Kajsa Hallberg Adu, Ph.D, Personal Blog
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This years BBC World Service radio play competition had one Ghanaian in the top. Benjamin Kent wrote the play “Funeral Bells” which evolves around the oh-so-common Ghanaian funeral. Loads of people, food and drinks, but often you don’t even know the deceased…
Listen to the play here.
In the pic, my mother-in-law and me at a funeral for someone I’d never met, in a village in Central region, Ghana .
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I woke up on Monday to find a kiosk outside our wall, just next to the carport. A blue stall, common for selling Ghanaian fast foods had just appeared over night. Instantly, I felt a bit pissed off: this unauthorized tiny building had been erected right in my reverse turn radius, making getting out in the morning with my car much more difficult.
-Good morning! You must try my waakye!
The lady preparing and selling the fast food looks at me with a bright smile offering me some Ghanaian brown rice cooked with beans, waakye. I smile back. Maybe it is not all that bad having fast food available 10 meters from my front door.
Recipy for waakye here.
In the pic, people in line at another food stand.
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A friend here in Ghana told me about the many healthy effects of the moringa tree (“benzolive” in French, “drumstick tree” in English) some time ago. I had never heard of it, but through a little research online I now know my friend was right to sprinkle dried moringa leaves on her kids’ food.
It contains vitamins (A, B1, B2, B3 and C) as well as calcium and potassium. But the miracle is it also contains complete proteins, which few plants do. Another example is the soy bean, but moringa is much richer in protein! According to Trees for Life an organization promoting the use of Moringa to combat hunger, the leaves also prevent various diseases. Download Trees for Life’s interesing PDF on possible uses of Moringa here.
You simply eat the fresh or dried leaves with your food or brew tea out of it.
The Moringa tree grows in tropical areas and the fast growing tree requires little water and no particular soil. It’s leaves can be fed to animals, a meal made from the seeds can purify water and be used to produce bio fuels!
On my way home from work I always pass a little shed with a “Moringa is sold here” sign (opposite the Shell station at the end of the Tema motorway leading towards Achimota). I always used to wonder, what IS Moringa anyway? Now I know.
Pic of the moringa leaf from Trees for Life
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They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The meaning of that concept is that we all have different glasses though which we see the world. In this post, as in all others I have ever written, I intend to write about the world I see. Here are my thoughts on poverty (spurred on by Blog Action Day).
With my sheltered and sometimes outright naive Swedish background, coming to live in Ghana has in many ways been being confronted with stories about poverty. I have come to understand the depressing effects of poverty: that there are people who are so poor they buy food and spices for today’s meal only, hoping that tomorrow they will afford rice and pepper again. There are men so poor they can’t afford the transport fare to go look for a job, women so poor they cannot afford to go to church (offerings and sunday clothing requires money) and families so poor they cannot afford contraceptives or an abortion even when their resources are not enough to feed the kids already at their feet.
Then again, Ghana is a relatively well off country in the region, see for instance gapminder for figures. And the person buying pepper for today, at least is buying something. The man not able to find a new job will be fed by his wife who is a successful trader in the local market. And interestingly, the poorest families rarely see children as anything else than a resource and a joy.
Poverty is in the eye of the beholder. I argue, so is glamour.
Pic taken in the Makola Market area, downtown Accra, Ghana.
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I just returned from a fantastic long weekend in London, or shall I say Little Ghana? I knew London has a big Ghanaian population, but I was unprepared for the massive scale. Many Ghanaians have settled in the southern suburb of Croyden where I my first night in UK had rice balls and groundnut soup. And it tasted just like it should! And two days later I was offered fufu!
Apart from the food, I continued the weekend with speaking Twi about as much as I do when I am here in Ghana (me ho ye paa!), swinging by the Ghanaian Restaurant Accra Nima, discussing Ghanaian politics and best beaches, listening to hip life and then also of course doing the city. Westminster, Big Ben, Tate Modern, London Eye, Tower Bridge and Covent Garden were all the backdrop to my Ghanaian weekend in London.
The lovely colorful pic borrowed from yourbestlocal.com
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Yesterday I met with my sister-in-law. She is a wonderful, easygoing person and very easy to talk to. We sat down and discussed all different kinds of things; Ghanaian versus Swedish food, what to do in the weekend, how our careers are moving along etc. We laughed together and she vowed to soon come visit me. As I was leaving I wanted to give her some of the fresh corn (in Ghana maize) I was carrying in a big, black shopping bag.
– I got too much, all of this I bought for 1 GHC, so please help me out!
And then it happens. As my sister-in-law picks out a couple of corn cobs she, having lived in this town all her life, asks me, the obroni-new-kid-on-the-block, where I’ve gone to buy so much for so little. Bursting with pride I tell her what corner of the market I went to, feeling like I just graduated with a degree in Ghana Street Smartness.
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I have tried some different approaches to integrate into Ghanaian society. I have had dresses made in Ghanaian materials and styles, eaten the spicy foods (with my right hand of course) and learned the difference between the different starchy staples. I have drank Star beer and ginger juice, cheered for Kotoko Hearts in soccer and come to appriciate that in social situations providing details is not required (i.e. saying “I’m coming, eh” when leaving).
I have reached some understanding into the culture and I walk my guests out- longer than to the gate -, also I argue about small change when I think the taxi is too expensive and I can sustain a discussion about Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah for hours.
But by far, the most efficient way to become a part of my new world has been trying to pick up the local language, Twi. Me da wo ase (thanks) and Afehyia pa (Happy New Year!) has made people laugh and take to me like no dress or taxi fight ever did. How I wish that in my homeland Sweden a tack or gott nytt! could do the same for those trying to integrate there.
In the pic from yesterday I try to fit in to a kids pool area in a seaside restaurant in Tema.
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What is it I really miss from home? The climate, some of the foods, my friends and family and being able to walk down the street and not wanting to capture at least 3 things on camera. Yesterday, I went to the capital with my boyfriend. Apart from one evening in an Accra restaurant this was my first visit in the capital since I came. We shared a taxi there, which took no more than 30 minutes still we ended up in a different world. We found ourselves in the hip Osu district of Accra. A place where big cars and obrunis (white people) are as common as yellow-and-blue taxis and bibinis (black people) in all other corners of Ghana. At the popular spot “Osu Food Court” I had an opportunity to choose not only between goat soup and different types of yam, but also hamburgers, pizza, coffee and cake (!) and other western/American dishes.
So what did I choose to eat? After some two weeks of local specialities I have come to really appriciate like spicy soups and stews, fish and chicken, carbohydrats in sticky balls and fruits new to me I went with…Pepperoni Pizza. Why? I don’t even eat pizza all that often in Sweden. Later that day, I had the opportunity to discuss this phenomenon with a Swedish newfound friend. We agreed that even though we came to experience new things it is just too much novelties at the same time. The heat, the smells, the early mornings, the animals running about, the new sounds, the different ways of buying a fruit/taking a taxi/shaking hands and the fact that it is impossible to blend in…all this make us inclined to once in a while look for the well-known. Even if it is a sad Pepperoni Pizza.
In the picture new friends Annie and Johnny visiting in my mother-in-law’s house.
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Since my big move to Ghana, I have not only moved from being a single gal in a student room in Uppsala, Sweden to being a “sambo” with my boyfriend as of 4,5 years – no, I am now also an elder in an African household. This leaves me with a number of advantages…and of course responding responsibilities.
One of them is that I never have to do my own dishes, that is being done by a child in my household -“Abena, bra!” (- “Abena, come here!”) But in order for this system to work smoothly, I must remember to leave some of my food on the plate as a small reward for the dishwashing person. This must be the exact opposite of what parents said to kids in the Swedn of the past “think of the kids in AFRICA and finish your food”. Now I have to leave some for a kid in Tema.
Yesterday, I was watching soccer and drinking a soda, thirsty from a hot day I gulped it all up and was consequently accused of being a “bad elder” because there was nothing left for the child who came to collect the bottle…
Life is indeed a learning process.
