Introduction

This blog is a tale of love, not unrequited love as is the story so many tell, but rather of undying love across a distance that seems impossible. This is the tale of my husband and his wife, David and Larita, two ordinary people who find themselves in a rather extraordinary circumstance.

Rather than start at the very beginning, which would make this introduction rather lengthy and dull, suffice it to say that ours is a very different romance. Truly it was love at first sight, no matter how fantastical it sounds. You may argue, if you like, whether such a thing ever happens, as I used to, but I know that it does because it happened to me. David and I met, innocently enough with a simple greeting and several days without a verbal word spoken. But from the first moment our eyes met, our hearts seemed to have plenty to converse about. Since that day of our first meeting, nothing and nobody else has occupied our thoughts and feelings as much as one another.

Despite being from two opposite sides of the world, I moved back to Ghana (where we had met) from Canada (where I was living) to be with him and we were happily married in a sweet, small, and simple ceremony in late 2007. So far, this all sounds like a fairytale, doesn't it? (Of course, I have left out quite a bit of the struggles we went through, but now that our marriage is signed and paid for, those struggles are not of any real importance. However, if you are especially curious and wish to know the details, please feel free to send me a message and I will be happy to answer your questions as I find appropriate.) And it really all was very fairytale-like for the first while. Endless days of honeymoon where we had nothing to do but be completely wrapped up in each other. However, within time, this fluffy fairytale began to take on a slightly darker tint and begin to head in the direction of a nightmare. By February 2008, it had most definitely become at least a close relative to a nightmare. Those endless days of nothing but lazing around loving each other were also endless days of not earning money. The economy of Ghana is in tatters, leaving both of us able-bodied useful people without any income or even possibility of a job. As with any marriage, the thought of children not too far in the future caused us to take a good hard look at what the state of our family was. Not good. So after much sobbing, tears, and goodbye kisses, it became clear that, as the one with the decided advantage of North American citizenship, I must leave my blissful married home and return to the cold land of British Columbia, Canada, from whence I came. Unfortunately, international travel isn't as easy for most of the world as it is for the average North American. There is no such thing as merely purchasing a visa to the appropriate country, or flying without any visa at all. No, one must apply for visa or resident status, endure countless investigations and interviews into every part of one's life, pay what is often equivilant to three or four months' gross salary, and still have only a 50/50 chance of actually obtaining the traveling permissions applied for, often seeming to hinge on which side of the bed your immigration counsellor woke up on that specific morning. Of course, after that, there is also the ordeal of purchasing a ticket and then requesting and receiving the appropriate transit visas. Imagine one rather large fiasco equivilant to being sued, divorced, and declared bankrupt all on one day.

So because the prospect of this process didn't look very agreeable with us (never minding the fact that we didn't have the money for it nor any way of saving money for it), I was sent off to Canada alone, leaving my husband and a good deal of my heart in Ghana, not knowing when I would see either of them again. My duty right now is to find a job, work, and become stable in order to apply as a sponsor for my husband, thus skipping a large part of the process described above and giving us a better chance of being reunited in Canada, where we will both be able to work in order to gain a better future for our family (in case you're wondering at this point - no, I am not pregnant. That is only an expected, and in our case desired, option for some time not too far along.).

So to make this long story short, I am here, he is there, and there is an awful lot of space between here and there. At the beginning of this process, we are approximating about 11 months of seperation... and hoping desperately that our approximation is extremely generous. I have been in Canada since April 7, 2008, making it just shy of a month apart. As any newlywed would understand, that is a VERY LONG TIME. I currently do not have a permanent job yet, though I have a few options pending and have applied for an awful lot of positions. So I guess you could say that at the moment, our situation isn't looking promising. But, as always, we're trusting that God knows what he is doing and has something good planned for us in the end of this all... I'm sure we'll both do a good bit of learning about something in the meantime too.

If this story intrigues you at all, pass it along to your friends and check back often for updates. The more people who know about this little family's fight to reunite, the better. Perhaps we'll even gain the ear of some kind-hearted immigration personnel along the way who can help our sponsorship and immigration process to go a little faster. You can also keep up with a visual version of our tale by going to http://flickr.com and searching for Kwame's Girl (that's me!).