First week in Ghana

People selling things on the traffic signal, traffic rush, city with churches and mosques ………isn’t this all sounds pretty familiar or say pakistanish? , But its not………………….Dozens of men and women selling, bread, tissue papers, biscuits etc etc on the traffic signal as if you are moving through a grocery store…… hours and hours of waiting in traffic jams,……. churches of every god-dammit type (mehodist to catholics to “Lambs of god” to 12 apostles and jehovahs) and mosques of Ahmadis and other sects…….and above all you being treated as a white man, one can easily say Pakistan is doing quite fine.

But that was just the space around. The real beauty comes with the raw friendliness of ghanians. The real organic innocence of these huge kingsize people and such acceptance, one can easily understand how the actual white men, britishers, portugese, french, dutch may have sliced them with their sweet knives.
The chaos part started as soon as i boarded the aircraft to africa, when it was diverted to nigeria instead of ghana and recieving my luggage will the locks broken and the suitcase packed in a large plastic bag. But things started to change as soon i came out of accra airport to find my friendly driver samuel waiting for me, surprised to see an asian face manager instead of a Swedish. My driver full name is Kwame Samuel.

As per ghana tradition every body writes the day he is born with his name (kwame is Saturday), and so my new name now is Kuoku Salman (wednesday). 🙂 Things i have learned so far from mydriver is: “Papa” means good, “Dada” means “boss” and “Kaisay” means big. and apart from that which lady is of which age group(something i am still struggling to guage correctly). And not the least, how to have a ghanian hanshake and how to break fufu food with 2 fingers only and eat.

Sad to see is that the globalization is playing its part here as well , with all the similar names, Cocacola, head & shoulders, guiness, toyota, showing up on signboards with just the addition of black model girls. Same roasted chicken, french fries and pizzas filling up the streets making the indeginous food harder to find.

With just few days in africa and Still living on the periphery of african society, this is what i have to say so far. Lets see how much i can enligten myself with the next few months here, but I am already becoming skeptic of the reality of things around me. Are the things and perceptions we think we stand on, really tangible realities? or are they just color shades of another tangible reality existing outside my sunglasses?. Is it possible to see reality without the sunglasses of societies & beliefs, rich poor, black white, hygenic non-hygenic, ding dong blah blah, from our eyes? I think reality for me in the end will just become only my frequent fits of feeling of self existense only assured of itself, which with the decay of time & space around me will soon be vanishing along with, leaving me as a stone with no sense of existense, as my other friends and fellows are becoming………….

Salman from Africa