Missing Tamale

As the last of seven weeks comes to a soggy close, I pause to reflect upon this city of Tamale. It holds so many memories, experiences, and I am happy to say, friends. Now that I am getting ready to leave in less than 3 days, I look toward my departure as bittersweet and I reflect upon the things that have made this place so special.

Opening my eyes in the morning to the sound of 30 or more girls singing as they start their school day. “Taking breakfast” of “eggbread” at Fuseini’s. Traveling with strangers in a packed taxi cab, dodging a medley of farm animals and motorbikes. The constant
accessibility of cheap, tasty, freshly-made foods carried by beautiful women and children atop of their heads as well as the knowledge of precisely where your food is coming from as the air is packed with the scent of butchered and burning meat and the bleating of goats and sheep.

Fast food that comes from a giant cauldron served in open air without the million dollar advertising. A satisfying meal of guinea fowl and jolof rice at prices that put the dollar menu to shame. For when there is more time, sharing a bowl of TZed and groundnut soup. Enjoying the company of one another as you both dip your bare fingers into the piping hot ball of dough and then into the scalding soup before scooping the spicy mixture into your mouth unencumbered by the senseless taboo of “double-dipping.”

Bonding over laughter and music as cultural differences melt away and you are no longer where you come from, but who you are.

The beauty of the people. The women in their brightly patterned, tailor-made dresses which hug every curve and complement the figure of a woman. The men with their toned physique developed through years of skilled labor, not manufactured in a stale health club. Their uninhibited practicality and grounded reality.

Above all, those beautiful people I will miss most are the ones that showed me the real side of Tamale and who shared with me their culture, their passions, their hopes and dreams, their laughter, and most of all, their friendship.