READERS WRITE - NOISES
Last October, after working for a corporate America for
almost a decade, I was heading for my next adventure - Africa! I've joined Peace Corps, and was going
to Ghana. After one week in Accra where our group of trainees did necessary paperwork, learned each other’s names and got
a little used to the heat and humidity, we were transported to a small town
hidden in the hilltops of Ghana’s Eastern Region. For the next two months, we were
to live with local families where we were to learn a local language, get used
to Ghanaian cuisine, and do household chores.
We arrived in the local Presbyterian church – a large unfinished
concrete building with lizards scattering on its beams. Our new families,
dressed in their Sunday best, were already waiting for us, sitting on flimsy
plastic chairs. By a stroke of fate, my name was called first, and here was
Madame Aduewa, my Ghanaian mom, talking to me in an accented English and
telling about her family. She brought her nephew and niece with her, and they
helped me to carry my giant suitcases on their heads.
Madame Aguewa’s house was right next to the church. Once at
my new home, exhausted and sweaty, I took my first bucket bath. Then I hung a
mosquito net above my bed and started watching my Ghanaian mom cook my dinner
on a coal-stove: fried fish and rice. I ate my dinner on the porch while my new
family sat around me, watching. Then I crawled under the mosquito net and fell
deeply asleep.
A crowing of a rooster woke me up at around 4 am. Oh, well –
I could get used to that, after all, I was in the village. But after a short
slumber, I was woken up yet again: a short-wave radio in my mom’s room started
playing religious marches and hymns. Really loudly. Shortly after, my “grand-mom”
started singing along with the radio, and my “mom” called her nephew: “Imma!
Imma!” so he would get up and start the fire going for the stove. I kept lying
on my bed, no longer sleepy, listening to the noises outside of my room: the
roosters, the radio, the calls, the off-key singing. Later that morning other trainees
were complaining of being woken up really early by typical (as we later found
out) noises of a Ghanaian village: goats were bleating, babies were crying, and
people were praying. We were not “in Kansas anymore”. We were in Africa!
Two months later, after the successful training, I became a volunteer, and moved
to a village in Western Region. I am now used to village noises around me: the squealing
of kids, the chattering of neighbors, the preaching from neighboring churches
(amplified by giant loudspeakers), the pounding of cassava.
At the same time, I still vaguely remember the noises back
in the US that I could hear from my apartment’s window on Commonwealth Avenue - the humming of morning traffic, the ringing
of a T tram’s bell, the breathing of lovemaking neighbors, the moaning of firefighters’
sirens, the hooting of sports fans after a successful game. I wonder how I
would react to them when I’m back...
