Lately, I have been feeling like we are tracing Annette's past footsteps. For me, when I look at this trip, I don't want to visit any place I have been before. When I was a child, my mom used to discourage me from reading a book twice. "There are too many good books out there," she would say. Well, the same goes for the world. The world is still too big a place at this point to go anywhere twice (except maybe India, which is a world unto itself).
It has been different for Annette. And I think it is because she is a self-described Army brat. She moved every couple of years growing up. So, for her, to revisit a place or person from years ago is a luxury, an opportunity she rarely gets. And the universe has done a good job collaborating in this effort.
This summer, we walked the halls of her senior year at Jefferson City High School. We walked to Lincoln University and the ROTC building where her father used to work. We went and found Mr. Tyus in a used cell phone shop in the back of a strip mall in Missouri. He is the father of one of her best male friends from high school, who has since moved to Mexico.
In Germany, we found her kindergarten teacher, the playground she used to swing on, the candy store she frequented. And she crouched in the little classroom fort, far too tall now to stand up straight, that her teacher so clearly remembers her loving.
In Senegal, we retraced her steps on Goree Island, where she visited with her family as a girl. And much of our month in Ghana was the same. We found some new places and old ones she visited with her parents as a girl and with Dr. Dorr and her classmates at Ole Miss six years ago. And she was so comforted when we found the elephants in the water hole she remembers in Mole National Park.
And even our new places were made old. Through couchsurfing, we found a classmate of Annette's from her last year at Jeff City. She was one year into her service with the Peace Corps in the small village of Lipke Todome, an area Annette had never been. Jeanna not only went to the same school, she graduated in the same class. But they had never met. So, while I hiked to the caves and waterfalls alongside Francis, our guide, Annette and Jeanna reminisced on Jefferson City. We stopped to let them catch up every so often, but they were fifteen years behind.
We spent a day on our way back from the Volta Region stopping in Ho in search of Crafty. Crafty was an artist she met on a Sunday during the one day she spent in Ho six years ago. She remembered a hotel across from a church and by the end of lunch we were headed that way. Then I just followed her as she walked through her memory. She led us down a street, where I stopped and told a dreadlocked woman I was looking for somebody, a man named Crafty. "Oh. I know Crafty. His shop is just down the street on the left," she responded with a bright smile. So, we walked to it and found it. But it was locked. So we called the number on it. Crafty answered. He was in a tro tro coming back from Akosombo. So, we waited. And we waited a bit longer than expected, as expected.
He arrived with a smile and took us to his house, which lives vividly in Annette's mind. For me, this part was like a movie that had been described to me and quoted too many times (like Dazed and Confused in high school). (The fact that he had given her a firm Ghanaian kiss six years ago and Annette says she wasn't impressed, didn't help). By the time I set eyes on Crafty's house, I was disappointed. It had been built up to be a castle, which it wasn't quite. But it was beautiful and artsy. He urged us to take off our shoes and relax. He brought us a plate of chopped pineapple. He keeps two live crocodiles in a back courtyard. He has a view overlooking the city. And art everywhere. Jewelry, drums, stringed instuments, clothing, beads, voodoo dolls. Indinkra symbols decorate the wall and line the hall. Reggae slips out an inside window and dances in the courtyard. Two hours was sufficient for Annette, even time for us to still catch a tro tro back to Accra that evening.
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