Mamá Cotacachi

As promised, our driver picked us up at 4:30 a.m. He drove us out of town, and gradually up hill. We passed through the still-sleeping town of Quiroga and onto a dirt track where we picked up our guide, Antonio.

A road winds up Volcan Cotacachi to a squadron of antenna: cell towers, tv and radio. We wound up the road until mud ruts stopped us, and the driver let us out, promising to return in the early afternoon. From the road, the rising sun showed the earth below us undercast. Otavalo was blanketed in cloud, only the peaks of neighboring volcanoes stod clear: Imbabura and Fuya fuya. Even our first volcano of the trip, Rocu Pinchicha was visible 80km away.

We left the road for a narrow footpath that lead up through the paramo grasses. Mamá Cotacachi is deemed more difficult; the last 40m or so require mountaineering equipment including ice axes, crampons and ropes. The service, with which we had contracted for the day had reminded us that the guide would take us only as far as we could climb without the additional gear.

The clouds came in quickly and within an hour, our vision was reduced to 20m or less. Our guide, sometimes only visible only as movement, always waited for us in a sheltered spot, out of the wind. When we arrived minutes later, out of breath, he offered shelter, fruit and chocolate. We ate claudias (yellow plums) and manderinas in the refuge of a rock. On more exposed sections, he peered around his hood to make sure we were following and adjusted his pace. At breaks we asked him about plants, learning some names and medicinal uses.

In the high alpine gardenhe rooted at the base of pies de gallina in search of a small creepi8ng herb. "Medicina" he told us "Contra la altitura." He pinched off a branch for us to smell. He cleaned the rest with bottled water, then tucked the leaves into a thermos of boiling water.

The route, though well maintained with carns, bisected many other trails, and without Antonio, we would have been lost. We reached a staddle after scrambling up a few pitches, and Antonio, waiting for us in the lea of a rock, offered steaming cups of tea and bread flavored lightly with anise. We peered up at Mama Cotacach's final pitch. It was steeper than we'd yte come and coated in rime ice. The ice was beginning to accumulate on my raincoat as well.

Though higher, we found the climb somehow gentler, perhaps it was simply less steep until the final ascent, or perhaps our footing was surer on the less-traveled path. But it may also have been the folklorico and andean flute eminating from the pocket of our guide, or the promise of hot tea luring us upward.

Las Fruitas

In the mercado that spills out of the daily market and onto Avienda 31 de Octubre, open air stalls offer myriad varieties of fruit. Some are familiar: mangoes (two varieties), bananas (at least five), guavas, papayas, pineapples, oranges, blackberries, strawberries, avocados, cherries and grapes. In small moments of bravery, I sally into the market, bringing back a new trophy each time.

I sample tomates de árbol - strange egg-shaped fruits with a mottled maroon and crimson sin. When I peel it, the apperance and texture are entirely tomato, but the taste is an earthy tartness that, I find out later, makes an excellent ¨juice¨ (fruit, agua purificada y asucar)

I try tamarind, cracking the dried pea-pod like husk for the sticky fruits inside. I´m surprised, after using tamarind paste and encountering it in indian restaurants to find that the fruit is mostly seed.

It's not until our profesoras take us to the market that we make the aquaintance of some of the more obscure (to us) Ecuadorian fruits. Like pepina, whose thin yellow skin hosts purple stripes and whose taste and texture bring mellon to mind. and naranjilla (little orange), a small member of the citrus family with a flavor akin to kumquats. Its tartness likewise lends itself to juice and ice cream.


After offering us a quarter of guayaba each, and discussing its characteristics in spanish, Elizabeth roots around in the remaining half for the gusano, or worm, that is often found there. "Protein", I say, "I feel it moving", Mike says. While the custard-like texture puts some off, the fruit can be used medicinally to treat diarrhea.

We end our tasting with a family of fruits whose juicy, and somewhat slimy flesh surrounds a multitude of small seeds. "Pomegranite", I think, "Salmon roe", Mike suggests. Elizabeth hands us each a spoon. The flavors range from sour to sweet and each sports a thick husk that needs to be ¨cracked¨ to get at the fruit.

The lesson fuels my bravery, and I expand my forays to ordering jugo de naranjilla with dinner, and buying guayaba jam for our morning breakfast. We find the heladeria and watch the sorbet-like ice cream being made. Fruit juice and sugar are beaten in a copper bowl nested in a larger bowl which is lined with reeds (to serve as insulation) and ice. Taxo and maracuyá for Mike, and guyabana and mora for me. What will we find next?

Pay Attention!

La escuela sits on the third floor above a dentists office and a candy store. It holds a maze of small rooms, each with a table and two chairs and a stack of books. The day begins with a stack of blank paper on which Fernando writes our lectures, scrawls new vocabulary, or draws pictures to explain them.

On our first day, he asked if we'd like to study on the roof top terrace and we've claimed it each morning since. The three of us sit at a picnic table under a yellow umbrella, which offers shelter from the sun and passing showers. After the lesson, we practice with a mixture of written and oral exercies. We read about Ecuadorian history, geography and culture. Always his lectures, explanations, jokes and praise, as they should be, are in spanish. We write it, read it, listen to it, and stumble through speaking it.

I had bought a notebook before I came to Ecuador in an effort to prime my learning. I worked through it, a chapter at a time, picking up basic vocabulary and grammar. In the six hours we studied on the first day, we covered most of what I had studied. By the afternoon of the second day we were on to completely new material. I fall asleep and wake to a litany of conjugations and vocabulary.

There are, of course, moments of great humor. When Fernado went to photocopy an exercise for us and mientras tanto (in the mean time) left us another task. We heard only "tonto" which means "dumb", and made us all laugh. And again when we struggled over the translation of students "puden atencion" or "put attention" to their studies. Imagine Fernando's dismay when we told him in the U.S. students "pagar" - pay attention! He covered his mouth and threw his head back laughing. Settling down, we put our attention to our lessons and moved on.

Finding my Edge

We set out for Imbabura amid lifting clouds in an camioneta. The driver brought us as high as he could on the cobbled road that switchbacked two thousand feet up the mountain's shoulder. From there we climbed through cow pastures and scrub to the high paramo. The trail followed a ridge and ascended steeply up a slope to gain the next. Though I am a strong adherent to staying on the trail to prevent damage to the surrounding area, the previous night{s rain had turned the foot path into a otter slide. Adjacent tussocks offered steps to climb the steep slope.

Paramo grasses gave way to a high alpine garden, which in the swirling mist, appeared like a Japanese painting. Occasionally the clouds parted to reveal our destination: a rocky crag impossibly high above us.

The path, while solid enough, snaked along a knife's edge ridge. The mountian fell away to the left and right. Sometimes we saw nothing, other times, windows in the clouds offered us views across to distant ridges and summits. Hummingbirds plunged down the slope or sprung into view only to hide themselves in a shrub. The diverse alpine garden drew me on, and the path drew me up, despite the tether of thin air which forced me to stop again and again and again sucking air.

The garden diminished and we moved up over exposed rock. My breath came in gasps from fear as much as from altitude. I was safe, and I knew it, but the effects of the altitude were insiduous. My mind, my heart and my gut longed to push on, to overcome my fear and acomplish something I knew I could complete. But my body seemed drained of all motivation.

We climbed on. Again I stopped, leaned against an outcrop, and again held court. The heavy mist around us solidified inot sleet. Above us a group who had passed us earlier were beginning to decend. I watched Mike scramble up to confer with them and I followed. "Fifteen more minutes" the assured us "y no mas dificil!"

Something in that last stretch realeased me. Already I had moved beyond what felt comfortable and into new terrain. I stood 50m below the sumit of a mountain 15,400 feet above sea level in a mix of sleet and freezing fog. I was on top of the world and it was enough.

In the Hands of Strangers

We left Otavalo on Friday afternoon in a down pour and headed to the bus station for a weekend excursion. The terminal in Otavalo is a paved plaza that, to someone, must have a clear order, but to me, resembles a pick-up-sticks tangle of busses. Walk around confused for a moment in this town, however, and help will find you. A gentleman in a yellow raincoat and pants pointed us to the bus for Ibarra, and within ten minutes of arriving at the terminal, we were on our way.

From the terminal in Ibarra, we walked six blocks or so to the smaller station from which busses leave for Esperanza. We found the plaza and began to board the bus, but the driver stopped us, explaining that we would reach Esperanza faster on the neighboring bus, which, as it turned out was the express.

It was probably evident to the driver and all the other passengers that when we boarded we were headed for the house of Doña Aida. The hostel, which sleeps 70 comes highly recommended both from the Lonley Planet book and fellow travellers as the starting point for climbing Volcan Imbabura. When we asked when to get off, the passengers passed knowing smiles and assured us it was a kilometer further up (and up indeed it was, the bus had been climbig steadily since we left Ibarra). When we neared the stop, we were ushered out of our seats and to the front of the bus. "Casa Aida?" the driver asked, and let us off at the door.

Doña Tamara met us at the door as if she had been expecting us, though we had no reservation, and she showed us to our room. She graciously agreed to have breakfast ready for us at 6:00 am and arrange for a camioneta to take us to the trail head at 6:30. We settled into our turquise, red and mustard colored room grateful for all the hands who had eased our journey.

Are the mountains out?

Roosters wake me when the world is at the edge of light. A short time later, traffic picks up. The sounds of diesel busses, delivery trucks and car horns join the morning symphony. The metronomic clicking of frogs who sang all night begins to fade.

Sunrise happens quickly on the equator, and dawn is a brief affair. Roosters and car horns wake one dog whose barking quickly ignites the others, setting the full cacauphony into swing. Only then does the sky sift from dark to light, the town from night to day.

It has become our habit, when the sun offers enough light, to spring out of bed and check the mountains. Mama Cotacachi overloks Otavalo from the northwest, and when the sky is clear, she fills our window. This morning, clouds flank her skirts, but her sumit is clear, crowned only with a lenticular cloud.

At 6:30, fully light, the music begins at the municipal track, where walkers, joggers make their circles and an aerobics class sends women bobbing and kicking to the beat.

It is not sufficient to say the weather is variable. It puts the fluctuations of the Northeast to shame. January marks a dry period in this region, but afternoon clouds and showers are common. Even when Cotacachi stands clear, Poppa Imbabura may be fully obscured by clouds. And so, he draws us, each morning, to the door and out onto our small balcony to peer out to the east, out across the empty lot which houses a sheep, and the frogs that each night sing us to sleep. We look out at the rising sun in hopes of a glimpse of Imbabura.

Otavalo

We arrived in Otavalo on market day. Its a small city of 50,000, folded in a valley between Vulcan Imbabura and Volcan Cotacachi. We found almuerzo (lunch) of chicken and rice and began to explore.

The Plaza de Pancho holds a daily hand crafts market of woven alpaca blankets, knit sweaters, embroidered wall hangings, carved statues, silver jewelry and montecristi, the traditional andean felt hats. On Saturdays it explodes into the surrounding streets, turning the main avenue and adjacent side streets into a pedestrian mall. Food vendors wheel carts with fruit, drinks, meat, beans and roasting plantains. At the fringes of the hand craft market, stalls sell jeans, sweatshirts, brillo pads, cell phones, soccer balls, pots and pans and anything else one might want or need.

Saturday´s volume weaves the hard goods market into the expanded daily market where vendors offer sacks of potatoes, beans, corn and rice, baskets of leeks, onions, tomatoes, grapes, bananas, mangoes, oranges and other fruits whose names and flavors I do not yet know. In the carne aisle sides of beef hang from hooks and pigs heads adorn trays. Women pluck lingering down feathers from whole chickens while they wait to make a sale.Dogs nose the street for scraps. Abuelas with the stature of children carry too-heavy bags. Otavaleñas, the local indigenous women brouse the market in their white embroidered blouses with billowing lace sleaves, long woolen skirts and woven belts, their children strapped to their backs with a cloth.

We wander the maze of stalls and streets, "mirando, solomente mirando", looking only, finding ourselves on the same street corner and turning a new direction. We did pick up some mangoes (five for a dollar) and bananas (five cents each)and some bread to serve as a light supper. We at it on our stoop, watching the clouds that crowned Imbabura and waiting for a glimpse.

Quito with altitude

High places, vantage points draw our eye. Maybe its inate in our species to climb and seek clear vistas. From Old Town, the Basilica del Voto Nacional drew our eyes and then our feet. We climbed the circular stairs and looked far out over the city from the parapet above the rose window. If Rome was built on seven hills, Quito must carpet a dozen or more. From our perch, the top of an adjacent hill crowned with a park called our eye and drew us on.

A number of cross streets end in a set of stairs, where the land becomes too steep for cars. We ascended a set to the park, pausing to catch our breath on the landings while school children passed us eating ice cream.

The next morning, feeling better acclimatized and after a morning cup of coca tea (a diuretic and digestive that promotes increased oxygen intake), we took a cab to the TeleferiQo, a gondola that brings tourists to the shoulder of Volcan Pichincha overlooking Quito. aT 4100M, I stood higher than I had at any other point in my life. We were greated by a paramo pipit, a cousin of the alpine birds in the US. Well above tree line, the vegetation was dominated by tussock grass (ichu)and matted alpine flowers which grow close along the ground where temperature fluctuates less and the wind´s influence is diminished

Ecuadoran hillstar hummingbirds with white bellies and indigo heads fed from the orange thistle-like chuquirangua, and a pair of carunculated caracaras played on the wind. The air was thin, the absence of it evident not only in our racing heartbeats, but also in the way it entered our nostrils and the complaints of our muscles as they worked with less than their usual fare of oxygen.

A gently sloping foot path brought us along an open ridge where clouds broke to offer view of distant mountains and the blanket of Quito below. I stopped and sat in the alpine garden watching swirling mist and listening to the echoing calls of birds while Mike scrambled up the last 100m of the Rucu Pichincha.

We nearly flew down, pausing on the last rise to eat chicken empeñadas, with the city at our feet.

Time Travel

After breakfast, we let our feet carry us to Quito´s old town, a labyrinth of one way streets and colonial architecture. We found our way to the Plaza Grande, ringed with the Palacio del Gobierno and Quito´s Cathedral. On a side street, we picked up crecentes and pan dulces at a panaderia and fresh squeezed orange juice. Back in the plaza, we lingered in the shade, eating our snack and exhanging pleasantries with a patient elderly gentleman.

Around us children kicked a soccer ball, buisness men stopped to chat, policia patrolled in dark blue uniforms, their whistles at the ready.Indigenous women in their high Ecuadoran hats and embroidered skirts sold weavings, sunglasses and small carved statues.

A UNESCO world heritage site, Quito first came to prominance during the brief rein of the Inca in 1500 when it served as the secondary capitol for the Ecuadoran born ruler. Less than 50 years later Francisco Pizarro arrived and disposed of the Inca. The Spanish crown declared Quito the capitoal of a province extending up into Colombia and down into Peru. It was then, in the late 1500s that the white-washed buildings around us were built. In the 1820s, Quito and other Ecuadoran cities began to vie for independance, which they won in 1822.

Errands pulled us away from Old Town and we wound up paz y muño to the Instituto Geografico Militar where we selected topo maps for our treks. On large flat screen monitors, we were able to view each map, zoom in, and check our routes. After paying less than $3 per map, our maps were printed for us on a state-of-the-art, large-format printer.

Gravity pulled us back down the hill to supper in New Town with its wide streets, electric trollies and glass-fronted buildings. What a kalidescope of time and topography.

Arrivals

I woke to see,against the pailing sky, the silouhettes of volcanoes jutting through the clouds. Standing there, on the shoulder of Cotopaxi one would see the world as I did, blanketed in cloud and still sleeping. We decended through the haze and between the time we landed and entered the airport, the sun had risen and began to burn through the fog.

We arrived in Quito with little hastle and took a cab to our hostel, where Belen waited for us. The hostel is clean with fresh paint, wooden floors, and a center atrium that pours light into our interior room.

At 2850m (aprox 9000 ft) even a walk through the city can be taxing. So we wandered down Avenue Amazones to Parque El Ejido, pausing along the way in plazas and on street corners to watch cars and busses, street vendors and sparrows.

At Parque El Ejido, a crowd drew us to a volley ball game, just getting underway. After stretching, six men took the concrete court and commenced a game of Equavolley. In this Ecuadoran version, the net sits about 9´ off the pavement and the players suspend the ball in the midst of their volley. On-lookers ringed the court, two or three people deep in the shady sections.

Extending one end of the court, a row of cement benches held card players. Men in suits straddled the benches and faced men in tee-shirts or ragged clothes. While we watched both games, two men clasped hands, crouched to blow the dust from the bench and took their seat to deal a hand. We ambled on.

Grateful

We woke this morning to the sound of the fan going off, the fan resuming and the printer going through its paces, and then both falling silent again. The still-dark morning showed no storm, no wind, nothing that would cause a power outage.

We live in a small house, heated with a wood stove. Leaving means shutting the house down, turning the water off, and flushing all the lines. Which requires an air compressor. Which requires power. We had saved printing our itineraries, and copying our passports until this morning. Cooking breakfast would have to wait or would happen over the wood stove.

We rose and dug our head lamps out of our packed bags. We lit candles and searched out the phone book to find the power company’s number. We loaded the wood stove and attended to the tasks we could accomplish by candlelight.

In general power outages in the US, with the exception of rare storm events, are brief. In under two hours, our lights were back on. But my mind, already en route to South America, realized how lucky we are to be able to take electricity for granted. It takes an interruption to shake us into awareness. We have so much: health, enough money to jump on a plane and travel for two months, and the leisure to do it. We have the support and well-wishes of friends and family. And so, for all I have, and all I will encounter, I embark suffused with humility and gratitude.

¿Por Qué Ecuador?

Why not?

Despite the fact that in the Northeast we’re 14” of snow below normal, its still winter. Ecuador, on the equator, offers 3 additional hours of sunlight a day, and about 30˚F warmer in temperature. Scotland, also high on our list, is cold; Thailand is far.

We want to study Spanish, and my partner has already traveled extensively in Chile and Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala.

Though the size of Nevada, Ecuador has more species of birds than the US and Canada combined.

Ecuador uses the US dollar.

While Everest is the tallest mountain above sea level, Ecuador’s Chimborazo is the furthest from the center of the earth, due to a slight bulge at the equator. Many other volcanoes, extinct and active, dot the Andean spine that runs through Ecuador’s center. We look forward to climbing a few.

So tomorrow… Ecuador!

Finding the Familiar in the Foreign

My partner coined the phrase “Finding the foreign in the familiar.” As naturalists, we seek to see. And too often on our daily beat, we speed past trees, animals, processes, and events. We take the familiar for granted. But in a new place, where the foreign reigns, we find everything new, engaging.

Evolutionarily this would have helped us survive. Within one’s home territory, if something were amiss, we would spot it and be alerted to an intruder, predator, or source of food. The challenge is to continue to see, observe, notice, the land around us even as it remains familiar.

But we are leaving our home territory. The place where the marcescent oak leaves still cling to twigs, their rocking indicating a slight breeze. We’re leaving the startling red of winterberry holly berries that never fail to catch my attention, though they linger all winter. We’re leaving the lake, newly frozen and holding its first dusting of snow.

So now the challenge shifts. In a place where everything is new, where the landscape, trees, birds and language will all be foreign, I’ll seek out the familiar. My brain will strive, unconsciously for the most part, to link my experiences to that which I already know.

As I embarked on a study of Spanish, I found strong connections with the French I studied for years. As I paged through the Birds of Ecuador field guide, I was accosted by the unfamiliar shapes and color; overwhelmed by wonder. But a closer look revealed familiarities; flycatchers, thrushes, warblers, and tanagers are all cousins of birds I can name from sight and sound. The general size of them, the shape of their beaks, and the way they alight on a branch are familiar to me.

So much as we travel will be foreign, but I anticipate with delight finding the small connections that knit this planet into its single, cohesive sphere.

Abundance

I shrugged my winter coat over my shoulders, coaxed my car into starting after two weeks of rest and drove myself home. I brushed my teeth with water from the tap, concerned neither for the safety of the water nor for the abundance of it. I took a hot shower, long and cleansing to wash the red dust, sweat and 42 hours of travel away. My house seemed far too large for my needs. When I turned on lights, electricity was reliable. I looked forward to returning to my job, grateful for salary that allowed me to pay my bills and even acquire some luxuries. Outside rain fell. I was home.

Playing Tourist

Soloman met us at the airport with a small crew of friends, and turned our fourteen-hour layover into a guided tour of Accra. Our first stop was to the home of one of his friends where we put our luggage in a back room, confident we would find it at the end of the day.

We drove past the Flagship House, the Ghanaian version of the white house. We passed the National Theater and Parade Ground, past the national field hockey stadium (a highly competitive men’s sport here), and drove out along the ocean to a seaside restaurant and bar. Stretched along a plywood counter in the shade, we looked out over the ocean and watched fishermen set their nets. Their five-man wooden canoes plunged across the swells.

I finished my red red and fried plantains, flaked the last of the meat out of a whole fried fish then wandered out to sit in the shade of a palm tree. More canoes stitched the horizon. A black edge between the sky and sea protruded from the shore, it was the remains of an old slave fort where tribal men, women and children were loaded on to ships bound for the Barbados, Brazil and the United States.

We left the sea for another slice of Ghanaian history: the Nkrumah Mausoleum - the burial site of the first democratically elected leader in West Africa. After pursuing an extensive education in the US and traveling to Canada and London, Nkrumah returned to Ghana in 1947 and became a leader in Ghana’s independence movement from Britain. Ironically, the marble monument rests on the old polo grounds – a vestige of colonialism from which black Ghanaians were excluded during the British rule.

Our last stop of the day was at a roadside kiosk, where Soloman jumped out of the van to negotiate prices before we showed our white faces. Several of us piled out to pick up Ghanaian soccer jerseys. The storekeeper laughed when I chose #3 Gyan – the Black Stars striker who put the US out of the World Cup. Soloman, still laughing, pointed out Gyan’s airbrushed portrait as we headed back to pick up our luggage.

Safari

We took breakfast on the patio of the Mole Motel just as the sun was rising. The doa-doa tree with its red-seeded fruits hanging like Christmas ornaments, was full of birds. A small troop of baboons came to drink from the pool, and perhaps to steal fruit from the tables. The morning was cool, soft, though the sun, once it cleared the lodge, brought heat. The terrace looked out over one if the largest watering holes in the region. And as I had scanned the shore through my binoculars, the night before, I watched a long, lean shape ease into the water. Crocodile!

At seven we met DK, our guide from the evening before. Elepants had been spotted, and he ushered us into the van quickly. We sped off, raising a trail of red dust. Another tour had found the elephant, and were disembarking. DK warned us to move quietly and quickly. The elephant was eating as we approached. It did its best to hide behind the tree it was feeding from. We watched for a while, but the other group drew too close and the elephant moved off.

After some discussion, we continued in the van, pausing for bushbucks and waterbucks, cob and baboons, and finally another elephant. This one was out in the open, and didn’t seem to mind our small group. Once it turned and took a few steps toward us; DK stood forward and the elephant ambled off toward a trickle of water, pausing to pump water into its trunk, curl its trunk toward is mouth, and squirt the water in.

Back in the van, DK recited elephant’s natural history. “We have here the savannah el-ay-fant and the forest el-ay-fant.” he began “If you go down south, the elephants we have there are the forest elephants. If you come to Ghana Northwest to Mole National Park, the elephants we have here, are the savannah elephants.” He went on to illustrate the differences between the two and give more detail about African elephants in general: “Because the elephant has a poor digestive system, it eats a lot. Because they eat a lot, they go to toilet 16 times a day under normal conditions.” Though his voice was measured, a playful irony under laid it and we laughed all the way through his presentation.

It is an astonishing thing, to see an elephant in the wild. For most of us who live in the U.S., they are the creatures of story: Dumbo, Horton, Babar. We see them in zoos and circuses. Animals half tamed and bored, far from the places where their foot prints and wallows might provide puddles for other animals to drink from, weeks after the surrounding land has dried.

But after the elephants, it was the birds that distracted me until my breakfast was cold. Sent me thumbing through the Birds of Western Africa in search of a match. Found me calling for the van to stop. We scattered a bevy of double-spurred francolin, small partridges who disappeared into the undergrowth, and gazed at the impossible scarlet-chested sunbird. A flock of African grey hornbills flew overhead, calling. I had read about hornbills as child, and been amazed by their habit of sealing the female and young inside a tree cavity with a hole large enough only for the male to pass food through, and breaking the seal only when the young were ready to leave the nest. We stopped for a bustard, hadada ibis, rose-ringed parakeet, and clown-like hoopoe.

I love birds and have watched them since childhood, and it is a rare thing to encounter so many new species at a time. Like the batiked fabrics and carved animals, the check-marked drawings in my bird guide would be another treasure I would carry home from Ghana

Shade

The land invited me in, called to me like a siren. “Get off the bus! Get off the pavement. Walk!” But the bus and our schedule contained me, mostly. Twice, while students were in class, I slipped outside to wander the school grounds, let my feet find the slight grove worn by hundreds of feet on the red earth.

The trees called the loudest, for they were few and the land around them was bare. I laid my palm against the smooth bark of the banyan tree, my feet stepping between the wide root buttresses to get close enough. Pods hung from the high branches like fat green bananas. I learned later that, when ripe, they are full of a cottony substance that is used to stuff pillows and mattresses. Nearby was a tree T. identified as Ebony. The day before, at the cultural market, I had chosen an ebony bowl as a gift for my mother.

For the most part, trees supply wood for cooking fires. When we ventured out of the town, beginning the long drive to Mole National Park, most of the activity along the roads focused on gathering and transporting wood, or burning it down for charcoal. Bags, four foot tall and filled with charcoal leaned against each other by the roadside waiting to be carried back to the village.

But trees offer shade and livelihood as well. At each of the schools we visited, a wide spreading tree with dense foliage provided an outdoor classroom. Mango trees, Shea trees, or Doa Doa. Our students were given a mango in our travels, wrapped with a sparkly pipe cleaner bow, and proclaimed it the best they’d ever eaten. Shea nuts provide income for rural women who gather and process the nuts. Shea butter is among Ghana’s major exports and is used, among other things, in the lotion that sits on my bedside table.

As I sat outside at Dahin Sheili, a dry savannah wind brushed up red dust and released it to coat everything. Admonishments from a mistress punctuated the jubilant tumult of nursery school students. Wind whispered in the hollows of my ears, and sent plastic bags twisting across red dirt. In the tree above long-tailed glossy starlings chattered amid the mocking song of a laughing dove. Seed pods dropped from the doa doa tree that provided my shade, children sang “Happy Birthday,” a car honked, a moped streaked by, drums echoed first from the road, then from a classroom. Smoke rose from a smoldering trash pile where a goat nosed the unburned section for scraps. The seeds of the doa doa are used as a spice, to ease hypertension and prevent stroke. But on that day, the shade of it alone, the moment of stillness and solitude it offered, was enough to give me ease.

Sumisi

Seldom, as a white woman living in the northeastern US, have I been acutely aware of the color of my skin. More often, subtly or not, attention is drawn to my sex. When a heavy box, for example, is put aside in favor of one more suitable. Or, as the soul occupant of an elevator or parking garage, I wonder if the incoming company will be welcome or not.

The first time my whiteness was thrust on me, I was commuting on the Subway. I was on the “A” train heading home to Brooklyn. As we hurtled under the east river, the car rocking like an insane man, I reached into my bag and slid on my headphones – not to listen to music, but to dull the sound of the uneven rails. Settling back into my seat, I looked around and realized I was the only white person in the car. No one else seemed particularly to care or even notice that I was there. The faces around me did what the faces on the subway do, they read, they gazed at the strobing flash of tunnel lights and passing stations, they attempted isolation in what was inherently a communal situation. The moment stands like a snapshot in my mind, or rather two snap shots: the train from my eyes—a sea of brown faces each suspended in its own internal world; the other a fish eye photo from above—black, black, black, black, White, black, black.

In Ghana, our bus rides taught us two things, the first was, if we waved by showing our palms and rocking them side to side, people, mostly children, waived back. But if we extended our palms and waived by opening and closing our fingers, it meant “come” and people came to the bus windows with food or crafts for sale, or with open palms themselves, asking, asking.

We also learned the word “sumisi” which came whispering in through the windows laden with wonder. It hissed up at us from the street, sumisi, sumisi. When we asked the driver, he smiled and hesitated before sharing the secret. “White,” he said. “It means white people.” I’ll admit we did it too, albeit in our own language. “White person!” someone would exclaim pointing at the sidewalk or market.

At schools, younger children approached us shyly, round eyes on our faces, small hands reaching out to touch our skin, just to see what if felt like. Twice I sat with friends holding young babies, but when the babies focused on my face, my skin, or found themselves in my arms, they burst into tears frightened by the strangeness of me.

Faced with my traveling companion and I, of similar ages and builds, our hosts took for sisters, called us by each other’s names, and giggled when we revealed their mistake. A. was fair, blond-haired and blue eyed with an elfin chin. While I am also fair, my eyes and hair are brown, and my jaw square. All white people, I guess, look alike.

Firstborn

“Excuse me, madam”, the boy, perhaps 10 or 11 leaned toward me from the one-piece wooden desk where he sat. “Excuse me, madam, but what is the name of your firstborn?” By Ghanaian standards I was an older woman, who, for 10 years at least should have been about the business of producing and raising children. “I have no children, yet.” I responded, watching the look of disbelief and pity cross his face.

“Oh,” says, Abdulai as I shared photos of my family – of my father and his third wife, “Oh so you also practice polygamy?” When I explained that the photo is of my stepmother, he was as dismayed and saddened by my parents’ separation, as I was surprised by men living with multiple wives.

As we struggled to make sense of young brides, of polygamous households, we found the Ghanaians treated the subject with a good deal of humor. When my co-leader, A., was invited to return to Ghana, she allowed that it was difficult leaving her husband with her young son. “He should take another wife, then you could travel whenever you want to!” They teased with laughing eyes. At the palace, the chief’s wives giggled at our curiosity. They loved living in a polygamous family—they had to cook only once a week and had unlimited free childcare!

Our shopping brought us to Colwod, another element of the equation. Here, women like me, unmarried and past the age of 22, may be kicked out of their homes, often with no place to go. The Colwod Cooperative teaches them a trade and offers an income. Women batik cloth, make shirts, dresses, pot holders, wall hangings, napkins, bags, headbands. They took our measurements, and began their work on the wide table and sewing machines that huddle in the shade of a corrugated metal canopy.

And I, unmarried and childless at 32, took their handiwork with gratitude back to my partner, my mother, my father and his third wife.

Sound Minds Reside in Sound Bodies

Visits to The Tamale Islamic Science Senior High School (TISSEC) were a part of our daily routine. We took lunch and dinner here, and had been invited to join the students in their inter-house athletic competition. We’d been given uniforms, and arrived in our green dresses. The girl’s prefect and several of the senior girls lingered to help us pin on our headscarves.

The headmaster had staged a volleyball game between KCD and TISSEC, but with a twist. Our students donned TISSEC jerseys and played the “visiting” team of TISSEC students. Students and staff from both schools encircled the court standing just outside the macheted line that defined the field of play. There were, of course, a few liberties taken to ensure that TISSEC (our team) won; the lines were adhered to when it favored us, and ignored unless our fault was too egregious. It was lost on no one that theirs were the more trained and skilled players. But graciously they allowed the “home” team to take the day.

Our game provided the informal opening to the inter-house athletic competition. Students stood with their houses dressed by color: blue, green, yellow and red. We circled the track, which had also been carved from the red earth with a machete. At each house, our guide presented us to the housemaster, and we wished the students well. We sat in the shade of a canopy, resting in upholstered chairs brought out especially for the occasion. Our students took seats in the carved wooden chairs that formed the second row, and behind them the TISSEC staff were arrayed on benches and at tables.

The first heat came to the starting line, crouched and sprinted hard at the sound of the wooden clapper. Those with shoes wore them, those without wore socks or ran barefoot, their own leather soles pounding against the dirt. The students ran hard, sprinting past the finish line. A row of stretchers inside the track held those who had toppled from heat exhaustion.

As the races ended, the headmaster stood to address the students and honored guests. From the center of the track rose a low chorus of “Boss, boss!”

“Sound minds,” he began, “reside in sound bodies. Students who are physically fit are better able to attend to their studies. Through athletics, we learn our strengths and our weaknesses.” And through athletics as well, we spoke the common language of grace, community, and play.

Damba

A line of plastic molded chairs marked the edge of the circle. We were expected. Jahanfo came and greeted each of us, shaking our hands as we filed in and sat down. Barefoot boys in dusty tee shirts flung fistfuls of water on the ground, tamping the earth. The small saucers of dampness began to evaporate as the boys ran back to fill their buckets. Water! We each downed a half to a full gallon a day, and our conservative but still too-frequent showering had already emptied the cistern at the palace, warranting a visit from the water truck. This was luxury indeed to dampen the earth with water.

Noise grew across the circle, drumming intensified as an ornate ten-foot wide parasol cut the crowd. The singing crested, wood sounded on wood, metal on metal, while around us conversations continued in the soft tribal language that dominated this region. The chief and his retinue approached his compound, lingered for a moment, and then turned and processed to the open-air portico where he could watch the dancing. Conversations returned to their normal buzz, the boys returned with their buckets, and I settled back again letting go of my Western ideals of scheduling and efficiency. We had come to celebrate the birth of Mohammed, and after all, birth happens in its own time.

A man swirled out through the crowd orbited by drummers and Gonje players. His smock spun wide and he stomped his cowboy boots in the dirt. Laughing, Fati got up and handed him a coin. Another woman rose and stuck coins to the dancer’s forehead. As she returned to the circle he shook his head and the coins fell one, two, three into his outstretched palm.

Question, sir

Our morning tour at Dahin Sheili brought us through each classroom. Children stood and performed songs or dances in unison for us. Then the headmaster released us to roam as we liked among the classrooms, where our white skin and unusual presence left a trail of mayhem. Poking my head into classrooms, I saw our students engaged in spontaneous games of Simon Says, giving high fives and being ogled at. Our dusty, white faces stood out in the sea of brown skin, uniformed in yellow and brown. The nursery students were released to the schoolyard where they congregated in the shade of a doa doa tree, singing and dancing to the beat of their headmistresses drum. She drew them into che che coole, a call and repeat song that had made frequent appearances in my own elementary education.

The middle school students handled our visit with a little more restraint. After greeting us with the school song, students settled back into a math lesson practicing bar graphs by graphing the wins of their favorite football (soccer!) teams. Each classroom held 40 – 50 students, most of whom shared a wooden bench and desk with one or two other students. The walls were whitewashed and bare. Students used their notebooks sparingly, writing to each margin and using both sides of every page.

In a neighboring classroom, students reviewed electricity and wiring. In the middle of the lesson, the teacher stepped out to find a poster to illustrate his topic. The students remained attentive during his absence; one rose to recover chalk the teacher had dropped, another to erase the board. When the teacher re-entered the room, he resumed his lesson without needing to re-capture the students’ attention. Their discipline arose both from a culture of respect for elders, and from liberal use of “the switch.” Students stood to ask questions, getting their teacher’s attention with a raised hand and a soft “question, sir?”

I leafed through the science text and discovered that with a few minor variations, their curriculum matched the scope and sequence of my own: astronomy, chemistry, ecosystems, and natural resources. Theirs included as well an in depth exploration of the life cycle and natural history of the mosquito – a matter of interest in a region where malaria is confirmed in 10% of the population. I was ashamed to discover that I was surprised, by the brightness of the students, their dedication to their education, and the standard to which they are being held. While my relatively lax discipline and reliance on hands-on materials might take some getting used to, any of these students could succeed in my classroom, and even shine. And I know, my own students could learn from their tenacity and pride.