I get knocked down and I get up again

The line comes from a song by Chumba wumba called, oddly, thub-thumping. I’ve never understood the title; its airy chorus brags “pissing the night away” and lists beverages more likely to leave me vomiting the night away.

This is not that

This is the memory of a little boy riding on top of bags of charcoal to the hospital with his mother regularly; this is him hugging me; this is him following me down a path, quietly, until I notice and send him home. They’re well-worn memories; I try not to touch them too much for fear the contact will wear them away. This is his mother crying over the photo of him I gave her, how helpless I feel  next to her grief.

And this is the other little boy, running at me down bush paths, on a collision course with my kneecaps. It’s me, stepping aside and him forgiving me every time for not hugging him and holding any part of me-a finger, my purse strap-that he can reach. It’s me spending one night away and coming back to hear he has died. It’s going for a run and being bent in half by my grief, sobbing into a sweaty t-shirt just beyond where anyone can see me. It’s knowing that I never have a chance to love that little boy the way he deserved to be loved. I get knocked down…

…And I get up again. Today I got a ride to the taxi stand in Town and, before I got out, a man handed me 80 Ghana cedis. I don’t know why, I tried to demur but he was insistent. He didn’t ask for anything in return-not even my number. This morning a woman I’ve met twice told me her family would welcome me in to their home when I go to Kumasi later this week, and then sent me phone credit to offset the cost of me texting her.

I am knocked down by these deaths. I am knocked down by the level of grief I feel, the grief that I see. Yet every time I am knocked down I am picked back up again. I can’t take credit for it; it’s the generosity, the kindness, the love that comes from the people around me. This is how Ghana, how peace corps, how reality can knock me down, and this is how Ghana, how peace corps, how love can pick me up again.

Hamidu 2011- Aug 2, 2014

 Ibrahem: 2012-July 20, 2014

Kayayo

Northern Ghana was not developed when slave traders entered the country two centuries ago. By dint of their being on the coast, Accra, Tacoradi, and Cape Coast were points where Europe, and later America, came to build and fill ships with human cargo. According to “History of Africa”, the north was purposefully not developed by the British in order to ensure a constant stream of cheap labor when the farmers of the north suffered their dry season and moved south for work.

It has been over fifty years since Ghana gained her independence. It experienced the typical African growing pains; a harsh dictator, the bloody overthrowing, an economic descent into poverty, and has emerged into the twenty first century as a country that has experienced three elections without upset. The former Gold Coast has become the Gold Standard by which other African countries are weighed; a peaceful, development minded country whose south boasts hotels comfortable by western standards, a Shop Rite shopping center, and that bastion of development; obesity.

Once you pass through Kumasi, known through the country as being a site of robbery and the very worst in third world transportation, the country is unrecognizable. The north that the British are charged with never developing (but which most people have chosen to overlook) has one major paved road that bisects the regional capital, Tamale. The extreme poverty of the north is unique mostly for how widespread it is. It is not a few people in the north who are poor; it is a few people in the north who are not.

Because of this, many people in the north follow their need for income to the south. During dry season, the typical northern village loses a large chunk of their young women to work in the south, and you can hear the regional dialect Dagbani spoken frequently in Accra and Kumasi.

The disparity of wealth coupled with the fluctuations in the value of the cedi note combine to mean that goods are being sold for very low prices, and the relative wealth of the south remains contained. The young porters need housing, and many find it in refuse walled huts in what is known as “Soddom and Gamorah” in Accra. Those who cannot afford those prices can sleep on the street, and those who rightly fear for their safety on the street can find an older man, one with a home nearby, and accept his offer of a room in return for compliant sex. There is no shortage of these individuals.

Young women stencil their names on their arms with staining black ink so that, if they die in the south, their bodies will be returned to their families. Those that survive wear these marks into their adulthood with something like pride.  Those that survive frequently come home with new babies, with HIV or AIDS, with loss from malaria.

This is important because Ghana also leads the developing world in their low rate of HIV/AIDS, a trend that will not persist should the trend termed Kayayo (a Niger word meaning head porter) persist. What impacts one person has the power to impact us all. The success of Ghana gives hope to many African nations still in the adolescent process of Becoming, and its challenges reach farther than its own borders.