Kim Percival | The Blog

Since returning from my recent trip to Ghana, to visit my sister before she completed her Peace Corp commitment there, all I have wanted to do is go back.  It seems so strange to me to write that down … because it really makes the thought real. I spent the first week upon returning in a major funk.

As ridiculously happy as I was to be back in the States with my girls and my Mark, I was really craving the simple, simple life that the Ghanians live.

They walk everywhere. Their children are raised by a community. They sit, just to sit and enjoy and talk to passers-by. They stop to say hello and have a conversation (even if it’s short) when they see someone they know. Their clothing is bright and happy. They are always late.

And they don’t know any different way. It is their normal, what they are used to.

Now I know and have experienced (thanks to my sister and beautiful people she was blessed to have in her life) a different normal. A normal so very different than the complicated lives we live here.

We close our front doors while entering and departing our homes through only the garage. We read books on how to parent or how to make life simple. We crave close relationships, but spend too much time living those out online instead of in-person. We schedule our days so that every minute is accounted for because if we aren’t producing something, then we doubt our self worth.  This is our normal.  Or let me speak for myself … this is my normal.

Frankly, I don’t want it any more. I want a life in-between the one I briefly experienced in Ghana and the one I live here. I have spent the last few weeks reconciling how I can get it. I have been asked if the trip was a life changing experience and it feels glib to say yes. So I won’t call it life changing, but I will say that my time there, the people I met and the things I saw have affected me in ways that I still don’t understand.

Most importantly, I am grateful. So crazy, ridiculously grateful for all the simple things that we take for granted here (the things we consider a right for us to have).

I am grateful to Ghana.

 

As part of my memory making, I took all the iPhone images I posted to Instagram and created a Blurb album. I can’t wait to have a copy of my instant images to flip through on the coffee table.

You can see the preview on Blurb, for print and e-book.

In the works is an album of the DSLR images I took. The grand scheme swirling around in my head is to start a non-profit that would benefit the work going on in the village of Adaklu for mothers and the care of their children. It was seriously my favorite place during my travel. I just need to wait for my sister to come home and we can get right on this … and the construction of our Ghanian vacation home there too!

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