Pro and Con

Hi there. Did you see the Ghana/Uruguay football match? Ugh! That dude who handballed it out of the goal totes cheated. Boo for cheaters. Ghana was sad. However, some happiness did come to pass in a little part of Ghana recently. I was in Tali, a village outside of Tamale, with Andy, another PCV, and Issaa, his small boy. Andy and Issaa read Romeo and Juliet outloud together at nights and I joined in for some scenes. If you have never heard a fourteen year old Ghanaian boy read the part of Romeo, you are Missing Out. This kid was Good. He totally got the cadence right and pronounced the vast majority of the words correctly, an accomplishment with Shakespeare. We did it sitting outside of Andy’s compound, using flashlights . It was a completely unique experience and was pretty wonderful. Issaa was/is just a great kid all around: super smart, really funny, very devoted to Andy. He called me “madame” when I was there, and once, when I was hanging up some wash to dry, he told me that the wind would dry it fast fast. I was like “Are you sure it’s the wind Issaa? Because I think its the sun that dries it more.” It was cloudy that day and later on my clothes were still damp and I was like “Issaa! The wind has not dried my clothes! You were wrong,” just playing with him, and he was like “Oh, Madame, don’t worry. God will dry your clothes. He told me.” Schwadorable. More cute Issaa moments include when he was helping us light the coal pot and he told us to stop fanning it and let him blow on it, “let me add my own air.” Also, we played Scrabble with him and I said something too fast for him to understand. He thought I said “Friar Lawrence” (one of the Romeo and Juliet parts he’d read the previous night) and so said “Friar Lawrence!?” all excitedly. We busted up laughing. A similar thing occurred when we taught him the ‘word’ “donezo”. We told him that it meant ‘spoiled’ and when he tried to pronounce it first, he said “dernzer” in a really funny voice. On both laughing-at-Issaa’s-antics occasions we made sure to make it clear that we weren’t making fun of him, that we were laughing at him because he was funny and that was good. Yeah.  Just thought I’d tell you about him. I’m currently in Kumasi for a Pepfar meeting tomorrow and should prob go to sleep now.

Love from Ghana