A Better Place to Live

June 25
Kumasi

We’ve moved from room 133 to five rooms and a pantry in a bungalow of our very own.



Ah yes, life is good when I can hear Graeme but can’t see him, when I can eat grilled cheese sandwiches and when there’s a steady stream of running water (sometimes it’s even hot).

This seems like luxurious living. The power is sporadic, like everywhere in Ghana, but no matter: there’s a kitchen AND our own very pet snail living in the gutter outside.



Aside from the interrogating security guards at the front gate, the scorpions lurking in the bush outside and the vultures sitting atop the trash heap down the road, life here is pretty good.



We have left behind Bismark, our friend and custodian; Eman the manager and his wife Gloria (vendor of the “Making Jesus the Centre of Your Marriage” marital counseling book); several francophone Africans; the macho and often scantily clad men who work for Areeba, a popular telecommunications company in Ghana; and daily Twi lessons.

In exchange we have found scholarly solitude nestled deep in the trees of a well-manicured university campus.



We’ve said goodbye to the morning cries of roosters, and chickens; the calls for “BISMARK!” to come attend to one duty or another; and the swooshing sound of a broom sweeping away the dirt, and garbage under our window that woke us every morning. Our new place is quiet. Somehow, it’s unsettling, this quiet. Africa is loud. The African philosophy is simple. Music? Crank it. Air conditioning? If you’ve got it, use it, full blast. Here, though, all I hear is birds tapping on the roof, crickets calling and the rustling of leaves.



I may have to walk to the road later just to hear what I’m missing. Either that, or crank the radio, incite the dog living next door to bark and start yelling for Bismark. (T)