A bumpy road home

"Sister Salakka!"

'Salakka' was how some of the locals pronounced part of her full name, so what would be a more convenient way to call her from now on?

"Do you remember my name?" asked the boy. One of the small black boys, who all looked quite similar to her.

Err... No?! How could one answer that question?

"James?" Salakka guessed.

"No! I'm Gideon!"

"Of course. Sorry, I need a bit more time..."

That was true. Salakka had only been in the home since yesterday, and it was less than a week ago that she had come to the country. She didn't have to know all the names yet, though it would have been nice to recognize the faces. But her mind hadn't even gotten used to be surrounded by black people only.

After three days of "orientation" (one or two informational conversations, one twi lesson and one quite nice verbal exercise to exemplify cultural differences) she had been taken to her project, a children's home a bit further from the centre of Accra. They had taken her by car; the man from the organization drove, and the pastor - leader of the children's home - sat next to him. Salakka sat on the backseat, looking out through the windows, simply taking it all in. The small, disorganized-looking shops on the road sides; the street sellers, carrying everything possible on their heads ("Do you like pillows?"); the deep green of the big, beautiful trees and the long grass that surrounded the roads; the old vans now used as minibuses ("trotros") that were part of the unbelievable traffic chaos and the incredible noise. Everything was noisy, and  it was so hot all the time that she never stopped sweating.

The road was a red dirt road. Really deep red, really dusty and everything but even. "It's a bumpy road", said the pastor and laughed together with the driver. Salakka also made an insecure little "hmh". It was actually easier to get used to not knowing how to behave than to the heat.

Finally, they had made it to the home, and Salakka had experienced a most pleasant surprise: after two years of work in a suburb school in Finland, she had seen a lot of difficult children, and had been sure the African street kids would be much worse. She had been wrong. This would never have happened in a Finnish school: the children ran to meet her, wanted to carry her bags to her room, to tell their names. She realized something she hadn't been able to imagine in advance: this was really a home.

Welcome home, Salakka.


For now, her mind and heart were too full of everything new to analyze anything. By seven o'clock, it was totally dark, and this was real darkness, complete and thick. A woman came to see her - a bit scary woman, who turned out to be the cook of the home.

The first thing she said was an angry bark: "Close the door! Mosquitoes!"

Salakka hurried to close the door and was happy she had gotten a mosquito net from a pharmacy the day before. Woah. A christian pastor leading the home and now this angry woman - and the mosquitoes. It was good her brain was too busy to start analyzing.

The woman gave her plates and cups to keep in the room. On a chair. There was not much else in the room: two bunk beds (both for two people; more volunteers would arrive in a couple of days) and a writing table.

That evening it demanded a huge amount of courage just to step out and go talk to people. She decided not to be the person who is too afraid to go out of her room, and sat a while out on the yard with some of the boys (in a miraculously warm evening; would she ever get used to this?!). Still, the evening was long and she was alone. She wondered if she could actually go to sleep at eight - and if she ever had, since her childhood.

To anyone planning to visit the equatorial areas: just for the info, only the climate makes you exhausted, not to mention the total change of, well, worlds. So for the first week, it's ok to go to bed early. Even at eight.

The next morning, one of the boys came knocking on her door before five, being sure she was late from waking their up. The boy had no idea of what time it was, and to Salakka it seemed absurd somebody would wake up more than half and hour too early when the waking time was 5:30 anyway. Two hours later, it was interesting that the same boy and his friends were able to be leaving the house late, having been up so long.

Soon, half-an-hours and other time-related stuff wouldn't be such a big deal anymore.