Kajsa HA's Social Media, Personal, Photo

New Semester, New Look, New Gravatar

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Here I am again (after a splendid summer, but that is another post).  As I am returning to this space, I decided to renew the look slightly on the blog. How I did it?

1. I opened Pixlr Express.

2.Played around with the photo I took of my recent passport photos.

3. To match the new look on my blog, I also changed my gravatar.

Now it is left with the small avatar called favicon that sits on the URL line, I just can’t remember how I got it there!

I guess that means I really have relaxed my brain during the summer…

 

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Parenting, Personal

Fante + Swedish = Fandish

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Our Swedish Ghanaian child is soon one year old. Time flies when you are having fun! She has now uttered her first word of what we call “Fandish” – that is combination of her father’s Fante, one of the Ghanian Akan dialects/languages and her mother’s Swedish, a Germanic language from north of Europe.

What was her first combo word? I am proud to say my child is polite. I believe she pronounced a mixture of the Swedish and Fante words for thank you.

“tack” (Swedish) +

“meda woase” (Fante)

= “ta’ssi” (Fandish)

Ta'ssi for the cereal!

 

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Personal, Photo

Passport Photos in Ghana

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In Ghana, you always need passport photos. You need them at the bank, at your workplace, to get your health insurance, for all educational applications and of course at Immigration.  

Often you need two photos, or sometimes three. So when you go do passport photos at the photographer, the normal deal is no less than eight photos!

Can you believe my 11 month-old daughter already have a pile of her own photos? Anyways, I recently ran out of my own passport photos and went to do another bunch. Yep, eight little Kajsa’s (for 6GHC or 3 USD) are now in my pocket (and illustrating this post).

Oh, no wait! Already, the photos are down to seven!

 

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Parenting, Personal

Procrastination Day

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This is what my day has been like today,but involving a vaccination appointment with my daughter instead of a squeaky chair and a salad lunch instead of whatever was in this brilliant little film. Now I need to go to get some stuff done. Really.

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Personal

Project Poultry: Update

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There has been some drama : After that first egg, no more came. This was curious as the hens were doing a egg laying sound (don’t ask me!) according to my husband. Apart from that, they seem to get on fine and happily walk around the backyard.

We got a partner for Jimmy, the guinea fowl we already had. Then Jimmy turned out to be a female. Luckily the new one was a male!

Then the other day, when one of the hens was missing, we decided to poke around to see if Adwoa Smart or Serwaa Akoto had laid eggs somewhere secret, and under some plantain leaves we found nine eggs, with a hen on  top!

So now we are excitingly hoping for a string of chicks.

To Be Continued…

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Ghana, Personal, Photo

Project Poultry: Raising Chicken in Our Backyard

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Adjoa Smart and Richmond the Rooster
After receiving a beautiful guinea fowl for his birthday, my significant other suddenly started talking about keeping it  ( as opposed to slaughtering it for dinner, which was the giver’s intention?) and adding some chicken.

This topic has been up for discussion before, but then always ending in a mutual agreement that “now is not the time for such a project”. This time, we both felt it was.

Is it our baby that makes us think its a good time? The idea of that it is nice for a child to grow up surrounded by animals? The fact that we are staying in this house another year? The slow farming in our backyard due to all the annoying ants who clearly need an enemy? I can’t say.

Anyway, a few days later we went to buy two hens and a rooster at the Community 1 market. The smallish hens cost 10 GHC each (our nanny claims they are 5 GHC in the village) and the colorful rooster 15 GHC, all in all about 20 USD. The chicken seller promised us that one of the small hens we bought had already started to lay eggs.

We (so not me!) cleared them of their long “flying feathers” and tied them with to our verandah furniture. We tied them with red satin ribbons only because it was the only string we had at home. It looked so beautiful! After the first night on our verandah, they could move into the vintage hen coop my mother-in-law raised chicken in for many years.
Vintage Hen Coop “God is too good!!”

 

After a day of observing the chicken, the guinea fowl joined the group. Now, the hens Adjoa Smart and  Serwaa Akoto, the rooster Richmond and the guinea fowl Jimmy form an interesting gang in our backyard. Still a bit shy, they graze the paths closest to the compound wall and run off in a haphazard row formation if we come too close.

In the morning we can hear Richmond clearing his throat and crowing as the sun rises. During the day we feed them food leftovers, uncooked rice and other seeds I found in the pantry. In the evening they trot back to their hen coop and stay there for the night.

The first egg

Just a few days into their stay with us, we got our first egg.  Smallish, as the hen that laid it is very young, light brown and luke warm I held it to the morning light.

Project Poultry has so far been most rewarding. I like having them around, I even like being woken up by a rooster crowing! I’ll keep you posted in this space!  

And what happened to the very first egg? Baby Selma ate it for lunch!

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Personal, Positive

Back to Work

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My parental leave is over and I am back to work at Ashesi University College.

This semester, I am teaching the freshman class Social Theory. It is an introductory course to political and societal philosophy and focuses on the question “how can we build a good society?” Really, I can’t believe it already will be the third time that I teach it! The news for this semester is that we are on Twitter. Follow us on @SocThe or follow this link twitter.com/socthe

This week is also Ashesi’s 10 year anniversary. On Monday, the anniversary was kicked off with a festive event for students, staff, faculty and executives of Ashesi along with invited guests such as the chiefs of the Akuapim area with the Berekusohene leading the group draped in the most beautiful and colorful kente.

The new campus – well for me it is new since I was away when Ashesi moved in in July – is purpose built and quite majestic as it is situated on one of the green Akuapim hills. Walking the broad, shaded walkways around the beautifully landscaped campus is definitely a motivating factor to strive for excellence!

So with drumming, smiling students and a campus in a festive mood – I was welcomed back to work!

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Personal

What Do Women Want ?

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Inspired by Ghanaian radio channel Joy FM’s discussion this morning, I feel like I have to make a comment on this topic, “What Do Women Want?”.

The discussion had a strong start. The host linked the discussion to yesterday’s International Women’s Day and aimed for understanding. A man called in and suggested that “a man who knows what his woman wants is a happy man”, explaining that then you know what is expected of you and can have harmony in your home.

However, soon the discussion was flooded with men calling in with grave generalizations. Several of them were suggesting that

“women do not know what they want themselves, so how can we know?”

or that women are “unpredictable” and “moody”.

How very convenient to say that! A way out for those too lazy to actually care about what women want?

Fellow blogger Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (see her co-blogger Malaika’s International Women’s Day post) was a guest of the show and shared some levelheaded and feminist comments, for instance suggesting that men calling women “moody” and “hormonal” is a grave exaggeration many times used as an excuse to meet expectations.

On Joy FM’s Facebook page the discussion was at this time going wild! Some comments were debating materialistic wants and intangible ones

“women want time and attention when they are with a rich man and wants financial security when they find themselves with a “poor man””

Others again were holding forward how very complicated women are.

Then Akorfa A. Pomeyie stated:
“Women are not complicated, we are very simple”
and I want to agree with her.

We women are just like anybody else. We like to be given respect, we like being listened to, we like it when you prioritize us and our wants and needs.

At this time, my phone rang. It was my husband calling to say good morning and ask how I was doing as this morning he left before I woke up. I smiled and said I was doing just fine.

That attentive phonecall, my friends, is how simple it is to give a woman what she wants.

The discussion is still going on at Joy FM’s Facebook page.

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Parenting, Personal

International Women’s Day: A Personal Reflection

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Last year around this time, I was pregnant with my first child. It was an amazing and literally nauseating experience. It was a reminder of what it is to be a woman.

Being a woman is at times a very bodily experience – growing breasts and hips, learning how to dance, coordinating movements in some nice shoe, climbing trees or other remote places for solitude.

Being a woman is filled with pain – headaches from trying to remember everything, cramps from the monthly period, silent but sharp stings of betrayal, the shockingly forceful pains of child labor.

Being a woman is joyous – growing in your mother’s shadow, learning to express yourself freely in words, feeling the cold water on your body as you dive in, being someone’s mother.

On a day like this, I think of everything that unites us women. I think of everything that separates us. Clearly, there is not a single experience of womanhood, however there is an attitude I feel is common to all women. An attitude I find it heard to put words on, but something along the lines of “change is inevitable”.

We change. We grow. We transform. The world changes.

This is a BloggingGhana universal post. See others take part in the discussion here. Female sign borrowed from Zazzle.com

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Ghana, Personal

Achebe, Szymborska and Kindle: My 2012 Readings

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Inspired by one of my newly discovered favorite blogs, Kinna Reads, I will hereby attempt to answer the question “What are your reading plans for 2012”?

Overall, I just hope to read a novel a month, because really this is looking like a very busy year, professionally. When reading is part of your work, I have come to realize that “relaxing with a book” does not have the same allure. Then add a nursing baby as the cherry on top!

Still, what self-respecting writer-wannabe can live without reading?

Right now, I am reading Achebe‘s Anthills of the Savannah, slowly, slowly. I like it, especially the idea of capturing a corrupt government from the inside, but stylistically the constant switch in persons telling the story confuses me. Plus I want to know if any part of this book can be used for understanding dictatorship, say in a classroom. Hence, I need time. I am also reading the collected works of Wieslawa Szymborska with the same non-speed. Now, this slow reading is for a completely different purpose. I read slowly to create my own images and because I like to think about that these are all the poetry we will ever have by her as she passed away earlier this month.

Then I am trying to get used to my Kindle. See pic! The reason I since October 2011 own a Kindle is all due to book-bloggers Accra Books and Things and Fiona Leonard. They convinced me that reading off a Kindle is just like reading from a book, only better. As ordering books to Ghana is a lil’bit of a nightmare, I normally fill my suitcases with literature. BUT STILL, if in Ghana when one hears of a new book, waiting is included. Enter the Kindle. In seconds one can get books of interest. Seconds! I am not even exaggerating! It is amazing really.

So far, I have read Fiona Leonard‘s book the Chicken Thief in full and many samples of books (they are free). Right now, I am “involved in” two non-fiction books on my Kindle. One is book on teaching critical thinking by bell hooks. I find it extremely relevant and am happy to finally be reading “the author without capital letters”. The other book by Ester Perel is called Mating in Captivity and is about long-term relationships. Interesting topic and great, flowy prose. My friends were right, by the way. Reading off a Kindle is better than reading from a physical book.

As I am bilingual, my reading habits are as well. I have read a collection of shorter texts Avig Maria, by Mia Skäringer. I have a few softbacks I might turn to, and my cook books, but maybe there will be less reading in Swedish now that I have a Kindle? The reason is the Kindle only carries English titles as you have to buy them off a big American chain store…

Kinna has promised to report monthly on her reading progress. Let me not make any promise of that sort, I would rather like to know about your plans!

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