Send-off

After the chaos of Thursday, I had the very good fortune to be invited to the sendoff in Sirigu for the local Peace Corps Volunteer, Sonia. She's spent two years in the village working with farmers and local community groups, and by all appearances has just completed the quintessential Peace Corps experience--small rural village, no running water, tightly integrated with the community, hot and uncomfortable, et cetera, et cetera.

I never had a proper send-off of my own, so it was a treat to get to live the experience through hers. I was rather hesitant to go, but her counterpart is also mine, and once invited there was really no polite way for me to decline, and from Peter's perspective it was probably unthinkable that I not be there. But a send-off after two years in the community is a special event and I was worried about detracting from Sonia's moment, as it were. So, I went, and in the end tried to make myself useful by taking lots of photos and videos to pass on to her as keepsakes.

I had to sort of arrange my own transport out there and ended up arriving two hours late. That turned out to be fine because the event began three hours late. And the chief arrived almost four hours late. But there were about twenty-five people attending, everyone Sonia had worked with over the last two years, mostly farmers. And most people said a few words, usually either that they hoped she would not forget them, or that they were thankful she had been so friendly ("not like most whites" one guy said), or that she would travel safely home. The event ended with them presenting her with a series of gifts including some very nice clothing and a beautiful bowl. Then we ate the goat that they had butchered that afternoon.

Sonia's send-off party

Inevitably, I was asked to say a few words. There is quite a lot of pressure to speak at an event where you've known noone more than three days, and almost noone more than fifteen minutes. And in the wrong language. And a strange country. But I did my best, said that I had been a Peace Corps volunteer as well, and that you never forget your village or the people you worked with, and that I am sure when Sonia is in Ghana she is an American but when she is in America she will be a Ghanaian.

I had to ride back to Bolga in a minivan after dark, which is a big no-no (though, strangely, less of a no-no when you are traveling on rural dirt roads, as I was, because the speeds are so much slower). But it was fairly clear so I finally got my view of the Southern Cross, which is a requirement of any trip to the tropics.