Amore

Love.

The word gushes out of Milan’s streets, printed on the cashmere sweaters and Gucci bags through the display windows. Beautiful men with perfect bone structure stand in the metro, walk past you on the street, serve you coffee or drive by on a motorcycle, all offering the fantasy of its reality.

Love. 

Sickening amounts drip on the dance floor, at the bar, in the clubs, as thin girls in dresses too short and heels too high walk like they don’t want it but sell themselves for it. Tossed around on pink lipgloss-ed lips shopping at Claire’s Accessories, written a hundred times over into notebooks. Cheapened by foolish girls. Lost in dark streets. The hope of it washed over with pain and scars and open wounds. 

Love in a man’s world is a scathing reproach on the word. The word makes me sick. Bitterness bowed out to unbelief. It’s like the tooth fairy. You can put your hope in it, but when the dime doesn’t show up under your pillow, what are you left with? Disappointment and an old rotten tooth that you should’ve thrown away a long time ago.

There is no single word in the English language to convey a lack of faith. Disbelief, incredulity, mistrust – all words of faith negated with a prefix. Why? 

Because it is human nature to believe in something. It’s human nature to place hope in a better place then one’s own hands. Well. I’ve lost hope in love and what it offers in this world. It’s everything that it’s not supposed to be.

…

 

And he whispers.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

 

I will always protect you.

I will never fail you.

my catastrophe

The towel is soaked in blood; there’s a kettle next to a bowl filled with hot water running cold; and Stephen is kneeling in front of me wiping alcohol pads over the gashes. In short, I fell. Hard.

…

I woke up this morning feeling rather normal. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and in my pajamees lazily opened my door to go get some coffee. I passed the boys’ room by the staircase and noticed a trashcan, tipped against their door, held up by two large cushions and a wastebasket cover. I took a second to stare, then shrugged, and went downstairs to go get my coffee. I need coffee.

About an hour later I make my trek back upstairs to my room, and again staring at the tilted trashcan, I move right along to figure out what to wear, read some email, and think of questions for my interview when I hear the boys’ door room creak open and then shut close. I stare for a moment, then go back to my questions when suddenly I hear a big THUMP, then a WOOSHHH. The trashcan just tipped over and water was rushing everywhere. I jumped up and ran to pick up the trashcan, but the damage was already done and the girls had successfully pranked the sleeping heartthrob. By now the water is spreading not just into the boys’ room, but also made its way into ours and was flooding the stairway. I slipped on the water and let out a small yelp. Then before really assessing the damage, I slip out to go to my interview leaving my roommate fuming.

 

Four hours later I finally make it back home, drenched in sweat (it is just so damn HOT in Africa), carrying a coconut (an entree on this coming up), and just plain exhausted when Amy comes running up to me and asks me if I’m okay.
Sure I’m okay, I’m just tired and sweaty and carrying this rather heavy coconut, but why are you apologizing profusely – wait … what are you talking about? What fall? Who fell? I didn’t fall.

In the next five minutes I get bombarded with “Are you okay?!” “I heard you got wiped out!” “Sharon, tell me exactly how you fell,” when I finally realize that my slip this morning had somehow transformed into a “wipe out” that needed doctor’s aid. Our director was called in fear of health liability and the whole thing just spun out of control.

We’re a really small group.

So after informing everyone that I’m fine and I didn’t actually fall, we go to dinner when it hits me. 

Diarrhea.

It started yesterday, so I took Ciprofloxacin, but apparently it was back with revenge.
Elana wanted me to walk her back home, but my stomach was hurting too much to get up. I was about to tell her to wait a couple minutes, but when I looked up she was gone.

After my pains died down a little bit, the group was still in heavy discussion about journalism or whatever so I decide to go run after Elana thinking in my pain-induced delusion that I could catch up to her.

I’m running and running, yelling “Elana,” while my stomach is writhing for a bathroom, and for some reason there are a lot of taxis and cars on the street so I stick as close to the end of the road as possible.

In Ghana there are no sidewalks. And in Ghana there are no streetlights. And I found out the rather painful way, that in Ghana the road doesn’t end with a curb, but with a ditch.

All of a sudden the asphalt underneath me completely DISAPPEARS and my right foot runs myself into a freaking ditch and the whole right side of my body slides against the ragged concrete landing me in what I’m sure is a pile of disgusting trash that I would rather amputate my feet than touch, but by God’s grace it’s pitch black and I can’t see anything let alone feel the blood dripping down my legs. I have no idea how, but I drag myself out of the ditch and end up lying on the concrete in darkness and in pain when these Ghanaians come out of nowhere and they start talking “I’m sorry, oh sorry, ow” yanking me up when really all I want to do is lie there and not move, but once they get me up they realize how much PAIN I’m in and then they go, “oh sit down, sorry, sit down.”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I say while pushing their hands off and in the end I can’t get rid of two of them and they insist on escorting me back home. One of them mention getting a taxi while the other one (with his arm still holding onto me) goes, “Oh no, no, let me just carry you, here get on my back, I’ll pick you up.”

Uh, no thank you. In the end I’m glad they helped me hobble back to the dormitory, cause I don’t know how I would have made it back on my own without using my right leg. The whole way the one on my left keeps chatting to me and at one point he starts talking to me in some foreign language, which was when I really thought I was getting delusional cause I couldn’t understand a word until finally out of exasperation I go, “What are you saying?!” and he goes, “Oh, you’re not Chinese?” Well, he keeps talking anyways and the right one keeps insisting for me to get on his back, and all I could think about was that I actually really did end up falling today.

Only to me.

Everybody doctoring me while Courtney pranced around taking pictures and laughing.

Dr. Stephen and his goofy apprentice

Minidramas of a 22 year old

“It actually sounds sexy … and provocative,” Courtney says in reference to the new title of my blog: Minidramas of a twenty-TWO year old. 

Personally I think it sounds wack, but I’m warming up to it.

I spent the morning of my 22nd birthday at church! Christ The King Catholic Church to be exact. Though I was lost most of the time with the constant standing, sitting, standing, kneeling, I really enjoyed the sermon and the African drum-infused choir and communion where the priest hand-to-mouth feeds you the cracker. 

Frankie, our director of the program, bought me lunch (and kissed me on the cheek wishing me a very happy birthday).

The celebrations began with homemade Bloody Mary’s – Phil’s specialty. It was actually quite good considering the limited ingredients available in Ghana’s market. 

Then had fabulous dinner at a fabulous hotel and doubling up at the hotel’s casino, I say not bad for a 22nd birthday. =)

Day drunk? Nahh

The party people at the casinoooo

Thank you Queeney.<3

It’s my birthday … in Africa

David badongka: happy 24th birthday

Sharon: you’re one day and two years early.. but thanks. =)

It’s my birthday –  in Africa. I had unwittingly signed myself up for another birthday to be spent across the seas, a continent and a half away from my family and friends. I mean, one birthday spent in Africa is enough I think, no? I spent my 20th birthday completely and utterly depressed. It hit me during dinner. Though we were eating Korean food, a luxury my teammates and I looked forward to all week, I was so sad to be spending my birthday in Africa that I got indigestion and held in my throw-up for the entire, bumpy ride back to our base where I then proceeded to throw up, heaving and crying on the bathroom floor. 

I didn’t realize I had signed myself up for another African birthday until a few weeks after all the papers were signed and the travel expenses paid. 

… 

I skyped with my mom and my brother yesterday and when I reminded them that my birthday was coming up my mom said, “Oh, should I send you flowers?”  Remember that this is Africa where a post card would probably either take 3 weeks to get here or get “lost,” let alone a fresh bouquet of gerbera daisies. 

My mom scoffed. “Of course not through the mail! Through the chatbox!” 

She then proceeded to send me a blooming flower icon through our Skype chatbox. She also gave me beer, cake and a tiny tiny gift box carrying who knows what pixelated surprise inside. 

“Sharon, it’s six minutes to your birthday!” says Phil, my assistant director and housemate. 

It’s six minutes to my 22nd birthday. And I am in Africa.

Picture taken at midnight =)

 

Isn’t Ghana Fabulous?

Other than a few hiccups, this trip has been one breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime, amazing moment after another.

 

On our first weekend in Ghana we planned a trip to the Lake Volta region to see the Wili Falls, a waterfall four hours north of us in eastern Ghana. We rented a bus (and a bus driver for 130 Ghana Cedi`s a day, which by the way would be fiscally impossible in the US) and made the trip up north. Right when we got to the base of the mountain the obvious happened. It started to rain – pour, actually.

Caught in yet another spontaneous rainstorm, the trail up to the waterfall turned into a gigantic mudslide and I nearly lost my flip-flop to the mud’s suction a bazillion times. As the rain slowed down, we suddenly heard Reggae ringing through the trees.

Let me remind you, we’re in the middle of a fing mountain.

The Reggae music only got louder as we continued to hike until the trees cleared and we came upon a full-fledged Reggae party with a stereo sound system, drinks, and a hundred Ghanaians dancing right next to the WATERFALL.

It was simply breathtaking. I can’t explain how gorgeous and magnificent a waterfall is in person. It really sucked the air out of me.

As we paraded through the party and reached the end of the clear water pooling from the waterfall the girls stripped down to their bikinis to dive in.

Now, let me tell you, this wasn’t the smartest of our ideas.

Apparently, there’s a group of Ghanaian men that come up and chill at the waterfall regularly, which isn’t weird at all because if I lived near a waterfall and there was always a bumping Reggae party up there, then I would go everyday too; but the weird thing is that they wait in the shallow waters of the pool for unsuspecting female tourists to offer “assistance.”

As I watched Anika and Amy, the first ones to plunge in, wade out towards the waterfall I saw them within seconds getting swallowed up by a horde of black men. I nervously tapped on one of our guys’ shoulder while pointing out at the girls asking if this was okay, but with no response I turned to see that the rest of the girls were stripping down too. 

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them.

 

“AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

I don’t know why I was so terrified, but the second I allowed a Ghanaian man to lead me towards the waterfall I started screaming and I couldn’t stop.

“AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

As we got closer it felt like we were getting pelted with hail or a freaking blizzard. The pressure of the water slamming a hundred feet into the water below was so powerful that it forced me to shield my eyes and turn my back to it, which is exactly why the Ghanaian men were there. They would hold onto your stomach from behind and lead you, backwards, towards the waterfall until reaching the mountain wall where you would literally stand underneath the crashing water. It was amazing. Simply amazing.

I think, because I wouldn’t stop screaming, the Ghanaian guy didn’t try anything with me although there were plenty of times when I impatiently threw off an extra pair of hands that would touch me out of nowhere. The other girls, however, didn’t have such great luck and almost all of them got molested under the waterfall.

I guess it’s the price you pay for one hell of an experience.

I really didn’t think anything could top standing under a waterfall, but I had no idea what was waiting for us at our home-stay in a village called Ho-Hoi.

 

The home-stay was reminiscent of a part of missions that I did NOT want to relive: sleeping on unknown mattresses in mosquito nets and taking dumps in foul-smelling, wooden port-a-potties – not a favorite.

But it was at this home-stay in Ho-Hoi where I experienced something most people will die without ever witnessing: an African tribal drum circle. Literally.

The South African Dance Association, also known as SADA, was a tribal dance group made up of boys, girls, men and women all participating in traditional African drum dance. The men stood in the back and began to chant while the boys, as young as ten years old, played the drums; the women, filed in two rows, began to dance and chant back, singing a tribal song in their native language that we naturally couldn’t understand. It was enchanting and I really counted my blessings to be chosen to witness this moment.

We spent the rest of the night in Ho-Hoi dancing with the Africans in the circle as the drums banged on.

…

The next morning we woke up at 5 am to hike the tallest mountain in Ghana, Mount Afadjato. It was breathtaking (both the physical hike itself and the view) and definitely took me straight back to the Moroto Mountains of Uganda. And though this weekend was finally over after our last stop at a monkey sanctuary, it was nothing compared to the one coming up.

 

Simply amazing. Photo courtesy of Julia Rickert.

Beware of The Rasta Man

The first breath of the African air threw me back into Uganda, summer of 2007. I can’t describe how the air smells different – it just does. It’s like this sweet smell – grainy or beany or something heavier maybe of the dirt or the trees, but the African air is definitely different. The air: confirmation that I am back in Africa and it feels awesome.

….

It’s been a whole week since we’ve arrived in Ghana and we’ve gotten into a routine of things. Wake up, wake up the roommate, wake up the boys, drink coffee while reading my Bible before climbing into the van, which takes us to the Academic Center where we listen to guest lectures or have classes for Journalism in Ghana. Then, we get a two-hour break for lunch, which literally takes the FULL two hours.

On a side note:

I don’t flipping understand how it can take SO LONG to prepare food. The food NEVER comes out together and it can take up to 20 minutes for the next round, or plate, to come out and sometimes it doesn’t even come out at all. Today I ordered an omelette and it came out 15 minutes after everybody else’s hamburgers were scarfed down and Courtney’s INSTANT coffee (which means hot water and a packet of Nescafe) came out at the same time her toast did which took 30 minutes. And you definitely do not want to order the kabobs, not because they’re not good, but because they will come out when the bill should come instead. Guaranteed. It’s a huge ordeal.

But I digress.

So after lunch we go visit a media company like the local radio station Joy FM, the state broadcast company GBC, or the state-funded newspaper, Graphic. We get a tour of the company and all of their facilities and have a Q&A after. It’s actually quite a privilege, one that wouldn’t be so easily granted to us back in the States.

Every night (and literally it has been every night) we go out to a local jazz café where Reggae and jazz fuse to create this awesome fresh vibe; or the beach for Reggae night every Wednesday where Reggae bands play and Rasta men offer you a smoke out for just 20 cedi; or a struggling lounge called Twist that offers drinks for half-off in an attempt to upstart a “college scene” that is currently completely comprised by us. Unexpectedly, Accra has a very vibrant nightlife.

I can’t do this everyday. So I’m staying in tonight with my two homies, Stephen and Carlos and we’re all sitting around our living room table with our Macs and listening to Kid Cudi’s “I Poke Her Face,” which has unofficially become our theme song, and which you are pleasantly enjoying now. =)

A huge treat was when we went to the “football” game at the Ghana Stadium for Republic Day. Of their many pre-games, the most popular was the Little Person game when two whole teams comprised of “little people,” or midgets, came running out onto the field and the whole stadium cheered! What I do not understand is how do they even find enough midgets skilled enough in soccer to produce a whole soccer team, let alone two? Do Ghanians just have more little people than we do in the States? And the crazier thing is that these little people were not just playing soccer, but they were playing on a regular sized soccer field with a regular sized soccer ball and their shorts went all the way down to their ankles. 

 

Real classes start on Monday and before then we have the weekend ahead of us planned to the brim with a trip to Lake Volta filled with stops to waterfalls and monkey sanctuaries. `stay tuned my loves.

 

a day in ghana

After meeting the 14 other people in the program I realized that I was really worrying over nothing. Honestly, why do I do this to myself all the time. 

Goal #1: Don’t stress the little stuff or the big stuff if nothing has happened yet.

E.g. Getting “lost” at a grocery store. 

On our first day in Ghana we unpacked at the Church Crescent and then drove around town to pick up essentials such as lunch, cellphones, and groceries. We parked the van and walked to the Koala grocery store where I mulled over toothpaste and detergent when I realized I was the only one left. After paying for my purchases I walked outside and was immediately bombarded with “Taxi? Taxi?” to which I curtly replied, “No” and confidently looked around for our van when I realized I had no idea where it was.

I walked to and fro alongside the front of the store with no white person in sight and finally I called the Director who called the Assistant Director yelling, “You left Sharon at the grocery store!”

Apparently they didn’t leave me but were still parked at the same spot from where they had dropped us off.

Completely embarrassed I walked back onto the van and somebody yelled from the back, “You called Frankie?!” incredulous that an idiot who forgot where the van was parked was actually in the same program as they were.

Damn. This is going to be a long 6 weeks. 

…

Every so often when we’re turning a new corner or trying to figure out if we should go towards the red shack or the shack with the red sign we have conversations about direction, which always somehow lead to:

“Didn’t you get lost again today?”

“…Um, I did?”

“Oh, that was just yesterday when you got lost at Koala.”

-_-.

Damn. It.

 

A Ghanian resting under the shade of a tree.

a confirmation

Literally up till the day before leaving for Ghana I thought about everything else but for the fact that I was going to live in Africa for 6 weeks. It didn’t occur to me to buy some Ghana travel guides or extra bed sheets or even bug spray up till the night of my 16-hour flight from LAX to JFK then to my final destination: Accra, Ghana.

After staying up all night trying to conjure up the items that I needed for my stay abroad in my bedroom (and failing), I had two meltdowns and tried my best to keep the tears at bay while stuffing my suitcases with clothes – cause that’s all I had.

I was wretched throughout the whole drive to LAX. My mind was plagued with “what if’’s” and worst case scenarios of missing the plane or losing my luggage or, the worst of all, not having confirmed my plane ticket.

While scanning my online print out of my ticket (for the first time) I see some small print at the bottom saying, “For international flights, please confirm your ticket at least 48 hours in advance.” Uh, what?

Buying the nonrefundable ticket wasn’t confirmation enough?

It was less than two hours before the plane was departing and I definitely did not “confirm” the ticket by any means.

By the time I got out of the car I was doing everything I could from holding back the tears. When I was denied by the front check-in and the do-it-yourself computer screen flashed “See Agent” I couldn’t handle it anymore. I started to cry. What if I didn’t actually buy the ticket? What if I didn’t CONFIRM IT?

“Please confirm your ticket at least 48 hours in advance.”

 

With my tears and stress etched on my face an airport agent let me cut the line and the ticket agent passed me through with no “Sorry m`amm I can’t find your ticket.”

And though I got my boarding pass, checked in my baggage, went through security and collapsed into a terminal chair at gate 53B with no problems other than the mental state of my head I was still at the whims of an existential crisis.

Not getting the confirmation for my ticket threw me into a plaguing doubt of whether I got confirmation to go on this trip at all. I was trying too hard and stressing out so much to get myself to freaking Africa that perhaps this was God’s way of telling me not to go. The right thing shouldn’t be so hard to do. While waiting for the airplane people to call my zone number I realized that not only did I fail to confirm my ticket I also never got a “confirmation” from God (whatever that was supposed to look like).

As I was sitting in the boarding terminal with no makeup, my hair unbrushed and sniffling with my red eyes I probably looked like a junior high kid whose irresponsible mother let her ride the plane by herself too early. The people around me are mumbling to each other while eyeing me such as the family of Europeans sitting across from me. Though we made eye contact twice they refused to stare down, apparently waiting to see when my next break down will be or to see when they could sweep in and tell on me to the authorities to send me packing back home. “This girl is too young to board the plane alone!”

I still can’t figure out what was causing such severe emotional turmoil inside of me. Hopefully I’ll pull it together in the next 16 hours.

a road not taken

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. “

I feel like I am at that crossroads now. And everything I do, every decision I make will make all the difference for the rest of my life. And I feel like I have botched it up completely. As a person wrought with indecision I feel like I always make the wrong choice. But no other decision before in my life seems to be taking me down an actual road such as this one. 

I feel I was at a crossroads and I’ve taken the wrong road and there is nothing I can do to turn around and make the decision again.

an unhappy girl day

It’s again that time of the month. That dreaded horrendous, mind-wrenching damning time of the month where the entire female population until the end of time has to pay for the fruit that wretched Eve ate and because of that ONE DAMN FRUIT I am sitting here in wretched pain writing this stupid blog in an attempt to convey yet another minidrama of a 21-year-old.

This whole week has been a never ending twist&turn flipping mind game in the hopes of procuring a VISA. V.I.S.A. A Visa. Who knew getting one would be so difficult and time consuming. The actual summer program for which I’m getting this Visa for only sent me one piece of paper. Count that: ONE, which said it’s so easy to get this visa, it takes only a few days to process, all you need is your passport and write “Student” on the application; but if it was so damn easy then how did I manage to run around all day today just to mail this one small envelope?

This is how:

I wake up at 10 am and go take a shower because I need to look presentable for my passport pictures which I needed to take at Kinko’s before my 11 o clock class. I leave the house by 10:30 and while waiting for the pictures to print at Kinko’s the lady is trying to figure out which envelope I need for my “prepaid tracking return envelope” that was required by the Ghana Consulate.

It’s 10:55 and I realize I won’t make it to class and doggone it I wasn’t in the mood to cringe in my seat in the lecture hall waiting for the next wave of beloved cramps, so I skipped my first class and in a fit of indecision for my next point of action I decide to drive to another post office, instead of going to the one right next door to Kinkos to get a money order when I realized that I didn’t have a gluestick to paste the passport pictures onto the applications. So I decide to go home.
While home I try to buy my plane ticket for the Visa but in my indecision couldn’t decide on which plane ticket to commit to and by then I was running late for my next class at 12:30 so I didn’t paste my pictures, didn’t get the money order, and didn’t buy the plane ticket.

By the end of my classes I had a 1 hour window to do all three and mail my application to the Ghana consulate at the postal office in price center by 4:30.

First I had to buy the ticket which I did by sitting at price center and going online. But then I realized I had to print it so I moved all my belongings to the computers at price center when the printer ran out of paper. So I had to walk to Geisel and use one of their computers to print the ticket.

Then I walked back to the post office when I noticed the big sign: “NO MONEY ORDERS,” which seemed to imply that they weren’t making any money orders today. I decided I should at least paste my pictures so I borrowed tape from the post office and taped them on. The post office lady told me I could go to the Credit Union at Gilman Parking Structure for a money order but they’ll charge me $5. It was 4:15.

In a fit of indecision I go on the bus thinking it’ll be faster and more reasonable if I went back to my car, drove to the first post office I went to this morning, get the money order there and mail the damn application.

But while sitting on the bus I realized this was unreasonable considering I had a class at 5. So I run off the bus and run from price center all the way to Gilman and wait 5 minutes in line to FINALLY get to the teller and she tells me that I need to pay in cash.

The ATM is back at price center.

By then it was too late. I missed the post office closing time and I had run around like a psycho-child on steroids all day to mail something that I felt was time sensitive. I forgot to realize that in the middle of the day I had talked to my IES counselor who said that I had an extra week to turn this in.

By the end of the day I was tired, cramping to no end without having eaten or drunken anything with increasing back aches and blogging before my 5 o clock class. I decided to go buy a drink at least so I went to the nearest coffee stand.

“What can I get you?”
“Juice or water… juice.. or.. water…”

In another fit of indecision I couldn’t  bear the stress of making the wrong decision any more that I bursted in front of the coffee stand and started to cry.