Summer 2010 in Ghana

Thursday, August 5, 2010

This morning, Annabel, Kelly and I headed over to Reverend James’ house (next door to the school) after breakfast because his wife, Mary, had promised to braid Annabel’s hair in cornrows with Ghanaian flag-colored beads.  Mary and her five year-old daughter Alexandra, who had no school, greeted us, and invited us into an unbelievable home.  The outside was unfinished cinder block, still under construction and not very attractive, but the inside was like nothing we’d seen in Ghana, Community 25 or otherwise.  The indentured servant, Emmanuel, showed us into a kitchen that might as well have been in American suburbia: linoleum floors, granite counter tops, a sink, fridge, a dishwasher, and an oven.  I was dumbstruck.  Mary had worked for two years as a maid in Hoboken, NJ (we bonded over the Jerz), which she proffered as an implied explanation for the startling wealth that had obviously stunned us, her guests.  There was a pile by the door of what looked like hundreds of little girl shoes, and although Alexandra did have a younger sister who wasn’t home, it looked like more shoes than I have probably owned cumulatively in my lifetime.  There was a living room with a large flat screen TV and a few couches next to the kitchen, and here we sat down to begin the braiding. 

After Mary began, Kelly and I remembered that we had to finish our notes for the kids (we had decided to cut out hearts, or “loves” for each student in our classes, color each heart with a unique design in crayon that invariably included yellow, and then write them a brief note on the back congratulating them for their work and improvement during the term).  Anyway, we needed to run back to the school to grab our hearts, paper, scissors, and crayons, and Alexandra asked to come with us.  The three of us skipped the few hundred yards back to the school, but as we approached, a huge lump rose in my throat.  All the kids were at Break, and thus not in class but rather playing outside the compound.  The girls were clapping, dancing, singing, and sucking on bags of rice, while the boys played football, wrestled, and playfully stole things from the girls.  A few kids were trying to convince the FanIce vendor on a bicycle to give them the bagged ice cream for free. 

Kids began to turn around, however, and the moment they saw us, they froze and stared.  First they stared at Alexandra, with her perfect braids and beads, shiny earrings, crisp, ironed white blouse, fluffy hot pink skirt, paten-leather buckled shoes and white socks with delicate ruffles at the top.  Their eyes followed her arms, which were raised and her hands slipped carelessly into Kelly and mine on each side.  And then they stared at us, their beloved Madames, holding the hands of this alien princess girl and skipping with her and smiling at her.  The little girl was, of course, not white, but with her attire and her house (every student knew where she lived), she might as well have been white.  Perhaps that’s why Madame Kelly and Madame Georgia were holding her hands, the eyes said as they pierced ours. She’s like them.  Luckily, Alexandra was completely oblivious to the cultural tsunami that was rearing up to crash violently into the pepper-patch shore at our feet.  Instinctively, unintentionally, I sharply released Alexandra’s hand and distanced myself a few yards from her and Kelly, before I even realized what I was doing.  I was so ashamed I could not meet Kate and Abigail and Esther’s eyes as we headed up the path towards the house, Kelly still holding Alexandra.  I wanted, selfishly, to disappear, could hardly mumble a response to the awed, “Madame”s that greeted us, and as the children fell away, leaving a path before us, instead of their usual uncontrolled swarming, I felt acutely that I had betrayed them.  The sickening feeling got worse as we brought Alexandra up the stairs and into our small house.  No student was EVER allowed into our house.  EVER.  And while it was a great relief to escape the children’s’ stares and whispers, I knew that bringing this wealthy, foreign child-creature into our house before our own children’s’ eyes only served to compound our guilt.

Leaving the house was even worse.  I delayed as much as I could, hoping Break would end, but alas, it did not oblige, Madame.  We left the house carrying lots of paper and scissors.  Alexandra had asked to carry the crayons, so she appeared, to the awe and jealousy of 150 pairs of eyes looking from every direction, holding an enormous, bulging ziplock bag of crayons in every color conceivable to the adolescent imagination, and I daresay a considerable amount more. Lexi did not look at, much less address, any of the multitude of children her age and older that gaped so shamelessly at her, and I hurried us all back to her house as quickly as I could. 

When we arrived, Alexandra removed her shoes and exclaimed to her mother, “Mommy, the dust got my new shoes all dirty!”  She was not at all a spoiled child, but the shoes were only imperceptibly dusty (if at all), and her comment, in light of the condition of the shoes worn by scores of children whom I loved (much more dearly than Alexandra herself), who were only a stone’s throw away from Alexandra as she spoke (albeit in an entirely different world), made me cringe. 

We entered the living room, where Mary’s nimble fingers navigated Annabel’s bright red hair deftly and the tiny braids were multiplying.  We greeted them, and Kelly and I sat down to our colouring.  Alexandra decided against drawing, and instead turned on the large television to an episode of Teletubbies.  She began singing along to the songs, shaking her hips in unison with the cartoon creatures, and generally having quite a pleasant time.  Her father walked through the room and smiled at his lovely, twirling, beaming young daughter, and pinched her cheek with pride.  The scene was so normal, so typical, and so like my own childhood that it ought to have been heart-warming for me.  Unfortunately, the effect could be more accurately described as nauseating.  I almost began to cry at the thought of Jerry and Clifford and Baba and Mariama and all the dozens of kids next door who would never just watch cartoons, or dance to Teletubbies, or have parent casually pinch their cheek, or even have electricity in their house much less a television on which to watch Teletubbies in the first place. And as Alexandra giggled and jumped and spun around, I couldn’t help watching how carelessly her clean, bare feet squished into the thick, soft rug beneath them, a feeling I never really appreciated until that moment, when I thought of the scores of children whose feet would never be free from dust, and who would never, ever know what it is like to step bare-footed onto a clean, soft rug.