personal journey

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