I took very few pictures on my trip to Koforidua. I did take a few where the people didn't know they were being taken. I love the two below - they were taken seconds apart. I thought of merging them into one to get both kittens in one picture, but decided to leave it as two.
These pictures, and what happened when they were taken is part of what Koforidua is to me.
This is my mother's uncle and we all call him Master - I actually don't know his real name. Master never got married, has no kids, and is currently the elder in our family. He's old, has really bad vision, and doesn't hear very well. He sits in this chair every afternoon, for hours, overlooking our compound.
What happened every afternoon was this: he would sit there in silence while kids play in the compound. The moment one of the kids starts to act up Master stirs and tells them to quit it, in a word or two. They would say 'sorry, Master' and go on playing. About 15-20 minutes, the process would repeat itself. I found it very funny because he would not raise his voice, but the kids would hear him clearly.
I also had no idea how he could tell that kids were acting up. Me, with much better vision and hearing didn't notice the kids acting up as quickly as he did. Maybe that's why we all call him Master.
I typically have blog posts with one theme and one story on that theme. This time though, I'm going TAL-style and will bring you a blog post with a theme and several stories on that theme.
This post's theme: Kodwo in Koforidua: Stories of my one-week visit to Koforidua.
Act I: The world is flat. What happens when Koforidua catches up with developed countries and developed countries catch up with Koforidua?
Act II: Family kneads. Three generations of bakers and a funny sounding snack food come together in one evening.
Act III: Us, your family. How do you answer the question of where you want to be buried when it's asked by a complete stranger?
Act IV: A new cultural experience. 500 guys packed into a hot room can only mean one thing on a Koforidua weeknight. You'll find out what.
Act I - The world is flat
I own The World Is Flat, but I've never read it. I've tried starting it twice but being that it talks about Indian call centers and supply chain systems as new ideas, it just feels dated to me. Anyone who has studied business in some capacity in the past ten years knows this already and is not being told anything new.
I thought about world-flattening a lot on my trip to Koforidua. I've seen how much Ghana has caught up with 'the west' (I hate that phrase) and how much 'the west' has caught up with Ghana.
Growing up, my mother didn't like telling her family in Ghana that she was coming - everyone would want stuff. We would use our full baggage allotment to pack in soap and toothpaste, cake mixes and syrup, old clothing and shoes we didn't want. We were like a traveling charity shop. Keeping that in mind, my sister Affie, told almost no one that I was coming.
As my flight was descending into Accra that Saturday night I was thinking to myself 'man, Accra is so big and look at all the lights'. Just after that thought, about 1/3 of the city's lights went out. That was my welcome to Ghana.
I thought things were supposed to have changed in Ghana.
Ghana has indeed changed.
I brought soap and toothpaste only to see that my sister had shower gel in the bathroom that was given to me to use. Shower gel!? I brought a pair of unworn shoes to give away, only to see that just about everyone had better shoes than what I wear in my daily life. I felt like an idiot for bringing this stuff.
I saw nice mountain bikes and SUVs on the streets of Koforidua, the likes of which I would not be able to afford. Kids saying 'Obroni, give me money' has a completely different meaning to me than it did even 8 years ago. I almost feel like I should be asking some of these people for money.
My nephew has a wall-mounted flat screen TV, in the 40-inch range and a mobile broadband hookup to his nice looking laptop. I have a 22-inch TV that sits on a bookshelf, a frustrating router, and a computer so old that on every page I load I get a message saying my flash is out of date (whether flash is needed on that page or not) - I can't watch YouTube videos without giving the computer permission to use the old version of flash.
There are satellite dishes around the roof of the compound, with CNN, live Champions League games, and a constant airing of the Ghana Election Petition hearing that has gripped the nation. At home in Edinburgh, I can't watch the Premier League and mark the one Champions League game shown on TV in a Champions League week on the calendar, so I don't miss it. CNN is a website to me in Edinburgh, it doesn't exist on my TV.
My cousin pulled out his iPhone 5 so I could use it as a mobile hotspot. I'd never even touched an iPhone 5 and had no idea they could be used as mobile hotspots.
I felt old and behind the times. Ghana had come and passed me by without me realizing it.
The memories of 2005 when Lauren and I would compose an email on our laptop, put it on a flash drive and hope to send off one email at super slow Internet cafes are only memories now - that world doesn't appear to exist anymore.
On the non-tech side, I saw ramen for sale as I walked through the market. Ramen!?! Now, an American college kid can come to Koforidua and not only keep up with friends back home online, they can also keep up their same diet while they are here. Crazy!
But 'the west' has also caught up with Ghana in some ways.
As we walked through the market, Affie asked if I could get things in the UK; Yams? Yes. Plantains? Of course. Gari? Cocoyams? Cassava? Yes, yes, and yes.
One of the last meals I made in Edinburgh before coming to Ghana, was a Ghanaian meal - plantain with palm nut and bean sauce. I can get all the ingredients for this meal on my walk home from work. I taught Affie how to make a Nigerian snack food not eaten in Ghana, that I have made in Scotland.
At least in terms of food, 'the west', at least 'the west' I live in, has caught up to Ghana.
There are still differences though. The water pressure is not always the best, Ghana still needs to work on its litter problem, electricity does go off from time to time and the heat and humidity were unbearable (that can't be very easily controlled).
But you don't see the lushness of Ghana in 'the west', you don't have the beauty of untouched vegetation, you don't have people who will gladly welcome you into their home and offer you a meal, even though they don't know you.
As much as the world has flattened so far, I hope it doesn't get so flat that the beauty of Ghana, and its people, are lost.
Act II - Family kneads
Baking is in my blood. My grandmother was a bread baker. I vaguely remember a big clay oven where she lived that would produce loaf after loaf of fantastic bread. When she died, my aunt Esther took up the mantle, continuing to bake bread.
My mother settled in Nigeria, where she became a cake baker. You could see her tea cakes all over the university where we lived, in kiosks and small stores.
My mother gave up professional baking when we moved to the US in 1998. I learned on my trip to Koforidua that doctors had told Esther to stop baking - the intense heat of her oven was doing something to her health. No one has taken over the bread baking mantle in my generation and that aspect of my family's heritage may be lost.
I like to bake. The greatest gift my mother gave me was the time she spent teaching me to bake. While I don't bake professionally (though the thought of doing that has crossed my mind many a time), I have tried to keep the baking tradition of my family alive in my own small way.
Before I got to Koforidua, Affie had asked me to bring some recipes to make stuff while I visited - I think the baking gene bypassed Affie. Armed with recipes on my iPod, I was good to go.
We decided that I should make sugar/butter cookies and chin-chin, a snack food I know of from Nigeria. Affie didn't seem to remember chin-chin and thought the name was funny so she chuckled every time it was said. Affie bought ingredients and we were ready to go.
It was very hot and humid in the kitchen that Thursday evening. My uncle had come to the house for a visit; Esther was milling about; I was to make chin-chin and cookies with family looking on, in sweltering conditions. The pressure was on, then it got worse - the lights went out. I now was under a time constraint to make the cookie and chin-chin doughs before it got too dark to see.
Luckily, Affie was the only one looking over my shoulder (not literally, since she is only 4' 11"). Papaa (my uncle) and Esther didn't want to stay in the kitchen because it was too hot - they popped their head in from time to time but not long enough to pay too much attention to what I was doing. Papaa chuckled, as Affie did, anytime chin-chin was said. I think it's odd that people who like a snack food called kelewele think chin-chin is a funny word - kelewele is a lot funnier, I think.
At one point Esther came in and asked Affie what I was making - Esther doesn't speak much English so she often speaks to me in Twi, or asks Affie what I'm up to, even when I'm in the room. When Affie told her, Esther said something that got to me. In Twi she said 'Aye! He's making his mother proud'. For that to come from the primary family baker meant a lot to me.
So I continued, sweating, with the lights out, kneading dough; feeling the generations above me in my hand and in that dough. Everyone in the compound loved the chin-chin, funny name or not, and it was gone in about 10 minutes. Papaa filled up a small bag with some, to take home to his family. I've introduced my family to a new snack food that they like. I was thinking, if things don't out for me, I could move to Ghana and become a professional chin-chin maker.
The family tradition goes on.
Act III - Us, your family
My father was 26 when he married into my mother's family. My mother's family loves him and treats him with the utmost respect (most of the time). He is almost treated like an elder, even when he was younger, and everyone calls him 'Mr. Shirley'.
I, on the other hand, am kind of treated like a kid and have always been called Kodwo, except the one girl who calls me Brother Kodwo.
I'm now 10 years older than my father was when he joined this family and while I can understand people of his generation respecting him and treating me like a kid, I've never really understood why my generation (many of whom I am older than), treat me like a kid.
I don't go on walks with people my age, I get told that I should go on a walk with 10-15 year olds. I get the 'do you want the boy to show you the way?' question when I decide to go anywhere. Adults never seem to want to show me the way apparently, even though I'm sure they'd be happy to show my dad the way (I should say that my dad likes to explore so I've never known him to like being 'shown the way' by anybody).
I'm not bitter about this; it's just the way it has always been. Because of this though, I get the impression people think I'm younger than I actually am. I'm sure it's not just this; it might also be my hair, the way I dress, or that I don't have kids. Whatever the reason may be, I'm constantly being mistaken for a younger man.
I was walking back from the heart of the city when I ran into my cousin, Kwame Wasa. He's a character - he's not quite there mentally and is teased because of his gregarious ways. He's so outgoing, so vocal, claims to know just about everyone, and openly brags about how his brother (me) lives overseas. He is also just about impossible to shut up or say 'no' to, so once I saw him that morning I knew what I'd be in for.
He greeted me, introduced me to the people he was with, and wanted to take me to greet his 'mother and father' - everyone in Ghana is your mother, father, sister, or brother so that meant nothing to me, especially since I know who his parents are and I know that they were nowhere near Koforidua at the time.
I went to the house of these people, greeted them, then listened to the same stuff everyone says - how long are you here? why such a short visit? how is Britain? how is your father and your sister? don't forget about us, your family, in Ghana. That last statement, 'don't forget about us, your family', always bothers me because its most often said by people who are not my family and know me the least. Chances are they will forget about me before I forget about them.
The 'father' then asked me an odd question: are you going to be buried in Britain? This was the first time in Ghana I've felt someone thought I was older than I am. While I appreciated his not thinking I was a kid, I didn't know if this was what I really wanted to talk about. We're talking about my death now? Nice to meet you too, guy.
How do you answer that question? For one, I don't want to be buried at all, but cremated and my ashes placed in several places around the world (I feel sorry for whoever will have to take on that task). But after the disagreements about what should be done with my mother's body when she died, I wasn't about to get into a cremation vs. burial debate, so I didn't go there. I just gave the first answer that came to mind.
I said that I was born in Nigeria and had a soft spot in my heart for that country. As soon as I gave that answer I knew it may be a mistake - some Ghanaians don't like Nigerians and so saying I'd want to be buried there could be seen as an insult. I didn't know where this couple stood on Nigeria and he didn't seem really satisfied with my answer so I tried to move on, adding that I hadn't really thought about it too much yet.
At this point, my cousin said 'he already has a wife'.
They had no interest if I wanted to be buried in Britain but if I wanted to marry a Briton.
'Oh, married.....I thought you said buried'. Again, I felt that I had put my foot in my mouth. I smiled at the misunderstanding. He didn't. I felt like Karl Pilkington.
I broke the tension by saying I had been with my wife for nearly 10 years and that she was neither Ghanian nor British, but American. I'm not sure how they felt about that answer, but at this point I didn't care.
'How old are you?', the wife asked, sounding shocked that I could be in a 10-year relationship. I told her I as 36 and they both said they thought I was much younger. I wonder what 'much younger' meant to them: 31? 26? Surely I don't look 21. Even asking a 26 or 31 year old about a possible future relationship, without first asking if he's already in one, seems odd. A fair number of 26 and 31 year olds are attached and why that wasn't cleared up first was beyond me. I felt like they were putting on that they knew more about me than they actually did by assuming I was single and younger than I am. Who was putting their foot in their mouth now?
In that moment, this couple went from 'us, your family' to 'you, random people I don't know and who clearly don't know me at all'. Lauren has been to Koforidua twice with me. These 'family' members must not have come to my mother's funeral (a 10-minute walk from their home, I should add), so what does that say about 'us, your family'? I felt somewhat insulted as I left their house.
I almost wished they were asking about where I'll be buried because, at least someone would not think I was a kid and it would seem that they cared somewhat about me, their 'family'.
I did get to spend sometime with actual family after that though. I walked home with Kwame Wasa and he introduced me to his 3-month old son. The family I hang out with seems to be getting younger and younger.
I guess I shouldn't be complaining that people always think I'm younger than I am, but the age issue has been going on since I was about 16. From people thinking I am younger than my younger sister to spending 8 years at De Anza having to justify that I was not a student 3-4 times a year. I have some sort of age complex.
You don't see many people complaining about how young people think they are, but this isn't the real world. This is Jeffersonia (that sentence shows you just how mature I am). It would be nice though if 'us, your family' would be family enough to have some sense of how old I am, being that I've been coming to Koforidua for past 36 years.
Act IV - A new cultural experience
The one thing I worried most about, when thinking about my trip, was what I would do in Koforidua for a week.
My last four trips to Ghana, dating back to 1997, have involved at least one person who had never been to Ghana before. This meant we did touristy things - we go to the art centre (I was more than happy to not go there on this trip), we go to falls of some sort, walk around the market seeing just how different it is from a grocery store.
By myself, having done all these things several times, none of them seemed particularly appealing. Add to it that the car Affie uses as a taxi was out of commission, and I was pretty much in the same position, transportation wise, as I am in Edinburgh - a walker.
Once I saw the satellites on the house, I penciled in something to do on Tuesday and Wednesday nights - Champions League. At least that would be something to look forward to.
On Tuesday, a few hours before Barcelona was to take on Bayern Munich, I was told that that game would not be on TV. I would have to go to Hajj's to watch it. I had no idea what Hajj's was, except that it was probably owned by someone who had made the Hajj (why I know that gives an inkling of how much Muslims have influenced my life and why I'm so bothered that Muslims have gotten a bad rap over the past 20 years for the crimes of a few idiots - but I digress).
I was to go to Hajj's with a cousin of my mom, a teacher who is about 50, but he didn't seem to be around when the game started so I guessed it wouldn't happen.
At the time the game was about to start, my 11 year old nephew knocked on my door and said that his mom said he should take me to Hajj's. Why was I not surprised that an 11 year old would be the one taking me someplace instead of an adult?
Turns out I could have taken myself to Hajj's because it was about a 2-minute walk away. From the outside, it looked like a small red barn. I asked my nephew how much it was, told him to keep the money his mom had given him (to pay our way in) and not tell his mother I had given him this money. I paid our 2 Cedis and we walked in.
The game had already started.
Hajj's looked like a cross between a fringe venue, a movie theater, and a stadium. It was a dark room with a projection screen showing the game, rows and rows of benches, with an aisle down the middle; about 500 guys packed in tight, shoulder to shoulder. There were also some guys standing along the walls of the room and some kneeling in the aisle at the front of the room. There were ceiling fans to circulate the air, but being that we were in Koforidua, it was a hot, humid, sticky, room. Hajj's would definitely not meet Health and Safety regulations in the UK.
I lost my nephew in entering and he ended up in the front of the room somewhere. I was about 1/2 way up the room, in the middle of one of the benches.
So there I was, in a very hot room with about 500 other guys, watching a sporting event.
I have not been to a ton of sporting events in my life, but I imagine watching some sort of underground boxing match would have a similar feel to Hajj's. Supporters of both sides sitting side by side, very vocally giving each other grief with every offsides or miscalled handball.
I'm not much of a supporter of Barcelona or Bayern, so I didn't go in rooting for one team in particular. I was sure this would be a Barcelona crowd though. I don't think of Bayern Munich as being a global brand the way some of the Premier League and La Liga teams are, so the eruption that happened when Bayern scored the first goal was a bit of a shock. Guys were out of their seats, cheering and rubbing it into the face of the Barcelona fans.
There was some back and forth taunting between the Bayern folks and the Barcelona folks after this first goal. But by the time it got to 3-0, the Barcelona folk were silent. The Bayern supporters held up 3 fingers, sang the 'ole!' song over and over, we're bouncing up and down (blocking the view for a lot of us), and it was over for Barcelona that night. Even I jumped out of my seat as the fourth goal went in - partly because I couldn't see anything when everyone else jumped up the previous three times.
I found my nephew on the way out as we all poured into the street, feeling ever so slightly cooler, my shirt completely dampened by my sweat and that of the guys I sat next to. The guys with the Barcelona shirts were mocked and the Munich fans cheered, and we made our 2-minute walk home.
I love the game of football. For those two hours, millions of people all over the world watched Bayern beat Barcelona. Whether it was alone in a living room in Edinburgh, on a computer at work in Silicon Valley, or in the thousands of places like Hajj's in the developing world. For those two hours, we were all the same - rooting for our team, yelling at a ref, taunting those who supported the other team. For those two hours, at least for the football fans of the world, the world was as flat as the field the game was played on.
That was my welcome to Ghana
I own The World Is Flat, but I've never read it. I've tried starting it twice but being that it talks about Indian call centers and supply chain systems as new ideas, it just feels dated to me. Anyone who has studied business in some capacity in the past ten years knows this already and is not being told anything new.
I thought about world-flattening a lot on my trip to Koforidua. I've seen how much Ghana has caught up with 'the west' (I hate that phrase) and how much 'the west' has caught up with Ghana.
Growing up, my mother didn't like telling her family in Ghana that she was coming - everyone would want stuff. We would use our full baggage allotment to pack in soap and toothpaste, cake mixes and syrup, old clothing and shoes we didn't want. We were like a traveling charity shop. Keeping that in mind, my sister Affie, told almost no one that I was coming.
As my flight was descending into Accra that Saturday night I was thinking to myself 'man, Accra is so big and look at all the lights'. Just after that thought, about 1/3 of the city's lights went out. That was my welcome to Ghana.
I thought things were supposed to have changed in Ghana.
Ghana has indeed changed.
I brought soap and toothpaste only to see that my sister had shower gel in the bathroom that was given to me to use. Shower gel!? I brought a pair of unworn shoes to give away, only to see that just about everyone had better shoes than what I wear in my daily life. I felt like an idiot for bringing this stuff.
I saw nice mountain bikes and SUVs on the streets of Koforidua, the likes of which I would not be able to afford. Kids saying 'Obroni, give me money' has a completely different meaning to me than it did even 8 years ago. I almost feel like I should be asking some of these people for money.
My nephew has a wall-mounted flat screen TV, in the 40-inch range and a mobile broadband hookup to his nice looking laptop. I have a 22-inch TV that sits on a bookshelf, a frustrating router, and a computer so old that on every page I load I get a message saying my flash is out of date (whether flash is needed on that page or not) - I can't watch YouTube videos without giving the computer permission to use the old version of flash.
There are satellite dishes around the roof of the compound, with CNN, live Champions League games, and a constant airing of the Ghana Election Petition hearing that has gripped the nation. At home in Edinburgh, I can't watch the Premier League and mark the one Champions League game shown on TV in a Champions League week on the calendar, so I don't miss it. CNN is a website to me in Edinburgh, it doesn't exist on my TV.
My cousin pulled out his iPhone 5 so I could use it as a mobile hotspot. I'd never even touched an iPhone 5 and had no idea they could be used as mobile hotspots.
I felt old and behind the times. Ghana had come and passed me by without me realizing it.
The memories of 2005 when Lauren and I would compose an email on our laptop, put it on a flash drive and hope to send off one email at super slow Internet cafes are only memories now - that world doesn't appear to exist anymore.
On the non-tech side, I saw ramen for sale as I walked through the market. Ramen!?! Now, an American college kid can come to Koforidua and not only keep up with friends back home online, they can also keep up their same diet while they are here. Crazy!
But 'the west' has also caught up with Ghana in some ways.
As we walked through the market, Affie asked if I could get things in the UK; Yams? Yes. Plantains? Of course. Gari? Cocoyams? Cassava? Yes, yes, and yes.
One of the last meals I made in Edinburgh before coming to Ghana, was a Ghanaian meal - plantain with palm nut and bean sauce. I can get all the ingredients for this meal on my walk home from work. I taught Affie how to make a Nigerian snack food not eaten in Ghana, that I have made in Scotland.
At least in terms of food, 'the west', at least 'the west' I live in, has caught up to Ghana.
There are still differences though. The water pressure is not always the best, Ghana still needs to work on its litter problem, electricity does go off from time to time and the heat and humidity were unbearable (that can't be very easily controlled).
But you don't see the lushness of Ghana in 'the west', you don't have the beauty of untouched vegetation, you don't have people who will gladly welcome you into their home and offer you a meal, even though they don't know you.
As much as the world has flattened so far, I hope it doesn't get so flat that the beauty of Ghana, and its people, are lost.
Act II - Family kneads
So I continued, sweating, with the lights out, kneading dough
Baking is in my blood. My grandmother was a bread baker. I vaguely remember a big clay oven where she lived that would produce loaf after loaf of fantastic bread. When she died, my aunt Esther took up the mantle, continuing to bake bread.
My mother settled in Nigeria, where she became a cake baker. You could see her tea cakes all over the university where we lived, in kiosks and small stores.
My mother gave up professional baking when we moved to the US in 1998. I learned on my trip to Koforidua that doctors had told Esther to stop baking - the intense heat of her oven was doing something to her health. No one has taken over the bread baking mantle in my generation and that aspect of my family's heritage may be lost.
I like to bake. The greatest gift my mother gave me was the time she spent teaching me to bake. While I don't bake professionally (though the thought of doing that has crossed my mind many a time), I have tried to keep the baking tradition of my family alive in my own small way.
Before I got to Koforidua, Affie had asked me to bring some recipes to make stuff while I visited - I think the baking gene bypassed Affie. Armed with recipes on my iPod, I was good to go.
We decided that I should make sugar/butter cookies and chin-chin, a snack food I know of from Nigeria. Affie didn't seem to remember chin-chin and thought the name was funny so she chuckled every time it was said. Affie bought ingredients and we were ready to go.
It was very hot and humid in the kitchen that Thursday evening. My uncle had come to the house for a visit; Esther was milling about; I was to make chin-chin and cookies with family looking on, in sweltering conditions. The pressure was on, then it got worse - the lights went out. I now was under a time constraint to make the cookie and chin-chin doughs before it got too dark to see.
Luckily, Affie was the only one looking over my shoulder (not literally, since she is only 4' 11"). Papaa (my uncle) and Esther didn't want to stay in the kitchen because it was too hot - they popped their head in from time to time but not long enough to pay too much attention to what I was doing. Papaa chuckled, as Affie did, anytime chin-chin was said. I think it's odd that people who like a snack food called kelewele think chin-chin is a funny word - kelewele is a lot funnier, I think.
At one point Esther came in and asked Affie what I was making - Esther doesn't speak much English so she often speaks to me in Twi, or asks Affie what I'm up to, even when I'm in the room. When Affie told her, Esther said something that got to me. In Twi she said 'Aye! He's making his mother proud'. For that to come from the primary family baker meant a lot to me.
So I continued, sweating, with the lights out, kneading dough; feeling the generations above me in my hand and in that dough. Everyone in the compound loved the chin-chin, funny name or not, and it was gone in about 10 minutes. Papaa filled up a small bag with some, to take home to his family. I've introduced my family to a new snack food that they like. I was thinking, if things don't out for me, I could move to Ghana and become a professional chin-chin maker.
The family tradition goes on.
Act III - Us, your family
....I thought you said buried
My father was 26 when he married into my mother's family. My mother's family loves him and treats him with the utmost respect (most of the time). He is almost treated like an elder, even when he was younger, and everyone calls him 'Mr. Shirley'.
I, on the other hand, am kind of treated like a kid and have always been called Kodwo, except the one girl who calls me Brother Kodwo.
I'm now 10 years older than my father was when he joined this family and while I can understand people of his generation respecting him and treating me like a kid, I've never really understood why my generation (many of whom I am older than), treat me like a kid.
I don't go on walks with people my age, I get told that I should go on a walk with 10-15 year olds. I get the 'do you want the boy to show you the way?' question when I decide to go anywhere. Adults never seem to want to show me the way apparently, even though I'm sure they'd be happy to show my dad the way (I should say that my dad likes to explore so I've never known him to like being 'shown the way' by anybody).
I'm not bitter about this; it's just the way it has always been. Because of this though, I get the impression people think I'm younger than I actually am. I'm sure it's not just this; it might also be my hair, the way I dress, or that I don't have kids. Whatever the reason may be, I'm constantly being mistaken for a younger man.
I was walking back from the heart of the city when I ran into my cousin, Kwame Wasa. He's a character - he's not quite there mentally and is teased because of his gregarious ways. He's so outgoing, so vocal, claims to know just about everyone, and openly brags about how his brother (me) lives overseas. He is also just about impossible to shut up or say 'no' to, so once I saw him that morning I knew what I'd be in for.
He greeted me, introduced me to the people he was with, and wanted to take me to greet his 'mother and father' - everyone in Ghana is your mother, father, sister, or brother so that meant nothing to me, especially since I know who his parents are and I know that they were nowhere near Koforidua at the time.
I went to the house of these people, greeted them, then listened to the same stuff everyone says - how long are you here? why such a short visit? how is Britain? how is your father and your sister? don't forget about us, your family, in Ghana. That last statement, 'don't forget about us, your family', always bothers me because its most often said by people who are not my family and know me the least. Chances are they will forget about me before I forget about them.
The 'father' then asked me an odd question: are you going to be buried in Britain? This was the first time in Ghana I've felt someone thought I was older than I am. While I appreciated his not thinking I was a kid, I didn't know if this was what I really wanted to talk about. We're talking about my death now? Nice to meet you too, guy.
How do you answer that question? For one, I don't want to be buried at all, but cremated and my ashes placed in several places around the world (I feel sorry for whoever will have to take on that task). But after the disagreements about what should be done with my mother's body when she died, I wasn't about to get into a cremation vs. burial debate, so I didn't go there. I just gave the first answer that came to mind.
I said that I was born in Nigeria and had a soft spot in my heart for that country. As soon as I gave that answer I knew it may be a mistake - some Ghanaians don't like Nigerians and so saying I'd want to be buried there could be seen as an insult. I didn't know where this couple stood on Nigeria and he didn't seem really satisfied with my answer so I tried to move on, adding that I hadn't really thought about it too much yet.
At this point, my cousin said 'he already has a wife'.
They had no interest if I wanted to be buried in Britain but if I wanted to marry a Briton.
'Oh, married.....I thought you said buried'. Again, I felt that I had put my foot in my mouth. I smiled at the misunderstanding. He didn't. I felt like Karl Pilkington.
I broke the tension by saying I had been with my wife for nearly 10 years and that she was neither Ghanian nor British, but American. I'm not sure how they felt about that answer, but at this point I didn't care.
'How old are you?', the wife asked, sounding shocked that I could be in a 10-year relationship. I told her I as 36 and they both said they thought I was much younger. I wonder what 'much younger' meant to them: 31? 26? Surely I don't look 21. Even asking a 26 or 31 year old about a possible future relationship, without first asking if he's already in one, seems odd. A fair number of 26 and 31 year olds are attached and why that wasn't cleared up first was beyond me. I felt like they were putting on that they knew more about me than they actually did by assuming I was single and younger than I am. Who was putting their foot in their mouth now?
In that moment, this couple went from 'us, your family' to 'you, random people I don't know and who clearly don't know me at all'. Lauren has been to Koforidua twice with me. These 'family' members must not have come to my mother's funeral (a 10-minute walk from their home, I should add), so what does that say about 'us, your family'? I felt somewhat insulted as I left their house.
I almost wished they were asking about where I'll be buried because, at least someone would not think I was a kid and it would seem that they cared somewhat about me, their 'family'.
I did get to spend sometime with actual family after that though. I walked home with Kwame Wasa and he introduced me to his 3-month old son. The family I hang out with seems to be getting younger and younger.
I guess I shouldn't be complaining that people always think I'm younger than I am, but the age issue has been going on since I was about 16. From people thinking I am younger than my younger sister to spending 8 years at De Anza having to justify that I was not a student 3-4 times a year. I have some sort of age complex.
You don't see many people complaining about how young people think they are, but this isn't the real world. This is Jeffersonia (that sentence shows you just how mature I am). It would be nice though if 'us, your family' would be family enough to have some sense of how old I am, being that I've been coming to Koforidua for past 36 years.
Act IV - A new cultural experience
So there I was, in a very hot room with about 500 other guys
The one thing I worried most about, when thinking about my trip, was what I would do in Koforidua for a week.
My last four trips to Ghana, dating back to 1997, have involved at least one person who had never been to Ghana before. This meant we did touristy things - we go to the art centre (I was more than happy to not go there on this trip), we go to falls of some sort, walk around the market seeing just how different it is from a grocery store.
By myself, having done all these things several times, none of them seemed particularly appealing. Add to it that the car Affie uses as a taxi was out of commission, and I was pretty much in the same position, transportation wise, as I am in Edinburgh - a walker.
Once I saw the satellites on the house, I penciled in something to do on Tuesday and Wednesday nights - Champions League. At least that would be something to look forward to.
On Tuesday, a few hours before Barcelona was to take on Bayern Munich, I was told that that game would not be on TV. I would have to go to Hajj's to watch it. I had no idea what Hajj's was, except that it was probably owned by someone who had made the Hajj (why I know that gives an inkling of how much Muslims have influenced my life and why I'm so bothered that Muslims have gotten a bad rap over the past 20 years for the crimes of a few idiots - but I digress).
I was to go to Hajj's with a cousin of my mom, a teacher who is about 50, but he didn't seem to be around when the game started so I guessed it wouldn't happen.
At the time the game was about to start, my 11 year old nephew knocked on my door and said that his mom said he should take me to Hajj's. Why was I not surprised that an 11 year old would be the one taking me someplace instead of an adult?
Turns out I could have taken myself to Hajj's because it was about a 2-minute walk away. From the outside, it looked like a small red barn. I asked my nephew how much it was, told him to keep the money his mom had given him (to pay our way in) and not tell his mother I had given him this money. I paid our 2 Cedis and we walked in.
The game had already started.
Hajj's looked like a cross between a fringe venue, a movie theater, and a stadium. It was a dark room with a projection screen showing the game, rows and rows of benches, with an aisle down the middle; about 500 guys packed in tight, shoulder to shoulder. There were also some guys standing along the walls of the room and some kneeling in the aisle at the front of the room. There were ceiling fans to circulate the air, but being that we were in Koforidua, it was a hot, humid, sticky, room. Hajj's would definitely not meet Health and Safety regulations in the UK.
I lost my nephew in entering and he ended up in the front of the room somewhere. I was about 1/2 way up the room, in the middle of one of the benches.
So there I was, in a very hot room with about 500 other guys, watching a sporting event.
I have not been to a ton of sporting events in my life, but I imagine watching some sort of underground boxing match would have a similar feel to Hajj's. Supporters of both sides sitting side by side, very vocally giving each other grief with every offsides or miscalled handball.
I'm not much of a supporter of Barcelona or Bayern, so I didn't go in rooting for one team in particular. I was sure this would be a Barcelona crowd though. I don't think of Bayern Munich as being a global brand the way some of the Premier League and La Liga teams are, so the eruption that happened when Bayern scored the first goal was a bit of a shock. Guys were out of their seats, cheering and rubbing it into the face of the Barcelona fans.
There was some back and forth taunting between the Bayern folks and the Barcelona folks after this first goal. But by the time it got to 3-0, the Barcelona folk were silent. The Bayern supporters held up 3 fingers, sang the 'ole!' song over and over, we're bouncing up and down (blocking the view for a lot of us), and it was over for Barcelona that night. Even I jumped out of my seat as the fourth goal went in - partly because I couldn't see anything when everyone else jumped up the previous three times.
I found my nephew on the way out as we all poured into the street, feeling ever so slightly cooler, my shirt completely dampened by my sweat and that of the guys I sat next to. The guys with the Barcelona shirts were mocked and the Munich fans cheered, and we made our 2-minute walk home.
I love the game of football. For those two hours, millions of people all over the world watched Bayern beat Barcelona. Whether it was alone in a living room in Edinburgh, on a computer at work in Silicon Valley, or in the thousands of places like Hajj's in the developing world. For those two hours, we were all the same - rooting for our team, yelling at a ref, taunting those who supported the other team. For those two hours, at least for the football fans of the world, the world was as flat as the field the game was played on.
