Home in Texas

I'm home in Texas. The air-conditioner says it's 75 degrees inside. The plastic thermometer with the red hummingbird stuck on the window says it's 87 degrees outside. Clement is asleep in the other room. Mom is downstairs organizing papers, moving them from one pile to another to the trash, fighting and losing to their fiercely swift reproductive rate.

About two weeks after arriving in Ghana, Clement was told that he would have to wait until August to resume classes. For a couple days the dean of the medical school said he might be able to continue this term but in the end he was told, "Sorry, come back in August." Since I had not yet started working we decided to try to come to Texas. My cousin Jon's wedding was scheduled for April 5th in Austin and I desperately wanted to attend. We booked the first available visa interview which was over a month away (March 26th) and bought - as we were told by the travel agent and believed after trying four different agencies - the last two seats on any flight heading to the US after March 26th and before April 5th. Then we waited and sweat.

Every day Clement walked to campus and entered the human pin ball game of trying to obtain a letter addressed to the consular at the US Embassy saying that he was enrolled in the fall term. The dean referred him to the registrar, the registrar told him to return tomorrow and then tomorrow and then tomorrow and then finally told him to go to the international student section. At the international student section they did not have the correct letterhead he was told, “Come back tomorrow” for about a week. Then once the letterhead arrived they told him he needed a letter from the registrar addressed to the student section. The registrar said it wasn’t her responsibility to write the letter; finally a secretary from the dean’s office copied a letter from his file which had already been sent to the student section. The man in the student section was satisfied with the copy but then asked if Clement had paid the fee associated with the letter they would write. Once the fee was paid – involving of course visiting another office and waiting in another line – the man at the student’s section told him he needed a passport picture. When I very calmly (much more calmly than I wanted to) reminded the man that Clement had been visiting the same office daily for weeks and suggested that it might be a good idea to explain on the first visit what is needed, the man became indignant, told me not to tell him how to do his job and with a mix of passion and anger said that his job is to help students – at least we agreed on that point. Finally, five minutes after the University officially closed, the day before we had to leave for Accra, Clement was handed the letter.

In Accra we stayed with a cousin of Peter and Abigail Kyei – friends from Kumasi. Having never met us she welcomed us hugs, cooked for us, and refused all help. In Kumasi we had been frustrated by the weekly unannounced interruption of our water supply but in her neighborhood we learned that for at least the past 15 years, water has only flowed through the taps on Wednesdays. For the rest of the week people buy water and fill tanks behind or above their homes. Without intending to do so, I have become very good at bathing with surprisingly small volumes of water. It seems to me that in the US our wealth as a nation buffers us from so many “coming” hardships due to global warming and population growth that have already arrived in many countries. After a few more days of waiting, on March 27th Clement was given a ten year tourist visa and on March 28th we arrived tired but happy in Austin to the loving hugs of my parents, a cool night, a quiet drive home on a wide highway, a hot shower, and clean soft sheets - I don’t remember ever feeling so grateful.

I am eager to work. I miss birth. I miss feeling useful. I'm driving Clement slightly crazy by asking him 1,000 times a day "What do you want to do now?" Still, it is wonderful to be here. I adore my parents. They are generous, wise, kind, and aging. I love my family. My cousin’s wedding was beautiful, the love professed deeply rooted, and my heart skipped an entire measure of beats from the excitement of surprising my paternal aunts, and uncle, and cousins who flew down from Michigan.

Two weeks later we also spent a weekend with my mom’s family in Houston and Raywood. Raywood is a small farm town in East Texas where the vast majority of residents are direct relatives of my mother’s. Once Clement assessed the place he leaned in close and said with a smile, “You never told me that you have a home village.” We started our visit with an entertaining tour of the cemetery, learning which deceased married couples were first cousins, hearing the story of two who hid under an overturned wagon to wait out a storm and then emerged alive and pregnant, we learned who was an infamous womanizer, who died from tuberculosis, who died from syphilis, and who died in childbirth. We ate a big lunch then concluded our visit by dancing Zydeco with my mom’s cousins in someone’s den. I let the joy flood every cell - sitting with Clement, watching my mom laugh out loud with her cousins, then turn around after each song to pull someone else to the dance floor. She was radiant and our time together is rare and precious.

The future as usual is uncertain, Clement and I will live 4 months of our first year of marriage with my parents, hopefully I will find a per diem nursing job while we are here, then we will return to Ghana August 1st, leaving all the trappings of middle class America behind. When I consider the future I feel the responsibility weigh on me as the sole provider for a new family. I wonder if my career as a part-time volunteer will be enough. I still refuse to spend any more than a fraction of a second considering job possibilities that would be more lucrative than midwifery.