Saying Good-bye
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2009
1
11
26
Trip End
Aug 11, 2009
Ho, Volta, Ghana
Thursday, June 18, 2009
If you visit a place for three days, leaving it will be sad because of a great café you found or the beautiful backdrop of mountains rising above the city as the sun rises. Somewhere between three days and a month, leaving becomes difficult because of the life you have created, the friends you drank tea with at that café and the boy who brings ice cream by the office every afternoon. If you were to return at some undefined point down the road, the mountains would still be there and the café would serve the same tea, but the people would be different, and it's harder to leave people than places.
I will be the first to admit that I was rather ambivalent about this whole Ghana thing at the beginning. I was coming off one of the best months of my life wrapping up university, and I hated to think my friends and I would never be together in the same way again. On top of that, Ghana was loud, confusing, and unbearably hot. I resented the country my first week here, somehow blaming it for the changes my life was going through when, in fact, I had been the one who bought the plane tickets.
But I have come to enjoy my life here, the surety of knowing the price of plantain chips, the ability to hold basic conversations in Ewe, the smiles of everyone in the small town of Ho, and the people I have met. I will miss the comfort and stability of my life here, and I will miss some of the people dearly, but my purpose here is complete, and it’s time to move on. If I stay much longer, I am sure to get a raging case of itchy feet.
And now seems the most appropriate time to inform those of you who were eagerly awaiting stories of my West African adventures that these adventures will not be happening. This change occurs for a variety of reasons I won’t get into. Suffice to say, I never expected to feel happy wandering West Africa alone, and being faced with only two months of freedom before beginning full-time employment, I have decided I will be much happier traveling South America with my boyfriend. West Africa isn’t going anywhere and perhaps when I return, they’ll have better roads.
So to give you a sneak peak of what to expect (starting my last three paragraphs with so, and, and but – English teachers everywhere, my mother and grandmother included, are cringing) there will be a couple weeks of Ecuador (riding on the roofs of trains, swimming in hot springs, visiting colonial towns), a few weeks of Peru (beaches, Machu Picchu, a canyon or two, and the Nazca lines), and a farewell tour through Bolivia and northern Chile (desolate landscapes and an insane bike ride). Of course, this itinerary is subject to change without notice, so if I somehow turn up in Buenos Aires – well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
