Thank you Adwoa

Did you know that it is incredibly helpful to have a local help you get acquainted with a completely foreign area on a new continent in a place that speaks a language I was barely conversational in? I can describe my 20-year-old self only as naive, thinking I would need maybe 2-3 days, following jet-lag, to set up an international bank account and phone service. I thought I would just hitch a taxi, spit out some Twi, and poof, I would get done what needed to be done. Emmanuela had the foresight to insist I stay with her sister, Adwoa, for my first week in Ghana. My parents were so worried about me traveling alone, but Adwoa saved my life. Over the course of my six weeks in Ghana, she supported me in a way I have only experienced from family.

I spent my first week with Adwoa at her home outside of Accra, a mixed-income town that bustles and breathes. It has the feel of a village with how friendly everyone is with each other, but the opportunities of a mecca: schools, apprenticeships, a one-hour drive from Accra’s city-center. The roads are of mud and there are no road-signs in sight; men hurl names of distant towns from tro tros, taxi buses. To think I could have traversed this country alone now seems foolish. Wherever I went, Adwoa was there, leading the way through the crowds and the heat. She translated, she organized what I needed to get done, and she supported me through my culture-shock. Her friends became my friends. Without her guidance, I never even would have made it to Egyam at all.

- Crystal