The six weeks in Ghana is winding down, with today (Friday) being my last day at my internship. I had expected to stay through the weekend, thoroughly enjoying my time in this country, when disaster struck in the form of a 103.5 degree fever Wednesday night.
I’ve been to many parts of the world where they warn you about the food and the water. I’m usually pretty good at avoiding travelers sickness, stomach issues, etc. So much so, that I’ve gotten pretty bold in my choice of foods. I’m usually pretty brave, thinking that if my friends can eat it, I can eat it too. I feel that one of the best ways to connect to and understand a different place and culture is through their food. Everyone in the world has to eat, and I want to know what that’s like. While I’ve been in Ghana I’ve eaten so many local delicacies. kenkey, fufu, red red, jollof rice, kelewele, and banku. Ahhhh banku. What did you do to me!?
Wednesday my boss came back from a trip abroad and offered to buy me lunch, telling me he would pick up some banku in Osu (a neighborhood in Accra) on his way back to the office for lunch. Knowing my time was drawing to a close in Ghana, I was ready to get as much Ghanaian food as possible before heading back to the States.
Banku has two parts to it. There’s a doughy ball which is made of either corn or cassava. Then there’s the soup, which is a spicy mixture meant to dip portions of the dough into, topped off with a slice of fish which is always going to be tilapia in this country (they love tilapia here). I eagerly dug in, wanting to show my boss that I was a champ willing to dig into Ghanaian food.
Ghanaians eat heavy. Sometimes only eating one meal a day. This wasn’t my first encounter with the heavy Ghanaian food, so I was sure I wouldn’t be able to finish the two balls of banku placed before me. After finishing one ball, my boss laughed at me. He knows Obronis (foreigners) can’t eat as heavy as Ghanaians. He also found it amusing that I hadn’t touched the fish. Not to be embarrassed, I took a good little bite. My stomach was full.
The Culprit
It didn’t take long for the effects to start settling in. My stomach flipped. I started spending more time in the restroom. While waiting with my friend for the TroTro, I started feeling ill and mentioned I’d rather just take a taxi home, eschewing the normal hour and a half cramped (and sweltering) TroTro ride home.
The symptoms hit me hard. At dinner I started shaking, unable to finish sentences, almost blacking out as I hailed an UBER before ever even eating anything. Back at our home, I was freezing cold, heavily sweating. I felt like I was in Norway rather than Ghana. I chugged some water, and laid in bed, asking a fellow classmate to wake me up in a couple hours to recheck my temperature.
Two hours later I woke up with my body on fire, the chills were gone but the fever was here with a vengeance. Our thermometer was only in Celsius, but the WIFI in the house was out. Of course the WIFI wasn’t working when I needed it the most. 40 degrees Celsius. That doesn’t sound good, was the general consensus. We finally found another thermometer in Fahrenheit. 103.5. I hopped in the, thankfully, always cold shower trying to lower my body temperature. Chugging a cold bottle of water, I rechecked my temp. It was down to 102. That made me feel comfortable enough to go back to bed.
At 3:30am my fever, thankfully, broke as I woke up in a puddle of sweat. I knew I was past the worst of it. The fever had just become part of my Ghana story.
It’s unfortunate to end a trip like this being sick. You feel weak. You feel like you just want to go home and sleep in your own bed, you want to be comfortable. I had originally wanted to stay through the weekend, but now found myself wanting to just get back to the comfort of the States. I thought about how I’d be feeling if this had happened to me in the middle of our trip. Would I feel the same way? I concluded that when you set an end date to a trip, you’re expecting to leave at that time. And when adversity strikes it just makes you ready to end it that much sooner. Had this happened in the middle of my trip I would have been ready to ride through it, continuing this amazing experience.
Ghana has been great to me. And, although, I’ll probably never be able to think about banku again without getting nauseas (I’m feeling ill just thinking about it while writing this blog post) I’ve enjoyed every minute spent in this beautiful place. I’ve made so many friends, seen so many things, enough so that I’m trying to come back and spend next summer working with the same group I did my internship with.
I’ve learned so much about journalism while here. I thought I only wanted to be a photographer, but I’ve realized that there’s so much more to give to the profession and the stories told that I shouldn’t limit myself. I’ve been surrounded by intelligent and passionate co-workers (read: friends) that I leave Ghana, not defeated, but ecstatic about the future. So many things have pointed me in the direction of journalism. From meeting James Nachtwey on the battlefields of Iraq, to Precision Camera in Austin, Texas. This experience in Ghana is my next step on the never ending road that is my life. I love Ghana so much. Medasse for everything. I’ll definitely be back.