Ghana

Saturday

Three days in the cocoa forest was hard. We did not even sleep there, yet I came home every evening feeling thankful for hot water, soap, clean clothes, a soft bed and a fan.

The thing that was hardest for me was not having coffee. 5am starts, and 14-hour working days in the heat and humidity of the cocoa forest, and nothing to pick me up after lunch for the afternoon shift, or to get me going in the morning, was really tough. I had a headache every day, whether from dehydration of caffeine withdrawal, I do not know.

I can still eat with my hands, I was happy to discover, and eat things out of politeness that I would never have otherwise ingested. I can still spend 2 minutes in a toilet and hold my breath for the entirety, a useful tool in these parts, and I can hang around on the side of the road in the midday sun while the broken-down car gets fixed without getting agitated or losing faith that we’ll soon be on our way. But I can not go without coffee.