A New Level of Patience

“I’m Definitely Learning a New Level of Patience” — Me in a text to my brother 9:34 Sunday July 24, 2016
Patience is a virtue and here it’s been key. Here’s a couple instances.

1. Supposed to leave at 5:00 am to do an impact assessment for our TOMS shoe giving. We leave at 6:30, because Ghana Mountain Time of course.

• Bonus points when the next time you go, you make sure to triple check the and you know that you should still wake up and get ready later, because GMT of course.

2. When you’re having a conversation with someone and they switch between Twi and English.

• Bonus points when everyone is talking/ laughing/ shouting in Twi and you’ve accepted that you’re never going to know what happened or get the joke.

3. Arrive at a bus station that has no times for departure and they just wait until the bus gets full.

• Bonus points when you’ve just missed the bus and while your waiting for the next bus, your favorite Ghanaian soap opera, Passion and Power comes on.

4. When people keep calling you white or ask why you’re brown

• Bonus point when you have to explain why you don’t know what country in Africa your ancestors are from, or why your black, or anything about race relations in the US

5. When everyone has wifi in the office but you’re is the only one that laptop refuses to connect.

• Bonus points when you actually have wifi, but it’s still not working so you just take your lunch break.

6. You arrive midnight at a concert that is scheduled to start at 8 pm and the headliner starts his set at 4 am

* Bonus points when you still make it home before the sun comes up.

7. As soon as you arrive home and get ready to cook dinner, but then the power goes out.

• Bonus points when it happens three days in a row & you’ve mastered the technique of cooking with just the light of your phone.

8. When you ready for work and it’s 9 am and everyone else is ready, but there’s an impromptu meeting at the house, and of course 87 % of it is in Twi.

• Bonus points when you manage to play 4–5 games of solitaire and ready half a chapter in your book while waiting.

9. You’re on a bus for hours and they’re playing a Ghanaian movie with the worst acting you’ve ever seen.

• Bonus points if it’s in Twi and your iPod is dead. So you watch it and try to figure out what’s happening and why.

10. You just finish doing all of your laundry by hand and you hung it on the clothesline. Then the sun decides it wants to go away.

• Bonus points if it starts raining, because that’s just nature’s extra rinse cycle

But in all honesty there all always going to be things that have you feeling like,

but I wouldn’t give this experience up for anything else in the world. I love it here and all these little adjustments are just helping my time in Ghana feel more real and less surreal.