Well, That's Different!

    

 My fellow volunteer and new best friend Lydia and I have a new, useful expression, “Well, that’s different!” It comes in handy. For instance when we walked into the kitchen this morning and found a goat head and four hoofs on the kitchen counter, honestly, what else could you say? ”Well, that’s different!” (more about that goat later).

     When Lydia badly needed a bathroom yesterday morning and asked at the school where the toilet was, the teacher said, “There is none. The girls use the forest.” “None at all?” begged Lydia. “Well, there is something, you have to pay, but white teachers don’t like to use it.” Lydia took a chance. It was horrendous. Four concrete stalls set in the middle of a field with no doors, no roof, and only a hole on the floor, a strip of newspaper for her cleanliness. She came back with a stunned expression, “Well, that was different!”

     When our fourth grade girls were beginning their all-important exams, Mohammad handed me the packet and said, “I am going to get breakfast, so you can give the exams.” What?! “Well, that was different.”

     We were so excited to have our home stay mother deliver her third baby on Monday night. We even got to visit them at the hospital on Wednesday. Both of us wanted to bring a gift, maybe a bouquet of flowers or a small outfit for the new boy, but unfortunately no one grows flowers here because they aren’t food. And believe me, Babies R Us hasn’t hit Tamale. Yesterday a baby gift did arrive at the house on a motorcycle. It was a gift from a village that Fred and his family support. The driver had a bundle on his lap that seemed to be moving. Turns out it was a black and white goat, feet tied together. He got off the motorcycle, untied the goat and secured it to a tree root. Lydia and I were hoping it was a new pet for the baby. They could grow up together! Sweet. But we knew better, especially when the driver stood up and we saw the three foot long knife blade tied to his handle bars. We decide to leave and go to town.

      When we came back, the goat was gone, so at least we had missed the final stage of this baby gift offering. Then we went to visit the other volunteer house.  A fire in the backyard had drawn all the children in the neighborhood, and with great excitement they welcomed me to come watch a woman singeing the fur off

the ‘baby gift.’ “Well, that was different,” Lydia and I agreed.

     Newspaper strips for toilet paper? That’s different! Squeezing noodles out of a baggy and straight into the mouth as a snack? That’s different! Men peeing anywhere at all? Mothers driving three kids to school on a motorcycle all at once? Yep, That’s all different, too.

    Tomorrow afternoon I fly back to Accra and spend the night in a hotel near the airport. I’ve heard there will be a working bathroom right there in my room, and there will be a toilet seat, and a working flush, and handles that you turn and warm water falls on your head. Wow, that will be different!