Ok so I seem to have ended up drivilling about thoughts and concepts rather than telling you about life here - why? I fear because it has been rather duller than expected. Kwame and I may have thought that by returning to Ghana we would have returned to how things were. This of course is not possible - we have two beautiful children and for their sakes (or so we say) we have contrived to live a more sensible and mundaine existence here.
I have gone to work - a fasinating insight into the workings of an embassy but work none the less. Kwame has been reluctant house husband and that work here is so much harder. Washing is done by hand and is held in such esteme that if the children uniforms are not spotless they are not allowed to go to school. The bins still have to go out except they are called boilers and are packed into the back of the car and driven up a near vertical incline to the 'dump'. Paradoxically this is in front of some of the most grandious houses we have seen. Most people here in our position have house help - something we could really do with.
Also we are living in Accra and Kwame and I are not city people. We do not feel comfortable in the fake gradure and forced fun of Osu. However, to be fair to Osu we have never really been there - I think we do not want to like it. Accra is exciting and challenging there are floods, visable heart breaking poverty and unbelievable bus trips. There is also oppulence in extreme, markets and any thing you could wish for sold to you through your car window. Just the other day we travelled to the market to buy a loo seat - only for me to be offered one through a car window a couple of days later. Reminisant of Colins loo seat dash on a pub crawl many years ago.
Before we have lived in Kumasi which is greener and we have lived off Kwames painting - which is work but his passion for it makes it feel like something different. Of course now the Ga Manste has called an end to the enforced silence in Accra we enjoying drumming sometimes late into the night, there are hundreds of children for the kids to play with and we have more time for each other than at home - if only because telly is so less engaging!! But even so we are an average family - happy and in love but feeling there is something more out there. This weekend though we saw this thing, this possible future and it is devastatingly exciting!!! We are going back this weekend and when we have everything signed and sealed I will send photos - until then its secret!!!
Friday 15 June 2007
Hair Cut
I had my hair cut the other day - it now feels wonderful but at the time....
The lady that cut my hair works in the shop next to Patricks press - she is lovely. As she started to cut my hair she said 'real hair - my first time to cut real hair'. Of course much of the hair here on ladies is attachments - although not all. Even for those who keep 'real hair' it is nearly always straightened. It is a strange and disturbing world in which some white women go to tanning salons or paint themselves orange and - some black women bleach thier skin and avoid the sun.
The skin thing is clearly nuts but the hair concerns me as families like ours in the UK and adults who were the result of such unions have warned me about the hair issue. Bizzarely the world sees many problems for children such as ours - but in reality it would seem that for girls the only real issue is hair. I cannot understand why such beautiful hair - either platted, in a ponytail or left as an afro is considered so ugly. I hope that the awe for dreadlocks, that is natural within rastafari, and Nayahs knowledge of her own radient beauty will help us avoid this hurdle.
So my hair cut in Ghana involved my hair being washed virgorously and then combed up vertical. It was then cut to the same length from mid point in my scalp all over. Actually this has lead to me having the best haircut and hair style I have had in years. After the hair cut product and rollers were put on my head. This smelt and left a hot senstation on my head. The rollers scratched and it felt like my hair was being pulled from my head. At this point I was scared but too scared to talk either. I was blessed with light off - without which I would have been under the dryer before I had a chance to think. It turns out that my hair was being curled so that it could be straigtened. My point that my hair already felt a little bit too straight for me was not accepted. Eventually I begged and the rollers came out and the product was washed off.
What a strange world - Sister Ama cannot understand that I think my hair is too straight and I cannot understand why she puts nylon extentions on top of the beautiful short crop underneath that suits her face so well. Jah has blessed us all - how have we manged to turn it into a curse?
The lady that cut my hair works in the shop next to Patricks press - she is lovely. As she started to cut my hair she said 'real hair - my first time to cut real hair'. Of course much of the hair here on ladies is attachments - although not all. Even for those who keep 'real hair' it is nearly always straightened. It is a strange and disturbing world in which some white women go to tanning salons or paint themselves orange and - some black women bleach thier skin and avoid the sun.
The skin thing is clearly nuts but the hair concerns me as families like ours in the UK and adults who were the result of such unions have warned me about the hair issue. Bizzarely the world sees many problems for children such as ours - but in reality it would seem that for girls the only real issue is hair. I cannot understand why such beautiful hair - either platted, in a ponytail or left as an afro is considered so ugly. I hope that the awe for dreadlocks, that is natural within rastafari, and Nayahs knowledge of her own radient beauty will help us avoid this hurdle.
So my hair cut in Ghana involved my hair being washed virgorously and then combed up vertical. It was then cut to the same length from mid point in my scalp all over. Actually this has lead to me having the best haircut and hair style I have had in years. After the hair cut product and rollers were put on my head. This smelt and left a hot senstation on my head. The rollers scratched and it felt like my hair was being pulled from my head. At this point I was scared but too scared to talk either. I was blessed with light off - without which I would have been under the dryer before I had a chance to think. It turns out that my hair was being curled so that it could be straigtened. My point that my hair already felt a little bit too straight for me was not accepted. Eventually I begged and the rollers came out and the product was washed off.
What a strange world - Sister Ama cannot understand that I think my hair is too straight and I cannot understand why she puts nylon extentions on top of the beautiful short crop underneath that suits her face so well. Jah has blessed us all - how have we manged to turn it into a curse?
The Joys of Paranoia, Self Obssesion and the Inability to Move on From an Incident
Sometimes the world seems to conspire against us. Our car broke down yesterday for the second time in a week. It broke down outside the shop of one of the only people in Accra I have ever had a full blown row with. I am usually quite paranoid anyway so you can imagine me standing next to this shop in which it seemed the entire community had come to watch TV. They were of course specking Ga - a langauge in which I can only say thank you... Later I was asured they were just enjoying a normal night out, I of course was imagining otherwise and had a horrendous half hour.
The joys of paranoia, self obssesion and the inability to move on from an incident.
The joys of paranoia, self obssesion and the inability to move on from an incident.
Tuesday 5 June 2007
dark
So June has come to stay for a couple of weeks and has been teaching at a school in the arts centre in Accra. The kids here are of all ages and have missed formal schooling - here they pass through beginners, intermediate and to advanced before hopefully returning to the formal primary school system. The kids are challenging but I think that June has enjoyed it - and true to form I think she has shaken things up at the school a little!!!!!
We went back to see the crocodiles. The kids loved it but looking back at the pictures I cannot imagine what possessed me to feel calm enough to stand right next to one of these mighty beasts with Nayah in my arms and no wall or fence between us. They say no one has ever been harmed - but still I wonder what possessed me!!!
We also went to the fort at Cape Coast - Kwame did not enter but I visited with June and Nayah on my back. It is as shocking as ever and so it should be 11 milllion people exported and still more dying on the way. Even now parts of west africa are notably depopulated and no wonder. This is the only loss of human life on this massive scale and yet we still do not call it a hallocaust and even in this bi-centenary year it does not get the attention it truly deserves. Slave trade does not catch the horror of the millions who did not make it. Yet more desturbing is the church above the slave dungeon and the school within the complex. The Ghanaian that ran them was the son of an African slave trader and his family honor him till this day. Looking out from the fort the lanscape is peppered with churches and schools. Why so disturbing?
At Junes substandard schoool education may help the kids sell fish better but (without a one in a million piece of luck no matter how clever they are) it will never fundametally change thier lives. They are trapped by global poverty and local class politics. There are vast numbers of highly educated young people with degrees, masters and doctorates who can be seen queuing for work - many have been queuing for years and clamour at the gates of embassies desperate to leave the country. And why not? - nearly all of the education is on foreigners terms - health students take exams on equipment they have never seen and primary schools have "speak English" writ large on the walls. Students learn of nursery rhymes and snow storms. They are told to work hard - that change will come - tragically for most it is a lie.
Within poverty much happiness is derived in the churches where people clamour to give everything they have to the pastor in hope of a better live. When I visited the kids at Junes school they sang hyms at morning assembly with a gusto and enthusiasum not seen in other areas of studying but much in evidence at break time fighting. I turned my face to the wall to hide my tears. The song they sang was "my joy is in heven there is no fight there, my joy is in heven, my joy is in heaven there is no pain there." These childen fallen to the bottom of the pile in a country desperatly trying to haul itself from the botton of the heap into 'middle income status' were looking forward to something. But the thing they were looking forward to was death.
One old sailor sitting outside Elmina Castle called "Elephant Man" had travelled the whole world on large boats. He left the slave fort at Elmina and on his travels saw the wooden strutures where slaves were sold in the Americas. He was invited to cellebrate a childs birthday in the house of one such black man and marvelled at thier cars. Now he has returned to Ghana to enjoy old age looking out to sea. He laughed at Kwames questions on his thoughts of the slave trade and said - park a boat here now and tell them they can go to America - you will see them come. Of course the world has changed but this is the most horendous crime ever committed against humanity and some people here consider them the lucky ones......
(this is hugely dark but it is a dark time of year).
We went back to see the crocodiles. The kids loved it but looking back at the pictures I cannot imagine what possessed me to feel calm enough to stand right next to one of these mighty beasts with Nayah in my arms and no wall or fence between us. They say no one has ever been harmed - but still I wonder what possessed me!!!
We also went to the fort at Cape Coast - Kwame did not enter but I visited with June and Nayah on my back. It is as shocking as ever and so it should be 11 milllion people exported and still more dying on the way. Even now parts of west africa are notably depopulated and no wonder. This is the only loss of human life on this massive scale and yet we still do not call it a hallocaust and even in this bi-centenary year it does not get the attention it truly deserves. Slave trade does not catch the horror of the millions who did not make it. Yet more desturbing is the church above the slave dungeon and the school within the complex. The Ghanaian that ran them was the son of an African slave trader and his family honor him till this day. Looking out from the fort the lanscape is peppered with churches and schools. Why so disturbing?
At Junes substandard schoool education may help the kids sell fish better but (without a one in a million piece of luck no matter how clever they are) it will never fundametally change thier lives. They are trapped by global poverty and local class politics. There are vast numbers of highly educated young people with degrees, masters and doctorates who can be seen queuing for work - many have been queuing for years and clamour at the gates of embassies desperate to leave the country. And why not? - nearly all of the education is on foreigners terms - health students take exams on equipment they have never seen and primary schools have "speak English" writ large on the walls. Students learn of nursery rhymes and snow storms. They are told to work hard - that change will come - tragically for most it is a lie.
Within poverty much happiness is derived in the churches where people clamour to give everything they have to the pastor in hope of a better live. When I visited the kids at Junes school they sang hyms at morning assembly with a gusto and enthusiasum not seen in other areas of studying but much in evidence at break time fighting. I turned my face to the wall to hide my tears. The song they sang was "my joy is in heven there is no fight there, my joy is in heven, my joy is in heaven there is no pain there." These childen fallen to the bottom of the pile in a country desperatly trying to haul itself from the botton of the heap into 'middle income status' were looking forward to something. But the thing they were looking forward to was death.
One old sailor sitting outside Elmina Castle called "Elephant Man" had travelled the whole world on large boats. He left the slave fort at Elmina and on his travels saw the wooden strutures where slaves were sold in the Americas. He was invited to cellebrate a childs birthday in the house of one such black man and marvelled at thier cars. Now he has returned to Ghana to enjoy old age looking out to sea. He laughed at Kwames questions on his thoughts of the slave trade and said - park a boat here now and tell them they can go to America - you will see them come. Of course the world has changed but this is the most horendous crime ever committed against humanity and some people here consider them the lucky ones......
(this is hugely dark but it is a dark time of year).
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