How she got back

Eleven months after returning to Finland, Salakka got a surprising chance to spend a week in Ghana. She took it, of course, and went back for a week. She hadn't planned to go this soon, and she was nervous - in vain. It was as if she'd never been away. It felt natural, it felt like home, it felt as if she'd gotten back a piece of herself she hadn't know to have gotten missing.

Then she came back to Finland, of course, and then things took some kind of a turn. Until this, she'd simply gone back to her Finland-life, busy and full of activities. Now she remembered her other life, and began to miss it.


It was pretty soon after her short trip that she realized something.
It was a late evening, she was laying on her bed, waiting for sleep. Her thoughts were flowing through her head, she was only half conscious. Then she kind of heard herself thinking:

...and then, when I don't have to stand these horrid Finnish winters anymore...

She stopped to look at the thought. (I have no idea what she had been thinking of before, it was only this line that stuck out from the blur.)

Wait a minute. "And then when I don't have to stand the Finnish winters anymore"? And when would that be? What am I thinking of?

And that was it, that was when it hit her, hard. In her heart, she had been living as if she was only in Finland for a while. But that was not how she had arranged her life. In practise, she'd been living as if she'd live in Finland for the rest of her life.

It was obvious she would have to do some re-thinking.


Yet, it was a full year later that she realised the obvious fact: She should go back to Ghana for not just a few weeks holiday, but for some months. To be there and see what it would bring.

It would be far too complicated to explain all the turns that followed, all the changes in plans to different directions. Despite of her decision, when she finally got to Ghana another 1,5 yrs later, it was a one-month holiday trip. But that's not the point; Ghana would make her re-realize what was supposed to happen.

The point is, she did return. Over 4 years after her first arrival, Salakka landed again on Kotoka International Airport.