Out of Africa

My wife's cousin Mary is in Africa teaching English to middle school-age kids. She e-mailed an update on her adventures there so far, and she seems to have inherited her mom's witty style of reportage. I have received absolutely no permission from Mary to excerpt her e-mail here, so I will not. Instead, I will share snippets of a hypothetical update that I imagine could potentially come from an imaginary white Minnesotan female writing straight from the heart of Africa:

"Yesterday when I was walking to school, I passed my students in the streets doing 'town clean-up.' It consisted of their gathering piles of trash and starting them on fire. My students were literally running around in the road, lighting things on fire. That gives you a little bit of an idea how different things are here."

"This weekend my sisters at my house are teaching me to cook, and we are going to cook the chicken that Nick got as a present for being the first white person to visit the neighboring village. I refuse to kill for him."

"This region doesn't get much tourism, so the people here make a very big deal over us. It is always friendly, but I get sick of children running after me yeling, 'White person!' all the time."

"Enjoy the snow; it is insanely hot here."

"But where in Africa is Mary?" you might ask. Well, I might answer, "Ghana." And it might be right here.