1: Ghana Trip | Exodus

For a total of eleven years, I’d worked outside the States, starting in Tanzania with the Peace Corps. Yet, I planned far more for a two-week trip to Ghana than I’d ever planned for life in another country. Also, this was the most I’d ever paid for a vacation; so, I wanted to make sure that I got my money’s worth.

One of my cousins, who’d toured Ghana before with Dr. Kofi Lomotey, enthusiastically recommended the life-changing experience. Thanks to her advocacy, eight of us, who were either descendants of Jesse Strange, my great grandfather, or married into the family, prepared for months to participate in the excursion.

I renewed my passport, obtained a visa, a yellow fever shot, malaria pills, and arranged for two weeks off. Initially, I’d requested only one week off. Fortunately, I had no problem getting that second week off since I’d started planning months in advance.

The Saturday prior to my departure, I treated all of my clothes, except for underwear and bathing suits, with permethrin. Although I’d read the instructions, I thought spraying my clothes with that mosquito repellant was tedious. So, I poured a container’s worth into a bucket. The first thing I dunked was a pair of jeans.

I learned several lessons: jeans were far too absorbent to dunk; I wasted nearly a whole bottle of permethrin; and spraying was both time- and cost-effective. After those life lessons, I hung up an item at a time in the laundry room to spray.

I laid all the damp items on a drying rack. The treatment would last for weeks even after six washings.

That process allowed me to double check that I had enough clothes, especially underwear since I hadn’t planned to do laundry while on vacation. I strategically put all my clothing and other supplies, such as flushable wipes, into my suitcase.

Wipes. There’s something about traveling, especially to a developing country, that causes a preoccupation about “cleanliness.” Wipes weren’t merely for toilet uses, but to clean my hands before eating, wiping down surfaces and wiping my face during long hours of travel.

As my niece pointed out, they weren’t antibacterial. True, but who wants to wipe their sensitive parts with antibacterial chemicals? That was what hand sanitizer was for. Plus, dining tables are wiped down with far less sanitary cloths.

I’d calmed down from the paranoid state of obsessively cleaning things since COVID, but the virus was still out there, right? Even knowing that Ghana had had a better COVID response than the States didn’t shake the belief that I needed to pack far more wipes than I’d possibly use in two weeks. Just in case.

Finally, my departure date arrived. Normally, I’m not a nervous flier, but during the months of planning for this trip, the political climate had changed. Masses of federal workers had been laid off. Airport controllers, many of whom Reagan had fired back in the 80s, were still in short supply. Tariffs. Travel bans. Would we still have a country to fly out of? Or return to?

My mind churned with paranoia. No one else in our travel group expressed any concerns out loud; so I kept my paranoid thoughts to myself.

My sister convinced me that we had to wake up very early in the morning to make a 90-minute trip to the airport for a noontime flight. At least I wasn’t late.

Despite my meticulous planning and packing, I forgot to pack an umbrella. Fortunately, she had one in her car to lend me. Even so, I would not have asked her to turn the car around.

We stopped at a fastfood place to get breakfast. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for them as well. My sister placed her drive-thru order, but the employee stopped responding when I attempted to order. By the time we pulled up to the window, even my sister’s order had been lost.

I chased away thoughts of that bad service being an ominous sign. If I hadn’t given into paranoia at that point, why let superstition creep in?

We had a beautiful drive while eating our breakfast in the car. No traffic all the way to the airport. Once my sister dropped me off, an airline worker greeted me and handled my check-in, doing everything for me with a smile.

Just like that, those twin demons, paranoia and superstition, disappeared. I happily rolled my luggage to be checked in. That’s when another demon jumped on my shoulder: Snap Judgment.

I placed my luggage onto the scale and greeted the airline worker who sported a prominent drink stain covering most of her chest. (She can still be a competent employee, right?)

Although I made an effort to look into her eyes, I may have faltered or else she was self-conscious because she explained about spilling a breakfast smoothie on herself. Sounded like a fluke occurrence. (You hear that, Snap Judgment?)

Then, she flipped through my passport to check the visa and frowned. (Paranoia reappeared.) Most visas that she’d dealt with had a barcode, but the Ghanaian visa did not. She said that she wasn’t sure which number represented the visa number. After consulting a nearby coworker, she typed in the visa number. (Paranoia disappeared; Snap Judgment lingered.)

After entering the women’s restroom, I looked at the visa, which only had two numbers. One of the numbers was very clearly labeled “passport number.” The other number, typed in large red print, could have only been the visa number. (Snap Judgment threw back its head, laughing, then snapped its finger and disappeared.)

Armed with nothing but an overstuffed purse, I headed toward security. For the first time in years, I kept my shoes on. One of reasons I’d bought a pair of comfortable, stylish slip-on sandals was for the ease of going through airport security. A few days before departure, the rules had changed, allowing passengers to keep their shoes on during the security check.

Although I was far too early, I sat down at the departure gate near an outlet to relax and entertain myself until my cousin’s friend, who was on the same flight, arrived. With that thought, I realized I had no idea what my cousin’s friend looked like.

My phone call woke up my cousin. She was always the last one to do everything, but somehow still on time. She was flying directly to Accra out of DC later that evening and STILL hadn’t finished packing. So, my early-ish phone call actually helped get her day started.

I immediately recognized my cousin’s very stylish friend from the pictures she’d texted me. We’d only had enough time to exchange names when the stylish friend dashed off in search of her cell phone, leaving her carry-on with me.

A few minutes later, I noticed two other women react to Stylish Friend’s name being announced over the airport PA system. When she returned triumphantly with phone in hand, SF introduced me to her coworker and the coworker’s daughter, who’d both heard the announcement.

For our first flight, from RDU to JFK, my initial thought was that the plane was too small. In retrospect, the plane had two seats on either side of the aisle, which was standard for a domestic flight. The actual problem was that it felt cramped.

When I discovered a woman sitting in my window seat instead of her aisle seat, I didn’t complain because she looked even more cramped, jammed up beside the window. She politely offered to switch seats with me. At the time, I didn’t realize I was being played.

I declined, thinking I’d have more breathing room with access to the aisle. What I actually had was motivation to dodge everything that came down that aisle before, during and after the flight. I hadn’t flown in six years and had forgotten the dynamics of why I usually chose window seats in the first place.

Our foursome found a restaurant near the departure gate. My only criterion was that the place served wine. Bonus: our server had given us a stack of napkins, which I stuffed into my purse. When traveling around a developing country, I believe in having my own toilet paper supply.

Properly sated, I strolled over to the gate, hugged my cousin who lived in New York and would be my roommate for the next two weeks. She pointed out Dr. Kofi, who stood in the boarding line.

As I boarded a bigger, cramped plane, I knew I wouldn’t be sweetly persuaded out of my window seat. This was the longer leg of the journey; so, in addition to avoiding things bumping into me from the aisle, I’d be able to prop my head against the window for a few hours of sleep. At least half of that came true.

One of the in-flight movies I watched, “Death of a Unicorn,” had an actress who looked like my seat partner from the first flight. Either that was an incredible coincidence or I didn’t have to land in Ghana before my mind started to play tricks on me.

Things actually got undeniably tricky as soon as we landed in Accra.