent against the rain, looked like some weightless confetti suspended in the air, celebrating the rain.

Because of the natural coolness that came with the storm, I was finally able to turn off all of the ceiling fans in the house. My ears swelled in gratitude for the silence when that never-ending whir and rattle of the fans arrested. In the afternoon, Elle and I cuddled under a sheet in my bed and napped, hearing only the peaceful pouring rain outside. Those few hours, drifting in and out of hypnotic, storm-sleep were pure relief. The coolness, the silence, the comfort, such lovely, simple pleasures that I embraced and appreciated in the very moment. Monday was a beautiful day.

Tuesday I was on my own for the whole day. I packed Elle a lunch; a boiled egg, a banana, a slice of cheese and a cookie. I packed her pink princess back pack with two juice boxes, a plate and fork, her spare blue-checkered uniform and extra panties. Scott and I walked her to school, where she gave us each a kiss and hug then walked up the path by herself to the cement porch of the school. No crying or reaching out to us. Just a cool, calm, “Bye Bye,” and she was on her way to find her teacher, Aunty Pat.

It was a far cry from the first few weeks when she screamed and cried and desperately grasped at our arms like someone drowning when we dropped her off. Two or three teachers would surround us trying to offer comfort by yelling out Elle’s name and ordering her to “Stop Crying!” And “Come!” Ultimately, Aunty Pat would have to pry her from the death grip she had around us. The first time we left her, poor Scott dry-heaved on the side of the road on the way home. The anxiety of Elle’s own fear overwhelmed him to the point of nausea. He stayed home with his cell-phone within reach her whole first day of school.

But when we picked her up that first day, we snuck to the barred window and spied her sitting on a blue, plastic chair with our neighbor boy, Joseph, happily helping him count his fingers. That first day, and every other school day that followed, Elle left school with her shoulders pulled back and her chin up. She swished as she strutted and she glowed with confidence and fulfillment. On those days, we could visibly see her pride shooting out of her pores, and out of her fingertips at the end of her swinging arms. Although she continued to cry each morning when we left her at school, she always declared when we picked her up, “I only cried for 5 minutes!” I asked her day after day, “Do you want to come back to school tomorrow?” and she always assured me, breathlessly exclaiming, “Yes, I have ten friends today!” or “Yes, I have six friends today!”

On Tuesday, Elle didn’t cry one peep. In fact, she didn’t even look back at us as she swung the porch gate open and walked in. She proudly announced when I picked her up later, “I didn’t cry all day long!”

With a mind free of worry, I trekked to the school on the hill. It was exam time for the students in Ghana, and the headmaster asked me to give two English exams. I gave one to the senior students (class 5 and 6) and one to the junior students (class 3 and 4). I hadn’t seen the reading and picture books since our moms had donated them, so while the students worked I whispered to Mr. Martin, “Can we get out the books we donated so when the students finish their exams, they can choose a book to read?”

One by one, as they finished, I handed them a book. It didn’t take long for the students to recognize the reward for finishing their exams. The volume in the rooms rose as they completed their work then held up their papers, “Madam Molly, Madam Molly. I’m finished! I’m finished!” Their eyes sparkled and they grabbed in pure delight at the colorful books I spread out before them. They flipped through the pages, elbowing the classmate beside them to enjoy the pictures with them. Soon, all the students had a book in hand. As they finished one book, they held it up for me to trade them for another. Their appetite for more picture books was insatiable. I felt helpless but exhilarated when I ran out of new books to show them. I announced, “When you finish a book, you can trade with a classmate.” They soon were up and moving around the room, perusing the available books, enthusiastically trading with one another. I encouraged them, “Read the words. It’s good practice for your English to read all the words on the pages!” The room got quiet as their little index fingers pushed along the pages, making sense of the stories. My heart overflowed as I witnessed their appreciation of this simple pleasure.

By noon, I was on my way to Oasis, where I was supposed to meet Kokonut. He had texted me early that morning, “Good Morning. How r u? Today there will be a boat trip @ 1pm. In case you may like to be part. Kokonut.”

I met Kokonut a few weeks earlier at Oasis. He is a 20-something, local fisherman who smartly realized the profit potential of taking tourists on sea trips in a fishing canoe. He offered a two hour trip on the ocean beginning at the Cape Coast Slave Castle, looping to the Elmina Slave Castle then back to Cape Coast. I immediately organized a canoe trip for Scott and me, along with three international students (two from GVSU) and two local friends, Joseph and his girlfriend, Anastasia. The beauty and adventure of that trip hooked me for life. I asked Kokonut to call me anytime he took tourists out to sea, because I needed to go again! And so he did.

Tall, spectacled Kokonut greeted me with the local handshake ending in a snap. He pointed to the group of tourists going on the canoe trip. I ordered a beer and headed over to their table by the sea to find out their stories. Two blond college students from the Netherlands were finishing a three month stay where they volunteered at an orphanage, two young women from Germany had only visited for 2 weeks, during which time they worked at a primary school and on their tans, and an older, plump African American woman from Harlem was wrapping up her 6^th stay in Ghana where she stops in every 6 months to check on a village school she’s adopted (she pays their electricity and internet bills). Besides the 6 of us, the canoe held our guide, Kokonut, a “captain” who stood on the back bench, a motorman who steered us into the waves, and a blind man titled “the bailer”, who squatted in the hull of the canoe with his bucket.

My nerves had worked themselves out on my first trip with Kokonut, so on this voyage, I could find a secure grip on my bench in preparation for the canoe’s rocking and just enjoy the unprecedented beauty of it.  In Ghana, Tuesday is the goddess of the sea’s day so if a man goes out fishing, he will be cursed with bad luck and misfortune. Because of this, the whole of the waterscape belonged to only us. We were alone in the huge expanse, just gliding over the rolling waves. We followed the virgin coastline, unspoiled by fancy hotels or millionaires’ homes, just sand and palm trees for miles. Above us the light blue sky was clear and open, no airplanes or helicopters.  It was like we were in some untouched world, pioneers.  Other than a few squeals from us when the canoe’s tilt passed 45 degrees, the only sounds were the wind and the waves.

We floated into the Elmina fisherman’s wharf an hour after leaving Cape Coast. All the fisherman who were not on the ocean were here. All sizes and colors of canoes packed in the docks, creating a floating island capped with colored flags flapping above. Bare chested men, whose torso’s could be used to teach all the muscles in an anatomy lesson, climbed from boat to boat, their skin black and glistening. They stopped their preparations for future trips to sea to stand and wave to us as we bumped our way against the other boats, trying to squeeze into a space beside the fish market. “Hey Obrunis!” they yelled to us. Some laughed at our screams as the motorman steered us directly into the sides of other boats, apparently shifting them over to create a path through the narrow waterway for ourselves. We had to reach out and push away from the other canoes. Some fishermen warned us, yelling “REMOVE YOUR HANDS!” before two giant canoes sandwiched us, then one by one slid past us.

I had arranged with Kokonut earlier that I would disembark in Elmina rather than riding the round trip. The Elmina fisherman’s wharf has become my favorite place. The colorful, chaotic frenzy of the place, fisherman and vendors and boats everywhere, the noise and smell, the overstimulation of every sense, epitomizes Ghana for me. Whenever we pass over the bridge by car, I ask the driver to stop just so I can get out and feel the energy buzz around me. I’d since found a restaurant poised right in the midst of the action. Its cobblestone beer garden is a perfect haven, shaded from the sun and separated just enough from the hubbub so that I can observe every crab cleaned by a squatting old woman, I can count the abdominals on the fisherman untangling his nets, I can listen to the loud argument between a woman with fish spiraled across the tray on her head and a short bald man in sagging, ragged shorts and I can hear the children giggle and whisper, pointing at the Obruni lady feeding the lizards scurrying around her feet.

This is the place where I spent my Tuesday afternoon. As usual, no other customers were within the half wall of the patio; just me with a half dozen lizards running across the stones. A security guard stands at the gate to the street, uniformed in shades of greens. I ordered my food then leaned against the half wall. Locals, leaning on the other side of the same half wall, asked me where I am from. They were delighted to hear about the length of my stay. “How do you find Ghana?” one man wearing a blue and red soccer shirt asked.

 “I love it! I wish I could stay longer!” Some children came over curiously eyeing my drink. When they began to beg for a sip, the security guard walked over and leaned beside me, shooing the kids off with a wave of his hand. Until my grilled chicken and jollof rice was served, I exchanged travel stories with the guard. After lunch, a meal any mother will appreciate with envy as not being interrupted by any children or spouse, I finished my drink just as Big John sidled up with a grin, “Sista Molly! How was the big sea?”

Rose had picked Elle up from school at noon, and she was napping when I arrived home. Rose is a 20-something local girl who comes to the bungalow one or two afternoons a week to help out with Elle and to give me Ghanaian cooking lessons. That evening, we cooked yam balls and fried chicken. Some of the recipes she teaches me, I’ll continue making in the United States. Unless I can come up with a substitute for the main ingredient, this one I wouldn’t. The vegetable they call yam here is nothing like ours in the U.S.. It’s a long, heavy root-looking monstrosity that takes two hands to carry. The skin is basically a stringy, black bark and when we cut into it, a hard white meat is inside. Rose modeled how to peel and chop the thick tuber. We boiled it then mashed it with shredded carrots, onions and green peppers. We rolled the mixture into golf-ball sized balls, dipped them in egg white then rolled them in bread crumbs. We finished by deep-frying the little balls in vegetable oil.

While we cooked, Kwabena (Samuel) walked through the front door. Samuel is a small preteen who had been coming over to the house looking for odd jobs, so we made sure to save small jobs around the house for him to earn money that he could bring home to his grandmother. Before we realized the cultural gap in the saying, “Come on in!” we’d invited Samuel to “Come on in” on his first visit. To him, this meant that on all subsequent visits, he was welcome to walk in the house at any time.

I asked him to clean out the tortoise’s bowl and refill it with water, rocks and leaves. By the time he finished, dinner was done. I paid Rose 15 cedis for the day along with half of the yam balls, and summoned Samuel into Elle’s room to pick out a book. We sat on the edge of her bed and he proudly sounded out each word in “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear?”

On the magic porch, he read another book to Scott when he arrived home from work. While Samuel read, Big John returned from driving and entered the porch. Then we all ate. Kwabena enthusiastically took the small drumstick I offered him but only ate half of it. Big John translated his explanation that he planned to take the rest home to his grandmother. Scott asked Big John if he’d drive Kwabena home since at precisely 6:20 p.m. the sun would set in a blink and Kwabena would be left walking home in the dark. Scott accompanied them and returned shortly to tell me about his visit.

It was dark by the time they got to Kwabena’s home. Scott said it was a compound made up of a few rectangular cement houses. Samuel led Scott and Big John to his door and his grandmother welcomed them in. She wore a plain burlap-like cloth wrapped around her like a bath sheet. Scott couldn’t see into the room far because there was no electricity. Big John acted as interpreter and told Scott that Kwabena’s grandmother was very excited to meet him. She said Kwabena had told her of a white man’s house where he worked and had given her the money he earned. She said she had been asking Kwabena to bring her to see the white man, but it was even better that the white man had come to see her. While she animatedly spoke, her cloth came lose and fell to her belly, exposing her breasts. Scott said either she didn’t notice or she really didn’t care because they continued the entire conversation that way until he and Big John left.

After walking Elle to school on Wednesday morning, I planned to escape to a beach resort called Coconut Grove. It’s situated right on the ocean and has a deck with lounging chairs, umbrellas, two swimming pools, a bar and a restaurant. For 5 cedis, I could spend the day at the pool even though I wasn’t a guest of the hotel. On that day, I was the absolute ONLY person at the pool. There were no other guests at the restaurant or the bar, either. So I lounged in the sun, read my book and waved to the awaiting bartender, waiter or lifeguard when I wanted Fanta or French fries or a beach umbrella. I just soaked up my privilege and loved every minute of it.

Thursday was my dance lesson. For some reason, Oasis Bar’s upper pavilion wasn’t available for our lessons anymore so Mary invited me to her home instead. She talked to Big John on the phone to describe to him where she lived (there is no such thing as an address system here). He took me and Regina (one of the GVSU students here who’d started taking lessons with me) to the center of town and dropped us in front of a cement apartment building painted yellow. We jumped the gutter and followed Mary to a squat stone structure beside the apartments. Her home was a cement room, 8ft by 10ft, bare except for a single foam mattress pushed against the side wall. I knew she had a toddler son so I asked, “Does Prince sleep with you in your bed?”

“No,” she explained. “This is his bed. He moves around too much so I just sleep on the floor.”

I looked to the floor. Bare cement with one thin, flat runner beside Prince’s bed. There was one tiny screened window high in the front wall and two flapping doors; the one where we entered, and one leading to a back courtyard shared with the larger apartment building. The doors reminded me of the swinging bar doors in old western movies. Mary had pushed cloth at the base, presumably to prevent critters from coming in. The room was neat and obviously cared for. The floor was swept and in each corner, Mary and her son’s belongings were stacked. There was one electrical outlet on the front wall but nothing was plugged into it. On the side of the bed was a neat row of Prince’s shoes and against the front wall Mary had thrown a sheet over a pile of her and her son’s clothes.

Mary was teaching us a new dance. She imitated the drum rhythms with her mouth, signaling changes in the choreography. This dance was much, much faster than the traditional dance I had learned before. In the still cement room, I sweat and panted through the moves. After each combination we mastered, she’d high five us and yell, “SUPAH!” She’d add it to the last combination, then announce, “From the top,” patting the top of her head. I sighed with relief when she finally suggested, “Let’s take a two minute break.” I grabbed my sweat rag to mop up my face, neck, and chest. I grabbed my water bottle and gulped at the cool liquid as I pushed out the door. The sun was glaring on the concrete entryway but at least the air was moving outside. By the time the lesson was finished, we had learned at least half the dance. I was soaked head to toe in sweat. Even my knee caps were dripping. AND IT FELT GREAT! I was energized and ready to take on the world…until I got home and collapsed on the bed where I slept soundly in my sweaty clothes until I had to walk over and pick up Elle from school.

Regina had suggested that we go watch the drumming and dance group, Korye, rehearse that afternoon. They practiced every day at 4 o’clock in a recessed cobblestone patio behind the Castle Restaurant. Scott wouldn’t be home from work until 6 and Elle was napping by then so I asked Rose to stay at the house with Elle until Scott returned.

We carried some of the restaurant’s plastic chairs down to the patio beside the ocean and got a large Club beer to share. The loud, primal rhythms of the drummers drew a crowd, who watched the dancers from the sidewalk above. Regina and I chattered over the music and toasted our hard work at our lesson. Before we knew it, we were on our second large beer, and the drummers began a familiar beat. Our heads snapped toward eachother as our eyes met in mutual recognition. Mary waved her hand, beckoning us to the practice “stage.” Before we could even feel nervous, we both kicked off our sandals and raced behind Mary who was beginning the entrance steps of our dance. The actual drums were so much faster than our lesson so I frantically moved to catch up to the beat. Within a few steps I felt the music and fell into step beside Mary and Regina. Without even thinking, I moved to the next combination, then the next and the next. The crowd reacted immediately when Regina and I joined in the dance. They pointed and yelled their approval. Within minutes, half the song was done and we ran out of routine. The drummers stopped, the crowd and group clapped and Mary gave us high fives. Catching our breath, sweaty and invigorated, we strutted to our plastic chairs and grinned at our accomplishment. We toasted our small success and enjoyed the rest of Korye’s rehearsal.

By the time Korye’s rehearsal ended, three other international students from University of Cape Coast had joined us, Jessica, Abby and Colleen. I called Scott and let him know that for the first time in three months, I was having a much-needed girls’ night out! The five of us ate dinner at the Castle Restaurant then walked through town stopping at the college girls’ favorite night spots. We drank and danced and joked and laughed. One bar opened right onto the coast. Music from the bar boomed as we danced on the wet sand. Local children came to join us in our impromptu beach party and they squealed and twirled with us under the stars.

On Friday, Scott didn’t have to go to work, so he, Elle and I packed up a backpack and headed to Coconut Grove for another day of utter paradise. The three of us held hands and played ring around the rosy in the pool. Elle giggled and splashed. She held her breath and plunged under water then opened her eyes to exchange under-water waves with Scott and me. We lounged in the sun and shared a big plate of French fries with ketchup. I couldn’t imagine a better finish to such a wonderful week.

When Elle lay asleep under her towel on the lounge chair, Scott read his book and I put my head back and closed my eyes. The warmth of the sun and the fullness of my heart brought a private smile to my lips. I reflected on my week and reveled in the happiness and confidence I was feeling. It was then that I realized this change that was happening within me. I knew I was strong. I knew I was independent and I knew I appreciated my life. I felt empowered.

I reviewed the time in Ghana, trying to pinpoint where this sense of power within myself had begun. I remembered the traumas we had endured for three solid weeks in March and was amazed how I had sprung back from such hardships. I remembered the number of helpless tears I had shed when Dakota ran away, when Scott got news about his sick father, when I watched a drowning victim hauled out of an emergency room on a metal cart, when I watched children fighting for scraps of my leftovers, when I rubbed Dakota’s back as he puked on the cement floor of a dilapidated hospital, when I held a screaming, struggling Elle down as two doctors stitched up her gashed forehead, when both Scott and Elle lay sick in bed throwing up, when a pock-marked dark face pressed into our window and demanded money. I recalled an afternoon when I went by myself to sit at the seaside. I felt beaten and victimized. I felt helpless and out of control. I just sat by myself and looked out at the sea and cried.

I wasn’t crying for fear and I wasn’t crying for frustration. I was mourning. I was mourning a loss. The loss of the control that I always imagined I had. If I watched the clock, if I checked the fire alarms, if I bought the approved car seat, if I locked the doors, if I read the labels, if I put the caps on the markers, if I bought extra batteries, if I had electricity and running water, if I was a good mother, if I was a good daughter, if I took my vitamins…nothing bad could happen. Somehow, if I did everything right, fate could not do me wrong. I was living to control what could happen, what might happen, and I was scared to death of losing that control.

And that was the moment. The moment I let go of the fantasy of any type of control over life and fate, and what the world could throw at me. I had witnessed, experienced, endured and overcome more uncertainty, shock and fear in those three weeks than I had in my whole life combined. Regardless of my own efforts, I could control none of them. My only choice was to control how I reacted to them. What I had done or hadn’t done hadn’t caused or prevented the hardships we faced in those three weeks.

Once I realized that I really have no control over anything that MIGHT happen to me, once I resigned to the fact that life is unpredictable and anything could happen, once I admitted that the only thing I can really count on is faith; faith in God, in the world, in the goodness of people and in myself, once I was aware of my ability to cope with life’s hardships and move on, once I gave up control, I was empowered. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I could live life, experience the world, appreciate and celebrate my existence without trying to control what might, could, should happen.

And that’s what I had done this week. I had simply let go of the imagined control I had tried to grip so fiercely, and experienced life. Without insecurity or fear or self-consciousness or paranoia or guilt or worry. I lived this week with the only sure thing I have, faith.