WHATCHYA GHANA DO?

Quite unbelievably, this week marks a whole year since we left Ghana – can you imagine?  It's high time this blog gets a proper ending, and this seems like a fairly appropriate occasion to get a bit sentimental, 365 days on...

I sit here listening to the desert blues of Vieux Farke Toure and feel like West Africa will forever be with me in some way.  In the past few months I've watched the region be thrust from obscurity into the daily news cycle in Australia due to the Ebola outbreak, and though, thank god, the outbreak has not yet reached Ghana, the scenes look like my old home, the people share similar accents to my old neighbours and colleagues, and the scenery looks unnervingly familiar.

My friends and I joke about how quick we have been to idolise our old home, the one which caused no end of joy, frustration and heartbreak in equal measures.  But it’s that contrast, that yin and yang in extreme, that makes you feel like you've been propelled into real life, that is so easy to miss.  Before we moved to Ghana, I remember reading an expat’s account of West Africa, describing it as though she were seeing things in colour for the first time.  For a long time I thought the description didn’t quite hit the mark - I didn’t quite fit when I read it nor during my time living there.  But for me, when I came home I think the reverse made sense.  After such intensity - smells, colour, attitudes, the fierceness of life in your face, life elsewhere does seem muted; greyscale. 

The thing is, I wonder if humans are even designed to cope with being as comfortable as we are in Australia.  It makes us complacent, disconnected – both from life and each other.  Sure, it's annoying as hell to need a shower in tropical heat, prepare yourself, step into the bathroom and realise the water is off and your reservoir is empty, only to have to get changed, find the bucket and go and fetch water.  But the thing is, by the time you return, you've had five conversations, made a new friend, been given a pineapple and learnt of a party on later that night. In Brisbane in the morning I can often get all the way to my desk before any other humans acknowledge my existence.

Ghana is a place where people smile and greet each other like everyone matters, but where some people go hungry and rice farmers are undercut by imported rice which goes moudly waiting at Tema port waiting to be dispatched.  Where honesty is trumped by sparing someone the indignity of disappointment – something that has all kinds of impacts on getting stuff done, but I struggled with continuously.  Where the streets are filled with rubble and horrendous-smelling open sewers, but when you fall over on the roadside twenty people will rush to your aid, bring you water and help clean your wounds.  

It’s hard to believe that I’ve now been away from the place as long as I lived there – when you fit so much learning, growing and new adventures into one year it seems like so much longer.  Coming home was a much harder adjustment than going there, but I finally find myself in a steady rhythm: I’ve moulded my job into something I quite enjoy despite being highly administrative, and I’m   continuing to work on Africa based projects.   Which is why, in fact, I’m sitting here writing this back on the continent itself in South Africa.  I haven’t quite made it back Gh-side just yet, but I also didn’t quite last a whole year outside of Africa.  And through my work I have contact with talented professionals from across Africa including Ghana, and it’s exciting to play even just a small role in helping the development of the next crop of African leaders.

I can only hope this blog has scratched the surface, given a small insight and probed some curiosity into a very unique part of the world.  Ghana, medaase-o.  Onyame adom, y3b3hyia bio.