Baby on the Tro

Part of my job is to visit the different projects to see our volunteers and NGO partners in action. Yesterday I went with two of our volunteers to a talent show and drama competition in Gynkabo, the community in which one of our volunteers had been performing health outreach for the past three months.

I will describe the experience in a later entry, but I want to first address what happened after the Gynkabo community events.

Lauren, our 3-month volunteer from Utah and one of my most favorite people I've met in Ghana, is leaving next weekend. She wanted to go to Kakum National Park to spend the night at the canopy walk as her last-weekend-festivity. I opted out because I wasn't in the camping outside mood and had already enjoyed spending the day with Lauren. After the talent show, drama competition and presentation of prizes to the communities of Gynkabo and Frami, which put us at about 6:30 p.m., Lauren, McKell and I waved down a tro-tro and headed back to Cape Coast.

Lauren and McKell told the mate they wanted out at Kakum National Park. We joked about how embarrassing it was that they were getting off at Kakum, considering most Ghanaians assume that because we're white (and therefore we are tourists, not volunteers or expats working in Ghana) we want to go to Kakum. Lauren and McKell were telling me that every time they walk to a taxi/tro-tro station to go to Gynkabo for their outreach, which is past Kakum, people shout at them, "Kakum?" They think to themselves, Um, no we're doing outreach in a rural village and they all call us by our names instead of "obroni" and say we're their Ghanaian sisters. It's difficult to describe the pride you begin to feel as a long-term volunteer - most of the volunteers and expats I've worked with and met have considered it borderline offensive to be called a tourist.

When the mate told the driver to stop at Kakum's entrance, I had to get out of the tro-tro first to let Lauren and McKell out. As I was hugging Lauren goodbye and wishing them a fun night, the tro-tro began to leave. I ran after it and yelled, "Hey! WAIT!" and banged on the side of the tro-tro. I stayed with the tro for a few seconds but then it accelerated. It was almost dark out and the mate didn't seem to see or hear me but I think the other passengers noticed I was chasing the van and told the driver to stop. I don't know why the mate told the driver to leave. I know it wasn't because I was taking too much time saying goodbye to Lauren and McKell because the tro took off literally as soon as we all got out. I hadn't paid the mate for the ride yet either so I don't know why he thought I was going with Lauren and McKell, besides the fact that we were sitting and talking together.

The tro-tro finally stopped about 25 meters ahead and reversed back to me. I hopped in, with Lauren and McKell still at the Kakum entrance probably laughing at our collective misfortunes as foreigners, and heard the driver talking rapidly in Fante or Twi to the mate and a couple other passengers muttering to each other and I figured it was because of what had just happened, seeing that the ride was silent before, besides Lauren, McKell and me. I couldn't tell if everyone was angry at me or the mate or the driver, but then the woman next to me told me, "Sorry." I like that about the Ghanaian culture; when a local tries to blatantly rip you off, sometimes another Ghanaian comes to the rescue, as if to salvage our perception of Ghana and its people. Each time this has happened to me I've noticed it is a woman who apologizes or corrects on her people's behalf.

The ride from Cape Coast to Gynkabo only took 45 minutes, but our ride back to Cape Coast took an hour and a half because of all the people we picked up along the way. Shortly after I got back into the tro, a woman with a baby and man got inside. The woman sat next to me and kept her baby on her lap, which I thought was strange considering most mothers use beautiful fabric to wrap their babies and toddlers onto the small of their backs. They don't take the babies out of the back wrap even when they're sitting in taxis or tros; they simply sit on the edge of their seats.

I assumed the reason the baby was on its mother's lap was because the mother was nursing. It was dark and the baby was wrapped generously with fabric so I couldn't get a sideways glance to confirm my assumption. Several times throughout the ride I heard the woman's baby making noises resembling a snorting sound and assumed his or her nasal passage was clogged up or that the baby had sucked the mother's milk too quickly. After each snorting session the mother would say something in Fante or Twi to her child. I noticed that the woman sitting on my left, the one who apologized for the driver almost leaving me at Kakum, would always cock a sideways glance at the woman and child when the mother would say something. I wondered what the mother was saying that drew such blatant attention from other passengers.

About half an hour later we got to Abura, a suburb of Cape Coast. The mother and child and the man they entered with got out. As soon as the mate gave the sliding door a good slam, the woman on my left told me, "Her baby is about to die. She is on her way to the hospital." Everything I said ("Really? Dying? I just thought her baby was having a hard time sleeping. That's awful." followed by a dumbfounded stare and ajar mouth) and everything I could have said would have made me sound like an idiot. We had been bumper-to-bumper in traffic for the past 20 minutes before the mother and child and I'm assuming the father got out - I couldn't imagine having to bring my deathly sick child to the hospital via public transportation. I thought of the time I got a phone call at home six years ago from a man who was with my father when he had had a sudden cardiac death at a local soccer complex and how I drove like a maniac to the hospital 45 minutes away and I was lucky I didn't cause an accident or get pulled over.

I hope the baby is alright. I hope no one with a sick child has to use public transportation to get to a hospital.

I'm sad that my hopes may be too much.