Impressions of Northern Ghana

A young girl running next to a bus in 100-degree heat to make sure someone gets there 15 pesewa (15 cents) change for the Pure Water sachet they bought through the window when the bus stopped at a traffic light.

A farmer with a dusty, torn open shirt coming down the dirt path from his farm after sundown – his broad chest glistening black with sweat, his ever present cutlass (machete) bound to the burlap bag of maize on the back of his bicycle with a rubber inner tube, and his bright, white teeth in a broad grin as he greets me.

Three market women pounding fufu together in a perfectly syncopated rhythm.

Children walking to school in their uniforms – blue for the Jr. Secondary School, brown for the primary school, and kind of Gingham for the pre-school.

Strong, graceful women walking back into town from the bush with a pile of firewood balanced seemingly effortlessly on their heads.

A baby suckling his mother's breast on a crowded bus while the stranger beside her holds her other baby.

A cargo truck filled so impossibly with people hanging off every side that you just know it will topple over when it hits one of the innumerable deep ruts in what is supposed to be a road. Sometimes, it does.

Fishermen sitting and patiently repairing their nets like a seamstress sewing a dress.

Incredibly beautiful and varied cloud formations morphing into brilliant textured canvas for the evening's sunset.

An outside wall bathed in fluorescent light so thickly covered with flying insects that you cannot tell what color the wall is.

Baby goats cavorting with each other just the day after they were born.

The Muslim call to prayer issuing from a dozen mosques' speakers at 4 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 6 pm and again at 7:30 pm.

Men napping under trees during the heat of the day.

Students standing and saying, in unison, "Good Morning Sir. How are you Sir?" when their teacher walks into the classroom.

Women in their brightly colored two-yards resembling a garden of beautiful flowers.

A gathering of chiefs in their traditional smocks and hats sitting at the feet of the Paramount Chief, heatedly discussing the case before them in their native tongue.

Magical Kapok and majestic Dawadawa trees.

Celebrations – weddings, passing outs (graduations), naming ceremonies, enskinments, festivals – happening at the Bode (town square) or at someone's family compound. And the seemingly daily funerals.

Ebunto (the riverside) – busy with women doing wash, women carrying water in huge basins on their heads, beggars, canoes with travelers, tourists, bicycles and motos, goats, sheep, and cattle, huge bags of maize, cassava, and groundnuts headed for the Tamale market, smaller canoes with fishermen, and people bathing or cooling off in the river.

The barrenness of the dry season being engulfed by the jungle-like greenery of the rainy season.

Children running barefoot moving a large wheel rim next to them with a stick – bringing to mind the time in America of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

People sleeping on the ground outside of their rooms because it is too hot to sleep inside.

The sky turned brown with the desert sand and high winds of the Harmattan (Dec / Jan).

1/2 built homes everywhere.

The beauty, mystery, and assurance of the Milky Way and Orion in beautiful night skies.

Chop bar "fast food".

Infants sleeping in impossible heat wrapped to their mother's back in a two-yard.

Barefoot girls of all ages playing / dancing Ampe.

Futbol (soccer) matches on dusty fields.

A small boy with doe's eyes leading a blind woman beggar to cars at a traffic light.

These are just some of the images that will be with me the rest of my life connecting me to Ghana. I cannot do them justice with these few words but I hope they bring you some feel of what my world is like.