Sometimes I wake up and think for a moment I’m still in Kumasi but that notion vanishes as soon as I begin listening to the sounds of the pre-dawn day.
You know you’re not in Ghana anymore when:
- The first pre-dawn sounds are tires on asphalt, not half a dozen roosters
- Its freezing outside and our windows are closed
- There are no ants on the counter, floors, toilet paper, etc.
- You can see your breath on the back porch
- You smell fire but there’s no plastic in it
- There’s ice on the laundry line
- You have electricity 99.9% of the time
- There isn’t any razor wire on our fences
- None of our friends live in razor wire compounds, either
- The road outside our house is paved and pothole free
- When your car is spoiled you have to get it repaired ASAP because there aren’t any taxis
- You can’t just pay three guys $5 each to push the car the seven blocks to the repair shop
- You can call for a tow truck, it arrives in twenty minutes and you pay the driver $77 with a credit card
- Amy can’t hop on a tro tro from Asheville to Pittsboro
- The police don’t stop you in town, looking for money
- You go to the DMV and no one is asleep with their head on their arm at the service window
- You can’t buy plantain chips off a head pan from the car window, in fact no one is carrying anything on their heads
- Fresh donuts are $2.50 each at the local bakery
- Not 25 cents from the woman deep frying them over a charcoal fire on the dirt
- Children are strapped to car seats, strollers and shopping carts instead of riding on their mothers backs
- The dogs look really well fed, glossy almost
- The fruit in the shops is pathetic and costs an arm and a leg
- You’ve got five pounds of nutritional yeast that no one had to carry in their suitcase
- UPS brings just about anything you could possibly want right to your door
- You can’t buy antibiotics over the counter for cheap
