I imagine most people don’t feel that way about hearing that Captain Sullenberger landed a plane in the Hudson River. But I do.
My husband and I were in an internet cafe down the block from our apartment in Accra, Ghana. If you’re visualizing a spiffy computer-filled and highly air-conditioned room, stop. There were internet cafes like that in Accra, but not the one in our neighborhood. This one was very hot and mostly frequented by kids playing video games with very loud rap music as background. Its chief advantage was location.
We went every day after work. On that day, we “opened” the NYTimes and saw the news about Sully. We’re New Yorkers, so it was “our” Hudson River in “our” city in “our” country. OHMYOHMY. We wanted to talk to everyone in the place about it, but being the oldest ones and the only foreigners made conversation difficult. Thank goodness we had each other to share our amazement with.
I just saw the movie Sully, which I liked a lot. Plus I loved my mental trip to “our” internet cafe in Ghana. Without the rap music as background.

Our Accra neighborhood: This is our end of the street, in the morning, looking down towards “our” internet cafe.
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Carole Howard is the author of Deadly Adagio, a murder mystery set in Senegal, around the corner from Ghana.