Farewell Kokrobite curtain, week one

Farewell Kokrobrite, Curtain, Week One.

Time to leave Kokrobrite and the safe harbour of Big Milly's. So far my instincts and research have served me well. Tomorrow, I hope to move west along the ocean to Cape Coast/ Elmina, the Auschwitz of the slave trade. By all accounts, its haunted shores are very beautiful. This will be my first attempt at serious travel by myself. I put on my big boy pants a few days ago, now its time to take off the training wheels.


How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone

After one week here, I have many images seared in my mind. The slums at the beach in Jamestown, Accra , will never leave my mind, hearing a band at a bar in Accra play Redemption Song, not as a lament, but as an anthem of defiance, and the euphoric crowd joining in with all their heart as we danced on the dirt floor of the courtyard nightclub early that morning in Osu ,and the sheer pulse and sensory assault of a large African city. But the image that endures most is that of a Gahanian women walking towards me as I sit in traffic in Accra. She is carrying something to sell me, just like the small children of Kokrobite. I think of both of them, and I think that they will be doing this for the rest of their lives. And they are two among thousands. For them, there is no corporate ladder to be climbed. For them, there is just survival. Yet, astonishingly, I see a lot more long faces (including my own) and self pity in Canada than I do here. Perhaps, knowing the empty materialism that we strive for is well beyond their grasp, the people of Ghana have committed themselves to something deeper.

Tune in next week to find out if Mrs. Schembley discovers that The Chumbley has nicked Miss Truebottoms garters!
And Scene.