CASEY GETS HER FIRST SUNBURN

By casey

I bet you all thought this post would come sooner than my last day in Ghana. I have been religious (and my build team may even say I was a
fanatic) about my SPF 55 coverage. I ground the stuff into my arms when they were covered with mortar, I slathered it back onto my nose as soon as it dripped off with sweat, and I was often known to ask others if they had put theirs on!

Alas, this morning, our last in Ghana, was a beautiful and bue-skied beach heaven. I SPFed to my heart's desire and went out to the pool with Steven to enjoy our last few hours in Elmina. We laid out, walked down the beach one last time, took a quick dip, and then went in to pack up. That's when I discovered that the SPF had finally failed me, in long uneven streaks on my knees and thighs and one strange stripe on my forearm. Oh well. At least it is one good reminder of why I
should go back to the temperate climate in the States. I obviously was
not built for equatorial climates.

And on the bright side, my legs will be toasty warm (read: burning up!) on the chiily ride home.

The last 24 hours of ghana have been a final breath of relaxation before we hit the ground running back in the states. Yesterday afternoon, after a day of toruing all over the town of Elmina, we took a few hours of quiet by the pool, drinking Coke and Savanna. We had bragged to the remaining members of our Habitat team in Elmina that our hotel had the best food we had tasted. And we gave them directions for how to get to us by walking down the beach right around dusk.

Steven and I sat reading on the porch, me with my trusty headlamp lighting the pages of my book. Being the worrier that I am, I kept picking my head up from my book to give a look up and down the beach, waiting for our friends to arrive. Suddenly, Steven looks at me and says "are you a lighthouse???" I was totally confused, until I realized that every time I did my head pickup, full beach panoramic
swivel, I did pretty much give off a beacon to anything out on the water. Oops.

Soon enough, Belva's head popped up from the dunes and we all sat together in the restaurant for lobster, fresh grouper, and plenty of Savanna cider to wash it all down. It was delicious and we all enjoyed being together in such a magical nighttime beach spot.

Steven and I closed the night out with distinctly un-African nightcaps. A Tia Maria for him and a Malibu and coke for me. Hey, you can take the kids out of America, but you can't always take America out of the kids.

So with full bellies and sunburned legs, we two are in a car inching towards Accra and the airport, where we'll change into our jeans and hoodies for the first time since arriving in Ghana.

Oh. Except we have decided to stop at the Accra Mall on the way there. What is more African than that?