> I leave the house around seven thirty after having waved goodbye to my husband ( he leaves for work around 6.45 ).

I lock my gate with a heart on it and criss-cross through my neighborhood, saying my “goodmornings” to the people I meet. I turn onto Hospital Road and follow it for about 15 minutes. There is a lot of traffic, lotto kiosks, chicks, kids going to school, food being sold, craftsmen lining up their produce like sofas or baskets, and taxis that don’t mind me walking briskly in jogging shoes and stop to ask where I am going. Sometimes, a friend will drive by, like this morning the neighbor in the black pick-up. His window is already down so he just slows down, stopping traffic, and shouts to me across the road

So, you have started your exercise again?

I have. Interestingly, it seems like it is as much an exercise for the mind as for the legs. Walking is really the best way to think. I think about the car I am going to buy, what I will do this weekend and why dragonflies are not considered scary, but beautiful.

My legs move almost automatically.

I stop and become standing for a while trying to cross the busy Hospital Road to get to my destination, a pool. There I will emerge in the water to chill myself, because even though it is just eight in the morning I am sweating. Before I enter the pool premises I pass by the Christian Vertical(!) School. Kids are sweeping the schoolyard, attending to a fire of scraps and rubbish when they suddenly get interrupted by the bell. They line up as I watch them from the dirt road and start to sing.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

In the pic the jogging shoe that does not impress taxi drivers.