Passing Thoughts

On Saturday I go to Spain with the gf. To meet the parents. I'm in Lome now, getting my Ghana visa. We're flying out of Ghana. Into Cairo. Layover. Into Casablanca. From there, if all works out, the midnight train to Tangiers, and then the seven-thirty ferry to Tarifa. Where the parents will be waiting with a rented car, not likely red of color, eating tapas in the shadow of a church next door to the restaurant.

Tim and I have been emailing dreams. How we'll make money once I get back home so that we can go to Japan. The book he wants to write, how he wants me to be a part of it. It's a travel book. I told him I'm in. I haven't told him that travelling abroad secretly scares me. Visas and passports and WHO cards with all the proper vaccinations. The conversion of money, the unknown market prices. Some people tell me that travelling in West Africa is harder than in other places. I wish I could be comfortable knowing there are things I don't want to do. But I just feel a kind of personal weakness.

Have you heard? I am having a wedding. With the gf. The dowry is: two bottles of sodabe, four bottles of whiskey, a case of beer. My host mother wanted to get it town to just two bottles of whiskey. The gf thinks she's worth all four. Maybe five.

At the Ghanaian Embassy, two middle-aged Canadian missionaries were filling out visa applications. I said, "Hello, fellow North Americans." The man, looking out of place in Africa in a baby-duck yellow polo, said, "We're from Canada actually, but close enough." I think he misheard me. The wife was nicer.

I walked from the Embassy back to the Bureau. That's a taxi ride of about 800 F CFA. That's pretty far, for a white kid. Or so they tell me.

The thing I most want to do in Spain is to go bowling.

Monday night, before leaving village, Lidao and Adele came to hang out with me before I left. I had to grade papers, so I set up my little laptop and put on Kung Fu Panda. Theo came in shortly after. I couldn't concentrate on grading. I kept looking at the backs of those little black heads as they shook with laughter. They were beautiful.