Don't Drink the Water (Caits in Ghana): OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD, HE REIGNS FROM HEAVEN ABOVE

Tonya said something the other day about how visual artists are so captivating because they live more in their bodies than us writers, who often live so much in our own heads that we forget the body is the soul. (Note to self: do more things that engage the body. No, not sex.) Today, even on the short hike up Kakum National Park, a running journal entry kept my brain captive. It seems the moments of escape from thought are few, rare and extremely clarifying. At one point, as I stood on a platform, high above the rainforest, waiting to cross the third of the seven suspension bridges, she looked at me, "are you OK?" I snapped out of the gaze holding me over the distant trees and said, "yes!" I had finally disengaged my brain long enough to feel the combined elation and peace (yes, it is possible) of conquering my fear of heights, present in the moment, seemingly hanging still in time. However, it was indeed momentary. If I had a tape recorder linked to my brain, it would be an interesting whirlwind of a transcription. So much is lost when pen is put to paper.

The bus ride home was long. A two hour trip turned five hours, the biggest traffic jam I have ever sat through, due to a riotous rally for Nana Someone-or-Other, a Ghanaian Presidential candidate. Sitting on a bus, tons of room to stretch, talking to Tonya, reading Jumpa Lampiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," watching the rally-ers hang from bus windows (and I mean really hang, their asses precariously teetering on the 'sills edge, legs dangling outside), I thought how joyous this scenario actually was. All the friends you've known for but one week turning family. The solidarity that naturally arrives when you share tissues after squatting over the drain hole in a traditional Ghanaian bathroom roadside (a stall of pure concrete), listening to the driver's terrible Western music tape (and allowing him that small measure of sanity in the thick of stuck traffic), it's all kind of magical. The conquering of many collective fears of height over the rickety swaying suspension bridges, cracking jokes about the slow wait service (but oh lord, the waiter who makes you weak in the knees and turns your body into one very alive animal with a just a dimpled, gap-tooth grin.) Here I am. I have arrived to the joy I have been so desperately seeking. And it looks a bit different than the colorful tapestry I wove in my head. But it is mine. All mine.