Eating out

"Wow! This restaurant looks really nice!"
"So neat. Feels like Europe."
"Look at the menu! They have so many things... Spaghetti! I've missed spaghetti..."
"French fries!"
"For once something else than fried rice and chicken!"
"Ah, now I don't know if I want jollof rice like I planned or one of the European dishes..."
"Let's order."

"Yes?"
"I'd like to have spaghetti bolognese."
"We don't have it right now."
"Oh... Oh. Then I don't know... Okay. French fries with grilled chicken?"
"We don't have that, too."
"Ah. Then I'll just take jollof rice."
"We don't have that."

"What do you have?"
"Fried rice and chicken."


The lesson learned: usually you get the most delicious meal not in a restaurant, but in a friend's home, cooked outside by the fire. (Unless they happen to serve okro stew and that's the one dish among all the delicious local foods you happen to hate.) If you miss European foods, go to Kokrobite and pay or ass off - or just miss them and accept it. 

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.

Beach girl

Before Ghana, Salakka didn't like beach life. You know: laying on sand under the sun, sweating, with crowds of other people doing the same. It wasn't enjoyable. She didn't have the patience to keep sweating there long enough even to get suntanned.

In Ghana, it was a bit better, because of the Ocean. Even though the sun was too hot, the Ocean was worth it. Anyway, she often couldn't stand staying under the direct sunlight for very long, still, and maybe this was the reason she was a lot less suntanned than the other volunteers. And still, she was a little bit annoyed with the kind of beach life she saw in Accra: the crowds packed on the beach, tourists forcing themselves to stay on one spot, sweating. Was it really so great?

Then something changed. It was after 6 months in Ghana, and it was with Milla at first. She took Salakka to a smaller beach east of Accra, where it was quiet and there were no tourists. They bought fresh pineapple and lay in the heat. The sun was so bright that when she tried to take a pic of Milla, she didn't see what she was photographing (and ended up leaving out Milla's head). It was definitely too hot - but they simply didn't mind. They just went to swim, added sun cream and stayed there.

And suddenly it was wonderful.

There's no way to explain it. It was simply a change of attitude. Salakka let go of the need not to feel so hot, and instead of feeling uncomfortable, she tried enjoying the heat. And did. The sun was caressing her, and the Ocean was there ready to take Salakka on her arms any minute she felt like it.


The change was sealed when Salakka went on a two weeks travel in the end of her stay. The first place she got to was a small village called Busua on the west coast of Ghana. At the time, it was no tourist season and the village was practically empty. The beach was the most beautiful one Salakka had ever seen (or has ever seen since, writer's notice). She was alone and free to spend there whatever amount of time she liked - disturbed by no one. And it was then that she finally truly got hooked on the beach life at it's best.

It wasn't crowds packed on the same spot to sweat until they dropped. It was about enjoying the sun on her skin, feeling the presence of the Ocean, not having to hurry at all, to any place - simply being free to stop to enjoy that very moment.

Since then, Salakka was able to feel the same happiness, no matter how many people there were around, and even when the sea was not the Ocean herself. A year later in Finland, she rushed to the beach on the first hot day and ended up getting herself totally sunburnt, having stupidly thought "the Finnish sun coulnd't hurt her after Ghana". And 3,5 years later, when she headed on a trip to Cuba and Ghana, she told her mother what she looked most forward to, was the BEACH. Her mom laughed, surprised. She remembered her daughter as the one who couldn't stand beach life.

Tunnustus / Blog Award

Sain (tai Salakka sai?) tällaisen:




Kiitos Suvi! 

Palkinto menee eteenpäin Sesa Wo Subanin puolella, koska täällä ei ole sijaa selittelyille. Sen sijaan lupaan ihan kohta kirjoittaa lisää Salakasta, muuten en olisi palkinnon arvoinen.

*
Salakka's adventures got awarded. I'll pass it on via Sesa Wo Suban, cos this is no place for explanations. Instead, here I promise to soon publish another chapter of Salakka's story - to be worth the award.

Looking back

Salakka was in a bus.

The sunshine outside seemed in conflict with how cold she knew it was there. The snow was shining incredibly white under the sun. It was beautiful, but she closed her eyes.

Now she only felt the sunlight on her face, saw it through her eyelids. It made her feel good. Sun was sun. She imagined being in a trotro instead of this big, half-empty bus. Despite the men behind her babbling in Finnish, it was easy to picture.

The sunshine there with the heat. The sweatty t-shirt sticking to her skin. (For some reason, the thought of the shirt made her see the trousers, too: the ones with the half-length legs.) The car trembling on the dirt roads, people sitting close to each other, the hot air flowing in through the open window.

How she loved it. So much, that missing it was more a pleasure than it was painful.

She imagined being back there, going back again, and that's when she realized something.

Next time, it would be different. It would be the same, but the same time different. The times she had spent there were past now, something to look back to, something she'd always remember. All the visits she had made belonged to one era, and she could easily imagine her and the friends who had been there looking back to it all, years from now, with a wistful smile, "oh those were the days".

The times to come, being there in the future, would be something new. Not better or worse, just new.

She looked at the snowy scenery. She'd just have to wait a bit before finding out what was yet to come.

Välihuomio / Note

(In English below)

Tämä ei ole nyt Salakan tarinaa, vaan kirjoittajan välihuomautus.

Blogin tilastojen mukaan täällä käy jonkin verran eri ihmisiä. Virallinen lukijalista on kuitenkin lähes tyhjä, eikä kommentteja juurikaan tule. Kirjoittajana minua luonnollisesti kiinnostaisi tietää, keitä kaikkia täällä käy ja mitä tästä tarinasta ajatellaan. Ottaisin mielelläni vastaan palautettakin teksteistä.

Tämä on siis rohkaisu: blogia saa toki lukea incognito ja hiljaa pysyen, enkä lopeta kirjoittamista, tuli virallisia lukijoita tahi kommentteja tai ei. Mutta ilahdun, jos ilmoitatte itsestänne! Lukija-napikka pitäisi löytyä sivun alalaidasta (joo, tiedän, se on piilossa, mutta olen huono tämän sivun modaamisen kanssa) ja kommentteja, olivat ne sitten anonyymejä moikkauksia, tuttujen tervehdyksiä tai rakentavaa kritiikkiä, otetaan ilolla vastaan!

Salakan tarina jatkuu joka tapauksessa taas pian.

*

This is not a new chapter for Salakka's story, but a note from the writer.

I've noticed that there are quite a lot of people visiting this page, but I don't know who they are and what they think. So, please feel free to write a comment, I'll be happy about a 'hello' as well as real feedback on my texts.  Just because I'm interested! You are also welcome to keep reading in silence, and the story will continue soon, with or without comments!

Milla

Milla was a Norwegian girl, who appeared out of nowhere one sunny day.

First, Salakka thought she might be another volunteer – so often some american short-term visitors came to the Home and wanted to do something small with the kids (this save-the-world-in-one-day -volunteerism is a pretty absurd phenomenom, by the way, but doesn't really belong to this story). Anyway, Milla turned out to be a student, who was doing research for her degree in the university. She was hoping to interview the boys in the Home.

That day, the other girls had gone somewhere, and Salakka was showing the place to Milla and took her to the pastor to explain what she wanted. They immediately got along together (Milla and Salakka, not the pastor) and Salakka was happy when Milla said she'd come back soon to continue on her research.

Milla was the best thing that had happened for some time. She was, shortly, great. She had come to Ghana with her one-and-a-half-year-old son, whose dad was Nigerian, for six months. They had made it very well on their own here, and had got to know a lot of people. They were now renting a room from a lady not far from the Home. Which was also great. A lot of beach days, drinks at the nearby Spot, good talks and shared moments were yet to come.

Milla was strong and free. It was easy to talk with her about pretty much anything and her attitude towards life made Salakka feel good too. Milla was understanding and positive about things, but the same time she was clever, critical in a healthy way, and not afraid to speak frankly. Somehow, she reminded Salakka of her own strong and positive self, which had at some moments been buried under all the heavy things.

It was with Milla that Salakka found a nice beach she hadn't been to before, and with Milla she tried to go to a yoga lesson of which she had seen an ad on the roadside. It was with Milla that she talked about life, people, things they couldn't understand here, about big and small stuff. With Milla she laughed on things and, occasionally, cried about others. They didn't even meet all that often, but they became close, and they had a lot of fun.

She laughed when Milla was annoyed with a local guy questioning them at the busstop and told the man they were from Croatia. Milla laughed at her, when she got furious to the man who had told them about the yoga lesson and given a wrong time – on purpose, Salakka claimed, wanting just to meet white girls (the man was laughing, too).

They also looked at the culture here in a similar way, and so they were able to share points of view and understood each others' experiences. Also when it came to people and relationships, they got each other well, and shared thoughts and feelings about, for example, men.

When Salakka was sick, Milla was the one who came with a taxi to take her to a good, private hospital she knew. And to Milla she called, when she realized it was May Day's eve, a big party in Finland.

”It's May Day tomorrow! Klara vappen!”

”What?”

”Don't you celebrate it in Norway?”

”No.”

”Well, anyway, that's when Finnish people go out and get drunk.”

”Let's go and get drunk!”

”Yeah!”
”Only, I might not get a baby sitter...”

”And I don't think I can drink while I'm still on malaria medication...”

They didn't go out that night, and they never got drunk together. But she had Milla to call on May Day's eve, and that was something. That was a lot.

What it means to feel home

When did she first realize this place felt like home? That she really felt home here? When did she really comprehend it?

It must have happened little by little. Kakra kakra, in twi. Of course there was the time in the beginning when she was simply falling love with everything and thought she'd never been so happy in her life. And of course there was the time after that, when things started to feel really hard and she started getting an idea of how little she could actually understand about how things were under the surface and how little she'd get to know about it during this short 9 months, and how little she would ever be able to understand it. And then there was the point when it all had just become her life, so that she couldn't imagine going to Finland and explaining "how it was in Ghana", because it wasn't "An Experience" or "An Adventure" or anything, anything else than her life, and how can you explain your everyday life to someone who's expecting to hear about adventures and exotic experiences?

But I guess what matters is, there were a lot of moments during all those times when she felt it would be natural for her to live here, maybe more natural than to live in Finland.

I don't know if that's enough to say she would have realized, comprehended what it meant what she was feeling. She simply felt that way.

I don't know if she still fully understands what it means to feel that way.

But what I know is, she had to come back to Finland, she had to stay there for years, and then she had to return to Ghana to really get hold of this feeling. To take it seriously. To start listening to it.

And that's another chapter of the story.

Toothbrush

Salakka was buying a toothbrush.

It was for one of the kids. Let's call him Boy Number One, cos that's actually what he really was for Salakka.

Boy Number One liked to talk and sing, and he liked to do it loud. He was social and positive, but also  had a strong mind and wasn't afraid to show his opinions. So, a bit like Salakka herself, maybe. And now she had promised to get him a toothbrush.

She went to Madina Market, of course. One could buy anything there. (Anything except tampons and real coffee, that is.) And there was a small shop for almost every item alone, it seemed: one for bags, one for flash lights (ok, lights et cetera), one for cell phones, one for local fabrics. Many for toothbrushes.

They weren't actually even shops. Toothbrushes and -pastes were sold from carriages pushed by men who walked up and down the chaotically full streets. It wasn't difficult to locate one of these toothbrush sellers and start bargaining.

When she had bought a toothpaste for herself, Salakka had done her best to get not the obruni price but the real, local one. In this case, she didn't have to bargain a lot after all: the brush prices were down enough for her already. The problem appeared to be finding a soft toothbrush. All of them seemed to be the hard ones, and Salakka knew how horrible it was to brush with one.

"It has to be soft! It's for a child!"

The man kept searching the huge pile of brushes and finally found a soft brush. Salakka paid, thanked and found her way to the tro-tro station and home, where, in the afternoon after school, she delivered the brush to Boy Number One.

He looked at it and frowned.
"It's soft!"

It was in vain to try and explain it was good for children's gums to use a soft brush. It had to be hard for Boy Number One, a soft one would not do. In the end, it made sense. Here, everyone's teeth were so strong, why wouldn't the gums be, too? And anyway, Ghanaians were used to a bit harder things than the Europeans.

Later, Salakka got a new brush for her Boy Number One.
A lot later, four years to be exact, she was spending her holiday in a small village on the west coast of Ghana, and needed a new brush. She went to the village's only shop that sold brushes and, knowing what she wanted, specifically told the shop owner that it had to be a soft one.

"This is a soft one!" sweared the man. Salakka paid, thanked and found her way back to the guest house, where, brushing her teeth, she found out the brush was extremely hard. Maybe she could have guessed it from the text on the cover that said in huge letters: HARD.

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.

A New Life

First time in a trotro. First time at an African market. First time by the ocean. First time washing by hand, first time eating fufu and goat meat, first time at the dressmaker. First time experiencing an African thunderstorm (Salakka and M were sitting on the floor, holding each others' hands, too scared to sleep).

Life was suddenly so full of first times, beginnings, new things, it was as if having been born again. Like having to learn how to walk, how to speak, how to eat all over again.

It was great. As if ten thousand kilos had been lifted up from shoulders, all the old things - replaced by ten thousand new things to learn, which was interesting, satisfying, rewarding, and gave you a 100% guaranteed good night sleep after every day.

Salakka and the German girls, M and C, got to know the places, the habits, the people; the kids, the "big boys", Auntie Yaa, each other. C was the calm one, who didn't easily reveal her feelings, but could tell a lot of interesting and surprising things about herself in a long conversation. She had been to Togo before this, and African life was not as unfamiliar to her as it was for the others. Still, she also was new in Ghana and new in this home.

M was quiet yet emotional, and for her, being here was a big shock. It was hard for her to get used to living in a religious home, having to be home by a certain time in the evenings, not being allowed to live as freely as in Europe. But she had the warmest heart: she had a real calling to work with disabled people, and she was the one who cared for the animals like dogs and cats, which were not treated as nicely as the pets in Europe.

And then there was Salakka, the most talkative, also emotional and a bit lost with the new life in Ghana, but the same time quick-adapting and motivated to learn how to survive. Sometimes she was afraid to be too bossy, talking too much about herself, bringing too much of her own ideas for the work with the boys in this home. But the same time she felt good, free (despite the curfews etc) and that she was exactly in the right place.


The kids were another chapter. The youngest one, shy and funny at the same time, who spoke maybe three words of English and thus was not yet ready to start school. The five school boys: the joker; the enthusiastic; the attention-craving; the polite one and the one who was difficult to get close to, him having been so attached to some of the former volunteers who were now gone. Salakka found herself feeling it was not hard to love these boys - it might be a lot harder to depart from them in next June.

There was also a girl living with Autie Yaa who was part of their group. The teenagers were not officially part of their work, but if some of them needed a hand with homework, they wouldn't mind helping. The big boys, young adults still living here while studying or looking for work, were more likely to be their friends, at least some of them.


Pretty soon it became clear Auntie Yaa would be an important part of their lives here. She might have seemed scary on the first day, but later Salakka understood it was probably just one of her bad days, or maybe she, too, missed the volunteers who had just left her. After all, the volunteers were her daughters; her only daughters. Salakka, M and C were to be the next ones.

She brought them more dishes - plates, spoons, cups. "Take it to your room!"
She gave them eggs, bread, margarine and jam for breakfast. "Keep in in your room!"
She appeared with a huge sack of rice. "Take it to your room!"

It was funny, considering the size of their room. But then again, it was better to keep the things in than leave them in the kitchen - no matter how strict the rules might be, if someone was hungry, it wouldn't really matter who had put the food there, and there were many hungry mouths around.


After a month, they got another volunteer to stay in their room. Lillian, or Lilli as she wanted them to call her, was from Austria and had a great sense of humour. She loved the "take it to your room" -thing, and pretty soon she and Salakka had a long list of other possible ways to use it.

The arrival of Lilli also cleared out how they would work. M and C would spend their days in the home for the disabled people, as Salakka and Lilli would stay home and work with the boys, planning program for them after school to practice school subjects, learn other things or just spend time together.

On Lilli's second day, Salakka was the one who was supposed to take her to the office of their organization to sort things out. A month ago, she had sat in a trotro, unable to understand how things worked - and how she'd ever be able to survive here. Now, she took Lilli to the road side, where they picked a car to a bigger junction, where they picked another car to 37 station, where they picked another car to the office. Salakka remembered the name of the bus stop, the right road to the office (after a short thinking), the right gate to the right house. In the burning sunlight, they made all their way to the office, and though she didn't say it to anybody, Salakka felt a deep happiness; happiness for having learned everything it took to live the every-day life, gotten used to that life, and simply being able to live it so smoothly, so naturally, without a feeling of surviving anymore. She felt happiness for living here.

And it had only just begun. There were eight more months to come.

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.

The First Night

She was laying on the bed, crying.

How did she ever think she would be able to do this?

She had left her home four days ago, attended a camp in Berlin and flown to Africa to volunteer. To save the world? To help? When she wasn't even able to help herself?! When she felt she'd never survive in this scary, unfamiliar country that did not feel at all welcoming, but a totally different world from her own, a world full of dangers that made her feel completely helpless.

She would not be able to do this.

She lay on her bed, trying to get through this night. Sleeping was impossible. She'd been taken to a cheap hostel by a man from the organization, who had, instead of telling her everything, guiding her and making her feel safe, given her food and left, simply saying he'd pick her up in the morning. She didn't even manage to ask for drinking water, so she had the 2 dl she had taken from the aeroplane and that was it.

So, she hadn't eaten. It was incredibly hot and she didn't have drinking water. The hostel had no mosquito nets and she'd been told to use one, so she was wearing trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, which was only making it far too hot to sleep. In addition to all this, she had to share the room with a completely unknown Nigerian woman, who was sleeping on the next bed, so she couldn't cry openly - instead, she lay on the bed, shedding invisible tears, trying to keep quiet.

In the middle of the night, the woman on the next bed started making strange noise. Like whispers. She couldn't understand it at all, and the only guess she could make was that the woman was praying. It made her even more scared, even more shocked and even more unwilling to stay here any more minutes.

A lot later, still remembering that night as vivid as it was at the moment, she'd understand not only that the woman was really praying, but also that it probably meant the other person was ar scared as herself. As lonely, spending the first night in a new country. This realization would come at a time when she would have not only learnt how to live here, but also fallen completely and inevitably in love with this place, the place that would (still later) turn out to be the home of her soul.

Right now, that was far ahead and she had no idea of it (which didn't matter, because she wouldn't have believed if someone had told her this). It seemed like the morning would never come. She started crying again, and the only thing she could think was a given-up thought:

"I want to go back to Finland."

Thanks be to God, Fate, the Universe or whatever you believe in, this wish didn't come true until nine months later.