Although I had travelled abroad before, it was more than 25 years ago with a high school tour group to Europe -- the culture shock of that trip was minimal. The hotels were not much different than American hotels, the food about the same. The biggest difference was that we were usually allowed to drink beer -- the coolest part of the trip for most of us.
In the years since my European travels, I had always planned to travel internationally but hadn't. Money, family obligations, US company vacation policies all got in the way. At 43 I had remarried to an artist with a lifelong desire to travel to Africa. Early on she had told me that she was going to get us to Africa. As she said, "I've wanted to go to Africa ever since I was 4 years old and told my preschool teacher that my family went every summer."
Tanya set about applying for grants, writing proposals and researching residencies in Africa and was eventually successful. For my part, I watched my company's fortunes slide further into the abyss to the point where they laid me off. Until this point, I had maintained that I would go for a week or so of the month long trip as that was all the vacation time I had. With a layoff and not a lot of prospects on the horizon, I had little excuse not to go all in.
Tanya is an optimist. She never doubted that she would get us to Africa or that it would change our lives in a positive way. I've never considered myself a pessimist, but more of a realist or pragmatic. That may just be how pessimists put a positive spin on their outlook. For the sake of the story, we will just say that I am a pessimist. Tanya read and researched exhaustively about Ghana prior to our trip. My research fell into a few broad categories: motorcycle tours; black mambas and 23 other varieties of poisonous snakes found in Ghana; obtaining local currencies, cellphone and internet services; and, the required shots and visas. So maybe I am just pragmatic.
Everyday leading up to our trip Tanya would provide me with a new interesting fact about Ghanaian culture -- a recipe for fufu, or something about the Kente weaving village we would be visiting. I would point out that black mambas were not actually black at all -- they could be in a variety of colors like "gunmetal gray" and that they were called black mambas because of the colors of their mouths. Or, that black mambas were one of the fastest species of snake and could move at speeds of up to 15 mph, that thankfully if you were bitten by one, you would die within an hour.
Tanya travelled to New York about a month before our trip to visit her mother. Her stepfather had set up a dinner with a Ghanaian friend of his and a woman from the Sudan who worked for the UN. After the dinner, Tanya called excitedly to tell me how much she loved the fufu, didn't care for the chicken and that the woman from the Sudan could get us on as rape counsellors in the Sudan next year. I responded that that was never mentioned as option on the skills inventories that I took in high school.
During this time we purchased plane tickets, made arrangements with the residency for Asafo lessons, and got our shots and visas. The only required shot was yellow fever. Typhoid, polio, hepatitis A and B, MMR and antimalarial drugs were all recommended and were opted for. Also, meningitis was borderline. Tanya's doctor gave her the shot , mine did not. I wanted money in reserve for anti-venom.
I contacted the motorcycle tour company -- the only one in Ghana. They had gone out of business. Everyone seemed to think that this was a stroke of luck -- that touring Ghana by motorcycle was insane. I struck out in all attempts at obtaining local currency prior to getting to Ghana -- no banks or foreign exchange bureaus trade in it. Cell service would have to wait until we got to Ghana. There really wasn't a very viable option from this side of the Atlantic. I went to Walgreen's to fill our anti-malarial prescriptions and ended up spending $111 on various supplies ranging from sunscreen to cold packs to neosporin to finger splints.
We arranged for my son and ex-wife to dog sit for our three large, poorly behaved dogs. We decided that the only way this would work was if we left the dogs at our house and arranged for her to pick them up after we left. This would make it much harder for her to back out as Caleb (the Doberman) wouldn't be able to countersurf until we were safely on our way to Ghana.
No comments:
Post a Comment