passing by

My farewells always include rain. It was Friday morning and I saw the sunrise. I opened my backpack and found the lighter Zoran had given me the night before –Stay you- It said. I smiled. My departure was imminent. It was drizzling and the streets were as empty as I had never seen them in Kumasi. Not even the waakye stands were ready to serve breakfast (Waakye is a traditional dish made with rice, beans and a spicy stew, simply delicious). I said proper good byes to my housemates and took my terribly large luggage once Ray arrived. The adventure was about to begin. Raymond and Agyemang, two friends and coworkers came with me to the Volta region. I had been told not to leave Ghana without visiting it. We took a long tro-tro ride into Peki. Ray and Agyemang had been telling me that they had never been in the Volta region or anywhere outside of Ghana. They were seeing mountains for the first time. Although only 1000m high, the mountains were embracing me again, just as they do when...

The stars cloaked the night. The trees protected us from the darkness with a moon that shone smiling with full teeth. I wish I had the knowledge to recognize all the noises from the jungle but just listening to them made me feel that I was part of something bigger, that life is one. We spent the night at Kakoum National Park. It was the ending I needed to a day that had kept my throat in a knot. Elmina is the most colorful place I went to during this trip. It is incredible that the energy there is as powerful and unlike any other place where human atrocities have been committed (where I have visited). The people there seem to have fully reclaimed it.  There was sorrow in the halls of the castle though. Feces, tears, urine, sweat and blood all belonged to the floor of the overcrowded cells. Desperation, resilience, hunger and resignation became human essence, where women would have to either choose to gracefully give their bodies to the governors or be beaten, tied to a c...

Two Akan hunters went out into the forest and were enchanted by a spider making its web. They learned from the spider how to use all of their extremities to weave what we know today as kente. I heard the story of the hunters a couple years ago in the Council of the Arts and Humanities in Staten Island ( COAHSI ) and had seen the loom and the weaving there as well. There is a big Ghanaian community in Staten Island and I had met some of them while volunteering at El Centro del Inmigrante through the Staten Island Immigration Coalition. I never would have imagined I would be in their hometown, Bonwire, years later. I had emailed Sam, one of my Ghanaian friends living in NY, and he gave me the number of the Gyasehene (divisional chief) in Bonwire. He was very kind to receive Allison and I in his home. Here is a picture of the Gyasehene, Nana Kwame Kwanning and I. He called some weavers he trusted and they took us to the Weaving Center. There were so many looms, so many ke...

The asteroid’s velocity only decreased a bit once it hit the atmosphere and immediately impacted the Earth. Massive destruction forced animal migrations. After centuries, there was only emptiness in the crater. One brave leaf started it all. Suddenly a rain forest had developed and the crater served as a small water reservoir: the only one in the area. It was past the Pleistocene and humans as they are recognized now had developed around the rainforest. From pond to lagoon, the floods and droughts transformed the landscape. The Ashanti kingdom was formed around the ever-changing pond. One day, a hunter was following an antelope (twe) and once it saw the antelope touch the small pond, immediately the water body started growing as a throbbing heart. He attributed it to the Ashanti goddess Bosom. This is how Lake Bosomtwe was born. This lake enchanted me and its sacredness is certainly a function of the ecosystem it creates, the vastness within the crater. Nonetheless, it is ha...