Part of Your World - Disney's Little Mermaid

I had lots of fears about coming into the Peace Corps.  Thanks to my mother and negative media there were the obvious fears like illness, rape, murder and assault.  My biggest fear was the loneliness that comes with being in a completely different culture with people who do not speak your language.  How do you build good relationships with a language barrier?  And how can I be happy without good relationships?

Loneliness is not a problem at all.  Kwesi is the director or the school and clinic, he is not much older than me and he has just moved into the other side of my duplex.  That side sat empty and I swear every bump in the night, every shrieking goat and blowing wind scared me.

But now Kwesi is over there and I love that he is there.  Tonight is the Manchester United v. Real Madrid game and there are a bunch of guys over there watching the game.  They invited me over, I’ll pass.

I love my community.  I could not ask for anything more and that is the truth.  I was scared to leave college because I feel like it is an ideal environment.  Lots of people your age, and everything you want and need is in walking distance.  But right now, I feel like I am in a similar situation.  I feel like the guys next door watching the soccer could be the boys in the Methodist house watching the NBA finals.

I find community here and I love it and here is why.  I walk everywhere.  I trust my neighbors.  I let my kid neighbors borrow my bike and I do not worry about its returned condition.  Kids play soccer on my porch and all they ask for is water and I’m happy to give it.  They play soccer with a small lemon.  When I am on the farm, it smells like home.  Outside is just awesome.  I worship with my neighbors.  I have a seamstress neighbor.  The kids showed me a cashew tree, its huge.  About half a dozen kids fit in the tree at a time, all throwing fruit down to the little kids.  I found wheat at the market and tomorrow I’m going to the mill to get it ground into flour.  Then I’m going to make bread in my solar oven.

Today Janet, a 20 year old girl who lives down the street came in and I was scared she was going to ask for money because she started “I gave my friend 10 cedis…” but then she said “to buy me bras and chocolate biscuits in town, the biscuits are for my boyfriend.  Now they are on my bed and if my mother asks who they are from I want to say you gave them to me for a surprise.  I do not want her to know I have a boyfriend.  Can I say this?  Is this correct?”  So I told her she could say I gave her the biscuits and she left.  Janet’s family is my family here.  Her Dad checks in on me every night and her Mom checks in on my everyday when she walks home from work.  When her Mom walks to work she yells good morning at me through my window.

Funny story:  Mrs. Joe (Janet’s Mom) sat me down one night and told me how she has told her sons they should not marry African women.  She wants them to marry white women because African women will put juju on their husbands and make them not want to see their siblings ever again.  “White women do not have time for that!”  Oh we laugh.

The very next day I wore a juju bracelet to church and the Joe boys made fun of me for it.