Out for a stroll in my neighborhood to pick up some supplies one morning, a cool breeze carrying traces of rain from the night before. Dozens of pairs of eyes move with me as I walk the length of the road, dark spotlights in the dim morning light. Women openly stare at me with hard looks. I am acutely aware of my hands that have no place to be, my clumsy movements and awkward gait, try to look straight and appear unruffled, unhurried. An old woman with deep creases across her face and a painfully arched back sees me and as I walk by she spits curses and shakes her head, her voice following me down the street. I’m sure she was dispelling actual curses just as surely as she used curse words; I can only imagine what she wished upon me.

I have to remind myself that this isn’t about me: the woman was old enough to experience colonialism and the abuses that accompanied that time, the people staring don’t usually see whites around here and probably have a difficult time seeing past my coloring. They don’t see the person beneath the skin because they don’t know me. Perhaps they want to know, but I am just too different, too strange, unapproachable, a dangerous and exotic animal they can’t quite classify, a threat to the balance, a curiosity, a spectacle.

I have come out in the wrong outfit, at the wrong time of this day. It’s Sunday morning at 10 and I’m in jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, not in an African dress and carrying a Bible. It’s church day, church time, and no less 25 churches in just this small neighborhood alone, the men in clean, crisp, impossibly white shirts and bright ties, the women wrapped in kente cloth headscarves and elaborately sewn matching dresses that fit like only an outfit made just for you can, little girls in ribbons and ruffles. It’s the younger men and boys who like to talk to me when I’m passing. “Ssssss. Sssss,” they hiss to get my attention. “Bra, bra (come, come),” they say. But the younger men and boys aren’t out this morning because they were out late last night drinking. They aren’t headed to church this morning either. So today I’m on my own, accursed and feeling accused, feeling judgment heavy on my back, pushing me along as I’m stopping in to the street sheds to buy fresh eggs, bottles of water, some medicine.

Off of the main avenue, I’m finally out of the crowd and walking toward a man sauntering past carrying his small son, clearly just from church. He walks by and our eyes meet and I feel a softness in him. I tell him good morning and he says, “How are you?” in English and the tears jump to my throat. Kindness. “Ae-yeah (I’m fine),” I choke out in Twi. Overhead, a large bird fights against the updraft bringing in more rain, the flapping, flapping, flapping of his wings sounding like helicopter propellers. I lower my head and listen to the sound, and feel a deep longing.

I think of Angela’s beautiful growing belly, of Jorge listening patiently to a student learn the right beats and rhythms, Angelina beaming and trying on her wedding dress, Ali pushing herself the next mile at the marathon, Charyn on yet another airplane to see yet another country with a hard-to-pronounce name, Dan barreling down a hiking trail on his mountain bike, Kel and Toskey having a glass of wine and watching the sun set with George and Sanders after they’ve enjoyed a home-cooked meal, Jim finding some lovely mischief, Ahn dressing her daughter in the morning, still not quite believing she’s a mom, Francisco spinning and marveling on the dance floor, Joshua talking excitedly about a new idea, Kurt ordering at a restaurant for the whole table, punctuating his sentences with something warm and funny, Madgy organizing and then relaxing, satisfied, in his just-cleaned house, watching the cats play in the garden, Mike feeling restless and pensive as he heads out for a cold one, Pace and Paige arranging furniture in their new home, chasing the kids around the sofa, Sean looking like a model as he impresses yet another new client, Marie wandering the streets of Oslo looking for an apartment. And Danny, Danny dancing across my computer screen and making faces, trying to get me to laugh.

My precious friends. Not all of my friends, just a few. A few who were, at one time or another, part of my every day, part of my own neighborhood, my own routine, people who didn’t see skin color or bad skin or skinned knees, friends who were easy and natural, who often came into my life in a blaze and, thankfully, stayed.

I like walking down a street, any street, anywhere in the world, and finding myself fixed on someone’s eyes and theirs on mine, momentarily caught by each other and forgetting ourselves for a second, and that small flash, that briefest fragment, is something that stays with me throughout the day. Connection.

Africa is not easily forgiving of the sins of my fathers, nor should it be. I understand why people can be hostile or curious or distant, I understand their reasons and their fears. I’m just a girl trying to live, to experience another angle to life, to push myself past my limits to find out what’s on the other side, to follow a thread I feel driven to explore, to understand difference but also to understand oneness – which really aren’t that dissimilar or separate – to connect, to become.

I don’t encounter women muttering curses at me all the time. Not every day is the same. Some days fill me with a wonderful kind of delight, and I am greeted by smiles instead of hardened faces, hugs from small girls, shouts of “Auntie Esi!” or “Sister Esi!” the name people all over Accra know me by because it’s easier to say than “Stacy,” a reassuring call from a woman pounding fufu who takes a break to say to me, “Akwaaba (you are welcome here),” a drink with a friend who really sees me, who really tries to see me, a conversation that has nothing to do with my ethnicity, my nationality, but about relationships or music or trees.

I think some days I am dragged through, pulled, by the memory of other conversations, other friends too far away, other stories and plans. On rarer days, I find I need nothing more than my own raw will and belief in myself to survive this place.

I suppose I do throw off the balance, but maybe that’s what everyone needs sometimes, to be jostled off stable footing, to be momentarily unset, where there are question marks and roads where you can’t see the end and people that challenge what you think you know. Maybe it’s just what I need, maybe that’s why I’m here. My friend Gaddafi says our conversations have changed the way he thinks about some important things, some important ways that he sees the world. Me too. Walking down the streets in Accra and feeling, for the first time in my life, what it is like to be on the receiving end of a racial prejudice, feeling the burn of it in my own skin – even if that prejudice is understandable and comes from a warranted place – changes the way I see the world.

I am slowly making friends here. I question motives a lot. Having learned some suffering lessons already, I have to. But I am beginning, over time, to find a few people I trust and enjoy, people who trust and enjoy me, people who have moved past the color of my skin to discover the person underneath. I live for a real sense of connection with the people I meet, and experience a profound joy when my eyes lock with the eyes of a stranger on the street and we see each other, see each other’s beauty and frailty and dignity and power.

I don’t expect everyone to see past my skin color right away, I don’t expect to connect with every person I talk to, I don’t even expect most people to pay me any mind. But I secretly hope, always, to blend enough or become part of the neighborhood enough, in both a literal and figurative sense, that people will see “Sister Esi” instead of “white girl,” and in that shift, we will have the chance to know each other, to learn from each other, to challenge what we believe, to become changed in our exchange of stories and ideas and desires, and to discover that, despite the mistakes of those who have gone before, we’re really not so different after all.