Meet Natalya Sakado. The girl exchanged cloudy St. Petersburg for distant Ghana, which is located in West Africa. A few years ago, Natalia fell in love with a medical student named Frank. And from that moment I realized that her fate was forever connected with Africa.
Our family is 6 years old. There are 4 people in it, 3 men, 2 babies, and 1 mother. Between our cities 6573 km or 10 hours of flight by plane. The country where we live has 270 sunny days a year and an average temperature of 28°C.
12 noon and 12 at night. 0% winter, 100% summer. Here people speak 46 languages and write in nine. There is 1 ocean here. 3 stripes and 1 star on the flag. We are Natasha, Frank, Martin, and David, and we live in Ghana (West Africa).
When I left my hometown, moving to Ghana was as natural for me as going to school after kindergarten, to university after school, and to the office after university.
Why are you in Ghana and not in Russia? Where is better? Of course, it is better in Russia, where there is a good free education and health care, an established public transport system, many playgrounds, and shopping malls. But I like Ghana more. Because my husband’s house is in Ghana. And for the family, it is easier and more comfortable to live in the homeland of the husband. Where he is, like a fish in water. Where he can be the head of the family.
Frank loves classical music! Especially opera, especially choral parts. Frank loves to cook, although in Ghana it is not customary for a man to be in the kitchen. Frank loves to read so much that at one time he stole books from the library. And finally, my husband is the best husband in the world!
Have you been there? So how? Hot? Wasn’t it scary to give birth? Does he have any other wives? And inside everything freezes, while you open your mouth to answer the same question for the hundredth time.
And you think: was I ready for such attention? Did you know that dozens of looks would follow us down the street, that people would turn around and whisper behind our backs?
I close my social media pages so as not to see angry comments. And then I open it again to tell people that the world is not divided into black and white. I go into the house and hug the most beautiful babies in the world, whose skin is much darker than mine. And then it seems to me that I can withstand everything!
In my hometown, tobacco smoke has always annoyed me. And in Ghana, I sometimes even miss the “native” smell. This is because there is almost no smoking here.
It’s even hard for me to say where cigarettes are sold in our city. Smoking in Ghana is condemned, as well as drinking alcohol.
The whole family looked at our rare bottle of wine for dinner with condemnation. By the way, about alcohol: here it is for sale – for every taste and color. But seeing a man walking down the street with a bottle of beer in his hand is unrealistic.
10 reasons to come to Ghana:
1. Make sure that Africa is not only adobe huts, monkeys, savannahs, and people in loincloths.
2. Feel like a superstar. Get ready to constantly wave your hand to others, smile, and answer questions and requests for photographs.
3. Feel like a rich man without the latest iPhone and an expensive car. Everything is relative, right?
4. Without extended eyelashes, the beautician and stylist feel like a beauty queen.
5. Make sure that eating with your hands is sometimes more convenient and tastier than with appliances. Even if it’s soup.
6. Make sure that a day without tap water and electricity is not the end of the world.
7. Enjoy the power of the Atlantic Ocean, the beauty of waterfalls and untouched jungle, the brightness of outfits, and the aroma of flowering orange plantations.
8. Test yourself for strength, endurance, adventurism, and sociability.
9. Falling asleep under a mosquito net, feel like a hero of an adventure movie or a program on the Discovery Channel.
10. Be proud to tell friends: “I was in Africa.”
“Meat is very popular in Ghana, and all offal is eaten, and such unusual parts as a cow’s head or hoof are generally considered a delicacy.
In my husband’s family, goat meat is held in high esteem. Not even a goat! Such that the goat smell is overbearing. The skin is not removed – the fur is simply scorched and boiled with the skin. Another delicacy is Achatina snails. They are grown on special farms to impressive sizes and sold in the markets.”
I used to be very simple about the fact that strangers saw my one-year-old son with a naked booty. And my husband scolded me because here it is somehow not accepted.
In general, in Ghana, they dress quite chastely. Short skirts and dresses are worn with leggings. Shorts until recently were generally taboo. Seeing a gank in a bikini is unrealistic.
Sling or stroller? For Ghanaian women, this is not an issue. Children are traditionally worn behind their backs, tied with a special piece of cloth. Carriages are also used by some, but mostly in the yard. Walking with children on the streets is not accepted.
I brought a sling scarf with me and carried David in it for up to six months. Then it became hard to walk long distances, and we moved to a stroller, with which it is more convenient for me to walk.
“In Ghana, it is customary to keep servants even in poor families. Most often, these are young girls or boys from the village, children of distant relatives, who are ready to do all the housework for the opportunity to live and study in the city.”
Almost all children in Ghana are bilingual. From birth, they are surrounded by two languages: English and local. So my children are growing up in a bilingual environment: at home, we speak English and Russian. They also hear the local language, but they do not speak it at all.
What I love Ghanaian children for is their patience and attention to kids. They are always ready to mess around, play with the younger ones, do not complain, and do not try to get rid of them. The boys in the neighborhood and even the big guys are always ready to stop the game so Martin can hit the ball. Also, they are not greedy. Most of them live extremely poor by our standards, but even with what little they have, they are always ready to share among themselves.
