I arrive around eight in the morning and my body is operating on a different clock than everything around it.
I had woken up just before landing with that muffled panic that comes from sleeping in pieces. For a moment, I don’t know where I am or how long I’ve been there. By the time the plane doors open, my thoughts have narrowed to logistics: my bags, did they all make it? Immigration. Getting through customs. Finding Iman (the best taxi driver in Kokrobite).
I move through the airport on autopilot. Stamp. Line. Wait. Walk. I’m not really here yet – just going through the motions.
Outside the airport, the noise hits me first. Drivers crowd close, voices overlapping, hands gesturing, reaching for my attention before I’ve fully stepped into the heat. I continue walking, pushing my cart of cases, scanning faces, and then I see Iman a few meters up ahead holding a sign with my name on it. With everything around me in motion, him and his sign became a pocket of calm and stillness.
As we walk towards his car, my eyes struggle to adjust to the brightness. A minute later, we’re squeezing my luggage into the boot and the backseat.
We pull out of the airport parking lot.
Only then do I come back to myself.
As the car merges into traffic, a realization hits me quietly and fully: I made it. I’m here. The world rushes in all at once – heat pressing against my skin, dust lingering in the air, exhaust fumes, salt. Horns. Voices. Movement everywhere. Vendors line the roadside. Buildings rise halfway and stop. Color stacks on color.
The closer we get to Kokrobite, the more my body catches up to where it is. My thoughts loosen. I stop bracing and start watching.
Jane and Kabiosi welcome me with smiles and hugs – it’s wonderful to see their faces again. Their two new puppies tumble around our feet, all legs and curiosity, still learning the limits of their bodies.
I head upstairs with my bags and begin unpacking, sifting through to find the donations before organizing my things, trying to anticipate where I’ll want this and that over the next three months. I nap. I talk with Jane. We eat dinner together. The day folds in on itself without demanding anything from me.
That night, I fall asleep early. As I’m drifting off, I realize again that I’m no longer floating above it all. Donations were collected, bags were packed, goodbyes were said, flights were taken. No more hemming and hawing.
I’m in it.
The next day, work begins. I wake full of excitement and beyond ready for a coffee. Just as the sun starts climbing and the day insists on itself, Kabiosi and I head to the Sankofa centre. This is the second KCC learning centre and the first built entirely of PET bottles.
It’s been over a year since I’ve seen this place and the changes are immense. An aquaponics tray I had helped shovel gravel into was now full of life in the form of several banana trees starting to fruit. Two tanks of catfish waiting for their permanent homes in the other aquaponics tanks welcome me with tiny splashes. Perhaps most significantly, the black soldier fly farm was no longer just an idea nor a few dozen blocks of concrete stacked in the shape of a room. It had become a kind of market – dense, humid, and humming – every surface alive with motion, each body busy with the deceptively simple work of eating, breaking down, and transforming.
Most of my first day here is spent trying to understand the workings of the black soldier fly farm. Much of the work revolves around the larvae – small, pale bodies that transform food waste into protein, feeding fish that will eventually feed people. Last year I was helping build three aquaponics systems. Putting together wooden forms, pouring aircrete (a special blend of concrete and soap creating a lighter, more affordable solution) and shoveling stones. All things I was familiar with to some extent. This time around I had a whole new ecosystem to wrap my head around. I knew I’d make mistakes, but I didn’t want to make the wrong kind (you know, where you stop paying enough attention or you act before wondering if what you’re doing is what’s actually supposed to happen).
We start by harvesting some of the larvae. Containers are tipped and sieved, soil falling away while larvae collect and wriggle together. The movement is constant. Hands learn the rhythm quickly: pour, shake, sift, separate, repeat. I expect my initial disgust at handling maggots so intimately to linger, but it doesn’t. Instead, my body now adapts faster than my mind. What felt overwhelming at first becomes procedural. Necessary. Almost ordinary. The sun soars steadily overhead, making itself known in waves of heat that settle as droplets of sweat.
When new eggs hatch we prepare the homes they will inhabit for two weeks before they become big enough to harvest. Fermenting food waste becomes both food and foundation. Palm kernel cake is added softened and sour. Wheat bran aids larvae growth and boosts protein content. Everything is mixed by hand, heavy and wet. There’s a precision to it that isn’t immediately obvious. Too much of one thing throws the balance off, too little slows the whole process down.
Work pauses only when the sun demands it. We step inside briefly, waiting for the heat to loosen its grip before returning outside. Time is not measured in hours here, but by temperature and tolerance.
At some point in the afternoon, I reach into the fridge and pull out the lunch I had packed that morning. As I go to take my first bite, I notice the ease of the motion and the assumption embedded in it. I spent the day working, knowing that when I am hungry, food is waiting for me. I can eat all of this now and there will be more food waiting for me when I am hungry again.
Many people here work harder and longer through the same heat and fatigue without that certainty. Meals are often smaller, stretched, postponed. Hunger isn’t always a call that can be answered immediately.
I don’t feel guilty in a way that leads to anywhere useful. Instead, I feel attentive. The difference settles in me and stays there, quiet but insistent.
By the end of the day, I’m coated in sweat and dust, my hands sore in a way that feels earned. The system keeps moving. Waste becomes feed. Feed becomes food. Everything here has a function.
I don’t have much time to process the day’s events on the short ride home, though I catch myself looking forward to a shower. It’s less about rest than reset.
With wet hair and a fresh pair of trousers free of maggot laden soil, I step into my second workday folded into this one.
Downstairs, I slip into my sandals. Even before I open the front door, I hear the learning centre coming to life. Children’s voices drift through the open windows of the house. Voices overlap and compete for space, names are called out, laughter echoes, arguments ensue that only feel urgent for a moment.
I step outside the house, the afternoon sun softening to a golden glow. As I walk towards the learning centre, I notice the shoes first: small sandals and worn sneakers scattered along the steps, maybe twenty pairs in total. Three backpacks slump against the wall.
When I enter, faces turn towards me. A hush spreads unevenly through the room – never complete as some children are too engrossed in their games, puzzles, and conversations to notice. The reaction is mixed. A few friendly smiles. Other stares linger longer, more cautious, measuring carefully what kind of presence I will be.
In the back corner sits Harriet. Children cluster around her, all vying for her attention at once. She moves among them easily, steady and self-assured, holding a quiet, benevolent authority. She looks young, but she carries herself with the confidence required to keep the whole room running smoothly. She conducts the room, guiding the tempo, cueing entrances, keeping chaos just this side of harmony.
I’m struck by how much of this work depends not on instruction, but on consistency; showing up again and again until trust has no choice but to form.
We exchange a smile and a wave before I sit down with a small group of children practicing spelling. I check over their work and try to think of new words with which to challenge them. All of the sudden I seem to forget half my vocabulary. Maybe because of the heat, maybe part of my mind is still at the Sankofa centre. Words wriggle, refusing to shake loose from the back of my mind. I turn my head hoping that the perfect word will appear in front of my eyes. Instead, I see a familiar face.
“Kofi!” I exclaim. He smiles. We hug. He’s grown since last year. The reunion is quick but rich. We catch up and he joins our spelling game, calling out new words with childlike wonder.
The posture this work requires is different. There is no standing back to observe. Attention is pulled in every direction at once – homework questions, small conflicts, bubbling excitement that has nowhere to go except outward. Where the work site asked my body to endure, this place asks me to stay open.
Later in the afternoon, a little girl slides into the chair beside me, slipping her workbook between us. Take home questions I read in the corner. Both pages are filled with multiplication problems – lattice multiplication. She pushes her book closer to me, expectantly, and tells me her brother has already solved the first question for her.
I understand what she’s hoping for.
Instead, we work through it together. Slowly. One box at a time. She hesitates, checks my face, then tries again. When it finally clicks, she lights up. She grins and immediately asks for harder problems, already reaching for the next challenge.
Here, mistakes are met with redirection rather than punishment. Questions are welcomed, rather than silenced. It’s a quiet but deliberate choice – one that many westerners may over look, one that asks patience from everyone involved. Children are allowed to try, to get things wrong, to try again without fear. Watching it, I’m reminded that this too is a system, carefully held together by repetition and care.
The room never fully settles. It hums with movement and noise, with energy that resists containment. As the light begins to soften, the room slowly empties. Workbooks are packed away. Children drift back out through the gate, their absence felt in the sudden quiet. The space holds onto the noise for a moment longer, then lets it go. A certain exhaustion hits me again, landing differently this time. It doesn’t live in the muscles so much as behind the eyes, in the constant recalibration of attention.
Walking back towards the house, I realize how closely this work mirrors that at the Sankofa centre. Both are about transformation. Both require time, attention, and endurance. The difference is that here, the results can’t be measured or weighed at a moment’s notice.
They show up later.
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