By Kendra Balmer
Kendra studied in Accra, Ghana during the summer in 2009 and wrote the following piece as a way to try and express the many sights, smells, feelings and everyday occurrances surrounding her experience.
“allow your flaps of skin with the occasional mind of their own envelope the single part of your physical being which has stayed the same since your first breath of earthly musk. fill nostrils strong with dirt filled energy to live another day getting closer to a return into reality. the game of real. alert the parts of your brain that humans don’t normally occupy to fit the memories of unlikely rare occurrences – store the tic-toc-ing of the clock with whom you used to
trust with your life and now….. you know time is relative – removing that from the list of constants to which you so desperately cling.
The eyes of the children weep stories more pure than the pronunciation of water in the not- so-western world. Slow is not synonymous to less, as much as you may have been trained to think. Walk too fast and be sure to miss all of the small details that make this world different from the rest. I sing to you from across the sea, feelings filling caverns that have until recently been vacant …dormant…undiscovered past my normal heart compartments.
smell a flower not to say you did, but to know its story, remember the smell like a name and when it returns or you are reminded by something similar – make connections like those that define greatness in our known history.
Once love is no longer shoved on a shelf for storage until the imaginary light turns red, the world will be one, the oceans will drain from between our pillows and we will only swim to sea in celebration that our hands only purpose is to fill the spaces between each others fingers like puzzles destined from the start.
We are for each other – there is nothing else to wonder.”
