MEDAASIE MEANS THANK YOU IN TWI

Waiting for take off on the plane. There are so many thoughts swimming in my mind. How to process this all? I feel like I am leaving family. Who knows if and when I will see some of these folks again.

My last night in Kokrobite I shared the moon with David on the beach, my Ghanaian sweetheart. We danced in the sand and kissed under the clouds, just how every good story should end. "I will miss you too much," he says, "wait? Is it too or so?" He tells me he loves me in Twi, at which I laugh. David works at the Institute and we met just a few days ago, developing a brief and secret liason, since he is not allowed to converse with the residents and our hand holding could have potentially gotten him fired. I find his smile maddening.

"e'ry second, e'ry time, e'ry ting."

Yesterday Chelsea and I picked up our dresses at the seamstress, a small shanty shop with open windows and no lights, that just barely fits the four old fashion foot peddled sewing machines and the women who power them. The dress had to be altered upwards of five times to fit my body, but within an hour it sat perfect over each small curve. We laughed and danced with the women to music pumping just outside, taking our hands in theirs and spinning around. One yelled, "you have small boobs!" (True enough.) David showed us the shop (we would have never found it otherwise) and he arrived on bike just after 5pm to make sure we made it safe on the other end. I will never forget the joy in his face when I walked back to the Institute, full of confidence in my stride (largely due to the people whom I bought the fabric from yelling across the street, "You look amazing!" and cheering), greeted by that luminous mouth of white teeth.

I must pause briefly to honor the most amazing poster I have ever seen in my entire life. A 18 x 24 inch glory of a calendar, dedicated to the life of a dead TV star, complete with shiny snapshots of crying celebrities (contorted bodies and faces, being held upright by body guards) and the poor man's limp body in its casket. The graphic design mimicked the bootleg CDs sold off blankets on Canal Street. It was probably extremely disrespectful, but Chelsea and I could hardly hold back, the laughter pushing through our fingers like water through a dam made of paper.

Here's the thing about leaving. You start to become familiar with the local characters. The big bellied man with the fabric, the ras selling masks (and other goods, I'm sure), the boy you kiss sweetly who takes you to his Auntie's house. They become a part of your daily routine and just as you start getting all "everybody knows your name," its time to leave, usually, without even a goodbye.

So, yes, since you are curious, David takes me to his Auntie's house one day on his lunch break. His parents live a bus ride away from Kokrobite, so this is where he stays during the week when working. The house is a small, one story concrete building and each room has its own entrance, giving the impression of tiny apartments. I only see the room he shares with his cousin: a mattress on the floor, small love seat, black and white television, posters of Tupac and various soccer players lining the walls. Random family members walk in and wave. Loud music bursts through the windows from an unknown source and goats and chickens wander freely just outside the door. It is unclear to me what the rest of the home looks like and how many people actually live here.

In the spirit of no clarity, there aren't any clear side streets in Kokrobite. Once you step off the main dirt road, it's layers of houses and shops, zig zagging in between buildings. People are hanging everywhere outdoors, sitting and cooking food, sitting with children, just sitting. I don't know how on earth one would give directions here, "right off the road between 'God is Good' hair salon and the woman selling plantains, right at the red and yellow phone card stand, walk straight through the brush, see a house being built, ours is behind that one. Blue."

(All photos taken off the main road in Kokrobite)

I told him he would not believe what New York looks like. The only real thing I have in common with David is our age and that he is going to school for graphic design (which I have a degree in) at the University of Ghana in the fall, pending the passing of his English exam. One night I ask him his dreams. He says, (an organist and drummer at his church- which is hugely important here in Ghana), "I believe in God, so I know wherever I end up is where I need to be. I just ask, God, please, please don't make me poor. That's all. Please don't make me poor."

The night before I left, David puts me on the phone with his fourteen year old brother, who begs me to come meet him before I go. There is a very real fascination with Americans here, especially white Americans. I knew this before coming, but I don't think I could have ever fully prepared for the reality. I've often had the experience of being the lone white person in a room, but it is something entirely different to be the only white face in, literally, miles and miles. Children wave, excited. Women call you beautiful. Men propose. Malaika calls it having "Jesus power." The by-products of colonization. The flip of being resented in Brooklyn and celebrated here, but the roots of both being the same. Though once I did get called Obruni ("white person/foreigner.") Like everywhere else, the real truth is always in interaction that gets beyond any false conception of an individual based on one physical attribute. I never do cross this bridge with David's brother and sign off with a smile.

Last night Malaika put on our new dresses and danced and sang in the bathroom, photographing each other. We talk about the amazing community we have stepped into here. How returning to "the scene" of New York is such a lesser version of what real community can be. All of the fashion and posing and posturing. I know I have been saying it for ages now, but I think it is time to put some real distance between myself and the version of Caitlin that still felt the need to be "looped in." How much happier I am worlds away from that life, with people who are absolutely gorgeous in their refusal to put on airs, in the almost innocent way they seem to not even know how to be anything but themselves.


Tonya catches me on the plane, making her way to the bathroom past my seat. I shoot her a sad look. "We are almost back to real life," I say. She sighs heavy and stops. Collects herself.

We must remember that we create our own reality, Caitlin and perhaps, where we just came from, was the realest it has ever been.