Today was perfect. I woke up at around 8:30 and bought an egg sandwich at the market for breakfast. Egg sandwiches are a delightful and familiar treat. They cost about 40 cents, and are cooked to order with onions, peppers, and tomatoes in a warm roll. Yummmm.

Then my drum class started at 9:30 (convert to Ghanaian time= 10:45). The class has about 20 people in it and we sit in a circle in the courtyard of the music department- our melodies are accompanied by a chorus of birds and ladies chatting in the market next door. Our professor is named Johnson and he has the warmest and most genuine smile. Being a drummer in Johnson's class is a big change from playing classical violin in an orchestra- there is no mention of A flat or four-four. The change in pitch is "high-low-high-high-low" and the rhythm is something like "shaka-shaka-shak-A-shaka-shaka." We say music is a universal language, so I must be learning a new dialect.

When the two hours have passed and my hands are sore and happy, I head to the tro-tro stop which takes me to my internship. Tro-tros are city buses on speed; man are they something else! Flying down the road, plastered with "God Bless You" and "Jesus Saves," you can't believe the thing still even runs, since the doors are hanging on by a thread, maybe even dental floss. Each tro-tro can squeeze a good 25 people into it, not including the babies who are wrapped on their mothers backs and the children who sit on their laps. The driver then has an assistant of sorts who literally hangs out of the side door and calls out the destination as we pass tro-tro stops along the roadside. There are various hand signals and calls, all of which are totally unrecognizable to me, so I ask about ten people which tro-tro I should get on, receive eleven different answers, and then hope I get on the right one. A tro-tro ride like practically everything else in Ghana is both phrenetic and therapeutic; getting on the tro-tro is a pain in the tushi but once you're settled in your seat, it's a relaxing ride.

An hour or so later, I have finally arrived at my destination- an unmarked area called "Dimples." It might as well be Freckles. I am meeting a woman named Mrs. Dove who is the head mistress of a special school for children with disabilities, ranging from cerebal palsy to autism and adhd. She wears many hats, and this is just one of the remarkable projects she juggles.If Osu the dance teacher could not bring about world peace, then Nakwale could surely lend a helping hand.

Nakwale Dove is Ghanaian but raised in Scottland by missionaries, and later schooled in London and Paris. In the car ride from Dimples to the school, I learn that she went to college with Prince Charles of England- according to Nakwale, Prince Charles was infatuated with her because she had "gumption."

Mrs. Dove also tells me that she had ten children, one who is in his forties, another with autism, and eight more who all passed away. She has been through hell and back and still manged to open her own school, get her umpteenth degree in Psycho Drama Therapy from NYU at age 50, and serve on practically every social, cultural, and political board in Ghana. What a woman.

And so Mrs. Dove and her colleague (a child psychologist) pick me up from Dimples and her driver takes us to an international school just outside of Accra. Today we are interviewing children at the international school who have been recommended by their teachers to be placed in her special school. We are greeted by the head mistress and escorted to the school library where we interview thirty to forty children, one at a time. Mrs. Dove introduces me as the doctor, and I am given full license to interview the kids about their struggles with school, friends, and family. The kids are beautiful and precocious, ranging in ages, backgrounds, and abilities. After we talk to a little boy with autism, she leans to me and says, "My, he is a very very special one." Words like "autism" or even "hyper activity" give way to discrimination in Ghana, and so Mrs. Dove applies varying degrees of "specialness."

After a long and fufilling day Mrs. Dove has the car drive me back to campus, and insists that I accompany her and the children to the clinic on Tuesday for their neurological exams. Afterall, I am a doctor.

Only twenty minutes late, I go straight to my dance class from the tro-tro stop, where I am greeted by seventy smiling and sweaty faces. Dance class, home at last.

Another two hours of dancing, a few chicken kebabs from the night market, and a baby wipe bath- pure bliss.

ciao for now, lots of love,
m