A mere glimpse...
You know when you go to something and you just want to run home and write down all that you were thinking in your diary? Well that's kind of how I feel about tonight.It was my first real "celebrity" encounter where I was actually really excited to meet the person- not just on a superficial level such as having their signature- but just to hear what the person had to say.
I went to a book signing by journalist Stephanie Nolen.(http://www.stephanienolen.com) She is the chief correspondent for 54 countries on the continent of Africa for
The Globe and Mail. Pretty amazing job I must say. Pretty damn jealous. She recently published a book called
28-Stories of AIDS in Africa. It is a book that tells the story of 28 Africans living with HIV/AIDS dedicated to the 28 million people living with the disease in sub-saharan Africa today.
I read about it in the paper and I got really hyped up. I don't want my experience in Ghana to pass me by and be a blip on my map of travels. I am putting in an effort to keep in touch with everyone from there (got an email from my host mother- miss her so much!) and to try to raise funds and awareness for the organization here in Canada. When I heard about the opportunity to meet Nolen I jumped at it. She is doing a job that I would love to do. Traveling and living in Africa, writing about issues that affect so many people, and raising awareness about the issue worldwide. Essentially I want to be her- or at least maybe I do.
She was an amazing speaker and it was a privilege to meet someone I admired. But I found myself a little disenchanted when I was actually able to speak to her one on one. I understand that I am young and she knows much more than I, but I found her tone a little condescending towards myself, as well as audience questions and people's attempts to argue about some issues. I asked her about doing a Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) program and she basically told me that by no means should I try to do one of their programs. "Why would you mix human rights and journalism? It doesn't make any sense. Move to Ghana and freelance," she said. Okaaay, but I thought that maybe journalism and human rights did go together? I felt a little confused, but it fuelled how I felt about what I had read a few moments earlier. There is a section at the back of her book entitled "how you can help".
I eagerly flipped to the back of the book and this is what I read: "First, people want to go to Africa to help in a hands-on way...It's a commendable idea but not always the best solution...Western volunteers can be a drain on the communities they go to help: if they don't speak the language, they cannot assist with education or AIDS awareness, and usually they don't have the particular skills that are needed...All too often, the already overburdened and under-resourced community that the volunteers want to help ends up translating for them, figuring out their housing and food needs, and taking them to the expensive clinic in the city when they get malaria or jiggers or dysentery" (Nolen 387-388). Hmmmm.....I must say that I wholeheartedly disagree.
I do not feel that I was a drain on my community. I was actively involved in the events around me, I did not demand special foods or fancy health care from my host family, and while I did not speak the language fluently I contributed as much as I could. I was a valuable part of AHFOGH's HIV/AIDS presentations, I taught at a school that barely had a teacher half the time, I was able to help and learn at the clinic, and I am pushing to contribute to the organization from Canada. I did get sick, but I did not force my host mother away from her work. I also used the basic skills that I had, as well as all the energy I could muster to contribute wherever I could.
Nolen's basic dismissal of volunteering abroad really bothered me. My experience in Ghana pushed me to learn more about HIV/AIDS, and hell, it was the reason I was there watching her speak. It is different to read the statistics splashed on the pages of newspapers than it is to actually touch an emaciated woman with a young child on her back, inevitablely dying of a preventable wide-spread disease. Volunteering lights a fire inside people who are already interested in something and teaches them what they are passionate about so that they can work to pursue it.
I left my encounter with her feeling kind of stupid. The problem with people who are very intelligent or in powerful positions is that they cannot dumb down their knowledge for others, or in doing so can make people feel inadequate. Nolen seemed very well-informed and I understand that she knows much more about the continent as a whole than I do. But I am trying. In retrospect, I have fond memories of the meeting I had with Carleton Professor Allan Thompson back in January. I went to discuss their journalism master's program, and though he was leaving for Rwanda the next day he found time to meet with me. His office was covered in beautiful African art, and he encouraged me to learn more about the genocide, excitedly discussed my upcoming travels to West Africa and fuelled my interest in the media's role in conflict and the imagery of developing nations. Even a person like Stephen Lewis seems to be someone who encourages others to become involved in a basic way.
In regards to Nolen, I someday hope to work with her, or under her, or even in the same area as her. I'm still excited to read her book, and hopefully it will raise awareness even more, and turn HIV/AIDS from something on a faraway continent into a real and important issue here in Canada.
Moving onwards and upwards?
So as many of you do or don't know, I'm going back to London to start my Master's in May. Yes, I am going back to Western. I'm so happy that I got into a Master's program that I'm interested in but not so thrilled to be back in London. BUT it is only a year and I'm making plans to escape Canada already. (With my invisible money so potentially should get a job before leaving again.) I am doing my Master of Journalism and it is a twelve month program starting May 4th. AHHH! I know. Must find a place to live and figure out what one needs to do before starting another degree. Actually, I'm really not that stressed out. Yeah I have a lot of stuff to do, but it is also not a huge deal that I have to get a loan and make a budget and blah blah blah.
Also, on another superficial note or professional note or whatever this is constituted as- I got some of my work published! Now, its nothing academic or groundbreaking, but I was pretty excited. In the April issue of Wish Magazine my name is published 3 times! (I'm such a nerd but come on, its hard to do!) I got a big blurb published about paying your bills online with my name beside it in big letters, and my buzzword on lucite shoes for spring was published right above the editor's note on the Fashion page! I spent weeks mailing and packaging expensive Tod's shoes and Chanel purses with little credit and a lot of stress so I'm pretty excited that I got some of my very small ideas published! As a fashion intern I know not to expect much, but I also worked on an organic fashion list and I just found it on the website! AHHH.
Wish has over a million readers so I was really pumped! I read it in Italy because my mom managed to shove it into her suitcase and I was jumping up and down with excitement. Okay, enough shameless self-promotion, its totally not a big deal, I was just excited. And for anyone that was lucky enough to experience my extreme stress there (Adam, Bethany, Aileen) you'll know how important this was to me.
Now to completely swing the other way, one of the projects I
really want to do is a journalism- related internship in Rwanda. Leaving Ghana, I had already decided that this wasn't it for me. I wanted to come back to this amazing continent and there were so many options. I would love to work for an NGO or maybe freelance and write from abroad. Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) has a lot of programs that I might apply for when I graduate. It would enable me to travel, work and potentially even go back to Ghana if they are hosting another program there. But Rwanda is next on my list. There is an internship there that works on cataloguing the genocide, writing for a local newspaper and teaching journalist classes so I really want to do it if I can get in. It was started by a Prof that works in Carleton's journalism school that I met with in January who seems really amazing. He just wrote a book that covers one of the topics I want to basically write a book on when I have some sort of established career in the future. His book covers the influence of the media on the Rwandan genocide and I need to find it (it just came out).
http://www.idrc.ca/rwandagenocide/- check out his book online! I wrote an essay on the media's impact on genocide and world conflict in 4th year and my research really didn't find enough resources on this extremely interesting topic. I'm hoping to someday contribute to some scholarly work on this topic, because I've become a little obsessed about it.
So, that's life with me. Random, all over the place, and yet somehow organized. I'll be in Toronto for the next month so hopefully I will get to see all of you who I have missed for the past few months and then don't worry I'm sure I'll be road tripping back for visits.
Agnes Opoku...an amazing woman
There are no words that accurately describe Agnes Opoku. Energetic, hilarious, caring, loving and motivated are some that could try. She started African Hope, had five children, works twelve hour days with the school kids, sex workers and PLWHA's and still goes to church at night acting as a local pastor. I don't know how she does it. But I love her for it.She treated me like one of her daughters and didn't care about me just as a volunteer but really made me feel like one of her own.
She normally didn't have time for breakfast because she was always running late. In typical Ghanaian fashion, things never happen on time, and it was one of the things about her that made me laugh.
I was driving in my car the other day loving the high life music CD's that Aziz made me in Ghana and I started having some great memories. I decided to take my braids out one day because Femke told me they were getting fuzzy, and they were definitely getting itchy, so I spent a few hours trying to get them out on my own. Braids are impossible to take out- they took almost 4 hours to be put in and about 8 hours to take out! Femke and Saskia came over to my house to help me, but by 11 pm, we were all exhausted. I had to do a presentation the next morning and half of my head was in braids and the other half was a complete fuzzball so I was starting to freak out. I woke up at 4 in the morning and started unbraiding again. At 8 am I still wasn't done! Agnes came out of her room, took one look at me and said, "okay we aren't going to do our presentations today because I have so much laundry and housework to do, and you need help!" She hadn't taken a day off all weekend- I went with her on the weekend to show a potential donor a plot of land for an orphanage- and trust me, laundry and chores take at least half a day here! So she plopped down and helped me unbraid my hair for over an hour. It is those moments, where she sat with me and chatted and was so motherly, that I will never forget about Agnes.
Another morning, at about 7 am on a Saturday my cell phone started ringing. It was Agnes so I figured she was already out and about. We chatted for a bit and she asked if I could go to a meeting with her that morning. I agreed and asked her where we should meet and then things got very confusing. Speaking to Ghanaians on the phone is always a bit challenging because they pronounce their words quite differently and there is not the greatest reception. She said we would meet Mike at the tro tro station, and for about 5 minutes I tried to ask her where WE should meet because I didn't know where she was. Finally she said, "oh Kate, I am in the house, in bed!"... hahaha she was calling me from her room in the same house because she didn't want to bother me! So funny, that one had me laughing all day.
I really miss her and so many things about life in Ghana. The weather, the music, the people and the general attitudes. I don't miss some of the smells, but I do miss some of the food. I hope to go back and visit Agnes and the family in the next few years, or maybe even end up working somewhere in Africa. I am trying to get started on raising funds/getting grants for AHFOGH so if anyone has any places they suggest applying for funds let me know!
"I was smitten for life."
When I was really sick with malaria (or whatever tropical disease it was) I had a lot of time to think. I couldn't do much for about 3 days so I read a lot and wrote a lot. I thought a lot about what the trip meant to me- so far I had been in Ghana for just over 7 weeks. This doesn't sound long at all in retrospect.
I realized a lot about myself while I was there. I did not want to walk away from my experience and go back to Canada and fall back into the exact same patterns I was in before I left. Yes, I will still care about stupid insignificant things, but they don't matter as much as they did before.
I learned that by trying to escape myself I have truly become more of who I am. I was joking around with Femke and Saskia about how I thought that Ghana would teach me to relax, to go with the flow of life, and help me to get over all of my fears. Indeed I have conquered many of these fears such as: African toilets (dear God did I find some horrible ones), peeing in public (a whole village saw me once), working in areas with terrifying diseases, foreign foods, lack of running water and electricity, open sewers and a completely different culture. I've learned that I'm still a huge hypochondriac and germaphobe and I still get stressed out about things - but I'm okay with that. I've learned how to be alone, and yet being alone made me realize how many people cared about me. The random emails or messages or blog posts from friends and family made me feel like I was really cared about, and like I was doing something important with my life.
I feel like I contributed something real in Ghana. I was afraid that I would go and simply get stuck doing something uninteresting and pointless and I got the complete opposite. Granted, I didn't speak enough Twi to do the presentations alone and I didn't do any medical procedures that brought people back to life. But you think, well I taught a group of men on Valentine's Day how to use condoms to protect themselves and their partners. I met some commercial sex workers who may have had their questions about HIV answered and put their minds at ease. I may have encouraged a pregnant woman to get tested for HIV and changed the life of her baby. I got to have fun with a little boy with HIV and show him that he is still a little boy even though he is sick. I think that everyone should do something like this at some point in their lives. I am so fortunate to be able to have the time and resources to volunteer because I know that everyone does not. I just think that if you are able to go abroad and face your personal demons and help another culture then you can re-evaluate whether you have been doing the right thing or the wrong thing all the years of your life. I'm not saying I'm less materialistic or capitalist or selfish- I'm just saying that it put all of these things into perspective and I was able to think about which things were actually important.
It's not so much that I'm leaving my heart in Africa , as it is that I will take a piece of it with me always. Not in some exotified, mythologized way, but as a true memory of a time in my life where I felt truly happy. It wasn't that I woke up every moning in luxury to some amazing sunrise - it was that whenever I felt bad there was always something right around the corner that made me so utterly happy.
I re-read Stephen Lewis' "Race Against Time" again while I was sick and it made me cry. The first place he ever visited in Africa was Accra, Ghana. He was supposed to stay for 7 days and he stayed for a year. I can see how he fell in love with it. So many of his experiences have paralleled the things I've seen- in the HIV clinic, in the schools, and in my travels, though obviously not to the same extreme. "I was smitten for life," said Lewis. This is exactly how I feel. His writing encompasses so many stories and ideas that I wonder how he managed to compact so many experiences into one book. But I've been thinking a lot and there will be more to come...
Paintings, dancers, and HIV/AIDS work
I wanted to share some information on the amazing paintings that my Ghanaian friend Adams does. He has no formal training and paints these gorgeous works that I will soon have hanging all over my house. Or will get framed for my future house because my room is too small to fit them all!
He has a website address:
http://adamsartservice-adams.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-01-25T14%3A37%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7Click on the link at the bottom right for older posts of pics. I actually think I bought half of the ones on the webpage- and you can order them from Canada I'm pretty sure so if anyone wants some great art for a very good price send him an email at
ziuj2003@yahoo.com.
Junior, who makes all of the necklaces and some drums, also has a website so check it out. He makes me laugh so much.(Apparently his realy name is Shadrack- who would have known!)
http://gbetorartworks.blogspot.comThe Africana Dance Company were unlike any dancers I have ever seen. This is the dance team that we went to watch because Adams, Junior and Aziz are members. My dad was utterly amazed. It makes you feel like the laziest, most uncoordinated person ever. But they offer dance classes and in no time you will be shaking it like the best of them. They have a website, and I have some videos so I might try to post them if I can get them to work. I'm sure they won't do them justice but just in case anyone is interested. (Someone hire them for a corporate event in Canada so I can bring all my friends over and you'll never have a better time in your life, I promise!)
http://www.africanadancecompany.comAnd finally. The African Hope Foundation of Ghana website. The most amazing organization I could have ever asked for founded by my host mother Agnes Opoku. The website is actually pretty good and I'm going to try to apply to some foundations in Canada for funding for the organization. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions let me know. Also, they would love more volunteers so if you want to do some hands-on HIV/AIDS work let me know and I can tell you what it's like!
http://www.ahfogh.org
Things that make you go hmmm.
I don't want to forget a single thing that I learned in Ghana. Everything was so different and when something is so dramatically different from what you're used to it is a great way to contemplate the way that you live your life. There were a lot of things I noticed, from fashion to food patterns and I would love to share them with whoever is interested, but I'm just laying them out more so I can think them over.
Fashion in Africa. Ghanaians sure know how to dress. Gill was right, we did look like tools in our Western outfits that were mainly composed of sporty camping gear. A quick-dry shirt might keep you from being really sweaty but you kind of look like an idiot there. The batik tie and dye, kente and GTP clothes were so gorgeous and most women had full outfits made out of them. A full outfit costs 30,000 cedis to make. Thats about 3 dollars US. I got some outfits made by the end but seriously felt under-dressed all of the time. Also, I think every shirt I've ever given away ends up in Africa somewhere. They ship large containers of clothes there from North America, women buy them in bulk and then sell them in the market. I passed so many people with shirts from the Toronto Blue Jays, random American universities, charity runs, and hilarious shirts from somewhere at home.
Shopping here is another interesting dilemma. It's been said that you can find anything in the Kejetia market in Kumasi. It is the largest open air market in West Africa and the longest I was ever in there was maybe 3 hours and I was still in the clothing section! The problem is if you are looking for something specific it could take hours. Instead of walking into Wal-Mart and finding the aisle you want, you have to roam and hope that you might encounter the product you need. Bargaining is another hard tactic. I am really really bad at it. I hate bargaining down some woman who probably needs the money more than I do from 3 dollars down to 1 dollar for a shirt. I'm horrible- I just feel so bad. But after a while you realize that as an obruni you're a walking dollar sign and if you don't stick up for yourself you're going to get ripped off every five minutes. So I tried to learn. I ended up shopping with my host sister one day and it was so weird. You pick through a giant pile of clothing and find random things that you can't try on and then just buy hoping they fit. It boggled my mind how anyone could find anything nice to wear, but people really do! It must take more skill than I have because I was always a little too intimidated.
Food. My sister sent some magazines with my mom to give me in Italy to help me catch up on the cultural scene at home. What struck me first was the models. They were so thin, and so sickly looking. There were also a few articles focusing on anorexia since there has been a lot of publicity about models dropping dead from anorexia -related heart failure lately.
People in Ghana are not thin. Yes, there are definitely people who do not have enough to eat, but I don't think I would say that I saw a lot of people who were starving. An attractive Ghanaian woman is fat. Not obese, but has a healthy appetite and eats a lot of food. It doesn't take much in Ghana to make you fat. All they eat are hydrogenated oils, heavy meats, and tons and tons of carbohydrates. Femke said she gained so much weight, but it's really hard not to. You can't really exercise (people here work all day in the sun) but if I did that I would probably have heat stroke and die. Victoria, staff at the hospital, implied that she felt almost insulted when people thought they were going to lose weight in Africa. "We're not all starving you know," she said. People here eat because you have to eat a lot in the heat to keep going. To have the energy to work for twelve hours a day you have to eat what you can get. The kids at the school would never turn something down that they were fed. Food is precious. I really didn't think twice about the hundreds of loaves of white bread I consumed there, except to note that I didn't really think I was getting any vitamins anymore. You don't think, man is this fufu making me into a big cow, you think, man I'm glad I don't feel sick today so I can eat this whole meal. It was nice to have a break from the stress in Western society that is around every corner about dieting and cutting carbs.
Saskia was talking to her host family about how some people in Western countries starve themselves and they didn't understand it at all. Why would someone do that they asked? She tried to explain that there are these mental disorders where people try to become thinner and she kept trying to tell them the many reasons why and the kids just didn't get it. It doesn't seem to be a concept that people understand. It was so weird to come back to Canada and think, wow I never really think over why I do some of the things I do, in the sense that I have the option to do so. I am obviously not trying to downplay the seriousness of eating disorders- they are very complex and horrible- I'm just trying to illustrate how our society feeds such illnesses (for lack of a better word) while others have very different societal issues. We have so much food. We can just pick out whatever we want and eat it whenever we please. The kids at the school get rice for lunch. If they don't get fed they won't come to school. If Agnes doesn't provide food at the PLWHA meetings, she told me people won't show up. It is an important part of their culture to eat and eat a lot.
The only people that I saw that literally looked like they were starving to death were the AIDS patients at the clinic. In stage 3 or 4 of HIV/AIDS people start losing more than 10% of their body fat. Many of the patients had severe diarrhea or vomiting every day so we would encourage them to try to gain as much as they could because it was very hard to hold on to. The blood pressure monitor doesn't work on people if their arms are too small, and many times we would try and try and their arm would be only bone and the machine would fail to give us a reading. Being thin is not a goal in Ghana, and I hope that their society stays that way.
Their society just worked so differently than ours and in many ways they have many positive societal norms that North Americans could learn from. I'm just rambling now and this is too long, but I'm trying to just think things out before they disappear into normalcy again.
Culture Shocking All Over the Place
Life outside of Africa so far seems too cold, sanitary and quiet. It feels almost lonely. Yes, I don't think anyone would ever describe Italy as any of these things but it really felt that way. Ghana was so bright all of the time- the clothing, the people, and of course the amazingly hot sunshine. Walking into a hotel in Milan was bizarre at best. I walked in carrying this striped plaid plastic bag that cost a dollar that Gill advised me to get to lug around my drum. I was really travelling like a Ghanaian with this bag, it was so funny, everyone had them at the airport. I looked so ghetto compared to all of the Prada-clad Milanese. (Mind you Louis Vuitton made a bag for spring that is identical to my dollar bag and it costs $3,000 dollars - but I dont think anyone would mistake mine for his.)
Anyways, walking into this hotel and having a shower was so weird. I felt like I was in a dream. First of all- running water, second of all- being clean. I showered every day in Ghana (bucket showers of course) but I felt like the second I stepped out I was dusty and sweaty all over again. Scrubbing down in a hot shower almost felt wrong. I didn't want to wash away the dirt that I had everywhere. It felt comfortable. My mom walked into my room though and told me that me and my father smelled, and proceeded to open the window to try to air it out, haha. Kersten said that she stayed in a hotel when her mom came to visit Ghana and got in a hot shower and freaked out. She hadn't expected it to be hot (I've never had hot water there, ever) so she was screaming and getting burnt and couldn't figure out how to turn it off and that story really makes me laugh. Sleeping in a clean bed was also hard. It was all white and tucked in and I felt so uncomfortable and cold and there were no bug nets and it was utterly soundless in there.
Culture shock is like having a cramp in your brain. You can push through it and start to feel normal or you can make it worse by trying not to get over it. I was kind of stuck between whether I should just not think twice about these things that were once normal and get over it, or whether I should really just hold onto how I felt. I always knew that Western society was drastically different but it's worse coming back. We waste so much. The amount of water, food, electricity and resources that we have and don't give a second thought to is unbelievable. You don't realize how important something like water is until its a sacred commodity. The house in Accra had run out of water before we left and they had to get a truck to bring some in or find a tap somewhere that is running. If you are poor you don't have this option. And here I am wasting the water away scrubbing myself clean. I guess it just felt weird to me to come from so little to so much excess. I actually liked it the other way around. And I know that is because being in West Africa was my option- if I was born there and had no other choice but to work hard all day to get what I had I might not prefer it. Life just seemed a whole lot simpler there. Probably because I could literally escape everything. I didn't know what was going on in the world, I had internet maybe once a week, my cell phone rarely had reception, and I only talked to other people who also had no idea what was going on at home. It was really nice. I don't think I've been as happy as I was there in a while.
Italy of course was absolutely gorgeous. Downtown Milan was dramatically different from Ghana, but it was still beautiful. We spent the day in Milan going to church and wandering around and it was really nice and really weird. I almost threw up in Furla while my mom was looking at purses. The world started spinning and I couldn't look at one more shiny bag or key chain and I just had to get out of there. I couldn't handle it quite yet. We drove up to Lake Como the next morning and it was amazing. It is surrounded by the Italian alps, but I couldn't get as many pictures of it as I wanted because my dad was freaking out driving on the winding roads and wouldn't stop. It was chilly there- I've been freezing since I left Ghana- but the mountains were so nice. We stayed in Bellagio along the tip of the lake and had a view of the alps and some of the other small villages. Everything I ate felt weird going down. I was so used to eating bread, rice and more bread that when I had vegetables or cheese my stomach was none to pleased with me. I was sure I was getting fat in Ghana because I only ate carbohydrates for 8 weeks and people would compliment me by saying I was looking bigger, but since I had malaria I haven't been able to eat the same and I think I've actually lost about 10 pounds. My mom said I looked thin, so I got fat for most of my trip and then got so sick that it reversed it. Not bad! Malaira is not the best diet ever though. Also there was a time change, so now I am going through about 3 different time changes and I feel very strange. We took a boat around to the different towns and explored and went to villas and drank cappuccinos that made me feel even sicker. I thought it might make my transition to home harder, but I think it made it better.
Toronto is pretty freaking bleak right now. We arrived yesterday afternoon (I have no idea what time my body thinks it is?) and it was rainy and depressing and I can't wait to get out of here again. I had a mini panic attack on the plane thinking about coming home. I'm not ready. The more I travel, the less I want to come back. I keep thinking that I will get it out of my system but it won't go away.
My last day in Ghana was so great- I couldn't have asked for a better send off. My phone rang about an hour before my flight and it was one of the girls from the school at Feyiase! She wanted to say bye and to thank me for teaching them. It was so sweet and she really made me feel like I made an impact on them. I had been trying to teach them some geography and history of Ghana in my past few weeks. They couldn't find Ghana on a map (you were right Gill) and they didn't know a lot about slavery or any of the Gold Coast's beginnings. I had been working hard trying to show them where all of the European powers were on a globe and the influence of history on present day Ghana. Hopefully it worked! It was just so nice to hear from Mercy because she probably had to go out of her way to call me. Then Daniel, the Ghanaian staff at the Volunteer Abroad house called me into his room. He had a glass bead bracelet for me and the most hilarious sandals. I will have to post a picture because they are pretty much the best gift ever. They are hand crafted leather sandals with fur all over the tops that is dyed bright neon yellow. He had bought them for me that day! I was so happy- I couldn't believe he would spend his salary on a gift for me. I gave him my crocs when I left- he really loved them and I think it was a good trade because he seemed pretty pleased. Then Adams, the amazing artist and dancer who is a good friend of Kersten's, biked all the way over just in time to see me off to the airport. He's so funny, and played Ghanaian dance music in the taxi all the way there. Saskia, Kersten and Adams all shoved into a cab (as they do in Ghana) along with me and my dad and all of our luggage just to give me a hug outside the airport. I'm going to miss them all so much!
