The Blurred Months

How to explain the three months of getting-used-to-it-all?

The months Salakka later remembers as a beautiful blur of people, places and moments, not at all as a clear, continuing story with chapters and causalities. In her memories, there is the scary, yet charming beginning, all the first times. And then there is the time later, when she already felt like home. In between them - only the blur, like someone put those months in a washing machine and the linearity was lost for good.

What she got used to, were things like this:

Heat - she didn't stop sweating, she got used to sweating all the time.

Markets had nothing to do with European supermarkets, of course. Here, market meant what it has meant originally: a wide area outside, full of small shops, stalls, sellers and even more people buying it all. There was literally everything from vegetables and meat to crabs and clams (still alive); from African fabrics to European clothes and shoes (mostly second-hand but also new); from local hand-made bracelets and beads to tat imported from Asia. It was completely chaotic, always too hot to breathe and, when Salakka got used to it, always as great to go there: to sink in the crowd and become a part of the chaos.

Hospitals were also something not western at all. The nearest hospital, the public one for this area, looked like a farm house when Salakka first saw it. She waited to get a hospital card, then to get to the nurse, then for the doctor, then to the pharmacy, then to pay for it all and finally to the nurse again. It always took at least three hours, usually five, and she had to go often, not only for herself but also to accompany some of the boys or other volunteers. Soon, the nurses and doctors in the local hospital knew her and asked: "Are you still here? When will you go to your country?". She sang local song with the nurses, making an twelve-year-old boy she had brought to check-ups totally embarrassed. She got a lift back home in her doctor's Volkswagen Beetle. And whatever health issues she had, they were finally solved, cured and healed.

Small adventures could happen anywhere, anytime. If it was raining heavily, it might suddenly be impossible for the guests to leave, so they had to start arranging a place to sleep (in total darkness of course, since the light was always off when it rained). Getting taken to a wedding and ending up serving food. Taking M to hospital when she was really sick, waiting for hours not knowing what was wrong with her. Being guided to a pharmacy by a local woman, passing through dark alleys that were actually too small to even be called alleys. Wandering in the center of Accra or in the chaos of the trotro-stations, asking the way from strangers several times, and always finding it finally, of course. Sitting in Auntie Yaa's room, massaging her, listening to what kind of men they should take (this could be quite an adventure, since Auntie Yaa was not shy to talk about everything).

There was a totally different way to do almost everything. There were many times when she laughed at something someone did, because people simply acted so different in so many situations. She also discovered this was a culture not at all as straight-forward as the European ones. There were things that were supposed to be kept undercover. For example, there was the time when C wanted to bring her rastafarian friend to visit the Home. She asked the pastor, if the guy could sleep one night there, since they hadn't found a room from a guest house. The pastor said yes, but later in the evening one of the small boys came to ask Salakka to talk to one of the big boys. What the guy had to say was: the pastor didn't want the rastafar to be in the church service on Sunday morning so the people would see him, so Salakka (as the "big sister") had to tell C to tell her friend that he had to leave at dawn. Outside there was a sign board saying: "A church where everybody is somebody".

The people she now lived with became essential. It's amazing how one can get so used to the people around, it starts to feel absurd, almost impossible to imagine living with the ones we knew before, the ones waiting back home. This is what makes it scary to think about going back, what brings the nightmares.

Like the one in which she was suddenly in Finland for a distant relatives' funeral. She was worried about when she'd get back to Ghana, but her family didn't listen to her questions about returning, no more than her stories from Ghana. She woke up feeling horrible, thinking she was in Finland, wanting to go back.

When she realized she was still in Ghana, the relief was incredible.