Evening in Ghana

Ghana Girl in Front of Sudanese Mosque

Northern Ghana 2001

We stopped in a village to see the Sudanese Mosque with its many pinnacles, each one a sculpture with its own personality . There was a cemetery in front of the mosque. A crowd of boys climbed over the tombstones. It was their playground.

The Imam unlocked the mosque and invited us to enter. We passed through the empty prayer hall and into a narrow shaft then climbed up the ladder to the rooftop. It was evening. We looked out over the village studded with large dusty trees: kapok and baobab and acacias.

The sun was nearly gone when a group of women and girls passed through the church yard??? mosque yard? carrying these huge pans on their heads. They glided by with graceful strides, not looking at us.

I used Snap Art 4 to stylize this photo. It resembles a sketch, the markings seem to me to be stars falling onto the girl and mosque. You get a good idea of what the small mosque looked like and also an idea about the hardworking people. The girl’s perfect posture is fascinating. Oh, if only we’d learned to carry things on our heads as children. We’d have perfect posture, too.