Thanksgiving
The air was cold outside when I left my house in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. It was still dark out, but in the moon light I could see my breath. I was freezing. I had on shorts and a t-shirt and I jumped in place and shifted my weight from side to side to keep warm, but I was dressed for the mid day sun and the searing heat of the afternoon. I waited for Steven, a colleague of mine from the school, and his girlfriend, Gladys, by the front porch of the compound house we live in. When they came out, we walked out to the dirt road and then down to the intersection. In the darkness, with the street lit dimly and warped by the strange shadows cast from electric lamps and a full moon, I stumbled in my flip-flops over the ruts and loose dirt. Steven and Gladys, both Ghanaians, navigated the path adroitly. Gladys was heading to Nkoranza as well, although her ultimate destination was different from mine. When we got to the intersection, we stood underneath a dim orange street light, one of a few scattered along the side of the road leading to Yefri, attached to the wooden poles holding up the electrical lines. The sun had not yet risen. I couldn’t see the trees, with their faint powdering of red dust from the road, and the mud brick abodes were mere outlines, points of discontinuity in the gradient shadows off from the road. Here we made some small talk. As we talked dawn broke behind us, raising the morning mists and huddled creatures in mud brick huts, and we stood at the corner waiting for the first taxis to come.
In my small green backpack, along with my laptop, a book, money, a bank card, identification, and a few changes of clothing, I had stuffed two energy bars to eat for breakfast. I ate one while we waited, for something to do with my hands, and because I thought it would warm me up. I was anxious and bored in the cool, rising dawn sunlight. I hadn’t spent much time in Accra and the last time I had been to the city was July. Accra had a mystique about it and existed in my memory as only a blurred collage of still frames from my first days in Ghana, overexposed and washed out. It was anything but lucid, starkly antithetical to the moving pictures in my mind of Yefri, Nkoranza, and Kumasi. Accra was mythical. And standing at the corner of the two dirt roads that intersect near my home in Yefri, with the street light still lit above me despite the rising sun, I appreciated the myth and mystique that the city offered me. It would give me something to think about in the taxis and trotros, as the rides themselves had long since lost their novelty. After six months in Ghana I could find my way around well enough and the idiosyncrasies of travel were nuisances and minor amusements, not challenges anymore. Travel, by itself, was mired in routine and ritual.
As I finished eating, Gladys waved down a passing taxi and we got in, bidding Steven a casual farewell. We left Yefri, and I put on my headphones in the backseat and I leaned my head against the window. I was wedged in between the other passengers, the side door, and my backpack. Here was satisfaction, here was heedless happiness. I had lost track of time, not in terms of hours but in months and seasons and I was savoring the novelty of seemingly celebrating Thanksgiving in the summer time. In the car, the air was warmer and the cool breeze rushing through the open windows of the taxi was calming. Now the sun was rising quickly, an austere orange globe climbing up past long, thin gray clouds on the horizon. Warm air and exhaust blew in through the window and the taxi rolled and rattled on over the dirt road.
A half hour passed and we ended up in Nkoranza. I found my trotro to Kumasi waiting, almost full, ready to depart. There is no time table for departures. Cars only leave when they are full and it was merely fortuitous, a stroke of dumb luck, not deftness, that I arrived in time to buy the final ticket. We left once I boarded, not more than an hour after sun rise. I wanted to get to Kumasi early on that Wednesday. I wanted the whole day to relax and I wanted to get myself a bed before they were all taken. The following day, Thanksgiving, there was to be a dinner at the ambassador’s residence in Accra. To get there by early afternoon I had to wake up in Kumasi around dawn and I wanted to be well rested for the ride down to Accra. I suspect that trying to sleep on a trotro would, at best, go down as a gross misadventure. The drivers regularly pack twenty or more people into the vans, replete with the extra rows of seats welded to the floor and the walls, and I usually end up stuck in a corner with my neck crooked and my head slamming against the sheet metal roof after every bump we go over. And even if that weren’t the case, I just don’t like travelling tired.
In the trotro down to Kumasi, wide awake, with my knees and my back pack in my lap and my headphones on, looking out the window and moving my ankles around the cargo underneath the seats to keep them cool, I had some time to think. This would be my first time away from home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the longest time I had ever been away from my home, my family, and my friends. In college, I had spent four months in Spain but I had left a week after New Year’s, with the tastes and sensations of the holidays, the splendor and revelry, fresh in my mind. It’s not easy being away from home as the year draws to a close, but the uniqueness of the experience at the time, that is, the opportunity to travel down to Accra and eat and drink and sleep for free in the capital, blunted the creeping homesickness.
Reflecting on all of this, I realized that I had never thought of Thanksgiving as a holiday in and of itself. For me, it was always the beginning of a season of celebrations, a prelude to festivities around Christmas and New Year’s Day. It was as if, up until that point, the end of the year was a day dream, some fantasy place far off in the future. Like the way young children think of college, or twenty somethings think of retirement or death, it wasn’t fiction, but up until Thanksgiving the year’s end and the jubilation and warm, romantic feelings that accompanied it were far from the point of realization. Thanksgiving used to be the end of the fall semester. Thanksgiving used to be the day I got to see all the family I hadn’t seen since Labor Day. Thanksgiving used to be the point at which the temperature, after meandering downwards as we trudged through the cold rains and icy mud of autumn, fell precipitately, down below freezing. And I wasn’t sad about this. I just missed the comfort and the feeling of home.
We rolled on, continuing south through Ghana. Kumasi is only about three hours from Nkoranza, but the last hour of the trip is usually spent sitting in traffic on the narrow roads outside of Kumasi. On the ride down, with the windows open, the trotro stays cool. But once we come to the inexorable stand still in the midst of Kumasi’s arterial roadway blockage, the trotro quickly heats up. The roof, walls and floor, all metal, all conduct heat from the sun, the road, and the engine. Exhaust and a faint fog of dust billow in through the windows and the back door, which usually isn’t closed completely, but only tied in place with a rope. This is where my legs begin to hurt and I try, in vain, to reposition myself in my cage of stuffed vinyl seats and metal. There is no solace to be found in the scenery either. The shops and homes are all concrete and mud brick still. Some are painted with advertisements in solid, severely radiant purples or yellows or reds, but most sink back from the road into the jungle beyond with austere, sun baked shades of tan and brown. There isn’t any sort of skyline to see, even if I could peer out through the windows and above the traffic. While we sit there, waiting, women come up besides the cars lined along the road selling bananas, water, groundnuts, and other small snacks. If I make eye contact with them, they won’t leave me alone. If I go to buy something and the car starts moving again, they’ll run along side the windows, their food tray balanced precariously on their heads, handing the food to me through the window as I fish change out of my pocket.
This trip was no different from any of the others and so the ride continued like this, like it always does, until we reached Kejetia station. The trotro from Nkoranza to Kumasi always stops at Kejetia station, in the center of Kumasi, nestled in a valley between two steep hills lined with multistory buildings and banks with glossy windows. Around the station are shops and vendors crowded in front, next to, and on top of one another for blocks and blocks. The more expensive wares, such as electronics and appliances, are sold out of the rented spaces in the concrete buildings with the big, heavy iron doors along the sides of the roads, but the lower cost, higher volume goods, such as fruits and vegetables, wooden stools and shovels, trowels and machetes, clothing and footwear are sold off of blankets spread out on the sidewalk. Milling around between the street vendors and the shop keepers are a few men and many women selling small baked snacks and water sachets from bowls and boxes on top of their heads. Overlooking the station, perhaps half a mile up the hill to the east, is a towering cathedral, one of the few distinctive edifices breaking up the horizon. I don’t know it’s history, who built it or when, but alongside the hodgepodge of brown, slanted roofs, scattered radio antennae, and the grayish tint of the exhaust fumes hanging in the air like a thick wool blanket, the cathedral stands out like a beacon, like a lighthouse of sorts for travelers.
Per its usual routine, the trotro breaks creak and we stop at the entrance to the station. There are many cars in front of us and next to us, and after a few moments, behind us as well. I, like most of the passengers, didn’t wait for the trotro to park itself. I jumped off and side stepped my way through the congestion of cars and filthy air. From here I moved through the station to the corner farthest away. The sun was very high now and I could feel it on my neck. There was no order, just a teeming crowd. I wasn’t feeling contemplative any more and I was tired and I wanted to rest. The trotros going to places within and around Kumasi are all lined up along long, narrow pavilions. Underneath are men selling tickets and women selling bread and other food and benches where the passengers sit and wait. I found my car and paid, and waited to board in the shade of the narrow overhang. I had made good time up to this point and I was not in a hurry. I looked around the station to see if I could pick out any of my Peace Corps colleagues, but I saw no one I recognized.
The trotro pulled up, the other passengers boarded, I boarded, and we left. After half an hour, on a road leading out of Kumasi to a city called Oduom, I told the driver to stop and I dropped off on the edge of the highway, near the narrow street leading to the sub office. No one was inside the office when I arrived. The back bedroom was empty and Mike was out running errands. In the back bedroom, I put my bag down on a bed, laying claim to it for the coming night, and took my computer out onto the porch. I spent the day reading e-mail, writing e-mail, and reading the news, a love I had left behind when I came here to Ghana. It was hard, at first, finding ways to waste time on the internet. Very little happens in terms of current events during the week of Thanksgiving. But the miraculous thing about the internet is that it allows for an almost infinite amount of opinion and analysis to be generated by only a handful of items meriting news coverage. Over the remainder of the day only two other volunteers, friends of mine, came by the sub office. The two young women spent most of the day, like me, doing nothing of merit. For dinner, we walked down the street and bought fried rice, chicken, and beer and brought it all back to the sub office.
The next morning, we woke up early. My bag was light, I was leaving my laptop and some other items behind in storage, to pick up on my way back home on Friday. Breakfast was light and we soon left the sub office. Cars heading towards Ejisu, a town in the direction of Accra, will stop and pick up passengers along the side of the road. We stood out there on the side of the street, down the hill a little ways, as the sun rose up above once again. Although it was bright out, the air was still cool and the breeze from the cars rushing by felt good as we stood waiting. I had my sun glasses on and in my backpack I had a camera, an early Christmas present from my parents, ready to chronicle the journey south of Kumasi. I thought I remembered much of what the south was like. I had spent ten weeks there over the summer, and even though Accra was still a mystery to me, I didn’t understand how inured I had become to the labors of rural life in Yefri. In the trotro, the closer we got to the capital, the nicer the road became. The houses and offices and gas stations and shops along the sides of the roads all looked bigger and better built. When we passed through towns, the people dressed better. The fruits and vegetables they sold were bigger and the baskets they sold them in were thicker and more neatly woven. Even the cars themselves seemed to be newer and glistened more in the morning sunlight.
As the car moved down the road, I watched the country develop. As we approached Accra, we approached civilization. It was shocking. As tempting as it was to label the people, their homes, their places of work, their cars and trucks as ostentatious, I couldn’t. They were simply modern, clean, and new. Things were painted white and made of plastic. No one was in rags, only ripped jeans and faded t-shirts. I felt like I was returning to America, or at least that’s how I imagined I would feel when returning home. I had been away from this developed world for almost six months and the sudden transition back into it was unsettling. I wanted to live like this again. Returning to Accra was like watching a period drama depicting my past, seeing the actors in the garb and get-up that cling best to the era, with the body language and behavior perfected, with perfect verisimilitude.
Accra has its slums too, but on this excursion into the mythical capital city, they were no where to be seen. My two friends and I made our way to the diplomatic district of the capital. We were all staying with American employees of the embassy. We wandered through the labyrinth of paved streets and sidewalks, in awe and struck by novelty from what we had known so intimately only six months prior. One of the girls I was with had directions to the home of her host family for the evening so we accompanied her there. When we found the house we were looking for, the front gate to the property was closed. Here, they still have property. People’s lawns are their own, and no one else’s. A groundskeeper opened the gate for us and led us in. In the drive way, there was a basketball hoop and bicycles. There were cars in the driveway and a swing hung down from a big leafy green tree in the front yard. The house was enormous. At the door I felt a breeze blow by me and I realized the woman who answered it, a middle aged American woman, had the air conditioning on and wanted us to come inside.
Inside, her house was indistinguishable from any American home, except for the fact that it was bigger and nicer than most. By the door inside she had a small collection of wooden warthogs, bought from places all over Africa. She served us cranberry juice and we sat in her living room and drank it while she told us about her job and all the places she had travelled to. After about twenty minutes, once we had finished our drinks and used her bathroom, she offered to drive us to the ambassador’s residence, which was not far.
In the car, there was also air conditioning. There were CDs and seat belts and spaces for me to move my legs around. Back outside the confines of her property, but still in the semi-opaque bubble of her SUV, we merged onto the highway and fought traffic for a few minutes. We missed the turn the first time drove by the ambassador’s house. Cars honked their horns and cut others off. On our second pass, we pulled into the right lane and slowly headed towards the gate. Guards, tall African men, waved us through and then we got out of the car. The ambassador lives in a mansion. He has a driveway in a semicircle, a swimming pool, landscaping and real flowers, a big outdoor patio with a roof over it and a dozen ceiling fans hanging down, and a yard with cut grass. Big glass doors from the patio open up into the living room. Inside, his walls and shelves are lined with books and knickknacks from around the world. In the corner is a grand piano. He has real carpets and real flush toilets and real running water, hot and cold.
I mingled with my friends from Peace Corps. I had not seen many of them since we had finished training in August. We caught up each other on what we had been doing at our sites, who had quit and gone home, and what there was to do in Accra that evening. Not long after I arrived, the ambassador, as always without a tie (certainly excusable in this case considering I was in flipflops), got up to announce that dinner was to be served soon. On a long, clothed table up near the house on the patio, servers brought out food in dishes of silver, ceramic and glass. There were bowls of cranberries, carrots, peppers and green beans. There were basins of stuffing and mashed potatoes, with gravy in a dish to the side and a silver ladle poking up out through the surface. There were plates with cauliflower and broccoli, seasoned and warm. And there were twelve cooked turkeys. So I filled my plate with as much food as I could fit and sat down at a table, eating and drinking glass after glass of sangria and smirking insouciantly, drunk off of the atmosphere and food more than the drink itself and from knowing that one day when I return home I have all of this waiting for me.
