Hello, 2018, and Hello,Harmattan!

Like most churches across Ghana, the Deeper Life Bible Church we attend planned to usher in the New Year with a midnight prayer and praise service. 

"Should we go?" John asked me. The two of us wanted to be there, but we weren’t sure if it was too much to ask of our young children. 

"Well, it is only three hours out of our lives," I reasoned. "The baby will sleep in my sling and the other two can take naps tomorrow." 

So we went.

The older children thought it was novel to go to church when they should have been in bed. They each took a blanket for warmth and planned to hunker down in their chairs and sleep at church. (Definitely an unusual privilege. Our church has ushers who tap any sleepers on the shoulder, ensuring a wakeful audience.) Other children, I noticed when we arrived, had mats as well as blankets and were sacked out on the floor in the back of the room. 

So we stayed while the baby looked around brightly for the duration of the service with my fellow-mommies laughing at him. "Why?" they asked me as I bounced him just outside the open church door where I could still hear the service. "Why isn't he sleeping?" 

"He wants to see the New Year," I told them, grinning. And other than a restless dozing twenty minutes before fireworks announced the New Year, the baby stayed awake to the amusement of my friends.

John and I enjoyed listening to songs in Twi which we don't hear on a regular Sunday morning and watching our friends truly feel the music as they sang. It was obvious that Twi is not only their mother tongue but their heart language as well.  

We listened to inspiring testimonies including a song of praise from the pastor's wife who has a baby with an amputated foot and obvious developmental delays. (You can read her story here.) She shared the story of her baby's birth and troubles and ended it by saying, "I am praising and thanking God that my baby is alive." There was no evident self-pity nor any reference to a hard year but simple gratitude that her son is alive.

A final highlight of the evening came after the booming fireworks died down enough for me to hear the pastor again (lights were off, so we were in darkness without a sound system). He said we would sing a New Year song and shake hands all around while we sang. Everyone was in high spirits. Mothers swayed the babies on their backs as they shook my hand and held on longer than normal. There was laughter and greetings all around. The camaraderie I had felt among the women while standing outside the church door with our babies expanded to include many other churchgoers during the New Year song. It was such a beautiful way to usher in the New Year. 

This is the song they sang, though ours wasn't as professionally done since we had untrained voices and no instruments. 

On our way home with three tired children, we noticed the haze in the air was unusually heavy. Car headlights coming our direction were soupy puddles of light like those in heavy fog. 

"Harmattan is bad tonight," John observed, for it was dust in the air that caused the haze. 

And, sadly enough for the housekeeper within me, the dust hasn't lifted yet. The air smells of dirt and a dusty haze obscures the hill we normally see behind our neighbors’ trees.

The harmattan is a phenomenon, though it happens annually. Winds pick dust and sand up from the Sahara (largely from the Bodélé depression in Chad) and fling it skyward. They blow southwesterly, dropping sand and dirt all along their path, but still carrying enough to South America to replenish phosphorus in the Amazon rain forest. Phosphorus, a mineral easily washed away by the excessive rains of the Amazon, is found richly in the sand of the dry lake bed in Chad. NASA has photographs of a dusty trail spanning the Atlantic and carrying the equivalent of 104,908 semi-trucks full of sand that actually reach the Amazon. More than 6 times that is lifted annually, according to this article, and dropped along the way.

 All the dirt that falls on us in Accra is redeemed by knowing that the harmattan has a greater purpose than simply dusting the earth. Redeemed or no, the dirt is still here to contend with. But I'm fortunate. Housekeepers less than 400 miles north of us deal with a substantially heavier coating of dirt. Theirs isn't the fine powder I clean off my table every day. Theirs is true gritty grime in a thicker layer than mine. I have memories of washing every shelf in our two-roomed house when we lived in a northern Ghanaian village, then waking up the next morning and being able to write my name in the dust on those same shelves. 

This season is unbelievably dry, especially from my perspective, coming from humid PA. Our laundry dries in short order, which is fun for a change. Lips chap and crack. Food remnants cement onto plates if they aren't washed immediately. Bread turns to croutons if left uncovered. Often people are troubled with sinus issues or bad coughs. John woke up one morning feeling dried out from the fan and the dry air and said, “I feel like a frog that has been out of its pond too long.” Knowing how hard it is to keep myself and my nursing baby hydrated, I sympathized.

While international flights are unhindered, regional airlines lose money during harmattan when visibility is too poor to land. If we have travelers going to Tamale during this time of year, it isn't unusual for John to buy both bus and plane tickets, then get a refund on the one that isn't used since flights are so unpredictable. 

One of our guests was told the following story by a fellow-traveler which highlights the difficulties of traveling during harmattan:

"When I arrived in Ghana, my luggage wasn't taken off the plane. By the time they figured out what happened, my bags were already on their way to South Africa.

"Luggage or no, I needed to get north, so I flew up to Tamale. When we were close enough to see the airport below us, the pilot said there wasn't enough visibility to land, so we turned around and came all the way back to Accra. 

"The airline said they'd run a special flight early in the morning and that I would need to be at the airport by 5:00. I was up by 4 and got to the airport in good time. Sadly, the harmattan was still too heavy, so they cancelled that flight and suggested I take a bus. 

"I bought a bus ticket and was finally sitting on the bus at noon waiting to pull out of the station when the airline called to say the plane is going to leave and I should come back. I quickly got off the bus and hurried to the airport. So right now I’ve been waiting almost two hours and am losing heart that the plane will fly.”

He was right. After a two-hour delay, the flight was cancelled and the good man was forced to find another bus.

The harmattan brings more than dust to Ghana. With the sun blanketed behind a haze, mornings are cool. Accra doesn't get the extreme temperature change you feel farther north, but it is still cold enough for a sheet at night and a hot beverage in the morning –pure happiness for us westerners. Recently, one morning was a delicious 76 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The sun at 4 pm today. 

Should you be interested in visiting Ghana, December/early January is a fine time to do it. The days get warm enough for you to appreciate the strength of our equatorial sun (provided the haze isn’t too thick), but nights are cool enough for you to sleep well. 

Best of all, if you visit now, I’ll have help cleaning.