Long plane flights are the closest one comes to pausing time. A strange stage between asleep and awake. Substandard films stared at by mushy minds. Too tender to think backward to home. Too tired to think forward to months of learning and adventure. Too restless to be in the present. Too anxious and cramped to sleep. In a tiny capsule 50,000 miles above an unknown place. A night without darkness. Loosing hours of life to vertical lines on a map. Accompanied by strangers who become unnatural intimates- rubbing shoulders, sharing meals and bathroom schedules. Emerging from the daze on another day in another world.
I arrived in rainy season. Over the course of one hour a clear sky filled with dark clouds and hurled enough water to flood the city. Major streets were covered with water. Homes filled with a foot of muddy mess. Laura, Karen and I had to wade to mid calf through their driveway into their house. We scrubbed our legs thoroughly. We had to find someone with a 4x4 to drive us back to the guest house because the road was impassable for a small car. The situation is not serious, it happens frequently here. People have tile floors and keep valuable items up on tables or shelves. It does create some health concerns as the raw sewage in the gutters is spread around by the rain water. Never a dull moment in Ghana!
These first few days will be for rest, orientation and getting to know the team. "The team" (The Mobile Member Care Team) consists of Karen, Darlene and Marion- three wonderful women in their 40s-50s. Between them they have tremendous experience in Africa. Karen is a clinical psychologist and will be my supervisor and mentor while I am here. For more about them and their history visit www.mmct.org. Laura is the other summer intern. She is a Marriage and Family Therapist who graduated from Fuller. We will be sharing our lives for the next month- cooking together, sharing taxis, and talking through our impressions of this experience.
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