Written between December 28, 2008 and January 11, 2009 at Green Turtle Lodge, Akwiida, Takoradi, Ghana and then at Lotus, Accra, Ghana.
12/28 As I sit down to write this, I am struck with the fact that it’s been ages since I’ve put pen to paper. My haggard and inconsistent script looks almost foreign to me and the lack of a ‘backspace’ key makes this task truly daunting. I know, however, as it has always been in the past, that once I lose the self consciousness of not being able to read my own writing and once again feel that refreshing flow of words and syllables, all will be well in the world of Kristina. The one who once dreamed of being a writer.
This month marks the two years since I became afflicted with writers block, its parallel with the beginning of my seizure treatment being no coincidence. Fortunately, I found other ways to release my creativity but my lifelong vision of being a writer was grossly stunted with the onset of the chemicals that would hold my brain hostage for almost two years.
I think back to me at the age of 12, incredibly idealistic with an almost unhealthy optimism. My 6th grade teacher assigned us the task of envisioning our lives 10 years in the future and then write about the people we imagined ourselves being. I saw myself as a successful fiction writer (already graduated from Stanford, of course) who would go on to study microbiology at Kings College in Cambridge, England—I wanted to cure cancer. Well, ten years passed and I’m sitting on a palm lined beach in West Africa, writing about how I’ve forgotten how to write, re-hydrating myself after the unfortunate incident of food poisoning in the night and trying to figure out what to do with my life.
The flickering lamp casts shadows on the page; my gargantuan black fingers crawl like spiders, waiting to pounce on some tasty verbiage. Waiting to spin some biting new prose. 12/29 But a whole day passes and here I am again, struggling to start this off.
After reading over 20 books during my past four months here in Ghana, I saw my situation a prime condition to start on my own novel. Something to serve as a culmination of my time spent here, for with every book I consume, that old yearning returns, that primeval desire to completely envelope my mind and senses in universes unseen and stories yet untold. But every time I sit and attempt to plot out a new piece, my mind goes blank and I find myself reading the same, solitary sentence over and over again. Almost like being interrupted during a book—your eyes always seem to catch hold of the very same phrase you left at before.
The faces are there. The tragedy, the soft intimate moments, the dark descriptions. All fighting to be released through my fingers and out into existence.
How can one contain so many other people, so many other lives--broken memories from another mind? These characters and their experiences don’t belong to me, they never did. Rather, they exist within me, all waiting for that epic release. For their solidification. Confirmation. –And freedom from a host whose own existence flirts between that of the tangible and the transitory.
Coming to Africa, I expected to find that tangible self, the person behind the reflection in the mirror. I wanted to plunge my fingers deep into the murky plasma of my soul, resurface and with a shout, raise the proof of my being to the sun burnt sky. But instead, I simply found another image of myself. A calmer self. A more patient and reflective self. Someone who could be satisfied with a day filled only with a few meals and a long nap. 1/11 For within all the chaos of West African life, in between the constant scuffle and heady scents of the streets, the calls of “Pure water, pure, pure, pure, pure!” and the raging, unseen heat that causes cement walls to drip with perspiration…there is stillness to be found. A silence that can only be heard when one fully submits to the pull of this cultures vibrancy, to its life force.
What a lesson it was, learning the art of waiting! Life here is full of it. Laying in the dark, praying that the power comes back on so that the creaking fan can once again push about the hot air in the room. Observing my class dwindle in size and hoping that the elections will finally come to an end so that my students will return. Standing around at the corner store for what seems like hours for a tro-tro and then sitting in it for even longer once inside, trailing the city traffic like a leech. Leeches upon leeches. I often wonder where the time goes after realizing that it is dark and I have finally reached my destination—to where did my mind drift off? How is it that a person does not claw out their eyes and tear at their hair with all this damned waiting?! In this land where African time is the norm and one should double any spoken approximation—how long to reach Cape Coast? Oh, not long, not long, maybe two hours? (Actual time to Cape Coast: 4 hours)—a certain type of patience must be cultivated. The kind of reassuring patience that insists that one is not waiting in vain. The tro-tro will eventually come. Maybe not in the next hour or the rest of the day, but it will come. The power will return at some point. The elections will end in due time (at this point, they finally have). It’s all a matter of finding that stillness and submitting to it completely.
I most often confront it while I’m riding the public transportation here; tro-tros have a way with making a person introspective, even when they least expect it. First, you clamber on, careful not to ram your head against the top of the sliding door or get your clothes caught in the hinges of the foldaway aisle seats. You push to the back, preferably to the window where you can stick your head out the side of the car for the majority of the journey (most tro-tros don’t have working AC, or even speedometers for that matter). As you wait for the seats to fill—tro-tros don’t leave until every seat is taken—you rest your elbow half way out the window and begin to lose yourself and your thoughts in the chaos going on around you:
“Plantain, plantain, NICE plantain!” Women walk by balancing whole laundry baskets of plantain chips on top of their heads.
“Fan Ice, Fan Ice. Four thousand!” The ice cream man passes by, pushing his cart of ice cream, pressing his bicycle horn every few seconds… HONK HONK!
“Tigo, tig, tig, tig, tigo!” A small woman peers into the door, her vest draped in phone credit papers.
Dozens and dozens of sellers pass by the waiting tro-tro, calling out the names of their wares and their prices. PK gum! Nice PK! or Meeeeat pies! Seven thousand! You kindly shake your head when a seller addresses you directly (or you might suddenly change your mind and hand over 40 peswas for a large bag of plantain chips…) and soon notice that the tro-tro is waiting for only one more person. Men and women are fanning themselves and some are leaning their heads against their arms on the seats in front of them. You do the same and study your feet, covered in a film of red dust. It smells of woodsmoke and sweat (probably yours) and you manage to taste the saltiness of your arm when you turn your head to the other side to avoid staring at the woman openly breastfeeding her child right beside you. Western shame. Suddenly, the tro-tro lurches forward and you’re jolted to a sitting position. You’re on your way.
At this point, the sounds of the station diminish and you’re left with the deafening shouts of politicians on the radio (not in English but in Twi) and the snorting, rumbling groans of the engine. Sometimes, Mate, bus stop! You finally settle into your seat and keep your eyes on the road, all the colors and shades of dark and light melting into a warm blur. And then everything is quiet.
I wish I could achieve this level of calm back at home, to be able to give in to the energy and movement that surrounds me and simply be carried. I find that if I fight it--the chaos, a small hairline fracture somewhere in my mind is loosened and all the stress and tension that emanates from my environment quickly seeps in. But here, well, you don't really have a choice. Africa is not for the faint of heart, nor is it a place that bodes well with ones existing insecurities. You either toughen up or go home. That simple. But what a place to find strength!
I guess I'll close this with the statement I've found myself most commonly uttering these days (both to myself and to others)...we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens when I finally get the courage to open up and empty out the novel that's stuck in my brain. We'll see what happens in the coming month and a half that I have yet to live here in Ghana. And we'll see what happens when I come home and find myself face to face with myself, finally, for the first time in years.
All my love,
Kristina
