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.