The Unpublished Sun Magazine Article

I am a fan of The Sun Magazine - it's beautiful, thought provoking and deep. It has a great section called "Readers Write" where readers can submit their own stories based on a certain theme (in the past they included "Love," "Family Vacations," "Saying 'No'", and "Coffee"). A couple of weeks ago I mailed my own story based on the "Noises" theme where I described my experience at the home stay family during our training. But I don't think my story made it to the US in time, so I'm posting it here.

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...