Day 7: Linear Man Meets Ghana

As my students can attest to, I pride myself on being organized.  So throughout this trip I've been trying to lay out every day's schedule well ahead of time, and my good brother Brando has done his best to accommodate the plan.  But the days have seldom gone as expected.

Take yesterday, for example.  The original plan was to meet with the leaders of the three schools in the area that we work with on Saturday night or some time on Sunday, then visit the schools on Monday and Tuesday morning.  But Monday is a holiday (though it is not listed as such on any of the lists of holidays I had consulted before planning the trip), and two of the people I had hoped to speak to before Monday were  not available, and so forth.  So when Sunday dawned, our dance card was looking pretty sparse.  After three weeks of trying to fit too much into too little we had time on our hands--which, given our general state of exhaustion, was perhaps not a bad thing.  Resting is seldom part of my plan.

Anyway, part of the dynamic here is that Ghanaians have been promised so many things by visitors from the West--and so many problems can come up to interrupt a trip--that they don't take our stated plans very seriously.  Until, that is, one actually shows up.  So Sunday was punctuated by a series of visits from friends of friends, meals that we had neither asked for nor expected, and offers of help.

The one big event of the day--which I had not anticipated when planning the trip--was a visit with the Chief, but that kept getting moved back 15, 30, 60, 90 minutes as everyone assembled to greet us.  The meeting itself was conducted in Twi, so most all of it went over my head, but there was no mistaking the fact that the Chief and Elders were delighted by our visit and stated purpose, which Brando confirmed, and by the time the meeting was over doors that had before been slightly ajar were now opening quickly and Monday was going to be a full day, indeed. 

But there was more to Sunday.  The day ended with an extremely emotional and inspiring meeting with a man who has devoted his life to redeeming the pains of his own childhood.  I had no idea of and no plan for that.