January

The Fabulous Cousins-in-Law

Tonight we had dinner with the Nigerian-Ghanaian cousins-in-law, my father’s sister’s husband’s elder brother’s son Alaibi Cookie, i.e. Sam, his wife Lara, and their three children: Menjabi, Bea, and Alaibi Jr. Menjabi picked us up at a nearby bus stop and welcomed us, asked us how we liked Ghana. It turns out she is an award winning Creative Writing student who has already been published up there in England.

At the high-ceilinged house they gave us a warm reception and Lara announced she had pictures of a younger me to show, and we were joined by their friends Kojo and Marjorie and their children, who attended school with the Cookies’ children. We sat in their spotless and beautiful air-conditioned home and briefed each other on the family connection. Out came photos of Lara’s 1995 trip to Nova Scotia, and there beamed a 19-year-old me on my couch surrounded by squirming smiling cousins. I vaguely remember posing for this photograph; I was probably less happy than I looked about it, but now it’s a grand site because I don’t remember another time when so many Benjamin cousins came into such close proximity. Of course there are annual events but there are always some missing, and we tend to sit far apart and make timid small talk for a while, rediscover the fact that we like each other bit by bit, then regret that the evening is so short – at least that’s usually my experience.

Lara had many pictures of the house I did most of my growing up in, the Beaver Bank home that still houses my two parents and my two young cats, with its sunsets on deep still water, red reflections of green trees. Lara, like many of her Benjamin in-laws, has the good eye, which serves her well as a designer of interiors and exteriors, mostly focusing on children’s play-sets and parks in beautiful colours, built to fit the local culture. Noticing a lack of toys that help African children learn, she created the miniature fufu pounding block, mort and pestle, and an African doll house. She showed us pictures of her work and they all have a natural beauty about them, taking full advantage of the colour of mahogany and throwing in a dash of pastels to brighten play-time.

“It took eight years to get this business going,” she said while Junior serenaded us with guitar, xylophone, and made-in-Africa instruments from the next room. Lara had to educate her clients about the importance of play as a means of education, that children can learn in ways other than memorization.

Sam is an architect and in Nigeria they worked together to create homes. The money in Lagos was good so he maintains a company there and flies back and forth, but they prefer the saner pace of Ghana to the megatropolis, where friends drop in at will, as demonstrated by their friend who works to finance the purchase of homes, and half-joked that empty-nesters like them should vacate their large homes and make way for multiple-flat complexes because of the housing shortage. Sam and Lara plan to do just that, but it’s hard to imagine them leaving their big beautiful new home that they took such care in creating. “Somewhere along the line people forgot how to design an African house for the heat,” Sam told us. “They adopted models from the north that are just too hot.” Their house has one ‘wall’ that is in fact almost entirely made of screen to keep the bugs out and let the breeze pass through, so that only one room in the house, the front sitting room, requires air conditioning.

When the banker left we were given a tour of the house with its artwork by the children hanging on the walls and its giant kitchen-living room complex, and then took cold drinks in the garden, under a huge tree the branches of which shade the whole yard in the day. They told us stories of the difference between policy and action in the Economic cooperation organization of West African States (ECOWAS), where duty-free translates to 7 month shipment delays to construction sites that are not prepared even when supplies finally arrive at great cost in bribes and officially banned duties. Sam is on the board and trying to change such things, but it’s a long row to hoe.

Back inside there was chocolate cake, a delicacy I’d not laid tongue on in a hamster’s age, and American fluff programming beamed through the satellite dish: top 65 most sexy fabulous red carpet superstars. We sat around trashing the trash TV and were served grilled barracuda and couscous: a garden of delights! What was this house of cool air, intelligent conversation, sarcastic humour, and delectable delights? Who knew such luxuries existed? They even drove us home, and wore seatbelts!

In the car we talked about cultural differences, living abroad (Sam lived in England for 10 years and Lara for 8, and that is where they met), and how back here in Africa they can do the work they love at a higher level that possible in the giant pond of the west, and at the same time influence politics and development. They feel that there is much Africa can learn from the west, but at the same time much about Africa that makes perfect sense, that should not change, and there are many things about the west that should not be mimicked or adopter, like top 65 super sexy eedjits on red carpets with plastic faces and genitalia on display.

Death of a Tooth

My bottom right second-from-rear molar managed to hang on until the third day of 2007, on which it was extracted at 11:50 AM, GMT. Tonight the tooth fairy will take it to tooth heaven. I doubt whatever she leaves me will equal what this tooth has now cost me. The decay was severe, the infection spreading, and the curvature of the tooth (and its state of decline) were too severe to allow for a root canal. I now have a gaping hole, fortunately out of site unless I really want to show you.

Miia accompanied me into the execution room to meet the dentist, who kindly and patiently answered her many questions. The procedure itself was quick and painless; afterward while chomping tissue I wrote down on a piece of paper for Miia, “Ghanaian culture is conducive to better bedside manner.” No Canadian dentist has ever taken so much time to explain things, to reassure, to minimize pain both physical and psychological.

Nikki

She moved with her mother from Ghana to Canada when she was six so, like Miia, she is a child of two nations, bi-cultural. She understands Ghanaian culture like an insider, yet is not familiar with the political scene or development issues even to the extent that I have become.
She is here for three months to shoot a documentary, about her return to Ghana, for MTV, which she is shooting and editing herself. To better familiarize herself with the political scene, she is working three days a week co-editing the Saturday paper with me. She is filled with ideas and enthusiasm, and refuses to accept the sexist jokes and inefficiency that are part of the Ghanaian workplace. The on-the-table-for-all-to-see office politics she expected. “I don’t even think there is a word for ‘subtle’ in Twi,” she told me as we met for wakye at a roadside stall I know and to discuss what we want to do with the Saturday paper, which so far has proven to be a circulation and advertising dead zone. It seems that in some ways, with Miia’s help, I am having an easier time integrating here than her: no health problems and decent familiarity with the trotro system, whereas she loves the food but it doesn’t love her and she so far has stuck to taxis.

For me, she is a great cultural interpreter and a co-worker who I can easily understand, and understands me. One idea I bounced off her first was to pick up the column of the great Dave Zirin, who wrote ‘What’s My Name Fool?’ and writes about the politics of sport. I wondered if he would compute for a Ghanaian audience, so filled as his writing is with American pop culture references. “As long as we put it next to an article about football, people will enjoy the Americana,” she told me.

So I emailed Mr. Zirin offering him nothing but a little bit of exposure in Africa. “My wife went to University of Ghana,” he replied, “so you could say I have a soft spot for Ghana.” Permission granted.

NE

The news editor (NE) is one of the few Ghanaians I’ve met who not only understands sarcasm but uses it liberally. When I asked him why Bossman wants us to start coming in at 7:00 AM he told me, “Because he is one of those people who can live on two hours of sleep each night and he expects the same from the rest of us. Me, I need at least six. I also need to spend time with my family. The other reason I prefer not to work so much is that I am not a robot.” Unfortunately, NE and all other editors were overruled, so as of next week my alarm clock will be set for 4:30 AM. You back in Canada will be brushing your teeth for bed at about the time I wake up.

Fatigue Friday

Nikki and I co-edited last Saturday’s paper, which on Friday we learned was to be a special edition with paid political advertising by the ruling party, which is choosing a new leader, all over it. That left us 4.5 pages to fill, meaning we cut most of the planned content, including my feature, then replaced some of it, then cut some other stuff, all to the great confusion of our graphics team and the consternation of Bossman, whose production fit came early and hard. When someone shouts at me I can’t really help but shout back; I hate being put into that position and it is really counterproductive. The issue got done with a 1,200 word piece I did on brain drain and remittance payments, which are one of the largest sources of revenue for Ghana.

I spent Saturday recovering, reading, and writing (in our room). We watched the latest movie about rich people living abroad with no interaction with the locals, then tried our own hand at such on Sunday with a visit to the foreign-goods superstore, where we dropped about 40 dollars (a very large sum here) on cheese, chips, chocolate, hummus and sensodyne toothpaste. It was the most white people we’d seen in months and the temptation to call out “oboruni!” was strong.

We also visited Buma camp to say goodbye to WO, who is headed to the Congo next week. Dacosta asked after my tooth and I shared the sad news. “White people have problems with teeth,” he told me. “For us here, it’s our eyes.” Which is strange because few Ghanaians wear glasses; I suspect that may have to do with the expense of eyewear. It’s scary to think of all the half-blind cab and trotro drivers in this town, like the one we had this morning who was so bad that another driver, a giant of a man, flagged him down and told him off.

Ghana is currently under attack by the Harmattan, annual winds that spread the fine sands of the Sahara everywhere: on your clothes, furniture, floors, walls, hair, lungs, eyes; and I think it’s putting a lot of people in particularly foul moods. Ghanaians are masters of self-advocacy, so it’s not unusual for someone to tell you exactly what they think of you at high volume, but today was something else. After the cab driver-other drive incident, we went to a trotro station where one trotro fired around a corner smack dab into a large pile of merchandise, flattening several cans of milk and other goods. The fight that erupted involved pretty much everyone who was waiting in line for the trotro, with the driver arguing that the goods were in the road and the owners of the goods arguing that they just set them down for a moment to await the trotro and that the driver was driving like a maniac, which in fact he was. We grabbed another taxi instead. Later on the way home two women started arguing with the trotro mate that he had short-changed them, and as usual everybody had an opinion. Finally a man whose little girl had burst into tears over all the yelling paid the women their change to get them to shut up. Plus Miia and I had a scuffle having to do with new release movies: she put me into a figure-four leg-lock that ended that debate promptly.

To cap off an uneventful weekend, we sat down with the family to feast on our home-made pizza as they flipped between the season finale of American Idle and the Ghanaian knock-off: Mentor. I must say that the Ghanaian version is infinitely superior; the singers sing better, the judges give articulate, specific, informed feedback that has to do with their performance and not their marketing potential. The performances were backed by real live musicians instead of synthesized soundtracks that probably make the original artists puke in their graves. On AI the two finalists did a duet of ‘Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong,’ which probably few people realize was written by an aboriginal Canadian woman, Buffy St. Marie, and has some great aboriginal imagery in the lyrics. Her version is so beautiful and makes perfect sense to me; it is backed by several other aboriginal women doing traditional song. And there before a nation of slack-jawed gawkers wailed these two southern whites with nary a clue about the origin of the keys they were missing. On Mentor, Kofi, a finalist, did a song lavishing praise on Africa, celebrating her people and tradition in all its glory; he did a wicked dance that filled the whole stage with his toned lanky body – it was perfect. If he had auditioned with that for AI Simon and Paula would have laughed him off the stage, the halfwits.

Anyway, tomorrow, Monday, we begin our 7 am working week, meaning I have to get up at 4:30 AM and go to bed about an hour ago. Goodnight, and Happy Birthday, Mom!