I fell in love across the Atlantic in a country more beautiful than God himself while four months pregnant with another man’s child.
The first time I saw him, it was nighttime in late August, the moon a perfect sickle. My plane landed in Accra, Ghana, and the air smelled like curry spices, yam and dry heat. A van was waiting to retrieve us from the airport, the driver dressed in slacks standing on the outside with a sign that read “NYU in Ghana.” I rolled my luggage over and was greeted by another man, Seth.
Seth was a CRA: Community Resident Assistant. He was 26 years old, a native of Ghana and an employee of the university. They put him in the house to guide us students along, show us the ropes and answer the millions of questions we had living in a foreign nation, like how to guard against being cheated out of our money and how much a taxi should cost.
Orientation lasted six hours the day after my arrival. We were told to avoid long walks at night for fear of rapists, to avoid carrying a bag for fear of muggers, to avoid drinking tap water for fear of cholera and to avoid mosquitoes for fear of malaria. “Symptoms of malaria include but are not limited to nausea, headache, loss of appetite and vomiting,” Dr. Akosua Perbi told us. If we experience any of these symptoms, we were told we should alert a doctor right away.
The housing complex was beautiful, surrounded on all sides by a barbed wire gate and guarded by a 24-hour security guard. The brick cobblestones inside were something out of the Wizard of Oz. I lived in a house full of six men… and another girl, an overload of personality. Seth, however, was my favorite. I watched him a lot. The uneasy way he sauntered around. He’d come in… Read more at Huffington Post
