New Friend From Ghana?

Can you make new friends, even if they are half way around the world, and who speak another language?  We’ll see.

You will remember that I talked about Isaac, one of my trash men.  Isaac is lead man on the trash truck that comes every week on Wednesday.  Rain.  Shine.  Ice.  Heat.  Snow.  Hail.  Sleet.  The trash truck comes; the men make sure the barrel that holds my week’s trash gets emptied into the truck, and the barrel gets returned to its proper place on the driveway by the garage.

It turns out that the reason Isaac brought that beautiful shirt to me from Ghana  (shown in the BLOG a couple of weeks ago) is that he told his mom about our relationship.  How he and his helper are treated by me.  And, how they reciprocate by helping me each week.  According to Isaac, she told him that he must bring the beautiful shirt to me.  I have learned to call it a Dashiki shirt.  One of my Lions International friends told me that when he was in college, he and friends started a band and had the Dashiki shirts as their “costume” or “uniform.”  I don’t know what to call it.  Anyway, this African shirt, the Dashiki, has a lot of meaning for many people.

I wrote a thank you note to Isaac’s mom, not knowing if she speaks English.  But, I figured that Isaac could translate for her, if necessary.  I have since learned that English is the official language of Ghana.  However, there are other languages that are also spoken.  I will list them here, but I really have no knowledge of their sounds or meanings:  the Twi dialects Asante, Akwapin, and Fante are the major local languages of Ghana used in publication and communication.  Other Ghanaian languages with written resources include Ga, Kasena, Nzema, Ewe, Gonja, Dagbene, Dagaare, and Wali – language names that I won’t even attempt to pronounce!**  And, there are more.

Last Wednesday, when Isaac and his helper arrived to handle my trash, I met him at the street and handed him the thank you note for his mom.  “Wait, wait.,” he said.  He seemed very excited.  He walked to the trash truck and turned off the engine.  When he returned to where I was standing, he had his cell phone in his hand and was tapping its face, dialing a telephone number.  He was calling his mother in Ghana!  When he spoke to her, it was a language that I didn’t recognize, and he translated what his mother was saying.  We talked for a few minutes with Isaac translating his mother’s words to me and mine to her.  At the end of the call, he showed me a photograph of her on his phone; a slender, beautiful woman.  When Isaac told me she is 85 years old, I told him that meant that I could be his mom.

I think this was one of the happiest days I’ve spent in a long time.  What fun to meet a new person – even someone that I could only understand through the interpretation by her son, and someone around the world in Africa.  I’m hoping that I can make a friend of this woman from Ghana.  It will take a lot of work, and I’ll need Isaac’s help with communication, but surely it can work – if we want it to.  And, I hope that she will want that.

This makes me want to meet more people that may become friends.  Only time will tell.

**Information from the world wide web.

Be Safe and Be Well
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are appreciated.