DescriptionIn my fall of 2006 my daughter Anna Kastner, then a student at Swarthmore College, spent a semester at the University of Ghana in Legon, Ghana. My husband, younger daughter, and I visited her in November of that year. In Legon, we toured the campus, so crowded with students from all over Africa that young people were hanging out the windows of over-full classrooms in an effort to acquire an education. In Accra, open sewers ran down the side of ever street, tro-tros (mini-buses) careened around corners, and taxis hailed passengers rather than vice-versa. The route to the inland city of Kumasi was a red clay road interrupted by pot holes and an occasional patch of macadam. We walked into and down through the slave castles at Cape Coast and Ellmina. The centuries of cumulative sorrow and pain in those dungeons will always be palpable. Yet these terrible prisons are set in absolutely stunning locations - on cliffs overlooking dazzling beaches and the breaking pure blue waves of the Atlantic Coast. It was impossible to reconcile the history of pain with the beauty of the scenery. The noise, smells, and sights -- all magnified by an equatorial sun -- were sometimes overwhelming, but we were greeted warmly by nearly everyone. In a country too close to war-torn regions nearly every conversation about Ghana, even conversations that included criticisms of the country, ended with a Ghanaian stating, but at least we have peace. The markets in cities and along rural roads featured produce, crafts, goods of every sort -- all of which I expected, but what surprised me was the fabric. Every market featured fabric vendors, bolts and bolts of beautiful cloth randomly displayed on tables or stacked on the ground. I asked Anna to buy fabric that she liked because a quilt seemed like a good way to capture the chaos and joy of her time in Ghana.