My Birthday

My Birthday

This weekend, my friend Janet insisted on coming to visit for my birthday. I traveled to Wa to meet her and while we were sitting there drinking tea, three other volunteers walked up to surprise me. They each traveled a long way and I just stood there stunned. The five of us hugged and talked and shared the experience of our first three months at site. Then we got a hotel room and spent the evening sitting on the roof talking. They brought me earrings and cookies and cashews and a beautiful weaved bag from the cultural center. It was wonderful and touching and I still feel like I imagined it. Three of them had to leave the next day but Janet got to come up to Jirapa for a few days. It was wonderful and more than I ever thought would happen. I wasn’t even concerned with celebrating it at all.

My actual birthday, is March 11, which was Tuesday. I was born on Tuesday, which in Ghana means I am called Abina, (Tuesday born). So, I have completed some sort of cycle I imagine, 7 complete four year cycles, seems important, but maybe its not. I’m 28 and it feels as though I only just became an adult. Life moves by so fast.

On my birthday, I said goodbye to Janet and saw her off on her journey home. I went to the office and added some info into the database we are creating then I went home for lunch. In the afternoon, I went to meet a beekeeper, who showed me how to build bee hives. We set out on our bikes and he took me to various spots in the bush where he has his hives set up. Later this week, I’m going to help him set out more hives. Its really a simple process. He told me about his plans to plant cashew trees near his hives because its nectar makes the best honey. At various points throughout the day, I spoke to Chad, my sister, my mom, and my friends Liz and Adria, all surprises which I relished. Later that evening, I was called upon to meet an artist. He is an amazing elder man who has been traveling the world showing his art and teaching art and he has finally returned home and he lives just behind my house. Friday, he is setting up all of the art for me to view. We want to work together to build the cultural center here so that the traditional crafts are preserved. Again, this just came about with out me doing anything. Someone just showed up at my house and told me to come to a spot at 6 pm to meet a man, I didn’t know who or why, I just went. I am amazed still at the preciousness of the map of life that exists before us. Before leaving the artist’s home, he commented on the smell of rain in the air and I told him that I thought it wasn’t supposed to rain for another 6 weeks. He said that it had already rained somewhere near there, that he could smell it, the rain is coming.
Returning home, I met my friend Sandra and while talking, off in the distance I saw lightning strike. She asked me if I could smell rain in the air, she said she could smell that it had rained somewhere earlier, just as the man mentioned.

Rainstorm

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting beneath a tree, the tree that sits at the top of my favorite spot. While leaning against his trunk, the tree whispered to me that it needed rain. It told me it was losing hope and it was beginning to die. Upon hearing this plea, my heart whispered back the greatest prayer it ever uttered, a prayer for the tree to live, for it loved the tree deeply. Watching this act of unconditional love, the sky was so touched that it began to cry, weeping giant tears of joy. The tears fell to the earth, covering the tree and its leaves, covering me and the rocks, then they ran onto the dry cracked earth and fell into those cracks, nourishing all it touched. I raised my face to the sky and wept with thanks. My tears blended with the sky’s tears and both washed deep into the earth.

I woke in the night to a crashing rainstorm, nearly two months ahead of schedule. Rainy season doesn’t begin until May. The power was off and the sky was so dark, I couldn’t see my hand in front of me. In my shock that it was actually raining, I walked outside and reached my hand out to touch it. The air felt and tasted clean. I stood there breathing it all in, then I walked back to bed and laid there listening to the soothing sound of the earth being fed with love.

This morning, I woke and showered in the courtyard, washing my hair in the rain. Close your eyes and imagine this feeling. The water was soft and slightly cool, causing my skin to form little bumps and my sleepy muscles to slightly contract. It ran over my arms and shoulders down the length of my legs and over my feet. It washed my shampoo out of the courtyard in little streams, running beneath the gate door. I wrapped up in my giant warm towel and now I am clean and warm sitting at my desk. This is one of my favorite days in Ghana.