That Time I Was a Ghostbuster…ish

There truly is no place like home.

Let me set the scene. It is a warm evening in the tropical western area of Sierra Leone. From the front balcony you can see the sun setting, the children still in their school uniforms on their walks home for their evening lessons, the group of men at the end of the road huddled around one small TV with their alcoholic beverages in hand watching a football match and the elderly lady in the house across peeling mangoes she had picked earlier on in the day. Then there was me.

It was coming up towards the end of 4-week holiday and I was soaking in all of the little things I’d enjoyed seeing every day and wouldn’t see again for a whole year! Boy was it bitter sweet. Although I wasn’t born in Sierra Leone, I never feel more at home than when I’m walking the streets of Lumley in my Primark flip flops with dried plantain chips in one hand and a bottle of ice-cold water in the other. I have an indescribable connection with the country, the culture and the people. Though I never truly understood why prior to that holiday, after this incident I knew why crystal clear.

Going back to our timeline, it’s the last few days of my vacation and the aroma of an assortment of roasted meats was consuming airways. This was because at the back of the house, my mum and my aunties were preparing the food for our annual New Year’s Day barbecue. It was always the most anticipated event of the holiday. Relatives and family friends would come over, everyone would bring their own food and drink contributions, and traditional music would be blasting from the speakers. Whilst all this is occurring, 12-year-old Adama is revelling in it all. My mum and her siblings are singing and dancing together and this is heart-warming as this is one of the few days out the year where they can all spend some quality time together as the siblings are usually scattered across the globe. Then suddenly, at the peak of the party, the electricity cut out.

This was not unusual as the electricity would often pick and choose when it wanted to work and it just so happened that it chose to cut out at THE most inconvenient time. Nobody was too bothered though; everyone had put on their phone torches and my uncles had gone into the storage to light up the generator. In the meantime, my mum had sent me to her room to get some candles.

This is where things get a bit strange…

The house was constructed in a way where when you walk in the front door, there’s a long straight corridor with the back door at the end of it. I had walked into the pitch-black house, looked down the corridor and what I saw should have frightened me but didn’t. A tall white translucent female figure stood opposite me, faceless but still with a vacant facial expression. She wore a white sheet wrapped around her body and a white headscarf to match. I thought maybe it was my imagination playing games on me so shut my eyes in the hopes that when I opened them the figure would disappear. It didn’t. Something in me said that I should walk towards her and as I did, she seemingly began to walk towards me, almost as if it was floating. Once we had reached within arm distance of each other, she reached out and just as I was about to do the same, the loud bellow of my mum calling my name snapped me out of what seemed like a trance. As soon as this happened, the figure vanished. For someone that is usually afraid of their own shadow, I shocked myself by how unfazed I was by this interaction. It wasn’t until the plane journey home that I realised what was going on.

I know in my heart that that figure was my late grandma Adama. Though some might call it a ghost, I rather say it was her spirit. Sounds less creepy. She passed away when my mum was still a child so I never met her but I always felt close to her maybe because I am named after her. Nonetheless, I knew she was there was us that day. Connotations of ghosts are that they’re evil but that wasn’t the vibe I got. She seemed glad? I think because all her children and grandchildren were together and happy. Maybe she just wanted to oversee everything and feel a part of it all. I will never truly know why but I know I saw a ghost. I know that the ghost was Adama.