Jah lives! In far north Queensland …

MaameJ in her own design (tussah silk), 1985. Got that, it was the 80s!

Or he did when I was there in 1985. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was adventuring around Australia that year when I re-discovered African music while waitressing at Fitzroy Island. I lived in the Cairns area – mostly in tourist village Kuranda - for 8 months. I waitressed, bummed around, learned yoga, swam at the Barron River Gorge, tried to sell some weird clothes I’d designed at the Kuranda market, got involved with the campaigns of the local feminist group, travelled to Cape York in a Holden Kingswood. Ah yes, the 80s …

Actually the Kingswood didn’t get us right to the top, it conked out in Weipa and we flew back to Cairns. Another story.

So how did Jah fit into all this? Well FNQ attracted interesting kinds of people in those days. Probably still does, if you exclude the trillions of ravaging tourists from your assessment of the population. So it kind of makes sense that it was in Kuranda that I met the person who introduced me to more African music.

Ibina was a white rastafarian whose parents were building her a house on a rainforest block in Kuranda. I camped in her backyard on my days off from the island, with our mutual friend Breatharian. (I call her that because she was aspiring to live solely on air. Hmm. I think that ambition was stymied by her closet chocolate bar addiction). 

Ibina was a retired dancer who had lived in Jamaica and danced in the US before coming back to Oz with her half-Jamaican son, JahLion. (Omigod, he must be nearly 40 by now!!) Ibina had dreds she could almost sit on and started each day with a fat spliff. She’d changed her anglo name to reflect Rasta beliefs and cooked a yummy vegetarian ital stew with sweet potatos and pigeon peas from a tree in her backyard. Here’s another recipe for it. So yes, Jah lived in far north Queensland.

Ibina inspired both Breatharian and I to learn dance. She was classically trained but her passion was Afro-style contemporary. She choreographed a special piece for the three of us to perform at the Kuranda festival that September. We practised on the spacious verandah of her half-finished house – surrounded on 3 sides by thick foliage. We danced to a Peter Tosh song: Rastafari Is.

Ibina on the left, Breatharian on the right, I'm the skinny one in the middle who's lost her balance.

Wow, almost brings tears to my eyes hearing it again. I can remember the first bit by heart. I can even remember the first few steps. The first bit was choreographed and when it moves into a long instrumental, we got to improvise for a while. It’s a long piece of music and about half way through Tosh stops singing and starts preaching, so Ibina very wisely only used about the first five minutes, then Peter Tosh faded out and Thomas Mapfumo faded in.

Thomas Mapfumo is another of those “master” African musicians – in this case a master of the mbira, or thumb piano. He’s not one of my favourites but this is a lovely piece of music. When I first heard it, it was another one of those gobsmacked moments where I’d never before heard anything like it. At the time, I had no idea who it was – it was just a track on some tape and Ibina didn’t know anything about it except that she liked it.

Breatharian and I didn’t get to dance to this, at least not in public. Ibina used it for her solo with a bunch of local toddlers pretending to be a rainstorm. You can hear the rain in the music, that’s the mbira. Breatharian and I reclined and admired her from the back of the stage, if I remember right.

Lulu's premiere public performance at Kuranda festival. Sorry it's so fuzzy.

The Kuranda festival was the climax of my stay in FNQ. A couple of friends from Sydney even came up for it. One of them, Lulu, had recently learned belly dancing and I will never forget seeing her dance for the first time. On Ibina’s rainforest verandah, in a deep blue skirt, the only light a candle. It was magic. Later, at the festival, Lulu discovered some Aboriginal women selling grass skirts and decided on the spot to buy one. She spent the afternoon sewing shells onto a brown singlet, then undulated to an enthusiastic crowd.

After the festival, Breatharian and I lost little time in fulfilling another dream, also inspired by Ibina: we hitch-hiked from Cairns to Adelaide, via Alice Springs and Uluru, to see the Alvin Ailey dance company perform. I’m not sure if Ibina had ever danced with them – her not actually being black, & all – but she certainly knew them, had gone to classes with them, was influenced by their style, and her passion was so infectious we put our crazy lives at risk to go and see them.

I’m embarrassed to admit that when we finally got there, it felt like a bit of an anti-climax, but then, we were exhausted. I’ve never really enjoyed seeing dance in huge theatres – I prefer small & intimate where you can see the sweat. And the facial expressions. Like at the Laura Dance festival. I don’t know what it’s like now, but when Breatharian and I went there a couple of months before Alvin Ailey, it was heart-stoppingly wonderful. I guess those vibrant, gutsy and dusty performances were a hard act for anyone to follow.

After Adelaide we took a train to Melbourne, Breatharian’s home town. From there I went to visit friends in Tassie, then I came back to Sydney to live, and Breatharian went to work in Weipa. I’m terrible at writing letters so I lost contact with both Breatharian and Ibina. I may never know if Breatharian fulfilled her goal of walking to Africa in a white robe, let alone whether she achieved breatharianism. I don’t know if Ibina’s even alive – she must be in her 70s by now if she is. When I went to Kuranda a few years ago I couldn’t even remember exactly where her house was, everything is so overgrown. Ah well. Those were the days.

Food shock

AM, Owure and 50 Cedis enjoy burgers, chips and Bombe Alaska (!) at the Rexmer Hotel in Kumasi.

It’s school holidays and AM is eating my money. Movies, gaming cafes, junk food, pearl milk tea. Perhaps I should just not give him any money other than pocket money, but I’d rather he went out and had fun than moped around all day in front of the computer. Whatever, he’s going to have to get a job soon, I can’t afford him.

A few days ago he went out with a friend who’s just come back from a trip to grandparents in Ireland and Germany, who was complaining about how much he’d had to eat at his German Grandma’s table. It prompted AM to commiserate and recount his own overseas food trauma. He blamed his tendency to over-eat on our trip to Ghana. Personally, I just think it’s because he’s a child of extremes in everything, but his analysis is that he missed Aussie food so much  that now he’s got unlimited access to it, he’s so relieved that he can’t stop when he should. 

AM told his friend how in Ghana he’d had nothing to eat for weeks on end but rice with a bit of chilli and tomato stew. He missed out on the part of that story where he’d refused point-blank to eat anything else for the last couple of months of our stay. (Unless we went to a ‘European’ hotel , when he’d plow through burgers, chips, steak and pasta). Peanut soup, fried chicken, fresh fish stew with palm oil, all these and more were on offer, but no … now that’s what I call cutting off your nose to spite your face.

However, although it was frustrating to watch, I do understand how he was feeling. (He probably doesn’t think so). I remember feeling the same way at school camp, where at a similar age to him I ate nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for a week and then totally binged when I got home. I also went through much the same experience on my first trip to Ghana. I was only there for four weeks but it was probably only a matter of days before I was craving a simple ham sandwich or a salad – anything but spicy, oily, weird Ghanaian food! At that time (early 90s), it was impossible to find either ham or salad, at least in Kumasi, and I suspect it would still be difficult to find what I think of as good ham, although I hear you can get a decent salad in Accra these days. My saviour was the Chinese restaurant in Kumasi (tender beef! broccoli!), but it was expensive and I couldn’t eat there much.

I tried making my own salad, but it was a dismal, almost inedible disappointment. The lettuce,  carrot and capsicum were bitter and the cucumber turned out to be zucchini (yuk). The tomato was ok but the dressing was awful.

After that, I gave up on substitutes for ‘European’ food and I have never, since, sought it out in Ghana. It’s never teh same as what you’ve grown up on. I’m sure that’s the expereince of expatriates everywhere. My approach these days is to appreciate what’s available rather than mourn for what’s not. However on that first trip it was awful because I got to a point where I just didn’t want to eat anything at all. It was unfamiliar, it was too hot and too heavy, and to make things worse I had a bad stomach bug. I guess that’s the same place AM was in, but for longer than I had to endure it, poor kid. I hope it hasn’t totally put him off.

The next time I went to Ghana I was lucky enough to be staying with my sister-in-law Serwaa, who is a very good cook. Between us, we soon figured out my favourite Ghanaian foods and I survived more than a month in the village, with absolutely no access to any foreign foods (except tinned milk, blech). I still lost weight, due to more or less chronic diarrhoea, but on the whole I was well fed and satisfied. And on our recent trip, I mostly had a wonderful time eating. I just avoided offal and it was all good. So I guess, even tho it had been ten years since the last visit, I’d acclimatised. Just hope AM gets to do the same.

Obruni Bank

I’ve received an email from a friend in Ghana who’s just got a new job, six or so months after graduating with a Masters in Engineering. It’s great that he’s got a good job and in his field, especially as it can take a very long time to get work apparently, but I confess I was shocked by the wages.  I knew the per capita income was low in Ghana, but still, I was expecting a graduate to do better:  it equates to around AUD$550 a month (US$360). Yikes, that’s less than I earn in a week, part time.  And I don’t have a Masters, just a BA. It shows up the gap, once again, between our countries and economies.

Compared to many of his countrymen and women, my friend Kwesi is doing well. And compared to a very small number of others, not. Only this morning I discovered, thanks to Qué?, a blogger in Accra, that outgoing Ghanaian President Kufuor has a retirement package worth literally millions more than that of outgoing US President Bush – in a country where the average per capita income of US$1,400 is just 3% of the annual US PCI. Shocked again.

Thinking about these inequities brought my mind back to the day, a few months ago, when I calculated just what it had cost me to live in Ghana for 3 months. It averaged out around AUD$75 a day, which at the time was about the same in US dollars but now is more like US$50. This comes in at AUD$525 per week, a little less than Kwesi’s new monthly income.

AM and his cousin Owuraku working on the dog house.

While travelling I met some Australian girls who’d come to Ghana for three months as volunteers on their gap year between high school and Uni. Travelling in a group of six, sharing beds in cheap hotels, eating street food and travelling in tro tros,  they got away with spending less than AUD$15 a day. Be warned, if you are going to Ghana because you are visiting your in-laws, and with a child or children, you will not be able to do the same. For a start, comfort, safety and familiar pastimes become more important if you have your kids with you, and that will add to your costs. But more significantly, your money is no longer your own.  Well, it feels that way.  As a rich westerner who is part of the family – and you are definitely rich by local standards - you have obligations.

My Ghana expenses included:

• Food – including hotel meals, street food, fruit, birthday cakes and party food, and giving my sister-in-law Serwaa GHC5 – 10 each day so she could cook a morning meal not just for us but for everyone else as well (DadaK footed the bill for the evening meal). One time I tried to save money by going with Serwaa to do a bulk shop at Kejetia market. This did not work out as I’d hoped, she still wanted money every day for the little things we hadn’t bought, like tinned fish and tomato paste.
• Gas for the gas cookers. DadaK paid the elecricity costs.
• Filtered water, including both bottles for the water cooler and for sachets before we got it working. DadaK paid for the rest of the water that was bought from a neighbour who had a bore.
• Mosquito net, pillows, toilet paper.
• Gifts, gifts and more gifts for all the family in Kumasi, the village and Accra, and a few neighbours, including cloth or clothing for everyone in the Kumasi household, occasional treats such as chocolate or bread or soft drinks, exercise books and pens for everyone under the age of 25, rebuilding the roof of AM’s cousin Afia Serwaa’s hair salon, and of course cold hard cash (which in Ghana is limp, crumpled, dirty and even sometimes counterfeit).
• Travel within Ghana, by tro tro, taxi or private bus service for long distances.
•  Cloth, clothes and souvenirs for me and AM and for family and friends back home.
• Mobile phone and lots of credit – mostly so AM could call friends in Australia on a regular basis. I gave the mobile to Maame Yaa when we left. It’s hard to believe, but AM is one 14 year old not addicted to online chat, messaging, Bebo etc. I, his middle aged mum, am the one who does that kind of stuff (not Bebo, ok, I use Facebook). So he had to be able to make calls, in order to get some respite from his culture shock.
• A new laptop cable that I promptly lost after spending weeks trying to find one to buy. This included a tip for the guy who helped me locate it. Luckily the old one held out until about two weeks after we  got back to Oz.
• Swimming pool entry occasionally, internet cafe charges, books, DVDs (they’re very cheap there).
• Timber for AM’s woodwork project – a dog kennel, and money well spent in spite of the fact that the dogs didn’t want to sleep in it.
• Payment for the lost-wax bronze casting workshop AM did at Kumasi Cultural Centre. Ironically, he mostly created nasty weapons which we didn’t try and bring back to Australia, but gave back to the bronze boss, who incidentally turned out to be married to one of DadaK’s in-laws. In Australia, this would earn you a discount. In Ghana, it seemed to mean we ended up paying more.
• Paying all the expenses of everyone who accompanied me anywhere, with a few notable exceptions, like my engineering friend above. This is one of the reasons we didn’t travel around very much.
• A few nights hotel accomodation when we went on our trip north.
• Medical expenses when AM was sick. Not enough to bother the insurance company with, but it all adds up.
• Nana’s wheelchair.
• Dash (tips).

It did not include:

• Air fares, vaccines, anti-malarials & other meds, visas, travel insurance.
• Getting all my photos developed back home and posted back to family and friends in Ghana (don’t laugh!).
• The interest on the debt I managed to accrue while away – surprise, surprise -  and am still paying off.
• The cost of all the clothes, shoes, books and other items I left behind or gave away.
• Postage on a couple of small stools I got sent back to me in Australia – aaargh! Never again.

My expenditure has no doubt been good for the Ghanaian economy, albeit in a small way. It was certainly good for the family and for Nana, although I think it gave them a vastly inflated concept of how much money I actually have.

One Ghana Cedi, featuring past Presidents. The bottom one is a fake that our neighbour got in her change one day.

Financial obligations play an important part in family relationships in Ghana, and probably much of Africa and the poor world. It’s interesting to note Barack Obama’s Kenyan relatives’ expectations. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that “in Kogelo, birthplace of President Obama’s late father, many hope the inauguration in the US of a Luo will bring running water, a paved road and a police station. Tribal tradition dictates that those who find wealth or power should share it with their clan.” I can’t help wondering in what ways exactly he will fulfill his obligations and at what point, if ever, enough will be enough. (And also whether that’s a reason why Kufuor got such a massive payout – for all the rels. Still doesn’t justify it, though, in any way.)

DadaK has been sending money back to his mother ever since leaving Ghana in the ’70s, and it seems like the money has mostly vanished. Apart from the house we lived in, and perhaps a few nephews’ improved education at boarding school, there’s nothing to show for it. Family members to whom he sent the money almost always seem to have had different agendas to him for how it would be spent. I don’t find this surpising but he finds it infuriating. As well as that, his cattle all died (allegedly killed by eating  from the village dump); the well he built was neglected because his brother wanted to charge the villagers for access, then was superseded by a new government well; and the gun he bought so they could hunt bush meat was used to pay someone’s debt.

Periodically I’ve helped out, usually when Nana’s been ill; I haven’t financed any money-making or philanthropic projects. My latest donation was for Nana’s funeral expenses. I don’t expect it to be my last, however. Apart from anything else, one of AM’s cousins has been named for me, so I now have an obligation to send gifts to her.

This financial drain can cause conflict in mixed relationships if it’s not carefully managed, and it can become even more stressful if you actually go and visit the family. DadaK was constantly worried about money while we were there, because he felt that the family were expecting total financial support from us but not being completely open about their own sources of income. I was worried about money too, but of course I also had white guilt to contend with, which made it harder to be firm about what I was prepared to give. Knowing that the average weekly wage was less than I earn in an hour, how could I not share generously with AM’s blood relations?

My namesake in Mensakrom, in a dress I bought for her.

However as the weeks in Ghana passed and my bank balance dwindled I too started to get tetchy about money, to the point where I was only half joking when I called myself the Obruni Bank. (Obruni means white person/foreigner). The family found the term hysterically funny, probably because I was naming the truth. In fact Obaapa almost beat me too it a few years before, by nicknaming me Afia Sica (Afia=Friday-born female, Sica=money). I’d just like to say for the record here that my income is pretty average and I probably earn less than most Ghanaian-Australian taxi-drivers. Perhaps that’s why I don’t find this nickname as amusing as the one I invented myself.

White guilt reality check: no matter how much money I pour into my Ghanaian family, it’s not going to change the global economic system and power structures that create such inequality – and I have my own life to support here in Australia, where my weekly rent costs about 30% of the Ghanaian PCI, and almost half of my weekly wage (which is why I have a flatmate!).  I need to also remember that although sometimes it looks like they only want me for my money, there are real bonds of love and friendship between me and my Ghanaian in-laws.

I’ve written all this because money’s  often an issue in mixed relationships where the partner’s from a poor family in a poor country, but it doesn’t get talked about much at all. I strongly encourage non-African partners /parents to go to Africa and meet your in-laws, especially if you have children, or are planning to have them. It’s a wonderful, rewarding thing to do that will give you great insights into your partner’s culture, values and family idiosyncracies. But you do need some warning about potential challenges, and the money stuff is definitely a big one. Don’t let it hold you back.

I also wanted to give you some idea of what the real expenses are, of this kind of travel. I suggest that if you are visiting poor relations in Ghana – or probably anywhere in Africa: examine your budget carefully, establish early on how much you are able to afford to fork out in expenses and gifts, make that clear to the family, and staunchly ignore any twinges of guilt about your little forays to the pool or lashing out on souveniers. That’s what I plan to do next time – I wonder if it will work?

101 ways with water

Today is the last day of National Water Week. Sorry I didn’t alert you to this fact earlier, but I have had to compete with ActionMan’s homework for computer access recently and his assignments on flatback turtles, postmodernism and medieval monks won out. But I’d been planning a post on water for some time and even wrote the first draft sometime back in June or July. So National Water Week, a special week to draw attention to water conservation strategies, seems an appropriate time to publish.

In 2007, between 70% and 90% of my home state of New South Wales was in continuing drought. And even though the torrential rains this year have Sydney looking greener than ever, the percentage of NSW in drought is still 71.6% according to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Green pages on Wednesday. A quick internet search failed to come up with a confirmation of this exact figure, but the Bureau of Meteorology recently released a statement on the Australia-wide drought, which has been going on now for eight years.

Australia has always been dry, a fact which people who only know the country from maps may fail to appreciate. You might wonder why there are so few people in such a vast space – it’s because there’s not enough water. I’m not going into all the details of why. Deserts, El Nino, Southern Oscillations, inappropiate farming practices and climate change all play a role, and you can easily research it if you want to. Suffice it to say, drought is part of the natural cycle here and as a nation we have to figure out better ways of living with it, not exacerbating it.

Given this state of affairs, you can see why water occupies a lot of attention in Australia. Newcomers to the country or city-dwellers without country connections may be puzzled by our obsession with the weather, but as well as being a hand-me-down conversation starter from British ancestors, discussions about rainfall and sunshine reflect our concern about our water supply.

I mention country connections because it’s easy if you live in the city to be ignorant of the true state of affairs - it’s mostly green and lush along the coastal strip. Only when Sydney’s main dam dropped to below 40% capacity a few years ago did people really start to ‘get it’. But if you have a connection with the inland you more easily understand what the issues are. I grew up bathing in three inches of water pumped from the river which bordered our farm and drinking rainwater collected from our roof. Dripping taps or wasting water were not tolerated. Even if we’d had access to a town water supply, it would have been pumped from the same river. Skimpy baths were not the worst of it, however. Two of my cousins went bankrupt in the 1980s drought, among the many who lost farms and businesses in that decade, and again now as the drought bites again.

Even though I’ve had this experience, I admit to having become more wasteful of water since living in the city where it flows without end from the tap and water saving is only now becoming part of the culture. But I do pay attention to what’s going on, and during our trip around the world this year I was been thinking a lot about water. We visited Los Angeles, a city that should be desert, where water is piped in from the Colorado River and wasted with a profligacy that is truly scary. Watering public lawns with sprinklers in the middle of a hot summer day? Mad. And then we were in Ghana, where water is plentiful but so poorly managed that it carries disease, causes heavy erosion, and most people only have limited or difficult access to it. Our last stop was South Africa, a land as dry as Australia and also in drought. It was weird, when we arrived, to no longer be surrounded by endless greenery. The rest of this post though, will mostly be about Ghana.

Early this year Ross Gittens, a Sydney Morning Herald economics journalist, wrote an op ed in which he suggested that a good way to save water would be to shower less often, i.e. not daily (and certainly not twice daily). At the time, this long hot shower addict thought that he was only suggesting this to justify his own lack of personal hygiene. (And yes, Ross, showers can be both pick-me-ups and therapeutic). However I also had to admit to myself, through gritted teeth, that he had a point. I hope no-one at the Sydney Water took it seriously, I’d hate to see a shower roster included in the water restrictions along with the garden watering roster and the no hosing of concrete. But hey, I have a better suggestion: the bucket shower.

I realise this will probably only work for most people in the summer months, and I haven’t been able to face doing it myself since we got back to Australia, but with a bucket you can wash thoroughly twice a day and still use less water than your average four minute shower.

One morning in Ghana I washed and conditioned my hair, soaped up all over and rinsed, washed my underwear, rinsed out the sponge, still had a litre to spare at the bottom of the bucket, and felt clean, cool, refreshed and also extremely smug. There is something deeply satisfying about being able to accomplsh so much with so little. I didn’t manage to repeat this parsimonious feat every day, but I often had enough water left in the bucket to tip into the toilet cistern. If I can manage to repeat this in a Sydney summer I will be feeling very smug indeed.

Owaruku pouring water

In Ghana, I had no other choice but to bucket shower. DadaK’s house had 3 showers and 3 flush toilets but it was not connected to piped water. The entire suburb was not connected. Asuoyeboah is a new development and the government has not put in the pipes. DadaK thought it might never happen, because many of the people who live there (mostly in houses built by expatriate relatives) have put in bore holes and pumps, and if enough people do it the government won’t bother. Our water came from a neighbour’s bore. Every morning Afia Serwaa, Marta, Yaa Ketwaa and sometimes Owaruku would collect the water the old fashioned way (see pic at right). It’s stored in basins, buckets and barrels beside the bathrooms and in the hall near the outdoor kitchen.

It looks clean enough, and I was told that Ghana’s ground water supply is fairly safe, but if the bore’s supply is at all connected to the stream at the bottom of the valley I’d be most concerned about its quality. All the storm water rushes down there, carrying with it plastic bags, empty medicine blister packs, dead lizards, you name it. Plus I wonder how closely the pit toilets in people’s backyards might be connected to the groundwater, in such an urban environment. I didn’t trust it and DadaK said any of the Australian family who drank it got diarrhoea, so he wouldn’t allow the children to drink it. Everyone else does though. Every night Yaa Ketewa would filter it through a sponge into bottles for the family and into plastic bags to sell chilled or as ice.

We drank filtered water that we bought in bulk in 500 ml plastic bags. Five pesewas each from the ubiquitous water sellers, or one cedi for about 15 bags at the corner store. (ActionMan was at one time considering exporting these water bags to Australia to solve our water crisis. He wanted to get in early before the anticipated global water wars settle on tropical, moist Ghana as their first target.)

DadaK imported a water cooler from Australia and after I and my bank account arrived, we purchased twenty litre bottles of filtered water and used that instead of the bags most of the time. This was DadaK doing his bit for the environment. Like me, he was appalled at the amount of waste plastic littering the streets and choking drains and waterways. My bit for the environment (apart from funding the water bottles) was to buy a laptop bag made out of recycled plastic water bags.  You too can find out more about recycled bags online at Trashy Bags, although I suspect mine, which is unlabelled, may have been made by their competitors. Who cares, it gets some plastic off the streets.

I was planning to buy the family a rainwater tank, but on looking into it, it didn’t seem such a great idea, although I let go of it with great reluctance. To buy one big enough was more than I could afford, it would be of no use during the dry season, dust off the roof contaimantes the supply at the beginning of the rainy season and DadaK thought it unnecessary. He wants to put a bore in instead, when he has the money, so I may help with that, in spite of my misgivings about the quality. It is his house, after all. He wasn’t concerned at the amount of work the girls put into carrying water, he’s done it as a youth, it’s “nothing” … ahem, your sexism is showing my dear … My position was that they worked so hard all day, a water tank would relieve them of one task, at least.

It was all a bit frustrating, especially because the house had been built in such a way that rainwater couldn’t be collected easily. The downpipes only opened just above ground level, so there wasn’t space to put permanent barrels underneath them. But when it rained – and we were there in the rainy season, so that was often – all household members between the ages of 23 and 14 (plus me and excluding ActionMan) leaped into action to collect the rainwater. One would stand in the downpour and scoop it from a basin underneath the downpipe into buckets which the rest of us would empty into the assorted barrels in the house. This was the best workout I got in Ghana. The family laughed at me for doing it, but I wanted to contribute in some non-financial way both to household labour and to replenishing the water we used. No-one stopped me. I think they would have liked a rainwater tank.

I imagine it’s clear by now why, though surrounded by water, we were having bucket showers, urinated in the shower cubicles, and only the most fastidious and privileged among us used the flush toilets. The other reason we were asked to urinate in the shower (I think the family all did it behind the house) was that the contents of the toilets went into a huge septic tank in the back yard and DadaK didn’t want to have to pay extra to have it emptied more frequently. The less that went into it, the better. Water from the showers on the other hand, just drains out into the roadside gutters to join the stormwater mentioned above, thereby becoming a public, not a personal waste disposal problem. Under the circumstances, who can blame people for shifting the responsibility? What else can you do, without a public sewerage system?

Anyway, it occurs to me that weeing in the shower isn’t such a bad idea for drought stricken Australia – you could flush it down the drain with a cup of the water you collected while waiting for your daily shower to heat up and save, save, save. Take note, Ross Gittens.

The Ghana Awards

It’s customary in my culture to recognise transitions or achievements with awards. So I think it’s fitting to mark my transition from Ghana back to Australia with some special awards in a range of categories. Among other things, my awards point to the various consequences of poverty and under-development, the innovation and creativity that springs up in the face of adversity, and how what’s culturally acceptable in Ghana can be very confronting to a non-Ghanaian. I’m sorry, not all of them are nice. But some of them are.

I’ll start on a positive note.

The Golden Cocoa Pod for Sales Innovations goes to:
The young man selling thongs (flipflops) outside Korle Bu Hospital in Accra. The thongs, with light brown soles and fluoro … ummm …. thong bits …. were attached to a large cardboard box exactly the same colour as the soles, with the toe end sticking up over the top of the box so that from a distance, it looked like an exotic multi-eared head-dress. Eye-catching, colour-co-ordinated, lightweight and practical. Well done.

For Optimism In Spite of Everything
Everywhere in Ghana you see small plywood cubicles, often no more than one metre square, usually painted some combination of yellow, red and green. The vendors at these cubicles sell lottery tickets. My Optimism Award goes to one such cubicle, spotted on the Sunyani Road on my way to Mensakrom, which was called Mappi Ventures. Venture is a word I associate with much grander enterprises. Anyone who can call a box that size a venture deserves full encouragement and recognition, especially in the current global economic climate. Unless it’s really a Tardis. May you get the winning ticket and a mansion on the Gold Coast (the Australian Gold Coast, that is).

For a Fantastic Place Name
I love words as you’ve probably guessed and I love the place names in Ghana. Kwadaso, Tanaso, Patasi, Odumasi, Abwakwa, Nkawkaw, Nsawam, Dansoman, Mamprobi, Akosombo, don’t they just role off the tongue? There were many competitors for this award but only one obvious finalist. Ododododidioo, in Accra, congratulations on your polysyllabic glory, and I apologise if I didn’t put in the right number of ‘do’s.

Scissor design

 

For Moving With The Times
If you have been following this blog you may have got a hint by now that Ghana is a good place to visit if you are a textileophile. Every day you can feast your eyes on an array of gorgeous fabrics: tie-dyed, wax (batik), block printed, woven, or embroidered in a multitude of colour combinations. One of the reasons the fabrics interest me is because they are not only beautiful, but many are full of meaning. Textiles in Ghana are on the front line of non-verbal communication. DadaK told me years ago that a woman could insult someone else in her household just by wearing a particular pattern, and that an adinkra symbol was banned as seditious at one time during the military Rawlings regime. Adinkra and Kente have been around a long time, but contemporary designers are still inspired by them and use them in new designs.

I asked Dr Esi Sutherland, a presenter at the Our Media Conference in Accra, if these days the power of adinkra was being eroded by modernity and western influence, and the symbols were becoming merely decorative. My family, for example, could identify only the best known and most commonly used, such as Gye Nyame, which is everywhere. She answered that it was true that was happening, but when it was really important, for example at a funeral, people knew what symbols to wear. (The conference itself included an adinkra symbol in its logo). She also said that new symbols were being invented all the time, although strictly speaking they weren’t adinkra. So perhaps obaapa, which I haven’t seen on any adinkra lists, comes into this category.

It was while in Accra for the conference that I saw the cloth that will be receiving the Golden Sewing Machine for proving to me that although times are changing, the power of textile symbolism is still strong in Ghana. The Award goes to the shirt I spotted from a traffic jam in Jamestown. The man wearing it was moving much faster than the traffic, and I only saw him from behind so I don’t have a photo. The cloth had a rusty red squiggly background that is popular in a lot of Ghanaian wax cloth, with dark blue circles framing the main icon: a computer mouse. This circling of images is also a common feature of Ghanaian cloth and is frequently used in uniforms, from school children to bank employees. The circled item is often a logo accompanied by text, e.g. the name of the school. But this shirt just had a computer mouse. No words. So until I see it again – if I ever do – it’s a mystery as to why it existed. But it does. And if the design were to persist, I wonder what meaning it would accumulate over coming centuries. I want that Tardis now!

Accra commercial architecture

Magnificent architecture
It appears to me that Ghanaian architects know no fear. They don’t fear asymmetry, unorthodox designs, unsupported flooring or even roofs the size of tennis courts. There is a lot of housing development going on in Ghana – much of it, I assume, funded by the money sent back by expatriates such as DadaK (I’m told it’s the third biggest earner for Ghana, after gold and cocoa). The part of Asuoyeboah where we lived was known as a new development and few buildings would have been more than twenty years old.

DadaK started building over fifteen years ago, I saw the foundations on my first visit to Ghana in 1993, so our place is rather conventionally laid out, but others in the area are far more flamboyant. Apart from all being made of concrete blocks and having lots fancy metal security grilles, they bear little in common other than size (they are built to accommodate large extended families) and a sense of adventure. It really looks like Ghanaian architects and home owners have jointly decided to play. Unusual shaped walls and verandahs frame eccentrically shaped spaces. It’s hard to tell what design influences inspire these fabulous buildings, they don’t seem particularly related to traditional designs or to earlier, more traditional housing. Perhaps it is the influence of expatriates who’ve travelled the world and come back with novel interpretations of what they’ve seen. Whatever. I love it. I want one.

So for daring, creativity and joi de vivre, The Golden Sydney Opera House is awarded collectively to Ghanaian architects. The picture at left is actually I think an office block. It’s not one of my favourites but it may give you some idea of what I’m talking about. It’s on the road into Accra from Kumasi.

Now it gets a bit more serious.

Cultural Cringe
Australians know a lot about cultural cringe. We are famous for it. I hoped that perhaps it had died in the 80s, but ActionMan does it every time I say “no worries”. Which is quite often. So it’s sad to see other cultures cringing too. I didn’t really see a lot of hard evidence for actual cringe in Ghana - adopting ideas, music and fashion from other cultures probably doesn’t really count, so it wasn’t an award I was expecting to make. That all changed when I collapsed in front of the telly one night in Koforidua. The award for cultural cringe goes to the TV program: English for Educated Ghanaians. Okay, I concede that on the global political stage it may not have gone down well for Kofi Annan to say he was coming when he was going, or dropping when he was getting out of a vehicle … but really … is there a genuine consensus on the correct way to pronounce oven? Does it really matter? English is evolving in wonderful wild ways all over the globe. Let it flower!

The sign for Afia Serwaa's salon.

Most confronting signage
Ghanaian barber signs have impressed foreigners so much that you can now buy them in galleries, but they are in fact only a small fraction of the many signs advertising a range of businesses, such as women’s hair salons, cold stores and herbal pharmacies. The work on the same principle as photographs of food in Chinatown food halls: what you see is what you get, i.e. rasta braids or pink pork trotters. All well and good, although being a squeamish obruni I could have done without the signs advertising cures for diarrohea which featured a person squatting over a little brown pile. However my award goes to the signs advertising (male) circumcision services at two clinics near Korle Bu Hospital. It’s a joint award because I couldn’t decide which should be the winner. The one picturing a child from the waist down was more bloody and featured a truly scary looking piece of equipment, but the other one gets marks for impact because it showed the whole baby and it was called “Holy Child Circumcision Centre”. Eeuuw.

Just to counteract the alarming pictures that may now have formed in your mind, I’ll make an award in another signage category: The winner of the Most Devout Street Sign Award beat off thousands of contenders, including Blood of Jesus Fashion and Divine Chemicals. For wit and devotion, it goes to Annointed Fingers Beauty and Braiding Salon (somewhere in Accra). Those fingers work miracles, see?

The Bodgey-Dodgey Award
There’s a sign board in Accra that always makes me smile when I see it: Abodwe Clinic. Written Twi, for obscure reasons presumably known only to students of linguistics, uses the letters “dw’” to indicate a “j” sound, so if you pronounce this word it sounds – more or less – like “a bodgey clinic”. The first time I saw it I only got a quick look, so I went off giggling, thinking it said “a dodgey clinic”. Bodgey and dodgey are not that far apart in meaning though, and the reason it makes me laugh is a sad one really. It’s because, as ActionMan pointed out soon after our arrival, so many things in Ghana are dodgey. Floor tiles that don’t match, toilet seats that refuse to stay fixed to the toilet, zippers that keep breaking, shops that look like they’d fall over if you leaned on them, creaky doors, power adapters that give you electric shocks and burn up your computer cables – the list goes on.

Mostly it’s a sign of poverty and lack of quality materials, although in the case of the floor tiles I think it’s just plain sloppiness. Then there’s the flood of cheap Chinese imports. Good for the Chinese economy, not so good for the people who have to use the products. You’ll note that most of the items I’ve listed are the accoutrements of a western, or developed lifestyle, and therefore they are mostly imported. There’s plenty of good quality stuff in Ghana – locally produced clothing and pottery spring to mind – but if you want to have a few mod cons, you suffer the consequences. And the consequences may be farther reaching than chronic irritation. In the Invisible Cure, author Helen Epstein alleges that women in a southern African country (I think it was Malawi, but can’t lay my hands on the book to check) turned to sex work when cheap imported clothing destroyed their employment prospects in the local textile industry. Hey, whatever happened to freedom of choice?

But back to Ghana. With so much to choose from it was difficult to decide where the award should go. I’d initially thought of awarding it to the handle on the bathroom door at the place we stayed in Koforidua. Or rather, to the door itself because there was no handle, as I discovered when I pulled the door closed behind me and got trapped inside. But it really couldn’t compete with the locked door in Mensakrom, behind which several children at first played and laughed, then started to cry and scream when no-one was able to open it and let them out. It took a good half hour and a few different people trying, before anyone was able to turn the key. Congratulations, Mensakrom lock, the Golden Annoia (the Discworld Goddess of things that get stuck in drawers) is yours!

For Most Disgusting Locality
Okay, in a land of pit toilets and minimal – if any – sewerage, there are many contenders for this award, but as a beach-loving Australian, I feel I have no alternative but to present the Golden Toilet Brush to Korle Lagoon and immediate environs, including the beach. Korle Lagoon could be a gorgeous place, but apparently all Accra’s sewerage ends up there, and an abattoir drains into it, and who knows what else. I couldn’t go past without covering my nose and mouth. The first time I saw it I nearly wept, it seemed sacrilege to so abuse a waterfront. Perhaps it’s worse at the moment because they are dredging it to open it up to the sea, or so I was told. They are also building a new bridge there. I have seen some indication online that an ecological restoration project is underway, so maybe this is just the bit where it gets worse before getting better. I hope so. I hope one day the water is clear and clean, and people go there to enjoy waterside parklands and promenades. 

Most beaches in Accra double as toilets and this, combined with the plastic flotsam and jetsam and the dirty outflow from the lagoon, makes the neighbouring beach look and smell like a rubbish dump. Before you get too upset about the toilet function, bear in mind that people living in the area may have no other choice, and in fact it might be the most hygenic option for residents of a slum district where toilets of any kind may be rare, and those that are there are probably not very clean. A recent New Internationalist revealed that Ghana is one of the countries in the world with the least access to sanitation.

So that’s almost it for the Ghana Awards. Let’s end on a lighter note.

For Most Death-Defying Restroom
Okay, restroom is not a word you’d ever hear used in Ghana. Ghanaians don’t appear to really get into euphemisms for bodily functions. If you want to urinate, you say so. And if you need to go to the loo, use the ladies or powder your nose, you have to make it quite clear what kind of facility you need, because urination and defecation are generally kept separate in Ghana. I think this separation is a good idea, and my opinion is confirmed by the New Internationalist’s special toilet issue (see link above), but when push comes to shove, it’s a bit embarrassing having to disclose to a complete stranger (e.g. a waiter in a restaurant) exactly which facility you need.  I like to think of myself as a relaxed, broadminded kind of a person, but I had to learn not to squirm when asking fot the nearest urinal or – if I needed to do, you know, that other thing, an actual toilet.

Every traveller to third world countries has a range of scary toilet stories to tell, and we nearly all bear the emotional scars of excreta-related illness. ActionMan is still battling the runs as I write. But my award goes not to bacteria-infested pits but to a very clean urinal in Bolgatanga that brought a whole new meaning to the concept of long drop. Horizontal void. The roofless wooden shack housing the ladies urinal at Bolga market was balanced over an open drain about two metres deep. I entered the – er, cubicle – to find that it only had half a floor. Usually such places have a narrow hole and you can place your feet either side. This had a one metre gap in the floor which no human being could possibly straddle. If, as many women in Ghana do, you can wee standing up, it wasn’t really an obstacle to relief. I think. But otherwise it’s a bit scary for anyone with balance problems or a fear of heights. And I paid five pesewas for that!

Goodbye Ghana. Sigh

That’s a sigh of sadness from me, and a sigh of intense relief from ActionMan. He’s been ready to leave for several weeks, but I could happily stay for several more. Or could happily have stayed, for we are now at home. I’d drafted and hoped to post this before we left, but banks and technology, and then jetlag conspired against me, so at the time of writing, we’ve been back in Australia for a week.

Traffic jam on Kuamsi-Accra road

On Saturday two weeks ago we farewelled the Kumasi family and boarded a bus for Accra, where we spent a couple of days waiting for a bank transfer to go through to my Visa card, and the connection to come back on at the local internet cafe, before paying off all financial obligations and boarding a flight back home.

It was a tearful farewell. I always cry at goodbyes and I think that separating from relatives who you may not see again for many years is a damn good reason to cry. Nana also cried a lot, while giving me her blessing and thanks. We had formed a strong bond, in spite of the language barrier, over the three months we had been there. Little Boahemma from across the road cried almost as much as we did. Serwaa looked very serious, Abrantie gave me a very looong hug, Treasure clung to me all morning and then waved cheerfully from the taxi that collected them all for church.

ActionMan said “it’s weird, I don’t feel sad at all”. He was a little bothered that he wasn’t sad about parting from his family. “That’s okay”, I said. “You don’t have to. Everyone feels differently about saying goodbye”. He felt no such guilt about saying goodbye to Ghana as a whole, however, and could barely disguise his glee as we passed each milestone leading to our final departure.

If he really loved soccer, or perhaps was a few years younger, he would probably have enjoyed the trip more, but after the excitement wore off and we settled into a routine, he thought it was too boring – just like being at home but without all the things that make Australia more fun. He missed high speed broadband, friends, Turkish kebabs, real showers and skateparks. If people want my recommendation, three months in a third world country is too long for a teenage boy, unless he likes soccer, is Christian, and it would help to have an interest in museums and arts and crafts. It would probably also help if your relatives lived near a beach that was clean enough to swim at; I’ve heard many of the beaches are very beautiful, but made the mistake of not going to any of them. It got to a point where neither of us could face another long bus or trotro journey, so we’ll have to save that for next time.

I have heard him admit to people that parts of the holiday were fun (like sitting on the crocodile, building the dog kennel, winning most of his arm-wrestling contests, playing with his bow and arrow, conducting experiments with water and boiling wax, winding people up), and he was really very patient in those final weeks when all he wanted was for me to re-book our tickets, and all I wanted was a bit more time.

I was rarely homesick, mostly enjoyed the food, and wanted to do more sightseeing, spend more time with new friends, learn tie and dye, perhaps even do some interviews with researchers I met at the Boabeng Monkey sanctuary, or the community activists at Our Media, or the Kuapa Kokoo fair trade cocoa farmers. But domestic commitments took over and left no time and we were, after all, in Ghana to build family relationships so I don’t regret that. It would have been nice to have more time for all those things … next time.

I do believe that ActionMan and I became closer as a result of going to Ghana. For four months we have been together almost all the time and we mostly got on well. The trip gave us some space to be together without the usual domestic tensions and stresses of work and school. I know I was his buffer against culture shock. Although it was a challenge at times, I’ve manged to listen to him fairly patiently about the things that bothered or upset him, let him try out new things, and spent a lot of money on the phone so he could keep in touch with friends back home. Having so much family around, and not having to cook or clean or work relieved a lot of the stress of single parenting, and I’ve returned to Oz feeling more relaxed, and even enthusiastic about the backlog of work that awaited me here.

I have pages of notes about things we did, saw, ate, laughed about, that I wasn’t able to blog about while in Ghana, and perhaps I will post those stories later on, or perhaps I will just have to tell stories at dinner parties. We are no longer in Ghana and life back in Australia is already moving at a fast pace, so it could be that I’ll want to blog about the present, not the past. But I did want to leave you with some last impressions.

There was the anarchic traffic jam we had to sit through on our seven hour bus trip (normally four-five hour) from Kumasi to Accra, where all the south-bound vehicles, including a semi-trailer decided to fill up the north bound lane.

There was my quest for ‘last tastes’ and final meals: RedRed (fried plantain and beans in palm oil), nkatiakwan (peanut soup), abenkwan (palm nut soup) made with abe (palm nuts) from Akosia’s farm in Mensakrom, boiled eggs with chilli, fried rice with boiled egg, salad and shitoh (chilli sambal), mangoes and sugar bananas.

My sister-in-law Akosia cutting off palm fronds so she can get at the cluster of palm nuts.

There was our hurried last minute rush to Mensakrom to see the family. We stayed overnight in a hot little room, but I found Mensakrom much easier to handle in dry, sunny weather, and enjoyed it much more than our previous visit. I gave everyone the Kuapa Kokoo phone number (they’d already heard of them, apparently KK give out free exercise books and pens when they buy your cocoa). Akosia took me to her farm to fetch the abe that Nana had ordered, and carried it all back to the village on her heard – about 50 kilos worth! We took Yaa Ketewa and Martha for their first visit back in many years. Both were excited to go but glad to leave. Mensakrom had become small, dirty, boring and full of teenaged single mothers and bad people who wanted them to drink alcohol.

Menskrom staged a cooking competition for our visit. Perhaps that should be ‘obruni-feeding competition’. I ate three meals the night we arrived and three meals in five hours on the morning we left, and returned to Kumasi totally stuffed. At night I had ampesi (yams and stew) from Nana’s farm caretaker, abenkwan from Yaa Ketewaa’s mother, and rice and stew cooked by Martha and Yaa Ketewa, under instructions from DadaK who feared we’d find nothing to eat at Mensakrom because we visited without warning. Ha.

I know it doesn

In the morning Nana’s caretaker provided banku (corn meal) and chilli, and Ohemaa’s daughters cooked both a fantastic Nkontommre (ground taro leaves) with palm oil and boiled plantains, and then beheaded a chicken for a delicious soup made with wrewre (something like pumpkin seeds). Akosia looked a bit put out that there was no chance of cooking for me because other people had taken over. ActionMan disdained all food except rice and stew (silly, silly boy!) but did get through almost three litres of palm wine (don’t worry, it’s not alcoholic when fresh from the palm) and filled up on bofrots on the return journey. He also renewed his acquaintance with the village monkey, and met an orphaned squirrel.

A mace and some manga weapon AM cast in bronze. each about as long as my hand, and heavy. The point

Our last days in Kumasi were consumed with finishing things and last minute shopping. ActionMan finally put a roof on the doghouse and cast the bronze works he’d made. He had to leave two behind because we thought Aussie customs would define them as lethal weapons. We said goodbye to our friends at the internet cafe. I raced around the cultural centre, Kejetia markets and Kumasi shops finding All Africa Cup souvenirs, Ghana fashion style posters, stock for my box of birthday/christmas gifts, a cable for the laptop, sparkling apple juice for G Ketewa’s birthday party, and a trashy bags laptop bag made out of recycled water sachets. The laboriously purchased laptop cable mysteriously vanished on our last day in Kumasi but the laptop, equally mysteriously, has been working okay since then. It must have been homesick too.

In our last days in Accra ActionMan spent a lot of time playing on the computer and I spent a lot of time in trotros – catching up with my counselling friends, trying to find a bank that would take Mastercard, and drinking in the mad sights and sounds of the city. Boys fishing with magnets in the clogged drains. A heavily pregnant goat, as wide as she was high, holding up traffic on a street in the busy suburb of Korle Bu. She waddled off the road looking like the kid might pop it’s head out at any moment. A man patting the nose of one of the doomed horses at the slaughterhouse yard at Korle Lagoon. Renewing my acquaintance with the forest of street signs and discovering a finalist for my forthcoming Ghana Awards.

I’d planned to go to Cape Coast and Elmina Castles just outside Accra – a history excursion for ActionMan, as these were slaving castles, but he totally jacked up about another outing and we ran out of time anyway, due to my banking dramas. I’ve been before, so I didn’t feel I’d missed out. And the beaches there, as I recall, are no better than Accra’s.

Baby & mum at dusk in Kruger. This shows how close they were to our vehicle.

In South Africa we avoided all possibility of trouble in the fearsome city of Jo’berg by avoiding it altogether. A tour bus collected us at the airport, drove us to Kruger National Park, then drove us back again after two days of game drives in time for our flight home. At Kruger we saw lions mating, lions sleeping, hippos’ nostrils poking out of the water, gorgeous, colourful birds, a snake’s head poking out of a hole in a tree, lots of giraffes, assorted antelopes, and all sorts of animals crossing the road – zebras, buffalo, baboons, dozens of elephants, a leopard cub. We also spotted a mob of Aussie blokes on the same tour as us (G’day!) and a remarkable number of grey nomads on self-drive tours.

At our treehouse lodge we had a large but harmless spider in the bedroom, a frog in the bathroom, monkeys in the breakfast area and buffaloes drinking from the swimming pool. ActionMan rejoiced in the ‘European’ food but eating muffins for breakfast I felt almost unbearable cravings for yams and Serwaa’s eggplant stew. Sob.

So it’s over, for now. We are back in the land of long hot showers, high speed internet, pot roasts, very pale people with funny glasses and dark clothes huddled over frothy ‘real’ coffee in inner city cafes, and traffic laws which are obeyed. It doesn’t feel as weird as I expected it to. Or even as sad. Perhaps I grieved enough, while I was leaving. Perhaps not. Writing the following passage still moves me to tears.

Sitting in a taxi in the slow traffic on Sunyani Road, approaching Sofoline interchange, a stretch I’d traveled so many times these past few months, tears rolled down my cheeks and I held DadaK’s hand for comfort. Laid back, flowing Hi-Life played on the taxi’s abnormally clear sound system. It was the perfect soundtrack for our Ghana trip’s closing credits. With outside sounds muted, it seemed like everything slowed down, like I was indeed watching a movie.

Loaded trotros passed us in the opposite direction, packed full of faces that now seem so familiar. A trio of people in black funeral attire chatted on the lawn outside the prestigious Prempeh II High School. On the opposite side of the road, in front of the towering red mounds of earth and never-ending roadworks, hawkers proffered lemon drops and handkerchiefs, and women tended plantains roasting over charcoal, their fires evenly spaced a few metres apart. The sweet smell drifted through our window. Passers-by chatted while they waited for their purchases to be wrapped in scraps of newspaper. A teenage girl ran, laughing, past several trotros ahead of us until she reached the one where she needed to complete whatever sale had begun 30 metres further back. I saw hands reaching to and from the window, money and goods exchanged. It all seemed quintessentially Ghana. I’ll miss it. I fully intend to go back. But for now, it’s Good bye-O.

Good Morning-O

Days in Ghana start early. I’m an early riser even at home, so I notice the morning sounds as I start drifting into wakefulness around dawn.

The first sound, usually, is a rooster crowing. If you’re lucky, it’s in the distance. If you are not lucky, or in the village, it is likely to be right outside your window. If you are in the village, this is followed by other rural sounds. The gentle clucking of chooks may lull you back to sleep, but if you’re starting to get romantic ideas about farmyard idylls, forget them. Turkeys gobbling outside your window at dawn is not something you will enjoy.

If you are in Mensakrom, and possibly other similar villages, however, you’ll soon prefer any amount of turkeys and roosters over the terrible clanging as over-enthusiastic clerics bang bits of metal together in the 4.00am call to prayer. I kid you not. Two different churches. One scored 45 bangs, the other 85. Give me the Islamic muezzin any day, no matter how badly amplified. I’ve only heard it once on this trip, and that was in Tamale.

But back at my place in Kumasi, the religious stuff starts a bit later on. Usually. Except when there’s a midnight or all night service at a local church. But the sound of hymns and drums are generally subdued by distance. In Asuoyeboah, the first sounds of human activity are usually a neighbour’s radio in the distance (DadaK is very firm about what time it’s appropriate to turn on the radio in our house because he doesn’t want me to be disturbed), the creaking and banging of doors as people get up and all the children consecutively come to check if we’re awake (we play dead), and sweeping. It’s the young women’s job to sweep all the floors inside the compound early each morning, with a broom made from the spines of palm fronds, tidying away any of the previous days’ debris that hasn’t already been tidied by livestock or rats: bits of chewed sugar cane, fragments of plastic, bottle tops, onion peels, powdery charcoal.

Owuraku pouring water in the hall outside the bathrooms

Gradually the layers of sound accumulate as more people get up. Conversations, the roar of the gas cooker or the crackle of charcoal, water pouring from bucket to barrel, from barrel to cooking pot or shower bucket. Fetching water is also the ask of the youngest women in the family and sometimes Owaruku. ActionMan has done it a couple of times but no-one wants him to – they are afraid he’ll hurt himself, or spill it. It’s pretty hard on the neck and back.

Most mornings there’s the sound of a hand bell when a woman walks up the street carrying a headload of toothbrushes, toothpaste and sponges, followed by one or two of her daughters carrying assorted soaps. I bought a toothbrush from her and I’d like to warn you now, never trust a Ghanaian’s interpretation of what is a ’soft’ toothbrush.

Sometimes people sing as they go about their daily tasks. I don’t always enjoy this, and ActionMan hates it. But I loved it on the morning of her mum, Obaapa’s birthday, shortly after we arrived, when Treasure wandered around singing the birthday song all day. It was especially poignant as Obaapa wasn’t there, she’d already returned to Australia.

Finally, Akonta can stand the ’silence’ no longer, and turns on the radio. Good morning-O. And that is the end of the gentle layering of sound. Usually by then I’m awake enough that I can stand it (it’s in the next room to us) and ActionMan has his head under the pillow.

So, that’s more or less how mornings sound between 4.30ish and 6.30ish. In school term everything stars earlier; now we’re in holidays the pace is a bit more relaxed. Variations on the theme include: the period when one of the dogs slept outside our window and snored, snuffled, scratch and occasionally howled his way through the night; the time when someone from Mensakrom urned up early and had a raging argument with someone, about what I never learned; Treasure calling out “Me! Me! It’s ME!” outside my door, with the absolute certainty of three year olds that once I know it’s her, I couldn’t possibly refuse to open the door; and then of course, there’s Jesus.

On Saturdays we get terrible droning gospel until the family leave for church (they’re 7^th day Adventists). Believe me, not all gospel is good. A large percentage of Ghanaian popular music seems to be religious these days, and ActionMan and I have both developed a strong aversion to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because it’s religious that I object. Christians have created some of the most sublime music on the planet. It’s the style. If it’s lively and /or joyful, I’ll even sing along; but there is a certain style of religious music that drones mournfully, and it’s not restricted to Ghanaian Christian music. In fact I believe it is a style that’s been copied from western churches. However Ghanaian Christians did redeem themselves in my eyes when I went to church one day and a group of women sang glorious a capella in a more traditional chant & response style. So please, Ghanaians, remember Sankofa and stick to your roots. Don’t copy the worst the west has to offer!

The other early morning religious experience I haven’t enjoyed has been the madman preaching in our street at 5.00am. Thankfully this hasn’t happened often. I know I’ve made a terrible value judgement on the poor man, but I guess that’s a measure of my annoyance. The first time I heard him was a Sunday, and he ranted in the choleric tones I’ve heard preachers use here, so I assumed he was indeed preaching at one of the many local churches. But after further investigation it turns out that although Jesus featured in his raves, he’s not actually coherent, and one morning I sneaked out to have a look, and there he was, two houses down, preaching to the air. Thankfully, he hasn’t done it very often.

I first drafted this post very soon after arriving in Ghana, because the difference in morning sounds is so marked. In my Sydney flat I’m woken by the hum of distant traffic and birdsong, not roosters and prayers. Admittedly, nesting rainbow lorikeets are not the most melodious of birds, but still – we’ll be home within two weeks and I’m looking forward to hearing them again. (And now I’m back and the birds have left and it is soooooo quiet!)

Homowo – it’s not what you think

Street performer at Homowo

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you may have noticed the theme emerging that I’m aiming to do things in Ghana that I haven’t done before, like going to Bolga, and getting cornrows. My most recently fulfilled goal was to go to a cultural festival.

I checked my tourist pamphlet guide to Ghana, consulted with a friend back home, and organised to go to the Ga festival of Homowo. This festival (means Hooting at Hunger, and celebrates the harvest), takes place throughout August at different Ga communities around Accra. Conveniently, the Jamestown Gas were celebrating on the weekend after the OurMedia conference, so I stayed on for the weekend and we arranged for my friend’s stepson, Nii, to take me around.

ActionMan didn’t want to go, saying he didn’t like the noise and confusion at festivals even in Australia, and that if he didn’t like it here, he wouldn’t have been able to get home without disrupting my enjoyment of the event. He spent our whole week in Accra reading online Manga comics, hanging out with the kids and arguing about religion with the adults at Naomi and Gifty’s place (in-laws of DadaK’s, where we stayed when we first arrived in Ghana). I think he would have enjoyed the first part of Homowo that I attended, but he has no regrets about missing it.

The first event Nii and I went to was the Twin’s festival on Friday evening. Still without a travel guide to Ghana, I hadn’t done much research on this, but what little I’d done did not prepare me for the mayhem, misrule and madness of this most enjoyable festival. The soporific Guide to Ghana Festivals said things like “.. the twins and their families proceed through the streets carrying offerings to the shrine”, which really doesn’t prepare you for it.

We found a viewing spot near a street corner, and waited in the fading day and growing crowd. Nii explained the bit about “proceeding through the streets”, only in more casual and friendly language, and I munched on peanuts offered by a very small, cheerful and feisty elderly lady (Letitia) who’d insisted we sit with her family on benches outside her house.

At last the first family approached and I realised this was not going to be the dry and formal occasion the festival guide had promised. There was, as AM predicted, lots of noise and confusion, but I think he would have enjoyed the craziness. What really happens is this: young women, men and sometimes children run or stagger through the streets carrying basins filled with water, leaves and other stuff (I’ll find out what it was and get back to you). They are surrounded by family members and friends who are holding them up, steering them in the right direction, pouring gin over them or in their basins, adjusting their clothes that have gone awry. In more sedate parties they are just running along beside them in matching outfits.

In this case it is th twins who are carrying the offerings through the streets.

There’s usually just one person per group with a basin and they are not necessarily the twins. Apparently the basins are carried by people in the family who have this special role and who are possessed by spirits. Most of them – shaking, grim-faced and staggering – did look like they were possessed or else they were having a great time pretending to be. The crowd with them was usually riotous and happy: playing music, chanting, turning somersaults, sweeping dirt onto bystanders’ feet, careering into the crowd, jumping onto any cars unwise enough to stray onto the route. You get to see every group twice because they return the way they’ve come. On the way back big groups of young men dashed backwards and forwards yelling and chanting and drumming. That bit reminded me of football fans.

We couldn’t always spot the twins because the groups were moving so fast, except if they were children dressed identically in festive clothes and carried on adult’s shoulders, or babies – also dressed identically, on backs or in arms. However it’s clear that there are a lot of twins amongst the Gas. I don’t think a similar sized area in Sydney could come up with that many. But then, in Australia we don’t make that much of a fuss about them either. In Ghana you even have a special name if you’re a twin. Amongst Akans it’s Ataa, I don’t know about other tribes.

And what festival would be complete without the street performers? I’m not sure if they were connected with families or were independent buskers; perhaps a bit of both, as only one held out his cap for dash when I took a photo. He was the guy who parodied the police, in short white shorts with padded bum, military shirt and hat, colourful epaulettes and a painted wooden rifle. Another guy wore stylish shades, carried a small pot on his head, and was panted white from head to toe, except presumably for the bit that was covered by a red & black G-string. Sorry everyone, that was the only cheeky bottom I captured on film. There were others but the crowd was moving so fast it was hard to get pix. (What pix I have will be posted when I have better badnwidth).

When it was finally, sadly evident that no more parties would be dashing up the street, we farewelled our hostesses, promised to come back the next day, and moved on through happy crowds to catch a taxi to Oxford St for a burger and chips. Well, where else would you go, in a night on the town? It’s surprisingly similar to Sydney’s Oxford St, except a lot less gay, with fast food joints, restaurants, nightclubs and bars and according to Nii, “anything that happens at night is here”.

Over dinner we talked politics, world affairs, upcoming Ghana elections, corruption, economics. Nii’s a smart, sensitive, aware young man who sells clothes on the street for a living. I will never look at another hawker through the same eyes. It’s the kind of knowledge that makes me nearly explode with rage at the unfairness, at the waste, at the lost opportunities both for him and for his country.

After dinner we went to a nightclub. It was not on Oxford Street, but closer to home, so we caught trotros back towards Dansoman, where I was staying, and I got a brief glimpse of the market that has grown up around Kwame Nkrumah Circle. Circle, as it’s known, is a roundabout and interchange so vast and congested that – especially at night – you can hardly see the other side. There’s a market spreading along the foothpaths surrounding it that even consumes the pedestrian overpass on one side. Displays of shoes, dimly lit by kerosene lamps and torches, spiral up the ramp. On the other side you wind through a tarpaulin-covered warren of stalls selling as usual everything from deodorant to peeled oranges, before coming out at the taxi park.

caught a trotro straight away, but missed out on the good seats and Nii, who is very tall, had to sit hunched in one of the fold down seats, his knees almost up to his chin. I can’t help wondering if the short stature of most Ghanaians is a result of natural section by trotro seating. My brother, who is also tall, used to pay for two seats every time he caught a long distance trotro in Ghana, so that he could travel in relative comfort.
My Oz friend had already filled Nii in on my taste in music, so we went to hear a band that played more old fashioned Hi Life style of music. I say old fashioned, but the crowd was still young and groovy. I’m just trying to distinguish between older style music and the new Hip Life, which is Ghana / hip hop fusion. Some of it’s pretty good, but I’m more interested in Hi Life.

band was dressed all in white, with the men wearing weird fluffy, feathery caps that looked like a twenties cloche gone horribly wrong. But if you could get your mind off that, the music was good and we had fun. And an early night, I can’t shake it like I used to.

We missed the Homowo activities the next day because neither of us was well informed enough to realise that all the cultural stuff – dancing, performances etc – was happening early in the day. I admit, I’d seen a banner for a Maggi Homowo cooking competition, but I hadn’t paid attention to the details. Pity. (Stay tuned for my post on Ghana TV’s Great Maggi Moments).

However I also had an appointment with some Ghanaian re-evaluation counsellors (RCers) in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to miss that. RC is a kind of peer counselling in which you take turns to listen to each other in pairs or groups, and I find my life goes much better if I have regular counselling sessions. They help me let off steam, plan and make decisions and keep a positive perspective. Before I left Australia I’d made contact with an RCer in Kumasi and after arriving had met up with him a couple of times (and gone to his graduation) before he came back down to Accra to stay with family. We kept in touch and he invited me both to a group on Saturday and a workshop later this month.

So off I headed, braving Accra transport on my own for the first time, and safely arrived in Osu for the group. Here I shall draw a veil over the proceedings because it being counselling, I must of course respect confidentiality, but I can reveal that it was lovely to be so welcomed by a bunch of smart, young, committed counsellors, feel like I was in familiar territory, have some fun, shed some tears and make new and different connections with Ghanaians. Oh, and I spotted an Irish pub in the suburb. (Colleen and Mick, I have photographic evidence).

Me sampling the special Homowo food.

For perhaps the first time in my trip, the meeting was running on African time, and didn’t kick off till quite late. This was mostly due to Homowo disrupting traffic but starting late meant finishing late. I had to leave early to meet Nii back in Jamestown before dark. We rendezvoused at the same place we’d watched the twins festival, and quickly realised that all the action at this time of day was in private homes or nightclubs, so before heading off in search of a club (they open really early), we visited our companions of the night before. They were delighted and sat me down to a meal of special Homowo food: palm nut soup with fish and a special dish of corn meal mixed with palm oil.

There’s always a risk with this kind of impromptu meal that the food will be alien to western taste and full of something I don’t want to eat, like offal or smoked fish, but I was lucky and the meal was delicious. Our hostesses were a family of sisters – Letitia, Augustina, Elizabeth, Dora – and their mother and brother and presumably a whole lot of children and grandchildren who were mostly out partying. They had a Kumasi connection (mother came from there) and an Australian connection (a sister’s living there but they’ve lost touch). I took pictures and an address so I can send them the photos – of them, of homowo, and of me savouring palm nut soup.

there we headed to another nightclub. This one was on a cliff overlooking the sea, and at night it was a good location because you just see the dark waves breaking and don’t see how dirty and polluted they are. Unless you take a closer look, and then you can see, where the waves wash onto the beach, whole schools of black polythene. Uuurgh.

The music, again, was old style. A different old style. To my untrained ears it sounded my like palm wine music, with rolling, flowing melodies and twangy guitar. I liked it a lot, but by this time, after two late nights, a conference, a festival, and an awful lot of time going backwards and forwards in trotros, I was a bit tired. My spirit was willing but my flesh was very, very weak, especially when songs went for about half an hour each. But the dance floor wasn’t crowded, so we could sit back with our drinks (me: pineapple juice, Nii: Malt) and watch the performance.

Once again, the band had white clothes and fluffy caps – people I’ve spoken to reckon it could be a Homowo thing, because these outfits are normally worn by Ga priests, or chiefs, depending who I talked to. The band was fronted by a group of women who danced as well as sang. So even though I may have missed it in the morning, I still got my dose of Ghanaian dancing, and went home satisfied.

Homowo is continuing at other Ga communities around Accra throughout August and even, apparently, in the US. Although it’s over for me, at least for this year, it ain’t over yet. So in the words of the banners strung over the Jamestown streets: Happy Homowo.

I’m so excited

I’ve come to the realisation that I’m hooked on three things: Ghana, conferences and knowledge. I got to feed all three addictions at the Our Media 7 conference these past few days.

Our Media is a gathering of academics, community workers and activists in the field of community media. This year’s theme was Identity, Inclusion, innovation – Alternative Communication in a Globalised World, and it was held in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

I attended Our Media 6 in Sydney last year and that was also a great conference – new ideas, inspiring projects, powerful stories. OM7 offered all this but with the benefit of African perspectives and in particular, a strong injection of Ghanaian culture. Ghanaian culture, as I’ve mentioned before, is rich in symbolism. I’ve realised it’s more than symbolism, it’s non-verbal language, and these non-verbal communication systems are widespread in West Africa. Adinkra I’ve mentioned before, but these systems include dance and of course talking drums. I had a fascinating conversation with a Nigerian academic who has been working on a voice recognition system that will understand Yoruba. Yoruba is a tonal language so as a first step, he set up a system that can interpret the language of talking drums. He also told me about a Yoruba divination system that he believes was originally a maths calculator.

You’ll be hearing more of this, but for now I need more time to process the absolute overload of information I’ve been taking in this week, and to make sure I can provide some useful links to some of the projects and theories I’ll be writing about. Not sure when that will be as we are embarking on a bit of tourism and sight seeing, starting with the Homowo festival today. Well, it’s only a ‘we’ if I can drag AM away from online Manga.

So just briefly, other highlights of the conference were:

• Watching and then dancing with the Ghanaian National Dance Ensemble.
• Hearing a Ghanaian woman with some clout talk about the necessity of preserving national treasures (like cloth)
• A number of presentations on how alternative media (such as community radio) is used in conflict zones.
• A community radio program in Kenya that has resulted in adults listening to children’s concerns and also in development of the local community
• Research on YouTube and social movements
• Digital media projects in marginalised / emerging communities in Sydney and in the UK
• Talking with lots of smart, interesting, committed people.

Going native

You'll have to read to the bottom to find out about this.

The main reason you have been getting to read about our adventures in Kumasi, Mensakrom and the north, is that for the past month we have stayed in Asuoyeboah. For the first two weeks we ventured no further than the internet cafe. It’s only in the past two weeks that I’ve gone into the krom (city) a few times. Ah, the freedom!

Not that I regret spending so much time at home. It’s just been a different, more domestic focus. One of the reasons for this was that I discovered that there was no point in sending ActionMan to school. By the time he’d been sick and we’d traveled around a bit, there were only three weeks left until the end of term, which would be mostly taken up with exams.

I was torn between disappointment at an opportunity lost, and relief. I admit it, I’m prejudiced against Ghanaian schools. I’ve heard too many reports of caning to feel happy about sending my child to such a school. Even though the school we were looking at professed non-violent methods, it seems – at least according to AM’s brother 50 Cedis – that this is its philosophy rather than its practice. Beating children is still a fairly accepted practice in Ghana, although that’s gradually changing.

If it hadn’t been such bad timing I would have enrolled him for a couple of months. I could have vetoed physical punishment for AM and it would have been a good opportunity for both of us to get a better understanding of the system here, plus for him to meet more people his own age. But it was not to be.

I decided that although he can probably manage a few months without school, I could not manage another seven weeks of him lounging in front of action DVDs all day every day. So I am home-schooling, with his co-operation. It started well but got derailed by illness, and the fact that all his brothers are home on holidays now.

I have a very flexible approach. Last week he was learning lost wax bronze casting at the Kumasi Cultural Centre. The week before he spent a couple of days building a wooden dog kennel for Gye Nyame and Angel, the family dogs. It’s unlikely they’ll use it, but it was an excellent project, which he accomplished with Owaruku’s assistance. Perhaps the family will buy some chooks for it instead.

The rest of the curriculum is basically lots of reading: New Internationalist, BBC Africa, National Geographic, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, plus maths and spelling online. Oh, and learning to cook with Serwaa. And swimming.

I got a list of hotel pools from the Ghana Tourist Board a few weeks ago, but it took a while to get around to going to the pool. Finally Owaruku finished school early on a Friday and the three of us caught a trotro to Sofoline, which is the name of the big roundabout on Sunyani Rd. We changed for a trotro to Santasi, which would drop us in Patasi, where I planned to hop in a txi and ask them to take us the the Rexmer hotel. On the way to Patasi I got cold feet about this idea, and was wondering if it was really going to work out so smoothly, when I spotted the hotel. It was right on the road we were traveling!

It was wonderful to have a swim after so many weeks of being hot and sweaty, but it was the hotel restaurant’s menu that really got ActionMan going. Hamburgers, bombe alaska, spaghetti bolognese, fresh orange juice … he even got excited about pizza, which he normally doesn’t like. So after splashing around for a while and trying to persuade Owaruku to venture into waist deep water, we headed for the restaurant and AM gobbled down pizza chips and fresh OJ faster than you can say tomato sauce.

We came back the next day with 50 Cedis and nearly drowned both of them in a foolhardy attempt to piggyback them across the pool. Oops. However it did prove the Owaruku that he could push off from the bottom and survive in the deep end. And I’m exaggerating. 50 Cedis was not really in any danger, he just liked to capitalise on the possibility that he may have been (typical).

We celebrated their survival with hamburgers and chips and bombe alaska, a meringue coated pudding I’m in no hurry to try again. I don’t think watermelon works in baked puddings. We were lucky that AM brought his pocket money because they couldn’t take Mastercard even though they’d assured me they could. Seems to keep happening here! So we didn’t end up washing our own dishes.

You are probably wondering by now why I titled this post ‘going native’, and in fact there is scant evidence for me to make that claim.

I do not pound fufu, fetch water, carry impossible headloads or chew bones. I avoid offal, malta (it’s a drink) and Nigerian soap operas. I am not born again and never will be. I’m hopeless at bargaining, a soft touch for cash and a shameless consumer of luxuries.

But … I can claim to be:

• A competent baby carrier. In the mornings I often tie Treasure onto my back and we go to buy koko and akosi or bofrots at the local mini-market. Until ActionMan vetoed it because I’m destroying my knees.
• A dutiful daughter-in-law (you’ll hear more about that soonish).
• A lover of fine cloth – who wouldn’t be, here?
• Chief toilet flusher for those too small to lift the bucket up to the cistern
• A good dancer. Well, AM might disagree, but everyone else seems to think so. They all have a good laugh with me anyway & tell me I “love life”.
• A responsible parent & citizen. I went along to the open day for Obaaku and Daniel’s school. I put up with children shouting into the mic and bad acoustics, felt clucky about the cute kindy kids and took photos of Daniel’s dance group performance (sound familiar?). The unfamiliar bit was how all the mums and dads went up the stage and stuck red one cedi notes over their child’s foreheads before depositing them in the donations bowl. Yes, I did that too, plus made a larger donation later.
• Getting better at the lingo limbo … slowly. I still don’t have very sophisticated conversations, but I can shop, make jokes and understand when Nana scolds me for forgetting to buy her dokono (also known as kenkey, a steamed cornmeal wrapped in corn husks and eaten with chilli, fried fish and okra stew). “I told you to buy me dokono, I expected you to bring it. They didn’t give me enough to eat for lunch but I didn’t worry, I knew you’d be bring my dokono, but you didn’t bring it etc. etc.” Oh dear.
• Able to chop ampesi, waakye, redred and jollof with the best of them – and even fufu, if I have to and it’s not sheep soup.
• Beneficent provider of funding for fruit, chewing gum, phone credit, bofrots, bread, chocolate, birthday cakes and most recently, a new roof for Afia Serwaa’s braiding salon.

And finally, perhaps most significantly:

• Hair fashion victim! Yes, after almost 20 years of more than nodding acquaintance with Africans, and five trips to the continent, I finally took the plunge and had my hair cornrowed. Afia Serwaa bought some red hair extensions (auburn, not scarlet) and did a fine job of braiding my hair one relaxing afternoon under the oil-palm tree beside her little salon.

I’ve always resisted this before. I don’t really think many white people look good in the style. I don’t like how our white scalp shows through. ActionMan shares this opinion and I wish I’d had a camera on hand to capture the horror, disbelief and dismay that chased each other around his face when he saw what I’d done. The only other people who didn’t gush “wo effe paaa” (you look gorgeous) were Gyamfi and DadaK (who approved in principle but wisely didn’t comment) and 50 Cedis, who sniggered whenever he looked at me and took me aside to tell me – in that open and frank way that somehow reminds me of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, that it really didn’t look that great and I’d “made a wrong decision”.

Well, I thought so too, but mainly because of the pain and itching, which didn’t stop until I’d taken them out, and the fact that it all started to unravel very fast. Oh that obruni hair, difficult paaa. Tufts of mousy brown sticking out of the auburn braiding – not a good look! It would have been better if I’d still had long hair, but it’s currently a bob, & didn’t work well with long braids.

So it’s cornrows, never again. I’m still undecided as to whether I’ll try ‘rasta’ braids before I leave. I’m not keen. I think I’ve stepped outside my hair comfort zone quite enough for now. Perhaps forever.