It’s quarter ’til seven on Friday night here in the Achibra family living room, where the extended family, a passel of neighbors, and the US Embassy Political Officer are huddled around the TV watching the big Ghana-Angola soccer game. Shrieks of manly glee erupt intermittently from the couches, with many a high-pitched Ghanaian “OH!” It’s pretty entertaining. I’m sitting at my familiar spot at the dining room table, about 10 inches (literally) from the oscillating fan.
In the month’s blank space of non-blogging, Ben returned to the States, I headed back to the Tema children’s home, and the TAL Executive leadership touched down in Accra. Shortly thereafter, Malaak Compton-Rock and her assistant, Lea Cohen, arrived, and Raymond Stephens (the aforementioned US Embassy Political Officer) joined all of us for a fact-finding trip to Kete Krachi.
Malaak Rock (yes, indeed: wife of comedian Chris Rock) heads up Journey for Change, an NGO that coordinates reciprocal service-learning trips for African-American kids from Brooklyn, NY, and African kids around the continent. The sweet catch: the African-American kids serve in countries to which they have traced their ancestry, allowing them to get a glimpse into their native culture and language, and life in the country from which their forebears came.
Malaak read and loved Pam’s book, Jantsen’s Gift, so this March, five Journey for Change kids, accompanied by Soledad O’Brien and a CNN crew, will arrive for a week-long service-learning adventure with the Touch A Life kids. And in April, the Journey For Change and Touch A Life kids will head to Washington, DC to headline a joint Congressional briefing on child labor trafficking in Ghana’s Lake Volta fishing industry. I am really excited for all of them – I think the US and Ghanaian kids will do a great job, and both trips will be once-in-a-lifetime thrills.
This week in Kete Krachi, Malaak and Lea got a feel for the Lake, the Village of Life (where many of the rescued kids live), and the Achibra family’s mission and work. And Raymond Stephens received the US Embassy’s first in-person introduction to Touch A Life’s work with the Achibras. The kids performed their gome, a drumming and dancing performance about their lives on the Lake (makes me cry every time I see it); we went on an early morning Lake Volta outreach/victim identification trip, toured the Thursday market, and enjoyed an 11 a.m. round of Guiness with Nana, the Krachi District paramount chief.
This week was also the first time that the Achibras regarded me less as a guest and more as one of the family. The role-swap meant that I got a better glimpse of the awesome (emphasis on the awe) household mechanics behind the Achibras’ unstoppable hospitality. I’ve come to believe even more firmly that the family’s generosity of spirit, food, drink, and accommodation pivots on a steady supply of young, unemployed female family members and friends who can be tapped for service at a moment’s notice.
I don’t know if this is bad or good. On one hand, I wouldn’t trade the opportunities of Western womanhood for a life of hand-washing laundry, pounding fufu, and tending stew pots in the front yard, while a phalanx of able-bodied adults (male and female) stand around and watch me work.
On the other hand, my sojourns in Bolivia and Nepal taught me that when moms, grandmas, and sister-in-laws are constantly at home, there is always someone ready to offer guests the tea-and-conversation that Americans are too busy to bother with. And there is something about that steady, gentle, bodily acknowledgement that instills a great sense of dignity – in the guest, I guess, but not always in the woman.
I don’t know. I’m sure things don’t have to be either/or, but I don’t know how to do it well – “it” being hospitality, sanity, and a career. And once again, I’m closing a blog post in the wee hours of 9 o’clock p.m., when my brain is doing a quick nose-dive.
[Imagine pithy concluding statement here] and sleep well. I’ll see you back in Accra after tomorrow’s long drive.
