Leaving Accra

Sitting in the lounge in the Amsterdam Airport, I am still groggy from the overnight flight, not quite long enough to get a good night’s sleep but long enough and late enough to engender traveller’s disassociation, that strange, not-quite-fully conscious state where everything is seen through a lens of fatigue and yawns come unbidden in an attempt to find sufficient oxygen after airplane air.

The waning days of my sojourn in Ghana were eccentric and confused. I couldn’t get my departure date clear in my mind and kept telling everyone – the Child’s Rights folks, WUSC, Suma and my friends – that I was leaving Friday. I wasn’t; Saturday had always been d-day. The funny thing is that this confusion wasn’t some weird subconscious desire to leave early. Rather, it really was more about not yet being ready to leave.

There is a tradition, in Accra, amongst the WUSC volunteers that, prior to returning home, a volunteer’s WUSC friends and colleagues gather for a farewell dinner at Suma Court, as if to close the circle that begins when the tired excited curious nervous new volunteer steps off the plane and into the embrace of Suma Court. Juliana and I conferred about the menu, how best to accommodate various likes and dislikes and a vegetarian. We had chicken, fried plantains (my favourite: any day with fried plantains is a good day), jollof rice, red and spicy, and the most exquisite spaghetti (not something I expected to find in Africa), and french fries (comfort food for Canadians here for a long time). There are bottles of Stone beer and then, the real surprise: strawberry ice cream.

I wonder about departures, about saying good bye, about promising to return.... and I do promise. When the time comes all the Suma denizens gather in front. Nicholas runs up to me and I carry him outside (can that really be me with a two-year old clinging to her?) Hugs all around,.... even Peace and Daniel hug me and Juliana and I hug like sisters. Patrick is there with his taxi, the really new one, and the bags are loaded. Somehow, I still have all the suitcases and yet one more package, as well. And as we leave the Suma courtyard everyone waves until the taxi turns out of sight. Patrick comes into the airport with me just on the off chance that I cannot finesse my oversized, bizarrely wrapped (in a tightly tapped, psychedelic purple bag) onto the plane. But the amazingly accommodating attitude of Ghanians continues through the KLM check-in and right through security. No one seems to think my purple plastic bag is the least bit unusual. (It contains two old carved window shutters for traditional huts, one from Mali, one from Burkina Faso. They would be closed during times of war and are carved with warriors and other figures including rats, that would protect the inhabitants of the huts. They speak to me in a way that souvenirs cannot).

So, leaving Accra is decidedly different from arriving. Anticipation has been replaced by wistfulness. I am so pleased to have made a contribution to the work of Child’s Rights International but I am definitely not ready to leave Ghana. Here in Amsterdam airport, in this artificial liminal environment, time and place do not exist, and it is thus that slowly, slowly my shoes turn and like a compass needle finding to true north, start to point towards home....