Over time, life has introduced moments finest described as surreal. Some small, some giant. However there was one which dwarfed all of them.
In July of 1978, in my mid-20s, I flew from my native Seattle to Accra, Ghana, for what can be a two-year keep in a rural faculty instructing highschool math with the Peace Corps. On the time, West Africa had solely the slightest hint of a grid within the capital cities and a few giant cities.
For the primary 10 weeks, we stayed in a vacated faculty within the giant city of Cape Coast, which had piped-in water, and for 3 hours within the night, a generator for lights. Right here we underwent intensive coaching, together with native dialect instruction 3 times a day, instructor coaching in school rooms with native college students and cross-cultural instruction from Ghanaians contracted by the Peace Corps. However it was throughout the fifth week that each one 90 of us contemporary volunteers had been placed on native buses and dispersed all through the nation to the properties of host households — close to the faculties the place we’d be instructing — for a one-week keep.
Deep into the western rainforest my bus went, previous countless mud-brick villages and cities, wandering goats and chickens, farms and folks and enjoying kids, till a day later I arrived in a small city and on the cement bungalow of my host household, which included the headmaster of a close-by faculty, the place I spent the following week.
Within the late Seventies, Ghana, Accra, and Cape Coast — not lengthy faraway from colonial rule — felt as distant from the remainder of the world as was doable. However this city and residential of my hosts, deep within the rain forest, took this to a brand new stage.
Close to the equator, the solar drops immediately at 6 every night time, plunging that area into darkness that may final till it rises 12 hours later. On the village and residential of my host household, aside from the cover of stars above, there was solely the faint glow of kerosene lanterns, or the coals in pots used for cooking, to gentle the darkness.
However in that darkness, throughout that week, after the night meal, whereas sitting in chairs within the firm of my host household within the grime space out again beside the bamboo cooking shelter — the one sounds had been the thrill of crickets or the random voice from a close-by home — there got here a distant, crackling voice from a small battery-operated radio the household owned, and that was The Voice of America.
Every night time we listened to headlines related to West Africa: A grain ship making port in a neighboring nation; one head of state visiting one other; the string fading out and in, repeated again and again. After which one night time, below the celebrities and by the glow of the lantern, the distant, static-filled voice mentioned: “On July 28, 90 new math and science Peace Corps Volunteers from america landed in Accra. They’re at present staying with host households. After 10 weeks of coaching, they are going to be dispersed to colleges all through the nation.
“That is The Voice of America.”
Editor’s be aware: A choose on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to close down VOA.
