Ghana With Grace

When my cousin Grace was 15, I promised to take her to Africa as a high school graduation present. “Yes!” she squealed, wrapping her arms around me and barely reaching my chin. (Grace is shorter than I am, which is quite a feat.) Then she did the math.

“That’s three years from now,” she said, looking defeated. “I’m only a freshman.” I assured her the time would fly but secretly comforted myself that it would not.

Here’s the thing: There are 15 years between Grace and me. We share a bloodline — my mom is her dad’s oldest sister — but other than that and a genuine love for each other, we’re very different. I’m too old to be her big sister and too young to exert any real authority over her. Grace, now 18, grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and always attended small private schools. She’s nothing like those snot-nosed brats on Bravo’s NYC Prep, but she loves horses and Harry Potter. She has never spent the summer away from home. I’m a freelance journalist specializing in development; I spend half my life on an airplane and get antsy when I am on American soil for more than a month.

When I promised to take Grace to any country she could conjure up, I intended to fulfill my end of the bargain. But I was worried and, as such, rational thought went out the window. I imagined the worst-case scenarios: Grace would contract a mutant form of malaria; civil war would suddenly break out; my family would disown me for endangering both of our lives. I wanted Grace to see the “real” Africa, but I could not schlep her around the continent as if I were traveling solo. At the same time, I didn’t want to take her on a luxurious safari where we’d encounter the big five but be deliberately sheltered from the pervasive poverty that plagues some of the world’s most beautiful countries.

Enter Globe Aware, a nonprofit volunteer vacation company that hooks adventurous travelers up with room, board, cool activities, and a work project to benefit the local community. Think mini Peace Corps.

Getting acclimated in Accra

In late June after an easy direct flight to Accra (thank you, Delta) and a quick overnight stay with relatives (thank you, Aunt Judy and Uncle Aki), Grace and I headed to the Pink Hostel International. There, we would meet our Globe Aware guide and other volunteers before heading to Ho, the capital of Ghana’s glorious Volta region, for a weeklong stay. Our guide Robert was there, but other volunteers were not. We wished Globe Aware would have informed us that we were in it on our own, but as Grace said, “We have each other.” I was delighted by her flexibility and suddenly saw her in a new light. “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” she added, tapping me on the knee as if she was the seasoned traveler and I was her ward for the week.

After Robert removed his jaw from the floor when I told him that my uncle was Ghanaian, he did the next logical thing: he called his colleague in Ho to report that the older woman in the back of his car was practically African. “Is she white?” Richard allegedly asked in Ewe, the local language. Robert was sitting shotgun but swiveled his head to glance back at me. Again. “Yes,” he said into his mobile phone. “Most definitely.”

During the next three hours, Grace and I stared out our respective windows at the gorgeous green scenery on either side of the road. I told her to inhale deeply, to take in the fresh air.

“It smells really good,” she said. “What is that?” I leaned back in my seat, beginning to relax. “That’s Africa,” I said. A moment passed and then Grace ran her hands through the sticky mess the humidity made of her normally straight hair. “I noticed it the minute we stepped off the plane,” she sighed, already falling in love with the continent that captured my heart three years ago.

Our first stop in Ho, a sleepy little capital with countless goats, celebrated kente cloth weavers and dozens of churches, was the home of Robert Yinkah, who greeted us with cookies and juice. Just like at mom’s house. “You need to stay hydrated,” I told Grace, encouraging her to drink the juice and, later, gallons of water as if they were pitchers of beer and we were college freshmen. (Of course, she remained perfectly healthy while yours truly woke up three days post-trip with such severe lactic acid buildup that I could not bend my legs.)

After meeting Richard’s family, including his adorable daughters, Andrea, 5, and Adelaide, 3, our host explained our project: Together we would silk screen 600 thick slates of wood with the alphabet and distribute these old-fashioned notebooks to local kindergarten students who didn’t have any writing materials. This wasn’t exactly rocket science, nor did it sound as rewarding as, say, building a school or working in an orphanage — both of which are offered up on Globe Aware’s website — but because there were only two of us, the project, Richard explained, had been tailor-made to accommodate our (limited) capacity.

From work to play

Home for the next six nights was the Ghana National Association of Teacher’s (GNAT) hostel. Despite its unfortunate acronym, this was a pretty good place to spend a quiet six nights. Ho doesn’t have many major tourist attractions and not much in the way of nightlife, but Grace and I spent hours talking and reading before suddenly realizing it was late and time for bed. We ate all our meals in the dining room. As a vegetarian, I consumed enough carbs — oatmeal, bananas, rice, french fries and curly pasta — to make Atkins adherents apoplectic. Grace tucked into goat stews. We also sampled local dishes like super spicy “red red” and fufu, which consists of a glutinous mass that Ghanaians gracefully dunk into soup. Needless to say, we were less dexterous and ended up looking like two kids covered in play dough.

We shared a simple room with twin beds, our own bathroom and, most importantly, a ceiling fan. Granted, you needed to be standing directly beneath the blades to feel the fan’s effect — and the electricity had to be working (it was temperamental) — but we quickly adjusted our expectations and learned to love our little room. Even if the hall lights kept us up most of the night. Even if rowdy footballers spent hours cavorting in the courtyard. Even if the shower refused to dispense more than a few drops of water.

Each day, we headed to work at a local school, where we set up shop beneath the shade of a large tree. Grace and I stood on opposite sides of a wooden school desk. One of us held the silk screen on top of the blank slate while the other added a dollop of paint and set to work spreading it back and forth with a rubber roller. It took less than a minute to complete one board and lay it in the sun — and about 10 minutes for our hands to start throbbing. The first day we completed about 50 boards when Richard announced break time.

Grace stared at me in disbelief. “We are never going to get anything done at this pace!” she exclaimed, panic spreading over her face. I reminded her we were on “Africa time” now and that everything would be all right. She looked quizzical but when a group of children spotted and then promptly mauled us, Grace regained her composure. Momentarily.

I made the mistake of giving one little girl a piggyback ride and then hundreds of arms were waving in the air, frantically gesturing that they were next in line for the special treat. “Have you completely lost your mind?” my cousin asked me. I shrugged my shoulders. “Think about how your horse feels,” I said. Next thing I knew we were racing each other, chicken-style, kids cackling on our backs.

By the end of the week, we finished our 600 alphabet boards. We also hiked to the largest waterfall in West Africa, helped the local kids with multiplication — though they preferred practicing math by counting my freckles — took a day trip to Togo, and visited a village where men wove exquisite kente cloth on thirty-foot long looms.

Most importantly, though, I think my cousin learned — and I remembered — how little we actually need not only to survive but also fully enjoy life. Good books. Some running water to rinse off dirty feet. Small hands eager to touch and hold yours. Someone to talk the day over with. A little bit of Grace.