We are in East Legon, Ghana. The roads are red like the warning track at Wrigley Field. Red sand and gravel that reminds anything it touches of its presence. Our shoes are red. On each side of the road are cement gutters two feet deep and one foot wide. It is dry today, but during the current monsoon rains these gutters prevent flash flood and road erosion.

The house in which we stay is beautiful. The fluorescent tube lights tint the walls a pale mint that contrasts with the deeply lacquered wood doors. Fourteen students transform six bedrooms into a home. The kitchen is dark, but the differentiation of color and style comfortably sets it into the house like a knife in Jell-O. Looking out the front door, a porch surrounds our house nine-o-clock to twelve-o-clock. The tile is white, and a white cement fence armored in razor wire circumferences the house.

Media in Ghana Day 1 from Kelly Vigil on Vimeo.

South Ghana is hot. East Legon is set north east of Accra, the capitol, which is on the coast of southern Ghana. Ghana is warm, but Ghana is humid, so to us Ghana is hot. Our clothes are sweaty and we are jet lagged. This is unimportant because through what we believe is tough – irregular disappearances of power, bug spray for mosquitos that carry malaria, clean drinking water only available from an office cooler, dear lord the wifi that we have is slow – we are becoming ‘diverse’, we are becoming ‘experienced’, we are becoming family.

We are seven hours ahead of our community on the west coast, but more and more we are becoming on time for who we are right now. By the end of these blog posts I’m sure you will know what that means.