Kodwo Ink

Soon after college, I started carrying around a print-out in my wallet. It was a print-out of a Gye Nyame, a very popular Adinkra symbol in Ghana. I wanted to get a tattoo of the Gye Nyame, and thought that by carrying around the print-out, I would eventually have the nerve to get it done.

I didn't know too many people with tattoos in college; I don't know if it was a generational thing (it seems like every college student today has tattoos), or if I just happened to know people who were kind of prudish about that sort of thing. Because of this lack of tattooed friends, I didn't really have anyone I felt comfortable asking about the tattoo process.

So, I carried around my print-out in my wallet, for several years.

I turned 25 in June 2001. I happened to be in Vancouver for that birthday. I was in an odd transit from the place I had called home for seven years, Michigan; to the place I would call home for 8 years, the San Francisco Bay Area. The transit included driving to Oakland, flying to Vancouver, staying there for a month, then 6 weeks in Massachusetts, 2 weeks in Baltimore, then back to the Bay Area.

In Vancouver, I was taking a class, and met some cool people. At some point, I let it slip at that I always wanted to get a tattoo; I told them about the print-out in my wallet, and that was it - one of them immediately told me I had to go to "the best place to get a tattoo in Vancouver". She said she expected to hear back from me about it by the next time we had class, otherwise she would drag me there herself.

I went to the tattoo place the day after my 25th birthday. The guy working there had that stereotypical tattoo artist look, with the big loops in his ears that had stretched out his earlobes, a few tattoos, a shaved head, and he was really skinny; he was a really cool guy. He looked at my print-out, said he had a better one in the back (it was much better than the copy I had been carrying around for several years), and wanted to make sure I wanted to go through with it. I set an appointment for the next week, when I got this.....Gye Nyame, means, literally, "take God", or "God is great". I've never taken the literal meaning to heart. To me Gye Nyame means be humble, there is something out there more powerful than you. I like my meaning, and I've tried to live by it.

In 2006, I turned 30. I had been itching to get another tattoo, another Adinkra symbol. This time I wanted to get a Kwatakye Atiko, a symbol for bravery and valor. I had been having a number of problems with my ankle that year, a recurring injury from soccer. I played through the injury time and time again, aggravating the injury on, at least, a weekly basis. I decided to get the tattoo just above that troublesome ankle. I was in San Jose at this point, and the tattoo artist I went to was no where near as nice as the guy in Vancouver, but he was good, and I got this....
Yesterday, I got my third tattoo. This tattoo means more than either of the previous two did, but I wish I wasn't getting this tattoo. I'm getting this tattoo in honor of my mother.

Last Christmas, with mother's health beginning to fail her, my younger sister, Emily, decided to get a set of necklaces for the women who are direct descendants of my mother. She got 5; one for each of my sisters, one for each of my nieces, and one for my mother. It had a design on it that looked pretty simple and I asked what it was. She told me it was a Tabono, an Adinkra symbol I had never heard of; a symbol of strength, confidence, and persistence.

When my mother died, I knew I had to get a tattoo of the Tabono, because, in my eyes, my mother was one of the strongest, confident, and persistent people I know (she might have been a little too persistent about some things, to be honest). I told Emily about this, and yesterday, on the day when Ghana beat the USA in the world cup, we got similar, but not identical, tattoos.

I don't know if this will be my last tattoo, but I would like to think it is. I would like to think the last tattoo I get is the most meaningful, not one that I got because of an itch I had, or one I carried around on a ratty piece of paper in my wallet for several years.

USA, the football nation

American sports fans are fickle. Second place is always forgotten and I think, in the end, that may be why the USA will never warm up to football (the kind actually played with your feet). America is a long way from being number 1 in the world in that sport and US sport fans are too impatient to be fans of a sport when they don't win all the time, or in this case, where they don't win at all, on the world scale.

In the aftermath of USA beating Algeria, when there were pretty big news stories about the win, videos posted on youtube, and people I know, who no nothing about football, all of a sudden becoming fans of a team they know little about, the US became a "soccer nation", for a few days at least.

Don't get me wrong, I was jumping out of my chair when that goal in stoppage time went in, but to be honest, I was doing it out of the excitement of the goal; I would have jumped out of excitement if Algeria had scored at that time, too. It would have been a thrilling win, regardless of who won the game at that point.

I was surprised by how much coverage football got over the next few days and even though I'm happy the sport I love most, was getting so much exposure in this country, I was left with a series of what ifs...

What if Robert Green, the England goalkeeper, had not let a goal in by the US, thus changing the points/goal differential scenarios for the US. If everything else had remained the same, would there be such hype about the US beating Algeria? or would anyone really care?

What if the disallowed goal against Slovenia would have counted. All else remaining the same, how much would Americans care about the Algeria game? The Algeria game would now have meant less, and probably nowhere near as many people would have stuck around to watch the 0-0 affair into the 90th minute.

What if the US was beating Algeria 3-0, 80 minutes into the game (which easily could have, and some would say should have, been doing at that point in the game); would everyone all of a sudden jump on the US soccer team bandwagon?

Personally, I don't think so. I think if any of the three would have happened, there wouldn't be the frenzy over football by non-football followers, and there wouldn't have been the let-down, when US lost to Ghana. America was celebrating a moment, not celebrating the team.

In my opinion, the USA-GHA game should have ended 2-1, or possibly 3-1, in favor of the USA, but the Ghanaian goalkeeper was on fire. I think football, like hockey, can turn on the strength of a goalkeeper. The Ghana goalkeeper was excellent, the USA goalkeeper was just okay, and in the end, I think that was the difference in the game.

Where does US soccer go now?

I go back to my first sentence. American sports fans are fickle. I have heard almost no one congratulate the US on getting to where they did. Yes, I realize they could have gone further, but at least acknowledge the comeback they were able to go through to win their group when getting to the knock-out round was in doubt; acknowledge that winning their group for the first time in 80 years was an achievement. Instead, I've seen (mainly non-football people) complain about how it sucked that the US lost, and, in effect, whine about it.

How far did these fans really think the US was going to go? Did they think the US would have gotten by Uruguay? Past many of the other world class teams? I don't know. What I do know is, the US lost to Ghana four years ago, so the assumption that they would get by Ghana this time (which I heard people say, even after they lost to Ghana yesterday) was a ridiculous assumption to make.

As someone who has loved the game of football for all of my life, I hope it is able to grow beyond AYSO and adult leagues, and can grow to the point where college teams get at least as much coverage as college lacrosse teams. Sadly though, I do not see that happening in a long, long, time.

So I hope American sports fans can become less fickle, and leave behind the mentality where second place is forgotten, much less only getting to the round of the 16 in the World Cup.

Global Citizen

Customs officer: So you were born in Nigeria?
Me: Yeah.
Customs officer: How did that happen?

A lot of smart-ass answers could be given at this point. I could've gone with my grandfather's line: "Because I wanted to be close to my mom when I was born" all the way to the birds and the bees response: "When a man and a woman love each other...."

I didn't go with either of these, of course; I just said "uh....my parents lived there at the time."

This was a conversation I had a few months ago, upon returning to the US from England.

I'm a global citizen, more so that most people. I live in a country I was not born in, was born in a country neither of my parents were born, and will be moving to a country where I have no family.

Even though people talk about the world being smaller, there are still many people who don't go very far from their roots.

When I lived in Michigan, almost everyone I knew was from the state and planned to stay in the state after college - I was neither from there nor wanted to stay there after college. At the time, I thought it was odd for people to not want to move away from the place they'd always been, but I've come to realize that I may be the odd one.

Many of the Californian students I taught at De Anza didn't seem to have any desire to leave, even the Bay Area, much less the state. Mind you, living in the Bay Area is probably considered a nicer place to stay than Michigan by most people, but still....

We went to Ratingen, a suburb of Düsseldorf, to visit some distant relatives of Lauren, a few weeks ago. I was surprised to see how close all the members of the family lived to each other. Cousins would hang out on weekends on a regular basis, because they lived in the same town. Grandparents could drop by anytime to see their grandchildren. I've only lived in the same town as any of my cousins for the last three years I lived in Nigeria; I've never lived closer than 600 miles to any of my grandparents.

I guess it might be me though; my sister lives only a few miles from my dad, who can see his granddaughter pretty much any time he wants.

Why do I bring all this up? Lauren was offered a job in Edinburgh, and it looks like we're going to be living there for the next several years. Who knows, maybe one day, we'll have a child who has a similar conversation with a customs officer, as they travel the world.

Lauren and I, in Edinburgh

The Non-Food-Blog Food Blog

I know a few people who have food blogs; they write about a certain type of food they made, maybe put the recipe up, some pictures of the finished product. While I like these people, food blogs don't really appeal to me, mainly because I'm not a food person. I'm so not a foodie that there have been days where I wonder why I'm getting a migraine, then realize I haven't eaten all day and it's now 5pm.

That being said, this blog is about food. I'm not going to blog about how to make a caramel covered whatchamawhozit or whocaresallini with basil sauce, but I will talk about food. Ghanaian food, to be more specific.

I've been eating a lot of Ghanaian food since I came to Towson in March. Before anyone says something like "oh, you're doing this to feel closer to your mother" let me say that that is not the reason for my recent Ghana food consumption. It's because it's easier to come by Ghanaian food in Baltimore than in either San Jose or Oxford. You can't get Abenkwan base at the local Sainsburys and the last time I checked, Safeway did not stock shito.

In the process of looking for cheap flights to Ghana, I discovered that there is stretch of road in Northern Baltimore where there are three West African stores in less than 1/2 a mile. Two of these stores are Nigerian, so I haven't really gone to those, because everyone knows that Ghanaian food is better than Nigerian food. I have gone to All in One, the Ghanaian store, several times since being in Towson.

Having better access to ingredients, and just for my own food education, I've decided to try an make more Ghanian food while I can get it. So far, I've made Red-Red, Fufu, and several stews.
I grew up eating Ghanaian food - Red-red, Fufu, Kenke (which I actually don't like), and Garri, with palm nut soup, groundnut soup, kontombre, and other stews I can't think of at the moment.

Kontombre I made, with boiled yam

I always liked Ghanaian fare to typical US food - I didn't have pizza until I was 12 and to this day, I'm no fan of the classic mashed potatoes and gravy - it does nothing for me, and has no flavor.
Several weeks ago,I made Fufu for the first time. Real Fufu is hard to make. It involves taking boiled (West African) yams or plantain, and pounding them.

As a kid, I knew Fufu as "pounded yam". Technically, Fufu is pounded plantain, but no one seems to differenciate. According to my dad, my mother stopped liking Fufu when she was old enough to be asked to pound it, and I can see why. It's a lot of work, but I never understood why my mother would pound it for the rest of us, as she ate un-pounded boiled yams.

I (thankfully) didn't have to pound the Fufu I made, because we now live in a world with Fufu mix - not as good as the real thing, but I'm not about to start pounding yams and plantains, and don't have the large mortar and pestle needed to do that in the US.

Lauren and Affie making fufu

I've also been eating Ghanaian bread on a daily basis. I know I've mentioned this in some blog post in the past, but there's no bread like Ghana bread. The bread I get from the All in One Ghanaian grocery store is better than any bread I have had in the US. The thing is, the bread in Ghana is SO much better than the bread at All in One. I feel like the day is not complete if I don't eat Ghanaian bread and I'm already not looking forward to the day when I don't have such easy access to it.

Ghana Bread

I have grown to really like the owners/workers a the All in One Store. They always greet me so warmly and ask how my dad is doing, and how plans are going for our trip to Ghana. In Ghana, even though my family is always welcoming to me, non-family never treats me with genuine kindness, and I've always felt less Ghanaian in Ghana because of that. In this store, I feel like I'm Ghanaian, which is great. It also is this cool feeling of being in two parts of the world at the same time, like walking through the Asian grocery stores in the Bay Area - in the store you're surrounded by everything foreign, but look out the window and see America.

Ghanaian food will always be my first food of choice; I just hope that in the future it can be part of my diet a little bit more than it has been over the last 15 years.