Global Village

One of the first things we did on my arrival in Ghana was to register with accraexpat and view their classifieds for items to buy. Someone was advertising furniture and plants and had posted some pictures. We were interested but what was even more interesting was that in one of the pictures there was a piece of tapa cloth on their wall. Now not many people will know about tapa which is cloth produced from the bark of a tree in Oro Province in PNG.
In a former life I was a volunteer in Milne Bay Province in PNG and some of the girls came from Oro and I was given tapa as gifts and also purchased some myself to use as wall hangings.
I was intrigued by the tapa on the wall of a person in Ghana.
We went to see the items and of course the tapa was mentioned and it transpired that the guy was the grandson of one of the previous headmistresses in the school where I had taught in PNG. She had even written a book about her experiences and he was kind enough to pass on his copy as his family had more in the UK.
I spent that evening reading her book and reliving many of the same experiences and even knew some of the people she mentioned.
It just goes to show that the world is a very small place and there are connections in even the most unlikely places. Who would have thought that one of the first people I met in Ghana would remind me of 4 fantastic years in PNG?