We meet the most unusual people on our early morning walks. At first we got lots of stares, some even fearful of the strange obrunis, but now the locals are used to us. They all wave and yell "Etahsane" (How are you this morning) and we respond, "Ayah" (Fine, thanks) and they laugh to think the white man will try to talk Twi.
One morning we met a young African girl named Victoria. She is about 14-15 years old and is exceptionally outgoing and friendly (unusual for Ghanaian girls) and she spoke fairly good English. She of course wanted to come visit us--they all do but rarely follow through. I told her that her name "Victoria" was the name of a very famous and powerful Queen of England long ago. She liked that and we continued to see her as she walked to school in the mornings. She has the usual cropped hair (about a half-inch all over her head) that is required by all the schools. She has beautiful chocolate brown, very large eyes, but her biggest asset is her fun and upbeat personality.
One afternoon, she and a friend just showed up at our place. Her friend's name is Ivy. She's much smaller than Victoria, much quieter, and doesn't speak English as well. We learned both of their families live in the same unfinished house like so many here in Ghana. When they left both girls were intrigued by our refrigerator. I'm sure they don't have one and probably no electricity either.
A few weeks later, Gary was updating his IPAD and I was vegging out on the sofa, when all of a sudden Ivy and a much smaller, younger girl ran into the Giant Hall (Living Room) from out of our back rooms, screaming hysterically, "Help us, help us! Something is wrong! There's a demon in your washroom (bathroom)!" We were totally startled! First of all because we didn't even know the girls were in our apartment and then we couldn't imagine what was going on. Ghanaians don't knock--they just walk in.
We ran into the bathroom and found Victoria huddled in the toilet room, scared to death! Gary's electric toothbrush had been turned on and was vibrating like crazy! We turned it off and then had the girls come into the Living Room to settle down. They somehow had gotten by the gatekeeper and had simply walked through our back door and went exploring in our bathroom. I'm certain they had no idea what an electric toothbrush was and they had pushed the button.
We gave them some cookies and juice. The smaller girl was Victoria's little 7-year old sister. Ivy took the longest time to drink her juice, barely sipping a taste at a time. I asked her if she didn't like it and Victoria said that she LOVED it and didn't want it to be gone because they never got juice--it was too expensive. We also found out that the girls had been taken out of school until their families could raise enough money to send them back, but for now there was just not enough to go around. When they left, they were fascinated by the washer and dryer--they had never seen them before either.
We can't help but ponder what will become of these precious little souls and what the future holds for them. We will however be locking our doors from now on so exploring little people won't unintentionally experience something that could hurt them like appliances or medications.
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