This week, TechNova is featuring me and the (tech) contents of my bag in a blog post.
Do you know what the brown rectangles are? The mint-green dot? The goggles?
Salad with my Favorite Vinaigrette
This post is a collaboration with Eden Tree.
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I love a good salad, especially on a hot day at home, and feel a vinaigrette takes it to the next level. My Favorite Vinaigrette is more like a life hack than a recipe (no measurements, just guidelines!) that I hope will bring you joy! I make my vinaigrette in big batches and keep in a bottle in the fridge.
Favorite Vinaigrette
- A generous splash of a good vinegar ( I like Apple Cider Vinegar right now, but anything goes)
- Two generous splashes of oil, preferably Extra Virgin olive oil
- Something sweet (Just a little Ghanaian honey is fab)
- One or two cloves of garlic
- A dollop of French mustard
- Dried herbs like Thyme, Oregano, Tarragon, or a mix like Herbes the Provence
- Black Pepper and Salt to taste
Combine all the wet ingredients in a bottle with a reliable cap. I like to put the cloves in the bottle whole, but for them to release their garlicky taste better, you can bruise, break, or if in a hurry to gobble up the vinaigrette, press them. Add the dry spices and the mustard and shake. In my experience, it runs out before it goes bad (but can probably sit safely for a few weeks in the fridge).
Salad
- A bag of Eden Tree Lettuce
- Half a bag of Eden Tree Basil
- Half a bag of Eden Tree Parsley
- Diced Eden Tree Tomatoes
- Slanted Eden Tree Cucumber or unripe pawpaw
- Possibly: Smoked fish, olives, lightly boiled green beans, boiled eggs, a good bread etc.
Separate and rinse lettuce leaves and the herbs. It is not strictly needed as Eden Tree vegetables are ready to eat off the shelf, but I always wash veg for freshness. Cut the dried leaves (wet leaves repel vinaigrette, dry leaves soak them up!) and combine with the other cut ingredients. With green beans, eggs, and smoked fish it turns into a Salad Nicoise, with olives and feta cheese it is a Greek Salad, with a bread and some olives it is a good lunch!
Drizzle the Favorite Vinaigratte over your delicious and healthy salad at the table. Soak up any remains with a good bread!
My Best Activity with Children: PLAY DOUGH
Weekend is coming up and what should you do with your kids? Forget about giving your children an electronic device for some peace and quiet, an iPad has nothing on homemade play dough! Play dough is also cheaper than almost any other activity and allows for developing sensory intelligence and creativity!
I make the dough anew maybe once a month and keep in in a plastic bag in-between uses. (You can also dry the play dough art your children create on low heat in the oven, but humidity in Ghana means the dried dough does not stay dry…)
Recipe:
2 parts* flour
1 part table salt
1 part water
a dash of oil (to not make the salt dry out the hands needing the dough, i prefer coconut oil)
food colouring (optional) * cup, decilitre, etc
I give my children household items like forks, spoons, cookie cutters, rollers, plastic containers etc. to use to shape the dough. A metal garlic press is the best tool for creating snakes/flowing hair. A knife can cut shapes. A tooth pick makes eyes. My children, just like myself back in the day, can entertain themselves with this recurring “game” for hours.
Enjoy the weekend with your family!
Why I Attend Chale Wote Street Art Festival!
In August CHALE WOTE is coming! The street festival enters its fifth year with the awesomest theme ever: SPIRIT ROBOT! It just does something to my imagination: spirit! robot!
The festival has been announced to run from Aug 18-21 with LABS @ CHALE WOTE on Aug 18-19. I understand that as the main, public part of the festival is the weekend 20-21 August, 2016. Location: Jamestown, Accra.
I will be going to the festival with my entire family. I am especially looking forward seeing the festival through my now five year old child’s eyes and seeing my teen relatives’ reactions. Personally, I am attending for the people, the art-meets-community, the fabulous fashion, the street food, and the general feeling of marvel.
Do you not also want to be part of the Chale Wote Spirit Robot?
Spirit Robot is described like this on the organiser Accra Dot Alt website:
In 2016, we ramp up the energy of CHALE WOTE by building a universal TRANSmitter – a singular architecture – that we call SPIRIT ROBOT. This immersive memory-tech presents a world within a world where life can be structured on different terms.
CHALE WOTE 2016 exists as an interconnected system of pan-African geometry shifting. SPIRIT ROBOT is a sacred current that decodes worldly systems of racist capitalism, alienation and subjection. SPIRIT ROBOT mutates these frequencies as a way of creating new histories, art and knowledge.
Robot points to mechanical forces that restrict our right to be human – to feel and to express – and to be free. Robot signifies the machine – the myriad constraints that people of African descent on the continent and around the world confront on a daily basis with our very lives. SPIRIT ROBOT reprograms history by melding West African mythology, cosmogramming, and artistic practice in a radical unveiling of alternative African realities. Together we animate stolen dreams, deferred inventions, and lost science through an intercultural kinship. We reclaim memory maps about who we are and where we are going.
What we are speaking of is Spirit – a collective creative process that is human and metaphysical, potent, available and abundant. Spirit is on the move through a series of portals – doors of persistent return – that open up a blueprint for radical reconstruction of our realities and pan-African building. It refers to the energetic abilities we employ to create a new encounter with reality that is entirely of our choosing and construction. Here we access liberating spaces of art and possibility, embedding our codes of connection in a live archive that we continue to build upon.
How do we create intentionally coded spaces – an algebra of minds – that can be grasped and shared? In 2016, we build bridges of possibilities between us, connecting our visions of reality with one another and the challenge to dig deeper. Stretching these projects together into a meta-network is an act of deep engagement with community, and an exercise in countering historical forms of hierarchy, exclusion, fracture and disharmony.
With SPIRIT ROBOT, we construct and amplify our own technologies to create a spectacular present where are we free .
See my earlier posts on Chale Wote Festival 2011, 2012, 2013 (no photos), 2014.
TEDxAccra: Re-Think. 3 things I look forward to
This whole week I have been hearing the build up buzz on TEDxAccra. With events every night culminating in Saturday 23rd all day at the National Theathre (Ego tickets here, although many categories are SOLD OUT!) ,the organising team has succeeded in taking over social media. I have seen the #TEDxACCRA2016 trending for days!
I have sadly been to busy to go to any pre-events (another exciting one on Women’s contributions to Economy tonight), but will be spending my Saturday at the main event. Specifically, I am looking forward to:
- Hearing Lucy Quist, CEO of main sponsor Airtel. She is a leadership supernova in Ghana, but manages to also be approachable and informative.
- Being introduced to other amazing speakers and getting to know their work which I’ll then share with my followers. (Follow me on Twitter and/or Instagram @kajsaha)
- The networking. I love to be among young change-makers and doers!
Hope to see you tomorrow!
PS. If you can’t come, you can stream it live!
Glamorous Launch of An African City [Video from Auntie Oboshie]
On Thursday, I was at the glamorous launch of An African City, Season 2 that I blogged about some two weeks ago. See me flash by a few times in black and white chevron print in this video by Ghanaian fashion promotor Auntie Oboshie.
The launch had everything one could ask for: Fabulous African couture (although I was for once wearing Swedish off the rack H&M), champagne, beautiful people who kissed my cheeks, and was cohosted by inspiring career coaches She.Leads.Africa in Accra’s freshest building the One Airport Square.
What could be more glamorous?
Looking Forward to An African City 2 (coming Jan 24, 2016)
Right now there is a humongous group of people ( 35 300 YouTube subscribers and counting, basically a small city!) just waiting around for January 24th when An African City, the popular web series recorded in Accra, Ghana, is back with season 2! See my first impression of season one here. Bottom line: If you love talkative women, fashion, West Africa, and a little sex…this is for you.
Here is the trailer of An African City Season 2:
While the girls and the setting remains the same, this season, the series will not be available for free on YouTube, but through a $19.99 subscription, underlining what has said in one of the early episodes…that everything in Ghana is really charged in US dollars!
Ps. If you missed season one, it’s still available on YouTube for free!
Sunday Reads 6 December
- The most in-depth analysis of the Pistorious case I have read by Jacqueline Rose, and I think I have read almost everything on the case. Its a very long article, winding through among other sub-topics a psychological analysis of Pistorius and a biography of his first judge, but the gist of it is: “The killing of Reeva Steenkamp was either a sex crime or a race crime.”
- Another article from BBC on returnees to Ghana (I mentioned one recently on my colleague Kobby). I learned a lot, also about the people in the article I know. Why the young and talented are returning to Ghana by Yepoka Yeebo.
- A summary from Forbes what is at stake in the 2016 elections: Ghana’s prosperity hinges on next year’s election by Daniel Runde. An interesting point was how the timing of the Ghanaian election – one day ahead of American elections – might affect it.
- Nicolas Henin: The man who was held captive by Isis for 10 months says how they can be defeated
by Adam Withnall. This summary here is that the refugees fleeing was a blow to IS, but bombing IS is not a solution.
Inspired by personal role models, Ory Okolloh Mwangi and Chris Blattman, I want to share articles I read with my followers on a somehow regular basis. I hope to make Sunday Reads a weekly feature to be shared here and on Twitter!
Global Corruption Barometer: Corruption in Ghana
Ghana’s shocking corruption levels were in the news again this morning. Here are some fresh numbers from Transparency International in collaboration with AfroBarometer:
- An estimated 75 million Africans paid a bribe in the last 12 months.
- 76% of Ghanaians say corruption has increased over the last 12 months, only South-Africa has a higher figure. 75% of Nigerians say the same.
- 36% of public service users in Ghana payed a bribe in the last 12 months.
- 53% of Ghanaian believe ordinary people can make a difference in the fight against corruption.
I wholeheartedly recommend a download of the full 49-page People and Corruption: Africa Survey 2015 report here filled with infographics and analysis! See especially Anti-Corruption progress in Senegal on p. 11.
Change is possible!
Speaker at the ASME 2015
I have been invited to speak at the Vodafone African SME Summit 2015. The summit takes place 5-7 November, 2015 and has the theme; “Dreaming Africa”.
I will be speaking from the BloggingGhana/Social Media perspective in the panel called “Changing the conversation on Africa’s media front” on Thursday 5 Nov, 2.05-2.45pm My co-panelists are Bernard Avle, CitiFm and Teophilus Yartey, Graphic Business.
Other speakers are Emmanuel Gamor of Impact Accra Hub, Nana Akosua Hanson of YFM, and Frederick Deegbe, Heel The World Shoes and many more!
I will share my slides here after my presentation.
Hope to see you there!
#BlogCamp15 Coming Soon
BloggingGhana proudly presents the fourth BlogCamp – in Kumasi – with the theme “Social Media for Good” this Saturday May 9th, 2015.
BlogCamp is a full day networking and educational event is for bloggers and social media enthusiasts, and as I know I have many among my readership, I hope to see some of you there! There will be a PhotoWalk in Kumasi suburbs, talks and panels on the topical topic as well as general workshops on blogging, photography and social media for business.
Register to secure your free ticket. (Information on buses from Accra when you have your ticket)
I will be Tweeting away, shaking as many hands as I can and try to in every possible way embody BloggingGhana’s two foundational pillars: technology and friendship!
So, if for some reason you cannot be physically present, follow #BlogCamp15 on Twitter and other social media channels on Saturday!
The Next Big Thing: Adomaa
Among dumsor and awards, a new Ghanaian star is rising on the dark sky. Adomaa is a young singer who has become a YouTube phenomenon with two well-produced videos.
The first one is chronicling the history of Ghanaian music (seen by 7800 at this moment).
The second one a single of her own*, a mash-up between a StoneBwoy cover, Baafira, plus a Sarkodie feat. (the late) Castro song, Adonai, that sounds a bit like Asaa or Efya, but with a more Ghanaian beat and a few more “alleluia’s” in there…(seen by 18 000 at time of writing)
My friends who know music are terribly excited and, I have to say after watching the videos, I feel it too, Adomaa could be the next big thing from Ghana!
Find Adomaa on SoundCloud and YouTube.
*Edit thanks to someone who ehum, knows the Gh music scene and has me on speed dial, thank you!