September 5, 2007- Good Morning Kpando

September 5, 2007

Morning

This morning I awoke to the sound of snoring in the bunk above me.  Looking around my new room in the daylight, I realized that someone else’s things were strewn all over a small plastic bistro table and chair in one corner.  As I started to unpack on the floor next to the empty crib in the other corner, Sonjelle (Sone-yell), my roommate, woke up and introduced herself.                                                                                                                                                     Her long hair was clean, but messy.  I got the feeling that she reveled in not having to brush it as she threw it into a wadded bun on the top of her head.  She slid a pair of stylish Lisa-Lobe-esque glasses onto her pointy, freckled little nose and leapt like a gazelle to the floor.  She was all angles and points, and legs and arms, like a Tim Burton character, if Tim Burton drew dirty-blonde bohemian girls in baggy pajamas.

Sonjelle

She’s been here for five weeks and goes home in one week (on the 12^th).  She’s from NJ and plans to come back to HardtHaven in January for a full year.  I could tell from her tone that she was in love with Ghana and the children here, and that her twenty-something years have left her jaded from consumerism and American bureaucracy.  An ex-pat in the making.  As I searched for my toothbrush she put on one of the dresses she had had made at a tailor shop during her stay – this one was a lime green and fushia number, which hung a little awkwardly on her boney hips and tan shoulders.  One strap may have been shorter than the other, the waistline was a bit high, and the twirling power of the pleated bottom was sure to be the envy of every schoolgirl.  If nothing else, she was ready to rock the electric slide.  She caught me staring and said “yeah, I liked the leafy pattern, but the tailors don’t really have the hang of western styles.  If you pick an African style they’ll do a better job.  But the whole thing only cost me seven Cedis.”  That’s about four or five dollars, I think.

Once we were dressed, we walked out through a big empty room called The Hall and continued outside across the small compound to the porch for breakfast.  Each room we passed was bright blue and green, with cartoons, letters, and numbers hand painted on the walls.  Each bunk bed was canopied with a white mosquito net.  The outside of the two one-story buildings, like most cement block buildings, were painted peach with a red boarder around the bottom that went up about knee high.  Sonjelle told me that the colors were to disguise the dust and dirt that flies around during the dry seasons.  Our building is L-shaped, and has three bedrooms for boys, two bedrooms for girls, our volunteer room, the volunteer bathroom, The Hall, and a porch facing the front footpath.  Along the side of the building is a staircase to the roof of our building.  The children are not allowed up there, making it a bit of a haven for overwhelmed adults.  From the roof you can see that HardtHaven sits at the corner of an intersection of a dirt road and a busy foot-path.  The walled soccer stadium across the road has a large fenced-in green grass field where the local team practices and plays, their clubhouse, a dirt patch where children kick around handmade balls, a paved handball court, and a small paved basketball court.  Following the road to the right takes you to town, and you can see a few small shops past the stadium on the left, and a small park on the right.  Following the road to the left seems to go straight off into the bush.

Back in the compound, the second, and smaller building, is rectangular and houses the kitchen, storage room, office, and a porch facing the middle of the compound.  The surrounding wall supports half a dozen laundry lines, and a tree in the middle is clearly fighting a losing battle – branches whittled and scattered about.  

A few of the smaller children welcomed us with hugs while the others sat around the compound slurping up porridge with hunks of dense white sugar bread.

Sister Francisca greeted us with fried eggs on sugar bread.  She’s not a nun – the kids call the two matrons “Sister,” as a sign of respect.  The volunteers are called “Auntie” or “Uncle,” which is even higher on the social hierarchy.  

Sister Francisca

Sister Francisca looked just as you might expect a sweet, motherly Ghanian woman to look (although she never had children of her own).  On the one hand she looked like she could be very stern and on the other hand you wanted to cuddle up in her lap for a nap.  The cloth tied around her waist contrasted with the cloth tied around her head, which both contrasted with her thin, but clean, tank top.  Her face was smooth, her eyes soft, and her mouth showed a hint of a shy smile. 

Sister Matilda, the other matron, is scheduled to be here at lunchtime.  Sonjelle explained that Sister Matilda is a bit too harsh with the kids, and Edem wants to speak with her before it goes on too long.  Today is payday for them, so it’s a good day for a meeting.  They make 500,000 Cedis each month (or 50 “New Ghana Cedis,” since the currency has just been changed and people are still getting use to it), which is roughly equal to a little under $50, and they sleep here on a weekly rotation, both coming in during the day to cook and oversee the children’s chores. 

Nancy and Minua (in doorway)

As I ate my greasy, salty egg sandwich I was entertained by Nancy, a bright-eyed two-year-old girl with a buzz cut, a pink t-shirt, and a pair of saggy underwear.  Nancy is an attention hound, and loves to sit in your lap.  She mimicked the songs I sang to her while she danced.  When Sonjelle scolded her for refusing to wear her pants, she just looked at us with a furrowed brow, pretending to not understand.  Sonjelle told me that Nancy and her older sister, Minua, came from terrible conditions.  She showed me a picture of their home from their file.  It was an old, grey mud hut with a dirt floor and crumbling walls.  There was no door, not even a sheet, to keep out the weather and the animals.  When their mother passed away from AIDS and their father disappeared, their Grandmother became sole caretaker.  She sold palm nut oil (that red oil I’ve been seeing) for a living, but mostly spent the little she earned on herself.  Since moving to the home, the girls have not only grown to healthy weights, but Minua has really started excelling at school, and Nancy has become a delightfully typical “terrible” two year old.

After breakfast, walking to the volunteer bathroom holding my towel, my shampoo, and my soap, one of the children called out “Auntie, will you bath?”  That’s how it’s said – you bath.  You don’t bathe.  “Yes, I will bath.”

The bathroom has a full-sized tub with a shower head, a toilet, cement block walls, and plastic rollout flooring printed to look like tiles.  If I squint a little bit, I could be in any bathroom anywhere, and it feels nice.  Ahh, a shower.  I hadn’t even noticed how grimy I was from traveling.  It’s been days since my last shower.  Next to the tub are two one-hundred-gallon plastic tubs full of water, and a ten-gallon bucket, which I ignored.  And then I tried turning on the faucet.  It grumbled and spat out a little brown blob of dirt, then started to roar horribly.  So much for the faucet.  So much for this being any bathroom anywhere.  So much for my shower.  This, I realized, is what those huge plastic tubs are for.  I found it works best to fill up the bucket of room-temperature water, hop in the tub, squat down, dunk my head in it, splash around, soap up, and stand up, and use a small cup to rinse off.  It was surprisingly refreshing, and after the initial shock of cool water, it was actually really nice. 

The toilet, thankfully, is a toilet.  It flushes, most of the time, and there’s a little roll of actual toilet paper next to it.  I had been worried.