The Stranger

For more than a week, there has been a mysterious woman living on the porch of my compound. I first noticed her sitting on our front step when I came back to the village from my Close of Service Conference last week. She was a small woman, probably in her later 30s, wearing a typical outfit with a cloth wrapped around her waist and a headscarf. I didn’t recognize her as a woman from my village, but we have had a lot of visitors around the community for the recently held chief’s funeral, so I automatically assumed that she was someone’s relative and was simply resting on our porch.


I thought it was strange that when I greeted her in Dagbani, she didn’t say anything back or even make much effort to look at me. Her lack of response indicated that she was either being incredibly rude to me, or she didn’t speak the local language, so I tried to say hello in English. Again, she simply stared straight ahead and gave no acknowledgement of my greeting. Oh well, I thought, maybe she’s just quiet, and I brought my things into the house to unpack.

A while later, I came out of my house to greet people in the community, and the woman was still sitting on the step in front of my place, quietly staring out at the road. This time, however, I noticed that she had tucked two large bundles of items in the corner of our porch, where they would be protected by the awning above. By the evening, when I returned home, she was in the same position, and I realized that she must, for some reason or another, have temporarily set up a “home” on our front porch. A few hours later, I walked outside to talk to a friend on the phone, and while I was sitting on the other side of the compound, the unknown woman approached me with a small ball of TZ and a plastic pail full of a thick soup. She didn’t say anything, but simply left the food with me and walked back to the corner of the porch and sat down again. I ate some of the food, which was cold and had clearly been sitting out for a while, and returned the rest to the woman and tried to thank her. She only nodded her head quietly and looked away.

After two days of seeing this woman in the same position on the stoop, I finally asked a couple of my friends in the village if they knew who she was. They all shook their heads, and some answered that she was crazy. They explained that she stepped off of a vehicle one day with her two bundles of clothes and other items and parked herself on our porch, not having said a word to anyone since she arrived. Apparently she has been given food by various neighbors, but doesn’t eat much and generally just stays to herself. Because of this, several people have speculated that she is from a neighboring village, but is “sick.” They say her mind has gotten to the point where she has forgotten language and doesn’t know where she is. Others think she’s a woman from another region of Ghana who ran away from her family and is quiet only because she doesn’t speak our local language and doesn’t want people to know who she is.

Regardless of her reasons for staying in our village, her presence has made me think a lot about the way people fit into society here, and a typical community response to people like this woman. I find it interesting that the people of my compound and surrounding compounds have brought her food and allowed her to sleep inside of the building on rainy nights. For the most part, besides their musings about the circumstances that led to her staying with us, haven’t made much fuss about her presence. Certainly no one has called the police or demanded that she leave our porch, though I have no idea how long they’ll entertain her here.

I have no idea what the mental state of this woman is. I’m inclined to think that she is struggling with some sort of mental issue, considering her behavior and circumstances. In my experience, it seems quite common that people in my area who are mentally disabled end up in one of two situations. When they are young, they are generally looked after in the village. Though possibly treated slightly more harshly than the average child (ie: yelled at more frequently and often made fun of by other children and even sometimes adults), these children are usually well-fed and cared for by both their family and other families in the village. As they get older, these individuals are generally well taken care of, but often tucked away in their compounds or slightly ostracized from the community as a whole.

There are others, however, that I would put in a different camp. These people are the type that you tend to see on street corners in larger towns and cities, dressed in rags, scratching at open sores, sometimes wandering aimlessly and muttering, often begging. I don’t say these things to perpetuate stereotypes, but rather to describe what I’ve seen in countless towns in Northern Ghana. My heart breaks for these people, as many sleep on the streets with little more than a piece of cardboard among their possessions and have almost no ability to communicate. I’ve seen people walking around in sweltering heat with their bodies covered from head to toe, including face masks and gloves, men wandering around naked at the intersections of large cities, and a woman whom we affectionately refer to as the “Tamale Bag Lady,” who lays in the same spot every day next to the road, crumpled amongst what looks like piles of garbage bags. This particular woman is infamous for collecting a coin from one of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and promptly putting it into her mouth, swallowing, and laying back down on her pile.

So, in the end, I suppose the mysterious woman in my village is somewhat lucky. She has a place to sleep that consists of more than a tarp on concrete, and she has people who are willing to feed her and who have a relative interest in her well-being. I hope, for her sake, that she is a runaway who has a family waiting back in a distant village, and that someday soon she will reunite with them. But if not, at least for now, she has a home on our front porch.