Light Off, part three

The village of Bechem seems smaller than the campus of the training college is contains--we walk the length and back easily in two hours, stopping along the way to greet people my mother knows. We pass the small cart selling scratch-cards with a code that buys cell phone minutes, its glaring red and yellow sign, the line of eager college students that snakes around it; side-streets off the main road packed with small houses, wooden beams and mud, tin roofs. Large white van taxis speed past, with one passenger leaning out the window yelling "Kumasi, Kumasi, Kumasi"--its destination--so that any would-be travelers can flag it down with its making any formal stops.

Children in green and yellow polyester uniforms play soccer at recess, or crowd towards the gates to point at us and shout "O Bruni!" (Hey White Lady). I feel both embarressed and special, wanting to rush over and high-five them all, let them touch my skin, and tell me what they're learning, then flush with anger at myself for thinking myself so important, so anthropological. I am not a researcher, I am a visitor. A tourist-scientist. The only way I can approach this place is detached, analytical, and I know that by doing that I am missing out on those all-importnat casual kitchen-table conversations that make Scott Carrier's work so compelling, the sound bites that get you into National Geographic.

For today, I am content to take a walk with my mother and chat with her. She has stories about nearly every block, each storefront a teacher's wife, each restaurant the location of a life-changing conversation. "There," she tells me, as she points out a bar simply called the Spot, no more than a few wooden picnic tables, "is where Martin and I used to drink Star Beer and talk about home and educational theory."

"Ma Pauline!" someone yells from behind us, and we turn to see Emmanuel, one of the secretaries in the principal's office at the college, running towards us. He looks young, maybe five years older than me, but I know he has a wife and twin three-year-old girls who nearly died of malaria last year. Aside from work at the college, he runs his own print shop, though he doesn't own a printer or photocopy machine. Essentially, he is a designer, producing copy and layouit for such varied projects as the college's official examination answer sheets and posters for local events. Hewas working from a piecemail construction he had put together himself. A monitor here, a keyboard there, until he could open the shop. My mother, admiring his dedication and passion, had a brand-new complete Dell setup sent his way last year, and he wants to take us to his shop, to see it in action.

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