June 28, 2008
Sisterhood Revisited
Our neck a little stiff our face a little shrunken,
Friendly and wise we open up to us
We laugh…we laugh at what we see.
A dancing cow, ourselves in mirrored glass, a dual mask, we laugh.
Always time beats
The unfolding of our dialogue.
From the start our voices mute,
Already ready for goodbyes.
Encounter is finite, love is not.
At night alone again in my apartment,
I salute the evening view of Lady Sea. Hello.
Our Lady Day has aged so well but still desires to be admired
So there I sit and look at you. Hello. It’s me!
Now my Sister, come once more,
Come and be inside my eyes again with me,
To see the evening light at play with Lady Sea,
To see late rays of sunlight touch the water shyly,
And water darkly dancing in the raising of the wind.
Parting. Dying a little. Is there really such a thing as parting?
With all this painful beauty on display around us?
The goodness of sisterhood, its yeast raising smile after smile?
Beauty that knows of nothing but quiet celebration?
Always time beats
The unfolding of our dialogue
From the start our voices mute
Already ready for goodbyes
Encounter is finite, love is not.
We’ll meet again.
June 25th 2008
Danielle without hair
Last Sunday Danielle from London lost her hair. A bold fundraiser for our Community which left her bald. Together with Naomi and Sue she once again gathered a lot of money for our kids. I tried to call her at the last moment ‘don’t do it’ but it was too late. .
For the time being she will be bald like a Buddhist monk.
The amazing thing is that Danielle has become even more beautiful after her shave.
Evaluations
June 6, 2008
Since my return from Chicago at the end of April, Ema and I have been conducting over twenty evaluation sessions with our workers, so as assess in a formal way their functioning in the Hand in Hand Community. One to one conversations. However with coordinator Ema present because of the language and also because it is a good learning experience for him. Every afternoon one or two conversations. At times it was frustrating with one-liners like ‘I am fine’ and ‘All is well’, and beforehand I doubted if it was worthwhile doing, my expectations about the outcome were low. ‘Talking with the boss’ plus ‘a culture of silence’ would make it double hard to get to something meaningful …and then the language problems that would arise for me once we would get deeper into issues!.
But in the end I’m really glad we did it, probably most of all because the caregivers were so appreciative of the attention given to them, but also because quite a lot came to the surface.
Yesterday evening we rounded off the personal evaluations with a general meeting.
There we were all sitting in a big circle, the children on a blanket in the middle, and Ema and Joyce at each of my sides. Silence fell and started growing and I had to come up with that already announced ‘word’ of mine. I do not like doing ‘public addresses’ and it does not always go well, but this time my words flowed spontaneously, clearly and to the point, I did not have to make any special effort! Feedback about certain themes that kept arising during these conversations, spiced with a couple of observations and suggestions and most of all, over and over again, a lot of compliments for the good spirit, the fun and the work-efforts that our people create and recreate every day, over and over again.
What is it after all that makes a person tick in his work? That makes a person happy or unhappy? I am happy when everything works to perfection (and if every now and then I can leave Nkoranza or Ghana in order to return refreshed again!) and I believe that Ema has a comparable mindset (minus the being able to leave Nkoranza/Ghana at will!)
Of course everybody is happy if things go well at work, and mostly people are concerned with their own micro cosmos within the big picture. The computer-lab and his three best students for Kwame. Some exciting new designs at the workshop for Angela. His boys Moses and Ema for Jerry. Many guests for Charity and Mercy and so on and so forth. In this way everybody has a leading position within the whole of the community.
But so much can go wrong too, and so much energy can be swallowed by petty disruptions. So much hurting sometimes and such bad communications many times.
That was the real good thing of all these long conversations, to touch upon some deeply settled dysfunctions, some deep hurts also. Often I listened with stupefaction and always touched by the vulnerability of our people.
The young woman who already works here for years says she likes everything and all is well with her. However after some probing and waiting this story comes to the surface: ‘They don’t like me. They talk together but drop silent when I pass by. I pretend not to notice but still, often I sit alone and think why, why don’t they want me.” When I ask her if she ever mentioned this to any of the group who does not seem to like her she starts laughing. That’s how dumb Ineke is! ‘No of course not. Then it gets worse.’ “What do you mean, then it gets worse? And can it be any worse then now?’
‘If they don’t like me and I say something about it they will even like me less and when I would say something to the coordinator it would be so bad for me that I might as well go home now’ One day the tension had mounted so much that it came to blows and then the problem was recognized and settled. But not really settled, she said, just only on the surface. The gossip and the laughter behind her back goes on till today.
The girl who looks after two difficult children wants to know if she can get more money by asking to look after another child. ‘And is it possible to get a double allowance when I work at the workshop as well as at daycare?’
The newcomer says everything is as beautiful as in a dream. ‘Right. Then sleep long, don’t wake up too soon, Letitia!’
Many persons complain that Ema does not greet them cordially enough in the morning and that I too don’t greet enough and sometimes ‘squeeze my face’. They say it almost as if they rehearsed it beforehand!
There are twins working with us. They have a very specific problem, their mother is ill and they both want to go and stay with their mother for some time. But are not allowed to leave at the same time, it is the one or the other.They really feel they should go together and sit at her bedside, who by the way lives in another part of the country altogether. Now what?
Some feedback at the end of these conversations is very direct.
* You really have to work with the clock, you cannot be late all the time. African tradition or not, we have created our own little piece of Africa here and that little Africa has its own rules and regulations. We are punctual so you be punctual too.
* No, you do not get money for each activity or each child, we have a different setup.
* To greet in the morning? Okay, I will do it. Would you do it to, next time you see me??
* My girl, really! If you never talk about issues and you harbor all these problems within you, you become a bitter person, you may even fall sick. Please, let me help you, let us coach you out of this bad situation.
* Together to your Mum, hopefully for as long as her illness lasts. That is so nice of you. But imagine you did that, what would happen....and so on.
Sometimes, when it was about trends, impressions or stories from sources that would not want to be revealed, the feedback was kept for the final group-meeting, yesterday. The persons concerned would know for whom the ‘advice’ was meant to be.
* It is bad to keep a ‘secret society’ together, like: when you don’t say anything when I am out at night, then I will protect you too when you need me. This is for sure a way to spoil the community real fast!
* To try and destroy a person who reports a problem that does not otherwise get solved? Don’t. Grow up!
* To leave your house at night and leave your children without supervision? Epileptic fits and everything???
* Explanations. How our finances work, for example. What financial sponsorship means, how it is used. How we count our money and make a budget for the year and have to stick to it. That Bob and I travel, eat, drink, decorate our house, all from our own money. That money does not grow on trees as my mother always said to me and as each mother still teaches her child or so I hope.
* And especially about communications. Oh heaven dear heaven what suffering for lack of communications. Imagine you suspect, you know that someone else does not like you? Worse, is out to try and destroy you? What do you do then?
* And at the end that warm shower of apreciation, the enormous pride in these people. You are unbelievable!!! It is not possible that you get so much done altogether. Awesome, great people, you!
And now it is one day later and I am typing and trying to get things prepared for the next few weeks when I won’t be here. Have only one more day before leaving to Holland. So much is still left undone. I haven’t even packed. Agnes and Angela walked up and down today, with beads and bracelets and necklaces, and pieces of woven material too. ‘Try to sell it all in Holland, Maame!”, as if I’m a traveling salesman. One more day left. And thank God I am on call in the hospital. That is solid concrete work, women who need caesarian sections and children with typhoid fever and malaria. That is my profession, that is where I get strong and focused, and consoled in times of pressure, like today. You have heard me otherwise but this is now, 2008, since I only work two days a week!
Then, the day after tomorrow, hopefully with a neatly packed suitcase off to Holland for some weeks. Satisfied.
Stephen
26-1-08
Stephen is approximately 4 years old, and he was transferred from Kumasi Government Orphanage to Nkoranza on May the 20th 2008.
This is his background story:
Two years ago Stephen was found abandoned on the street and immediately sent to the Nyinahin Government Hospital in the district to gain weight and help fight infections, as the baby was thin and neglected. The medical officer at the hospital later brought him to the Kumasi Children's Home for further shelter and protection. His date of arrival there is 20th June 2006. As the staff was not playing with the child, hesitant to touch him at all, he was transferred to PCC-Hand in Hand Community some two years later, on 20 May 2008.Stephen could have normal IQ. He is clearly depressed. Furthermore he suffers from bilateral clubfeet with advanced contractures and can only crawl on all fours, which he does with remarkable speed.
This is what the volunteer who helped facilitate the transfer of Stephen to our community said about him: Stephen has two clubbed feet and as a result is unable to stand or walk. He was badly neglected at the orphanage and often ignored or maltreated by the staff due to his condition. They considered him difficult to handle and treated him as inferior, leaving him in his crib while his contemporary brothers went to school. It was only after volunteers took interest in him that he started attending the pre-school at the home. Stephen does understand Twi but his speech is much delayed. He is easily frustrated and his mood is unstable. His facial expression is dull and depressed. Only when he is engaged and receives love he can smile and become lively. Stephen has learned to be very adaptable. He is only partly toilet trained.
Our plan is that Stephen will visit the outreach-program of Nsawam Orthopedic Center (Fr. Tarcisius) at D. Nkwantah Hospital as soon as possible, which means on the 18th of June. After this visit no doubt a date will follow for orthopedic surgery to straighten out both his feet. This operation will be immediately followed by a stay of six (or more) months at the Nsawam Rehabilitation Center, where, with the help of their good team of physiotherapists and paramedics, he will learn to stand upright and walk with crutches, calipers and other devices. This is why from day one we have showered him with love and games and cuddling sessions and jokes. Whatever bonding he can achieve before he will once more have to move ‘away from home’ and to yet again to another center, the better for his emotional development.
Expecting Grandma
20 May 2008
The last time I saw Augustina was in January, when she was coming to have a good hard look at all the watchmen filing by, and pointing out the one who had impregnated her. Now it is five months later and it won’t be long before Augustina will deliver of her twins.
There have been many phone-calls between our staff and Augustina’s mother. And finally, yesterday, she came for a visit. ‘How is Augustina? Where is she? Why didn’t she come as well today?’ ‘Oh the car-fare! What? So expensive these days?’ ‘How is her health, when is she going to deliver? Where?’ ‘What about the man who made her pregnant? Is he convicted? No?’
Okay. Yes, we knew the case was ‘settled’ between the mother, the police and the culprit. Thank God that eventually the culprit has been sacked from the Shalom Special School. ‘Is that true? Do we hear that right? Is he now employed as a watchman at a primary school? In a village not far from here? No justice for the wicked!’
All kind of questions shooting up and down between Augustina’s mother and us.
‘Well, did that guy ever pay any of his fancy promises?’ was quickly and precisely answered. He paid $160 so far. He had promised to pay $200 before the delivery. And a house, chop-money, school-fees and the entrance-fees to Paradise thereafter!
She had given up on reminding him, however, as the car-fare and the telephone units cost more than it profits.
Augustina will deliver mid June. The doctor at Dormaa Ahenkro, the town where they live, has explained that in all likelihood the birth will be done by Caesarian section. But okay, she is covered by the health insurance till August. Then what? Yes, Augustina must stay with Grandma and the babies for at least one year before she can come back to the workshop. Maybe two years, before the children can be looked after by Grandma alone. ‘Grandma’, who is now talking about herself as the caregiver of the new babies as well as her only daughter Augustina, is a beautiful strong African lady, 40 years plus, uneducated, a farmer by profession.
She seems made to do these things, solve family problems by taking over the responsibility from other less empowered people. ‘My husband too’, she said laughing, ‘He was such a baby, just enjoying life without any concern for today or tomorrow. He is gone now!’ She shakes her shoulders, she is all the better for it, not to have to look after a baby-husband as well!
Augustina could not come because of the car-fare. You know what it costs now? 8 dollar in and out for one. For her and her pregnant daughter it would have been almost 20 dollar before you know it, especially as they have many fat boxes to take back. The bus charges a lot for luggage. If you are not very careful a whole month’s salary gone.
Of course. The devil is in the detail, is in the cost of things.
(Why do I forget all the time? Because I am not born poor and I am nor ever will be poor. As simple as that.)
‘So here are all the boxes, from a benefactor from overseas who heard about the plight of Augustina.’ Oh Grandma is grateful and very practical. Or does this practical idea come from Angela? Let’s unpack all the boxes and stow the clothes and the toys and all there is for the babies in large 50 kg flour bags. That way it weighs less and is ‘moldable’ and so the lorry-driver will charge less for the luggage.
Angela and ‘grandma’ spent a nice few hours opening boxes and enjoying the things, with little enthusiastic outcries, while repacking them in a smarter way.
We talk about the future. Dream a bit. Just talking.
Yes, Augustina should of course deliver in Dormaa, that’s her home town and that is where her family- house and her farm are.
But still, it is only Grandma, Augustina and the future twins living together, no-one else. Imagine that Augustina would get bored and want to return earlier to our workshop? Imagine she would not want to wait till the babies are big enough to be looked after by grandma. Imagine Augustina would like that? And imagine, just imagine, how it would be if grandma would decide to ask us if she too could come and live at Nkoranza, with her daughter. Imagine she would ask us for a job here and we would find her one. Caregiver, maybe. She too would then be able to live with the daughter and the grandchildren here, at the Hand in hand Community.
Maybe a dream but it could one day become a reality, who knows? Grandma could always consider that, asking for work at our community. Then we would consider that in turn, and who knows we could say yes. We could, it could be!
Would that not be a nice way to spend the second half of her life? Living at Nkoranza, with her daughter and her two grand children, working for the same institution where Augustina works for, helping to raise the twins? Who knows?!
Or maybe the future will be the fulfillment of another dream. Maybe Augustina has her own secret dreams?
That morning, yesterday, we all admired the possibility of that one scenario! It made everyone happy and giggly and expectant, like expectant mothers and grandmas and communities should be! In awe of new life and, who knows, new forms of living together for common happiness, who knows indeed. With lots of laughter, followed by a line of workshop-boys to help her carry the huge flour sacks, ‘expecting grandma’ walked out of the gate and towards the bus station. She disappeared and we realized that she had brought a good energy to our place.
Now we are all expecting babies again, together with Augustina!
Gifty’s Mother
9-5-08
It was yesterday afternoon that Gifty and I had a chance to sit together, to let me catch up on the story of her mother’s illness and eventually her death, which happened a few weeks ago while we were still in Chicago.
We sat as much as possible in the shade but still with sweat streaming from our foreheads running salty into our eyes; it must have been the hottest and most humid afternoon of the year. Gifty talked Twi and the drumming was loud but I think I got the jest of her story.
I know Gifty’s mother rather well. Three years ago I wrote about her in this column (and I paste that story between brackets below this one, just for comparison.) She was then admitted at our hospital and I would meet her during my weekend-rounds. Gifty’s mother was heavy, she suffered from sugar and high blood pressure and had a gruesome ulcer of almost all the surface of one of her legs. She was admitted for many months and the ulcerating leg was partly healed when she finally was discharged from the hospital. Because Gifty bought her into the health-insurance she could afford to keep treating her diabetes, her blood-pressure problems, the wounds on her legs and all the other ailments she suffered from.
Time went by and I saw little of the mother but all the more of Gifty running out of our gates at all times with pots with food and other items for her mother. Half an hour later she would be back, panting, to resume work with her children. Faithful, always. Cheerful mostly. Sometimes she would complain. All her money. All her energy. Much of her time. All this for her mother. And what had her mother ever done for her? Not even one day at school, just the taste of it. No. Sweeping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, to the market, all the things a little girl sometimes has to do in a poor family in Africa. She is still doing them, in her twenties and not a little girl anymore.
I forgot about the mother. Gifty becomes more and more her-self and smiles and laughs out loud sometimes and it is just good to have her around.
Gifty is pretty.
She is giving more and more love to Alice who visibly thrives. She is becoming an excellent caregiver.
‘Gifty, how is your Mum?’ One day last year when Gifty herself showed early blood-pressure problems, I asked her.
‘My mother? No, she is finally moved to Kumasi to live with one of my sisters there. I am not looking after her anymore. She is well.’ I am glad for Gifty as some other daughters are now apparently helping to share the responsibility for their mother.
It is April 08, we are in Chicago and Baffo calls. ‘All is well, yes. But Gifty’s mother died and we helped her with the funeral, we all went there. ‘
So that’s why we were sitting there together, yesterday, I want to hear the whole story.
About a year ago Gifty’s mother moved to the house of another daughter, who lives in a village near Kumasi. (There are three daughters and a son, no further knowledge about the ex husband, distant aunties and an uncle, yes. ) Well, how did they look after her in the village? Did she go to the big hospital in Kumasi for her insulin? Was there a clinic in the village? A fridge? I understand form Gifty that somewhere along the line the whole effort of giving her mother western medication was abandoned. Despite the health insurance. Well, did she take her diet? And how did they dress the ever present ulcer on her leg? Gifty looks me straight in the eyes and says no, not with medicines, they have brought her to a prayer-camp. And she was getting better they said. A prophet or minister came every day do pray for healing and drive out the evil spirits from her. Her sister would wash her every day, dress her and bring her food if the prophet allowed her mother to eat. Many days she had to fast. To fast and fast and fast…!
It all went well till she was called. The message was that her mum’s legs were grossly swollen up to waistlevel, in fact the whole body was swollen and the mother was not able to get up anymore. The family now had wanted to let Gifty come to the prayer-camp and bring her back to Nkoranza for medical treatment. When Gifty was called again she prepared to go the next day but then the third call came. Too late.
‘No, we will come to you. We will bring the body. Mum died. The burial will be back in Nkoranza’.
Really, Gifty, so since she left you did not see your mother alive anymore? She looked at me with a twinkle, or was it tears? ‘No, that is not true. I saw her one night in my sleep with a shining wonderfully soft face and she waved at me and beckoned me. I knew she was all right then. I have never seen my mother beautiful except during that night. I will never forget her face. It was shining.’ It was recently, maybe a week before her mum died. I believe it, that Gifty will never forget that transformed radiant face of her mother.
In the meantime I look at Gifty’s face and see it halfway transformed. Gifty has done more than her share of love already, or so it seems to me. With her Mum, with her Alice and Cynthia, with our community. One day her face will shine brilliantly with light and I think I can see some of it already. Well there and then at least.
Strange and beautiful people here.
(From 16th July 2005:
I saw here last week Sunday while I was doing my ward rounds in the hospital. She is a cheerful large-built woman. Loudly she called me: ‘Doctor, please come. How is my leg today?’ ‘Nice’, I said, ‘you have beautiful legs’. Loud laughter. One of the most impressive characteristics of Ghana is its capacity to joke. In the meantime I saw that she did not look good at all. I saw a necrotic toe and a large sore on her lower leg. The woman has diabetes and had stopped insulin because of money-problems. That’s why she is now in the state she is in. The joking stopped as I had a closer look at her. She also looked very pale underneath her beautiful black skin. Blood was checked and yes she had a severe anemia on top of all her other troubles. So I asked for two pints of blood and continue the rounds, and suddenly Gifty showed up on the ward, one of the caregivers of our Hand in Hand Community, the one who lives with Cynthia and Alice. ‘Hi Gifty’, I say, ‘what are you doing here?’ Then I see the likeness.... is that your mother?? She nods, laughingly. Why didn’t you tell me your mother is sick and in the hospital? ‘Ah’, laughter again. ‘Gifty, sorry to say but your mum needs blood.’ She knows already, that is why she was there, to give blood. I thank her, because giving blood is not a small thing in Ghana. Do you know she needs two pints, at least? I start asking more questions. Who looks after your mother? Does she have a husband, other children, other family? Who cooks for her, where does she live?
Gifty looks at me and suddenly without any warning sign her laughter turns into an outburst of tears. ‘Don’t cry’ the nurse tries to console her, ‘all will be well again’.
Gifty cries even more and I take her aside to the veranda.
She starts talking. I am the only one who can give blood, there is no one else. I am the one to care for her. My father divorced her long ago, now lives with another woman in Kumasi. Never comes again, no interest, certainly no money from him. Four children, two in Kumasi, one ‘somewhere’ and then Gifty. No one else. The mother lives in one of the many small rooms of a rented compound house. She had to pay a large sum ahead and now has to pay rent each month. Who does? Gifty herself pays of course, who else. Who else takes care of your mother? Nobody, I do! Every evening I bring food to my mother and whatever she needs. God almighty Gifty, how on earth are you able to do all that? She shrugs her shoulders and smiles again. Then she leaves for the lab to give blood.
In the evening I see her back home in our community. She is playing with the youngest, Emmanuelle, and talks with the other caregivers. Of course everybody knows of Gifty’s situation with the mother except us, Bob and I. Probably the other caregivers help her with food and maybe giving blood, because there is a strong solidarity between them. They don’t ‘bother us’ with their many issues. We are from another planet, the world of the rich, the world of the white, and they know very well that we don’t really understand real poverty the way they do. They breathe it every day, they are soaked in money- and family problems, it is their natural habitat.
I tell the whole story to Bob who immediately melts down in tears himself and gives Gifty beefsteaks and money for her mother.
But our perspective towards Gifty has changed. Every time I see her now I hold my breath a little. If formerly I was somewhat disappointed about a certain distance towards the children she looks after, now….I still think it a pity but fully realize that she gives all that she has and maybe more!
I couldn’t do what she does, not under these circumstances, never! When I see her playing with Alice in the pool I think: ah that great and wonderful girl! Yes I would prefer it if she would put her whole soul and being in playing with Alice. What happens is that she plays with Alice by swinging her gently up and down the water in her rubber tube while in the meantime her girlfriends, one after another, come and chat with her, at the edge of the pool. Her real attention is with her friends. Can I expect more? Can Alice expect more? Can the children of these unbelievable brave and unbelievably poor people expect more?)
.
Returned Home
29 April
Contentedly and healthy we returned home yesterday. With Janneke, who is again coming for a few weeks to help us with PaaYaw’s light writer, computer-classes and all sorts of things. Great. Great, also, to be back home again, although America treated us well in every possible way. Family, friends, old acquaintances, the people in the building where we lived. Emilio, a very happy and hardworking Emilio, who came to our house the morning before we left to fry Bob’s favorite sausages for us. (No sausages like Emilio’s, says Bob). When leaving some tears sprinkled in our goodbyes as it may be long before we may meet again. Lynda and I who started to discover each other as friends and talked on long ends. The team of doctors of course, who occupied themselves with Bobs state of health. And a Bob who is now fully recovered. The plays and dance performances. The books and oversized scrabble-board we got, our favorite game in Ghana. The apple pie that the Mexican lady of the store kept stuffing in our pockets (Take! Enjoy! In Africa you will be hungry!)
Furthermore in Chicago the usual flow of emails kept streaming into our house, some consoling, some funny and some with very good news, all of people who think and feel with us and help our community. A letter from Bernard, the leader of the G8, a group of builders/volunteers who this year again will return to Ghana to help us. Not only will they renovate (rebuild, really) Mr. Ameyaw’s house but they gave the good news that they had bought a new scoot mobile for Kojo Evans. On May 8th it will be shipped to us already. I quote from Bernard’s last email:
.....On the 16th of October we hope to depart with a number of volunteers direction Ghana again, for two to three weeks, to built a house in place of the now uninhabitable shed (see picture) at the Hand in Hand Community at Nkoranza. Last year we were there with a group of eight volunteers to undertake a lot of very necessary maintenance. For stories and picture please visit our site: www.ghanag8.blogspot.com. Last year we collected the amount of 10,000 Euro by way of all kind of activities and we received sponsorships in kind, such as tools, clothing, toys and many other things. The gratefulness that we received from the people and children at the Hand in hand Community at Nkoranza and the joy of our daily togetherness has impressed us deeply. The way of living and working of the people over there is so very different and has changed our own lives by being able to look at it from new perspectives…”.
the house that will be renovated/replaced.
Another good news was what Madelijn, the daughter of Hinke and Jelle, wrote about the project that she had undertaken with her 99 pupils to help our children. Loosely translated she wrote the following:
“....I would like to further inform you about the project we are undertaking at our school. One of the activities during the 50-th jubilee of our school is ‘collecting building stones’ for your project in Ghana. Each year we do a project for a charity and this time it was to be for yours! (Because of my positive stories after visiting you the group chose your project unanimously).
The children themselves were to collect money and for each 2,5 Euro the child could plaster a symbolic stone into the miniature building under construction at display at our school. I informed the children here about your children by way of stories, pictures and the website. They were super enthusiastic and worked very hard. By today they have already collected 800 Euros for you. Tomorrow, Friday 11 April, the action is closed. Then we give a presentation about what our pupils have done, an evening that starts with a drumming-session by group 5 to 8.
I’ll be also there selling the bracelets and necklaces.
I’ll let you know the end results as soon as I know them. The time spent at your premises still warms my heart. It’s nice to be able to read your stories. Wish you a good time in America. ...”
And later: “The definite amount is : 1.203,67 euro!’
Kind regards, Madeleine Asantewaa Postma
Yes and now we are home again and the children look well (except for Boadu who has a pneumonia and Lisa who is also admitted to the hospital with an infection) and the grass is very green, much greener and thicker then when we left on the first of April. Our land resembles a juicy meadow in Holland the way it looks now. Everywhere people are working hard and from every corner you hear laughter as well. The computer room is in process of being further developed by the volunteers who are installing special equipment, and the hall for the autistic children (Nana Yaws Hall) is unrecognizable from what it was some few months ago. All this the work of Steven, Ema, Jerry, Agnes, James, Meghan, Lies, Bas, Roos and Eva!!
The birds have returned to their favorite large tree (for a moment we were afraid that the bats would chase them out of their tree) and I cant remember in our personal history to be embraced an ‘atuuu-d’ that many times as that afternoon of the 28th of April. Yesterday.
We are gratefull.
Campaigning, religion and the TV
16th April
Health has returned to Bob. So now we start using our eyes again to look around and notice how gorgeous the weather is, how delicate the colors of the lake, how good my in-laws are and how enticing to go to the supermarket for shopping!
There’s only one thing that we could do without, and that is the TV.
It is cable so you can zap from 1 to 100 and over but basically the persons entering your living room are the same. Yes, Hillary, Obama and to a lesser extend McCain. It has been campaigning time for almost a year already, and still over half a year to go before the elections take place, here in The States. Like many people I have good feelings about Obama, something refreshing, a listener, a unifier maybe. I hear a Hillary who upsets me because of a steel hard quality in her voice. I see a McCain and would want him as an uncle. But as a president?
(You hear me well, I respond to these presidential candidates purely from a feeling level and that is, of course, not enough. So thank God I do not have to vote in America. However, that is not my issue now.)
The TV could be a great help in clarifying the presidential campaigns by explaining in detail about the content of each of their programs. Unfortunately it’s not. Obama and Clinton are forever on the screen, preferably together, two windows side by side, and forever they are making global statements, shaking their audience’s hands, and disagree with one another. Slightly, politely (Obama), or ready for the attack, as much as maybe the tiger that was accidentally roaming the Chicago streets a few days ago(Hillary).
These last days you can’t switch on your TV, whatever channel, or these words of Obama are repeated in various forms: “Of course the poor blue collar folks in Pennsylvania are bitter. No jobs, just promises. No wonder they seek their consolation in religion…” followed by some other consoling factors which I forgot because they were not endlessly repeated as the ‘religion factor’ was. Oh was he pounced upon from all sides for ‘desecrating religion’ as a kind of drug for unhappy people. The Pope was to visit the USA during this ‘big upheaval’ and one of his emissaries explained that religion can indeed be a great consolation for people. Voices from the Bible belt however shouted as indignantly as if the devil himself had spoken.
So, it’s forever battle on TV, serious battle. Forever battle. And honestly it is not just boring, and invasive in our personal space, it is a shame. I find it a shame. It is a shame that so much, so very much money is spend on all this campaigning. How can this be democracy? Where would the poor bugger from Pensylvania be if he wanted to stand for president? Millions and millions of dollars away from it. From where and from what could an ordinary person raise this money? And why is all this necessary? Tolerated? So much money wasted and all what happens is that people are bored or, in my case, angry. Not better informed but more overwhelmed. It’s bad stuff going on. It may be a platitude but with the joint campaigning money, all these expenses for daily ads on TV, all these daily debates, campaign trails and bold public statements, a country like, say, Chad could be helped to develop into a midlevel economy. No doubt about that, so waste, waste, waste.
This morning was ours. We silenced the TV, hopefully permanently. Talk to me, I said. No talk to me, Bob said. Let’s look at each others eyes, we said. How much soul is left, what can we find in each others eyes?
Bob then retold me the story of the Belly of the Oyster, and how good it is to rest in there. And how bye and bye you may turn into a pearl, while sleeping there. ‘Yes, I remember, thanks, I said. Your soul comes peeping through your eyes while you tell me this’.
I told Bob about St Francis. About the wolf that was ready to attack him one evening, while on his way to a village. The villagers had warned him about that wolf. ‘Brother Francis, do not take that mountain road at night, the wolf will kill you’. However Francis could not take heed of such words as his mind was filled with higher things.
Then that night he saw the wolf, mouth wide open, gaping, ready for the jump, ready for the kill. ‘No’, said Francis, ‘why do you do that?’
Halfway his mighty jump the wolf fell on the ground, stupefied. ‘This is no way to spend your life, and you know it’, said Francis to the wolf.
So the wolf was ashamed and followed Francis and his donkey to that famous mountain village. The people saw them coming and were terrified. ‘Why, what is wrong? Oh, the wolf? Forget the wolf, he is ashamed. Do not look at him for you will increase his shame. Let’s all dance on God’s own tune.’
The villagers danced, but not with real abandon as you can imagine. The wolf understood how forever scared these people would be of his presence and that night he crept away in a cave. The next night one villager placed a bowl of soup outside his front door. The next morning it was empty. The following nights all people placed food outside their doors for their wolf and every morning the bowls were empty. And when, after many years, the old wolf died the people of that village grieved for him and told their children the above story.
Bob and I story telling. Better than the TV!
Nostalgia, beforehand.
30-3-08
Tomorrow we are on our way, with four weeks of good old Chicago ahead of us. Enough time for Bob to receive medical attention and for both of us to enjoy a break. Old friends, family, shopping, going out for lunches at the old jazz café around the corner, getting a ‘real’ haircut and all the rest.
But, ah, what we have to leave behind! When the suitcases are packed all problems and irritations seem to fall away and all of our community seems to glow in an almost holy inner light again.
Amma who early in the morning tiptoes into our room as the door opens and the dogs run out, always nearly tiny Amma off her feet.
The concert of the birds in the morning.
Our red bookcase and our leather chairs.
The two statues beside the door, which always are put back face to the wall after the floor is swept. (Who shall see that, who shall turn them, when I am away?)
These two happy faces.
The face of Ahmed when his name is called.
The new halls in the workshop, so awesomely beautiful in their simplicity.
Our volunteers walking with Lazarus, with YaaYaa, with Marielle.
Our parties. The face of Ema as the assistant of Koko the clown.
A cold beer when you are really hot.
The new autistic hall where Afia, Ntiamoah and the others of the slow table have found a better way to spend the day.
The heat of the afternoon followed by the coolness of the evening.
The Brass-band of the SDA Church, celebrating our kids during many Saturdays.
Yes, even the night calls in the hospital will be missed.
All the same, let’s get our last cloth from the line and go….
Bye happy land. We’ll be back on the 27th of April. If all goes as expected.
Little mother Philo, Emmanuelle who wants to walk and how we celebrated Palm- Sunday.
6 March
During last Monday’s child meeting Ema remarked how Philo is happy living with her new caregiver Joyce and with her little baby sister Emmanuelle but that there is one issue left unsolved. Between the swimming hour and the evening meal there is some time where Philo can make herself invisible, sneak away and roam around between the garbage bins. Anything filthy-looking will be picked up and preferably stuffed in her mouth. Sometimes when she is caught unaware doing this she swallows the filthy stuff. Not good. So that has to stop. How can we stop that? It happens at the time when everybody is busy so we need to be able to observe her from the corner of our eye. So let’s give her something to do which intrigues her and put her mind off eating dirt. Something she likes. At a central place where she can be seen. What does she like? She loves bathing her new ‘doll’ Theresa and her baby sister Emmanuelle. Bathing them and ladling them from head to toe with soap and sponging them and rubbing them dry. To then cover them with talcum powder. And if possible do laundry by hand, the way she sees her mother do it, with key-soap in a bucket, wash maybe Theresa’s swimming suit or Emmanuelle’s tee-shirts. And so since this week that is what Philo does. A basin filled with water is placed near the outside shower, with a piece of soap and a sponge and one after the other her ‘living dolls’ get soaped from top to toe and then rinsed clean with water from a cup thrown out over their heads. It gives Emmanuelle pleasure so she makes contented sounds and as far as Theresa is concerned, for the time being she is just astonished at what is happening to her. Philo energetically laughs out loud. Her motherly efforts are appreciated! Her laughter sounds like a waterfall intermixed with warrior shouts.
That works well and also distracts Emmanuelle from endlessly repeating her new sentence which says: “me too, me too!”, when she sees Mother Joyce do walking exercises with Inno or when she sees Ahmed making balancing acts on the swing board or even when she sees Aaron doing his exercises at the bar, pulling himself up and relaxing in sitting position again. Pulling up and relaxing, pulling and relaxing.
‘Me too, I want to walk!”
Nobody knows how to handle this recent development and Joyce has trouble suppressing her tears even though she keeps smiling. Grace and Felicia are somewhat hardier than the gentle Joyce and yes, they let Emmanuelle do pull-up exercises just like Aaron! With much encouraging laughter and a lot of affirmation of course! Emmanuelle, well done! Good! Excellent Seiwaa, come on, do it another time! What Emmanuelle does, and she does it very precisely, is tense the muscles in her back so that she sits very erect and gets like a head taller than before, and then relaxes again and curls up like a ball. Tense up, relax, tense up and relax. It really looks like she stretches to stand up and sit down again, she has the muscles right. She fetches a lot of applause for her excercises but that is not enough for Emmanuelle. Just like Inno, she wants to lean in the lap and against the legs of Joyce and walk, step by step walk. So Joyce says ‘yes’ and lifts her up and walks with her, throwing her body to right and to left to right and to left, as if they are march passing. She sings the ‘walking song’ with it, just like she does for Inno: ‘A Ba kyi a ba, a ba kyi a ba’ whatever those words may mean it means to Emmanuelle ‘I walk’. Emmanuelle approves of it, at least for the time being; this seems to feel like walking. A moment later she has all forgotten about it and plays her games with small Ema and Philo, who carry plastic blocks to her table for her to sweep them with her nose on the ground again. With a victorious grin from Emmanuelle and an ever patient happy Philo who brings them back again on the table to be once more swept on the ground. Small Ema plays the role of helper, he puts the blocks in a plastic basket before Philo presents them to Emmanuelle again and so on and so forth. This is fun. Yet this ‘I want that too’ returns a few times during every day. It is the beginning of a new phase of awareness where she will one day understand that certain things will always be beyond her. Not only Emmanuelle suffers from this, the whole community does, it gives everybody a helpless feeling. Yet what she can do is more important than what she cannot do. Kwame has invented a kind of machine where she can fill a spoon with food, put it in the machine, sway it around and then hopefully eat from it. It does not work yet but what a guy, this Kwame, to make such invention especially for her, Emmanuelle. That’s the spirit!
Today Father Pieter went to the monastery in Techiman and as usual a busload of kids could join. I counted 24. This time with palm-branches, which James early the same morning had cut off the palm trees on our land. It’s Palm Sunday today and this day is fiercely celebrated in this country, just like everything is well celebrated in Ghana.
Because of weekend duties at the hospital over the last two years (and because of an increasing aversion against church and its practices) I had not for ages seen a church from the inside anymore. No more weekend duties, this was my opportunity to go and I did not regret it. Pieter and Patrick were the organizers, Grace and Kwame joined as caregivers and then one after the other Philo, Emmanuelle, Joyce, Ema, Amma, Kwame, Ayuba, Bright, Marielle, Ntimaoah and more were lifted into the bus. Our children! They had just, two days earlier, enjoyed a fantastic excursion to the waterfalls organized by volunteer Lies and her visiting family (six busses at that time!) and now they were off again to another feast. Only one, not six busses filled with kids this time, but yet!
Palm-branches and flowers were carried along, the beautiful pink one that have such sweet scent in the evenings, bunches of little bell shaped yellow flowers, an occasional orchid and a red hibiscus here and there. Our kids looked magnificent again and what an audience they had!
During the Mass, which followed the palm-procession, Kwame was making busy gestures; this one no communion, is Anglican, this one neither, is not yet baptized, this one yes! This no. Pointing at one after the other. However all this went unnoticed by the dreamy father Pieter who walked with his chalice all the way to where the kids were sitting and offered everyone who looked over five years the Host for communion. Also to Bright who was sitting beside me so I could see how he grinned, quickly stuck out his tongue to Kwame and laughed behind his praying hands which covered his face. A little victory!
Many little victories this week, it seems to me.
Independence Day 2008
March 6
It is almost two weeks ago since I last wrote on the website, about the new Kojo Owusu at the workshop, the clay forms for candleholders and the renovation process at the sheltered workshop. Now it seems like Kojo Owusu has always been here and with his loud and cheerful ‘I am fine’ proclamation, whenever he sees people, he is greatly adding to the already high ‘smile factor’ in our community. He has started to work with Dorcas at one of the bead-tables and is proud to be on the team.
The molds for the candleholders had to dry for ten days. This past Monday was the day that Jerry and Ayuba filled the clay molds with grinded glass. Towards the evening it appeared that the glass was well melted in the right shape but there was no way to get them out of the molds anymore! They might have been nice candleholders but they remained one with their clay forms and were eventually discarded as ‘failed experiments’. Not permanently failed but just for that day. Jerry will contact the glass-master in his hometown about how to make molds from which to remove the product more easily.
In the meantime the beading hall is renovated, the new weaving hall is in use and the old weaving hall is being turned into a computer lab. The open glassmaking area in the back is now converted into a soft spot for the autistic children who used to sit at the ‘slow table’ in the beading hall. A lot of good energy, skillful caregivers, good volunteers and the an already not so new American workshop- coordinator called Steve Philips. Welcome Steve!
We enjoyed a visit from Frans and Art, director and secretary of ‘Verstand van Kunst’, which is a Dutch foundation with the goal of stimulating the production of handicraft by the mentally handicapped. They have helped us financially in the past and will help us in the future when we are ready to move into new areas of craftsmanship such as… yes what? Now we need to consolidate what we have rather than extend into new activities, so we brainstormed ideas but keep the detailed planning for the future. It is good to have such a great network of supporters.
All right. But I have solemnly promised myself not to write in this column about helpers and benefactors and projects and all that. Because there is no end to it, and if I mention the one then why not the other, and the whole purpose of this column is not to boast friends or say thank you to helpers but to…well just to write about life here in the village, whatever form it wants to take in these little stories that actually almost write themselves.
Today it rained. The first rain of the year! An old fashioned rain with lots of black clouds, flashes of lightning and gushes of wind that seem to sweep from downwards up into your face and dislodge thick layers of dust from the tin rooftops and the dry plants and trees, dust that runs away with the rain into the gutters. Afterwards a marvelous coolness, a renewal of sorts. The baptism of a New Year, that’s what this first rain symbolizes. And that on Independence Day, the 51st anniversary of the birth of the State of Ghana.
It did not rain on our parade. The parades were in the morning and the rain came to surprise us in the afternoon. And now it is night and with a bit of luck we will soon sleep soundly here in our cozy house, with a bit of luck for I am on hospital-call and a snakebite, car accident or caesarian section is of course always lurking around the corner when on duty.
Today was ‘march-pass day’. Parade-day. From over two weeks ago our kids and the schoolchildren of Shalom Special School have been practicing ‘march passing’ and this exercise is not to be taken lightly!
It has been the cause of more heartfelt delight and angry frustration among our children than, for example, the renovations of our work hall or, let’s say, the type of food we eat.
Everybody wants to be in the parade. Has to be in it! Yet nobody is sure to be in, till the moment itself has arrived.
Early yesterday morning Kofi Asare came into our house, to greet us and to moreover report that he was rejected from the parade, ‘because I’m growing too fat and they say I am stupid’. What? You? stupid? Fat, a little, maybe. But stupid? We heard later that Kofi had only been afraid to be out of it, while the teachers had wanted the opposite. They had wanted him to rest yesterday so as to be energized enough to march in the parade today. And he did! He marched and came home at noon today, satisfied and tired and a few pounds lighter, or so it seemed. And very content to have been among the ‘chosen ones’, those who marched!
Ayuba and Bright were not that lucky. This morning as we did our morning walks Bright was weeping and Ayuba too looked sullen and red-eyed. Why? Bright could not express his pain other then with deep sorrowful embraces and Ayuba did so by being aloof. They were both not allowed to walk in the parade and they were hurt. Whatever the reason was that they were not allowed to join, they were broken. Many of our kids are already sure not to be among beforehand; we know that they will not be walking in the town’s parade. They are simply not able to make it. Last year was they same and what we did then was doing our own parade. So this year again we did our own parade. The ‘parade of the rejected’. Evans marched with Alice, Piedu with PaaYaw, Joyce with Inno, Bright with Ayuba, Amma with KooEma and Ntiamoah, Ema with James and Peace and Regina, Buckly and Lola with..me…
By the way our parade is the better one, for we have biscuits and lemonade afterwards while in town all they had was speeches of the Mayor and the DCE! Tatatatataaaaata!!!
And the rain this afternoon, how it was? No pictures, sorry. But see the hazy dust in the pictures of this morning? That was the last shot of the year! From today onwards clear skies in between the rains, and green grass again and fresh green leaves on the trees. The dust season is over. Tatatatataaaaata!
Rehabilitating, claying and a new customer at our table.
25-2-2008
It looks like therapy and indeed it is, working with your hands! Last weekend our house was freshly painted and last Monday Jerry, the volunteers and I spent all morning making molds out of clay, trying out different shapes for baking candleholders made out of recycled glass.
If it will succeed is hard to say now as the clay molds need two weeks to dry before we can see how they hold out in the oven, but the claying itself was as relaxing as it was creative.
The whole of last week was centered on rehabilitating the bead-hall, which meant a lot of work for Baffo and his team of artisans. And today, Sunday, too they are working hard, finishing up the painting and placing the new doors in an effort to have the rejuvenated bead hall in action again by Monday morning. Tomorrow the newly painted tables should be placed back on the tiled new floor. Angela doesn’t like to have her working-tables temporary moved to the glass-hall as she loses sight of her children and of her necklaces as well, so she has been somewhat ill tempered during these last few days. Her mood melted away of course in view of the outcome of the rejuvenating process: new glass panels in the windows against the rain coming in, newly designed swinging doors and a floor made of fragments of the warmest ivory and earth colored tiles. Kofi Asare says that we are very, very rich and that one day he too will be rich enough to get himself a similar tile floor in his own room, if only he keeps working hard and earning more money… and I bet he is right and that one day his wish too will come true. Friday afternoon the big kids performed a modern ballet to inaugurate the floor. Now only the scrubbing and the polishing!
It was so busy during all of last week that most children may not even have noticed that we have a newcomer in our midst. Owusu is his name, Owusu with the wonderful smile, a beautiful boy who talks almost non stop. Owusu is from Charity’s village, a village called Aboantem, which is close to Nkoranza but not in walking distance. So Owusu was allowed to move into the dormitory of the sheltered workshop and Patrick has received yet one more son! Owusu is a diabetic patient and that is the way I got in touch with him and his mother, as once a month his mother would faithfully bring him for blood sugar and a new insulin supply. That’s how we started talking about the possibility of working at the sheltered workshop. His mother had been injecting him every day, and twice a day, for many, many years, keeping the insulin in the fridge of a good neighbor a few kilometers away from their home. Now that it was decided that Owusu could come and work with us, his mother too would have a chance to do something else with her life besides walking back and forth to that fridge twice a day.
So Owusu is a diabetic, just like Sunday who for some time now has been living in our house. Ema has already given the assignment to Sunday to inject Owusu each morning and evening before injecting himself, and Sunday does so happily. (Another time I have to write about the amazing boy called Sunday.) This way the one helps the other and that is one of the reasons why it is so good to live here.
This weekend I worked with my sewing machine. A jacket? Placemats? The bundles of hand-woven materials made by the workshop weavers is ever growing as, despite their beauty, their sales are slower than their production. So I’m just playing with ideas to create something fashionable out of these strips of woven material, something that presents, and sells, better than just a bundle of colorful material by the yard.
Will it succeed? Will the candleholders succeed? In any case we succeeded to rehabilitate the bead hall and give it an awesome new floor and we succeeded to offer a boy from the village a safe place to work. That alone should be enough already for one week!
God of the innocent child
17-2-08
Augustina is a special young girl who has been working for three good years at the sheltered workshop. Since the beginning, therefore, and we all got to know her pretty well. Full of fun, always laughing and joking, good with the other girls, a kind of a ringleader but a very caring one. Recently, during the Christmas holidays, her mother came to say that Augustina was needed at home, cooking and sweeping and so on, and so could not attend the workshop anymore. Nice mother, poor. Augustina in tears, of course. She left after greeting everybody, one by one, left with her bucket on her head and her bags slung over her shoulder. She’ll come back, we said. She likes it here so much so, and the mother loves her daughter so much so, that the mother will find another way to do her household chores. Augustina will come back.
Well she returned and sooner than expected. And for a different reason altogether.
The rumor went ahead of her, ‘Augustina is pregnant’, ‘It’s true, she seems to be pregnant’. Then it was Angela who heard the news from Augustina’s mother herself. Absolutely, no doubt about it, pregnant. So who could have done that, is the next question. Augustina’s mother had asked her daughter this question and the answer was ‘A watchman.’ ‘One of the watchmen of our place!’
Noooo!
Well, Augustina could not be clear if it concerned our watchmen or those from the Shalom special school.
So two weeks ago, late one evening and secretly, Augustina returned with her mother. Baffo and Ema were in charge of the investigations, they wanted Augustina to arrive under cover of darkness so that no watchman, or whoever had done this, could threaten or intimidate Augustina.
So mother and pregnant little daughter were hiding in the dormitory, with cokes, lemonade and biscuits, and it took till early next morning before Baffo had all the watchmen, from our community and from the school, lined up outside the sheltered workshop. Three of our watchmen en two of the school. The headmaster, shocked, had of course consented with the investigations.
The five men paraded in front of Augustina and very definitely she pointed her finger at one, giggling. ‘Him!’ she said. It was the older watchman of the school.
Two other girls at the dormitory, who were equally ‘invited to meet him’ behind the school building in the bush, confirmed him as the culprit. Thank God they had declined the offer themselves.
The man denied. Of course, it was said that the punishment can be up to ten years hard labor in prison. All this happened in the early morning of Saturday, and step by step we were being briefed during breakfast. That Augustina had identified the man. That the man had denied. That the headmaster was nowhere to be found. That Baffo and Ema were going to the police office with them in order to report the case officially.
So that’s what happened, the case was brought to the police and the watchman was detained in custody. The headmaster was missing. It was said that he had urgent business in town (even though it was a Saturday morning). Then the headmaster suddenly made his appearance at our breakfast. ‘Hello, tell me what is going on here’, he laughed. ‘No, it seems you need to explain this to us’, Bob retorted, without a smile. Headmaster shrunk a little but sat himself beside me and told us that he had had his eye on this watchman for a long time. For the same ‘fornicating behavior’. That he even had a written warning on his file. That would make it easier and safer for him, the headmaster, to dismiss him this time around, according to the rules and regulations of the Ghana Education Service.
I scream inside. God! God of the cowards is needed please! I’m ready to kill him, this foolish guy. ‘You mean to say this watchman was doing this and you knew it and you kept him at the school? With all these poor girls here who need to be protected? You mean you close your eyes and let him go ahead, just like that? I can’t believe it’.
He became more miserable and explained the rules and regulations once more and made his disappearance not as flamboyantly as he had made his appearance.
The same day the watchman at the police prison after all decided to confess. ‘Yes it was me who did it. But I did not know what I was doing and we have to be Christians and forgive each other.’
He said he wanted to make a financial settlement with the family so he was released on bail.
The next day we went to Accra and only now, upon return, did we hear the rest of the story.
It looks like the family of Augustina is still in the process of making a settlement, or trying to make a settlement. The police is no longer interested. I bet that Augustina is going to get the bad part of the deal. The guy is sly and anyway as poor as a rat, how could he settle anything? He would disappear to appear somewhere else in Ghana, and do the same thing all over again if he wanted.
Of all things which angered and angers me most, today no less than yesterday, is that the watchman is still around!!! He is there, walking tall on the school premises (which border ours) and cracking jokes here and there. Talking with the other watchmen. Laughing and waving to the girls. Our girls of course wave back and giggle. They are innocent, ignorant and rather angelic. They don’t understand this stuff.
‘Baffo, what IS this? What the hell is going on? What do they think they are doing at that school?’
‘Headmaster did not sack him. He suspended him. He says he will sack him later, or otherwise the family never gets a settlement! But even today we, and all the caregivers, have been telling the watchman to stay far away from our land. Far away! What else to do?!’
‘Not dismissed, that abuser? Are they crazy?! The girl won’t get a penny anyway. Can we sue the headmaster for dangerous negligence? Or just dumb cowardice? Something?!’
Baffo looks unhappy. He does not want to say ‘this is Ghana’ but I see it being on his lips and in his eyes. This is the part, the underbelly, of our Ghana culture, that he too does not agree with. Never say no. Always agree. Be polite. Always smile. Most important never ever sack a person. You need to be liked by everybody so do not make such unpopular decision. Dismissing someone is the worst form of saying no and can make you enemies!
What a headmaster! A man with a fearful, even angry smile, who wants to be liked so much that he dares not even protect his girls, and ours girls, out of fear of losing popularity. So now protects a rapist, a child abuser, if I see it well!
“God. God of the cowards come to his aid. And God of anger restrain the fury in me! Or better turn it into something useful for this case. Oh, and You, God of Innocence, Thank you!”
Augustina is pregnant of twins. The scan says 22 weeks. She waves to people, she likes her belly to be big. She positively beams when we call her ‘little mama’. She will be touched when she will see those two new babies cuddled at her own breast and that of their grandmother. She will love to watch them in a sling on the back of their grandma. Who of course is going to take the children as her own. She’ll be thrilled with the miracle of new life and the tiny fingers and toes to play with, the curly hair to run her fingers through. The smell of baby. I think she does not know of frustration or revenge.
Thank you, God of the innocent child. A good piece of work, that Augustina.
Of old people and things that pass.
10-2-08
Bob kept getting these cold chill attacks and so Sunday we went to Accra, to ‘37’ military hospital known as the best that Ghana has to offer. Before Ernestina had sewn pajamas for Bob, for if you go to a hospital you need things like that, just like a suitcase with toiletries and sandals and underwear and bed sheets and a sleeping mat for the one who was to stay with the patient during the hospital nights. ‘I am your family’, said Baffo, ‘I stay with you.’
Bob, Baffo and I, Monday morning we stood in the reception hall of ‘37’, rubbing our eyes and figuring how to start the process ‘admissions’, Bob on a folding chair beside his suitcase. Suddenly a tall good looking man comes sprinting our way and with a joyful ‘atuuuu!’ embraces me. “Maame!” Bob too is embraced in such a warm way that he almost loses his equilibrium on the folding chair. ‘Atuuuu also for the husband of my mother, who now is my father!’
Baffo stands looking at the scene with his kind small smile and really wants to get to business, but I stand on my toes with my head as far bent as possible into my neck and look at the smiling man. ‘Oheneba!’ ‘Oheneba Kissi!’ ‘You!’ The singer...the accountant of our Nkoranza Hospital of some twenty years ago! For some time I cannot release him with my grip, so very glad to see him, but Baffo pulls him along, to the reception desk, the insurance office, the place to pay deposits and finally to a military nurse who stands straight upright at the table called medical emergencies. Within an hour the papers for the ‘admission’ are ready and Oheneba and Baffo place us on a chair in the waiting area of Dr. Mensah, the consultant for internal medecine.
‘Yes, how can I help you?’
The full story of ten days of chilling, feeling cold, intense pain, confusion and vomiting, in an every other night rhythm. I decide to talk on behalf of Bob, and somewhat abruptly, as Bob manages to avoid talking about sickness by diving with the doctor into local American politics. Next day would be Super Tuesday, the preelections, and all that but still! The Americanized Dr Mensah also seemed to prefer talking politics over medicine, for he answers Bob’s question about who he thinks will win tomorrow among the democrats.
‘Obama I think, but I don’t think he is ready to be a president as yet. Too small a boy! Too fast, too swift, too ambitious, too young really. That will be something, The States, with a youngster like him in the presidential seat!” By the way this is the first time that I hear a Ghanaian speak against Obama. Interesting.
‘But about the symptoms of your husband’, he directs himself to me, ‘those cold chills every other night that must be caused by a tropical bug, a borelia, a spirochete, a malaria parasite or a septicemia. Mainly I think of relapsing fever. That your husband shows no fever means nothing, absolutely nothing. He is an old man, that’s why. I’ll order his injections immediately so your husband can get them this morning already. He’ll be alllright’.
Not even two hours later Bob lays on a modern hospital bed in a two person hospital room with everything you or I might expect present, even the oxygen supply, the ECG machine and the bell for the nurse neatly lined up and sunk into the wall behind the bed. Unheard of in the Ghana that I know and the Ghana that most people know. Oheneba has bought the medication at the hospital’s pharmacy and the nurse has immediately injected the first shots into Bob’s body. The measure of surprise is really full to overflowing when of all things a man with a little chart appears into the room, with tea and snacks for the patients. We are not used to this kind of western luxury and I must say we felt GOOD with it all!
Oheneba sees there is nothing more for him to do and with a ‘see you tomorrow’ he leaves the room. ‘Bob’, I say, ‘tomorrow I have to tell you the story of Oheneba. Now I go shopping and to the hotel, I’ll call you from there.’
Baffo stays with Bob, Geordie would come later and I leave for the hotel to take a long shower, to have a glass of wine, to call, to sleep, to call, to sleep. That night for the first time the cold chills did not return as expected, neither did they the next night. No fever, no more that yellow grey color. Blood had been taken from all sides for lab tests and the anxiety-level had noticeably reduced! I sit with Bob, Baffo and Oheneba in the hospital room and Dr. Mensah comes in. ‘Ah Bob! What’s new today?! How?!’
Looks to me a new political discussion is forthcoming if I’m not very quick.
I ask him if the lab results are in. “No, but I’ll have them tomorrow. This is one of the malaria-parasites or a borelia, no doubt about it. Only look at the response to treatment!’ That is true.
“But nobody can explain to me’, I say, ‘how he can have attacks of fever without fever. I mean during all those five nightly attacks he kept having a temperature between 35 and 36. Not any higher.’
‘Oh. Old age, Madam. That is what old age does for you. Often one can observe that with the elderly, the aged and the impaired an infection is not typically accompanied by fever. Defense mechanism get weak, the human body wears out. It is a bad sign, however, if one like your husband has a fever without a fever.’
Bob falls silent, has suddenly become a grey colored aged man, bend over and even shrunk as a whole. Dr. Mensah may be an authority in internal medicine, a personality to contend with and trained and shaped by the prestigious American Mayo Clinic, but he has bedside manners that are not helpful, to say the least!
Nothing stops this doctor. ‘We meet this in geriatric practice, we see that elderly persons lose their capacity to fight back, against infections, against cancer, all of it. Yes and then it really gets dangerous for such infirmed and aged people, if they have nothing to fight with anymore!’
Bob now looks green and has started looking like an extraterritorial, like the shrunken wrinkled potato I saw in the film ET.
‘Anyway, he is so much better’, I say, ‘I thought that maybe tomorrow you wouldn’t object releasing him. You know don’t you that I am a physician myself. So as far as administration of his medication is concerned there is no problem. I myself can administer the remaining injections to him. What do you think?’
I suggest because Bob wants to follow the pre elections on CNN, now that he is well enough, and here at ‘37’ there is absolutely everything, except CNN, but mostly I suggest his release because of the way this doctor talks about the reversed blessings of old age. It does not help!
Dr. Mensah agrees, ‘come tomorrow and take him home’. ‘But, the lab-results, doctor? What is the outcome?’ ‘Oh, not yet, but surely they are there tomorrow when you all go home.’
With a last political joke Dr. Mensah leaves the room and we are all relieved. Oheneba leaves and Baffo goes for shopping to Accra.
‘Remember I wanted to tell you about Oheneba. Ready to hear now?’ ‘Yes!’
The man with the chart with tea and snacks comes in and together we sit with a cup of sweetened milky tea in our hand.
‘Listen. ‘Oheneba Kissi. Hmmm. Means the son of the king, his name. Oheneba was an accountant at our hospital in Nkoranza. That was the time, the two years, 87 and 88, that I had to be acting hospital administrator as Sister Mercy, who was the administrator, returned for a two-year-leave to the Philippines. There was no-one else who could remotely do it. I too was by far not qualified for the financial part but anyway I did it. Then one night robbers broke into the hospital safe and took the money. Much. Police said it had to be an inside job. All the persons working in the business office, one by one, were interrogated by the police but no results. They said they are covering up for each other. (Well yes, sure. If you had ever seen a prison in Ghana from inside you would also understand why!) Then the bishop gave me the order to suspend all workers at the accounts and business department so that the police could interrogate them at the police-station. Collectively they were picked up as ‘the suspects’.
Immediately after that, in my memory the same day but it might have been a few days later, the bishop’s office demanded each of its hospitals to submit it’s budget for the year to come. Within 48 hours if you please! Great, without staff and with no idea of how to proceed. ‘Not possible, we have no staff, remember! Please send an accountant to help us’, directed towards the diocesan secretary for healthcare. Answer: ‘Just do it, don’t make such a deal about it, get them out of prison if you need to.’ Strange persons those who populate the palaces of the bishops, maybe even stranger the people who work somewhat lower in the hierarchy in somewhat smaller offices. Not that in the many years I’d been with the catholic hierarchy I hadn’t come aware of that already.
I went to the police office. “Oheneba. I have a terrible question to ask you. Maybe it’s not even all that terrible. For here inside it is really very terrible! Can you help me? Someone has to prepare that budget. 48hours. You are the only one who could do it. I want to ask the police if they can let you out of here. To help. What do you think? You want to help?’ It must have been something like that but I do not remember the details anymore. I do remember what Oheneba answered: ‘Yes Maame.’
The police let him go for the days it would take him. At the garden at the back of the hospital we set down a few long tables with all the books, papers and calculators that we thought we would need. I had no idea what to do except for being with him and bringing large thermos flasks with coffee, as well as more calculators, stapling machines, pens, pencils and erasers.
Especially those many cups of black Nescafe with pieces of bread kept us going, while all night till the next midmorning we were sitting outside at the table with the books. Oheneba working, I trying not to nod off to sleep. That night the generator stayed on all night till dawn brought its natural light again. At about ten that morning I carried a pile of papers to the typing room and one and a half hours later a few neatly looking copies of the expenditure account and the attached budget were presented back to us to sign. Oheneba signed. I signed. Someone dispatched a messenger with the budget in a large manila envelope to the Diocesan office in Sunyani. My memory stops here. Did they put Oheneba back there again for further interrogation? I believe not but now that we met up and I have his telephone number I will get the story from his side. Eventually our budget was approved and it occurred that not Oheneba but a clerical officer from the business office was the thief. He was doomed to imprisonment for ten years. (I went to visit that man once, in his cell. Gloominess, filth, hunger are understatements for what I met. I never saw him again. I hear he is free.)
Oheneba then was already a singer of highlife music who composed his own music and wrote his texts. That’s what he lived for, not for the books. During our hospital parties and celebrations Oheneba would entertain our staff and while he was performing the atmosphere would invariably change. The party could move from a soul of passionate longing, to a wild need to dance on his rhythm, to relaxed togetherness, all according to the mood that Oheneba expressed in his music. His texts were always in Akan, still are, and never even remotely understood by me, but my spirit would always be touched. I could feel him like so many could. Oheneba!! He loved the girls, was cute and tall and slender, never came alone when performing and always touched people!
He had touched my soul mostly during those 24 hours that, straight from the police office, he came to sit with me outside at the table and worked non stop from under the sun to under the moon to under the sun again, with the sound of only the old generator and scratching pens and coffee being poured into cups. ‘Thanks, Oheneba Kissi’. ‘I’m your son’, he smiled ‘Of course I do that’.
Not long after he had moved to Accra, to try and make a living from his music alone. And yes, he made it! There are so many with talent but Oheneba realized his dream and he has become famous. In Nkoranza I often heard his name being mentioned but never met him again. Knew that he often went with his band to Germany and to New York with his band. Heard the funny story of one of his so called drummers who once in New York disappeared almost immediately in the crowd of Brooklyn and was not found again. Oheneba. And then suddenly, twenty or so years later, he stand in front of you. To help! “Of course I do that. I’m your son!’
The next morning Bob was discharged from hospital and Baffo and Oheneba were there again, to help, to go to the ‘billing-room’ and to the nurses desk for the referral letter and the lab results (which were not there) and to the insurance office to reclaim some charges.
Dr. Mensah came to say good bye to us. The lab results? The letter? Ah, how unfortunate. They had not been able to trace them this morning. Surely because of the African football cup, everybody was on football, football, football, even at the military hospital, so well disciplined, they had lost control over their workers during and between these final matches. Call me, I’ll get it, once we have the Africa Cup!
Gladly we moved to the Shangri La hotel where there was exactly one room left for us, for double prices of course, business is business. The football match, not?? Gratefully we took the room and fell on the bed. Slept two good night.
Cold chills? Yes. But from an air-conditioner that could not be adjusted. Thursday night, in front of a giant screen in the lobby of the hotel, we followed the match Ghana- Camaroun. We encouraged of course the Ghanaian players against those from Camaroun. Ghanaians in the lobby around us sometimes turned and looked at us amazed or slightly irritated maybe, before shaking their shoulders and turning back to the screen again. Till somewhere during the middle of the second half we realized that the guys dressed in Ghana colors, red, yellow and green, were actually the ‘enemy in disguise’, the Camarounians! The Ghanaian team played in virginal white. Oh God, wrong!
On CNN Bob has been able to follow the last bit of the pre elections in the States and Friday we went, delight of delights, back home to Nkoranza.
We, old people, we will stay on a bit. But the things that I have just described have already passed by!
Three Newcomers plus One
30-1-08
One-and-a-half-weeks ago we welcomed three new children in our family. They all originate from Osu Children Home in Accra (An orphanage that regularly calls upon us to take their mentally handicapped children into our community. So if we have the possibility, we like to relieve their waiting-list by transferring some of their kids to us.) At Osu, contrarily to some other orphanages, the basic care is good. However the specialized care that mentally handicapped children need cannot of course be obtained in even the best of a regular orphanage, like that of Osu. Mrs. Helen, the director, frequently visits our projects and is always happy to find ‘her children’ happy and healthy in our ‘rose garden of special children’.
The newcomers:
1) Theresa
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| Theresa with her caregiver Susie | Theresa at Osu Children home |
Theresa was, according to the report made by social welfare, found on the 28th of April 2006 abandoned at a market at Takoradi. In the evening
at 8.30 pm the child was found by a certain man living around there and was brought to Social Welfare. The Dept of Social Welfare took custody of the child and sent the abandoned child the next day to the Effiah Nkwanta Hospital, as she was pale and weak. She has been on admission from then till the 26th of May, when she was admitted to Osu children home. Theresa was diagnosed with stunted growth, anemia, abnormal gait and impaired social interactions. At arrival at the children home Theresa was estimated to be born in 2003. She thrived somewhat better but remained a depressed and sickly child. Her hair suggests mild or recovering malnutrition.
Theresa is very quiet and passive. She has not smiled as yet. Susie is her caregiver (a new caregiver) and Peace is her ‘brother’.
2) Kwaku Chairman Boye
Kwaku was found abandoned, according to the social welfare report, on the 20th Sept 2006 at the estimated age of 3. He was then walking around in Tema, alone and crying, with an infected circumcision-wound. The mother or any other relative has not been traced since the abandonment of the child.
Kwaku with his caregiver Ema
And Kwaku starting to pile up chairs, his favorite job. (below)
Kwaku has been at Osu for over a year and affectionately received the nickname of ‘chairman’ because he takes great pride in piling up plastic chairs as high as he can reach. The moment he arrived at Nkoranza he started impressing us by doing the same thing, taking the chairs and piling them up into a mighty tower. We clapped for him. Since then none of our chairs are safe except when someone sits on it. Kwaku looks a healthy four year old and must be born in 2003. Ema is his caregiver and Bright, Joshua and Quinten are his brothers.(Of course Joshua spends most of his time at Jamasi at the school for the deaf.)
3) Kojo
On the 3th of September 2007 Kojo was found in Accra in the Bantsona area, apparently just aimlessly roaming around till deep in the night, when he was found and brought to Osu Children Home. He was then thought to be four years old. He has been at Osu for four months before we brought him to the PCC Hand in Hand Community. He is a handsome and lively boy who seems to suffer a light form of cerebral palsy. His left hand has little power and is spastic. He walks well, smiles and laughs and is an assertive boy. He is a great companion for the other children, as he is funny, lively and sociable. He looks somewhat older than 4, he might be 6. Which makes his birth year likely to be 2002.
Kojo with his new caregiver Patrick.
Welcome to you all! And a special welcome also to Evans at the Sheltered workshop, who arrived two days ago. Evans is 17, has cerebral palsy, is intelligent and is going to be a lot of fun. Evans sleeps at the dormitory and has already started work at the bead-hall.
Welcome Evans!
The times are changing
19-1-08
Ghana is changing and changing fast.
Media and information-sharing, manners and social values, traditions and belief-systems, loyalties good or false, the economy, the academic world, democracy, everything is in acceleration. So we are living in interesting times here in Ghana!
The past week the people of Nkoranza celebrated their annual festival. It is the grandest traditional celebration of the year. After 40 days of rest the local gods and divinities are woken up from their beauty sleep to celebrate the New year and give a forecast of the good and not so good things that will befall Nkoranza in the year to come .
Last Wednesday the traditionalists had blackened themselves with charcoal and were, near to naked, dancing, drinking and feasting while the traditional fetish priests made themselves ready to be carried at night down to the river nearby. There, in the dark, they would cleanse the stools of the gods in mysterious rituals that were absolutely closed to the public.
Our volunteers decided to visit the festival and the Chief, who is at PCC to recuperate from his illness, had given them a guide to explain things.
‘Do not bring your camera’, I said, ‘they may knock it out of your hand, they don’t want camera’s there. Really, be careful.’
My piece of advice to them was based on ancient history, my experiences 10 or 15 years ago. But when I came to the festival myself a little later I had brought my camera all the same,.just in case… I had just wanted to feel the atmosphere without really getting involved so I parked my little car near to the fetish-house, camera below the dashboard in the glove department. The priest’s palace was where the crowds were waiting for the chief fetish priest to come out and be carried to the riverside with the stools to be washed. I left the car and was immediately taken by the hand of someone vaguely known to me who said that he’d bring me to greet the fetish-priest. ‘Where’s your camera?’ he said. ‘What? Camera?’ ‘Yes, please take that camera there in the car. Why is your husband not coming?’ ‘No, he stays with the kids in the car. He’ll come tomorrow’. ‘Tell him to come now. Does he have camera? ‘ ‘No. He’ll join tomorrow’. ‘Okay, come’.
We entered a circle where the charcoal rubbed off on you if you wanted it or not, charcoaled people wildly dancing and falling over to the front or back, left or right, stuck to each other in the small space as one big body for better or for worse. The drumming made you want to join the dance which I did for a while. ‘No’, the man guiding me said, ‘make pictures now’. ‘Here, this one, the big man. And these two, and then the man who blows the horn
and then this guy with the drums and then the stools and then the chief priest again. Don’t shake hands but please take their photo’.
Really. I looked into the eyes of the chief- priest. Red eyes. I saw the eyes soften and he nodded. So I did make a picture and from there I made a feast of pictures! And then…I saw that GTV3 was there, the TV station, and many people with cameras!
And then I realized that while I had been busy for a couple of years or so the traditional customs had changed. Quickly while I was not looking! Wow! And why not!
Wasn’t I in Kenya the year before where they almost wanted to arrest me for forgetting my camera at the game reserves. So that in utter frustration I used my telephone for pictures of elephants and lions and all that. That was forgetful and funny but I think it was a bit of an insult to the people too.
And how would I find it if visitors came to Madurodam or Volendam in Holland without taking at least a few shots? Would I think maybe they were not interested in my country? Yeah a bit of a pride in my country, anyway enough to want it to be photographed. So why not these wonderful local festivals in Ghana. They are made for pictures!
And so the Ghanaians had obviously thought along these lines and seen it and not only allowed but insisted on camera’s. While I was out!
Next day the fetish priests had returned from washing the stools at the riverside and the gods could be placed on the stools and in dignity receive the signs of respect and offerings given to them. The main linguist of the main divinity, Ntoah, if I understand it well, was getting ready to connect to Ntoah and be entered into the spiritworld, in order to know what news he had for the future of Nkoranza. All over the board priests and priestesses were dancing and getting in a trance one by one, while helpers threw large amounts of talcum powder on them in an attempt to cool them off. One by one they were whirling and whirling and finally carried of in trance, ready to hear the voice of the spirit that had entered them.
The shrine
Times are changing. Would I have even dreamt, even as far back as ten years ago, that I could make a picture of the main shrine, even encouraged by a wink from the most friendly but most solemn high fetish priest attached to Ntoah’s shrine?
Thank you, times, for changing! Is great!
On the second, the ‘white-powdered-priests-day’, Bob too was among the audience. Immediately he was picked out by dancing priest to come and perform a whirling dance with him. Bob, the old Jew, as he calls himself, as apprentice of a fetish priest…. Moses would have thrown his stone tables down from the mountain all over again!
But Bob and the priest danced to their satisfaction. Pictures please!
Thank you, times, for changing! It is great!
Strong shoes, strong man
11-1-08
The time has come. Today, while posting these words to the website, Geordie is on his way to Accra. End of another little chapter in the PCC Hand in Hand history.
Geordie Woods is a Peace Corps Volunteer who has helped us during the last year with sorting out some critical business aspects of the workshop. And also, for example, with recording and filing the stories and background information of the various young people who work at the workplace. And coaching our staff in using the computer for administrative purposes. And together with Jelle and Nieske he has revisited and updated the web-publications around the sales of our products. Many things.
Because I hardly have pictures of him, and because a camera is an instrument that comes in mighty handy when sitting together during these last hours before leaving, those hours you would really want to spend holding someone in your arms rather then talking, which is however of course a clumsy and embarrassing thing to do for all these hours, and so you end up talking about subjects one after another that come up and sink away again without holding any energy at all. The energy is elsewhere, is in keeping connected where words can’t help. So the camera comes in as a useful instrument to do something physical while waiting for departure and something sensible by creating images of the memories that are to be cherished later. (Now is later, already!)
What a sentence! Let me show the pictures rather then write.
Bye Geordie. Success, and thanks again.
These are the pictures snapped this very morning. They are good memories already, especially those of your old shoes, all jokes apart. ....positive, self-directed and strong, shoes that are truly yours. Strong shoes, strong man. Keep going!
Almost Perfect
Jan 5th 2008
A Good and Happy New Year to all of you who read this.
Our New Year has started in a good and happy way, while dancing in a large circle around a bonfire on New Year’s eve and celebrating our final party in new fancy clothes on New Years day.
The ‘clean-up and take the decorations down’ exercise on the 2nd of January was almost a relief; we can be ‘normal’ again and start balancing back into the old daily routines that we began to miss. Just like at the end of a vacation you begin to miss your home and look forward to return to it.
Our Christmas days were so sweet and beautiful, all went so extraordinary well and the kids were so happy that it is almost embarrassing to write about it. People may think that I exaggerate which I don’t, really don’t. The 15th Christmas of the existence of our community was the best! The caregivers said it, you saw it from their faces, the kids radiated it and they positively looked dreamy eyed. Our volunteers and visitors enjoyed and Baffo, Bob and I felt, yes what, we felt good and happy! It was almost perfect.
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| Fr. Christmas (Dela) very excited! | Pakor: positively amazed! |
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| Wumpini and Felicia: exuberant! | Angela and all caregivers: proudly successful! |
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| Mabel and Abena: touched! | Our family and visitors: jubilant! |
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| Amma: giggly and emboldened! | Our caregivers again: Overjoyed! |
Maybe it was only PaaYaw who had a disappointment or two to swallow. This is why the days were ‘almost perfect’ but not quite. PaaYaw definitely did not show this, he has learned over the years while growing up to wear a brave stiff upper lip.
What was with PaaYaw? There had been a bit of a disappointment with his parents in the recent past. When Bob and I went to Israel in October of this year, PaaYaw and John had accompanied us to Accra, on the invitation of the father that they would all stay the night together in their house. (PaaYaw’s parents and siblings now live in Accra).
So after arriving in Accra we all had eaten in a restaurant and then PaaYaw’s father was to pick him up from the restaurant while we had to proceed to the airport. The whole event was carefully planned and we really believed that at least for the one night PaaYaw’s parents would create a feast of homecoming for him (and John). I had wanted PaaYaw to have stayed the whole 10 days with his parents while we were in Israel, so that on the way back we could pick him up and drive back together to Nkoranza, but the family had so many objections that we thought it wiser not to pursue the issue. So it was to be one night only. The next day Baffo would bring the kids back to Nkoranza. Well we waited as long as we could before checking in but never met PaaYaw’s father. His older brother had come to meet PaaYaw and waited with him and Baffo for a taxi to pick them up to his father’s house but when we left there was still no car on the horizon. In the meantime PaaYaw’s brother behaved in a very strange and distant way. He did not look at PaaYaw and did not utter a word as if PaaYaw was an unwelcome intruder.
When finally we had to go to the airport and leave him alone with his strange cold brother, PaaYaw lost his self-control and burst out in a very desperate howling way of crying. We all tried to console him but in vain. The pain was bad. We had to leave and left. So Baffo quickly drove us to the airport check-in and returned to PaaYaw to console him further and wait with him till the father’s taxi would arrive. Which eventually it did so that PaaYaw went with John to his house.
Only upon arriving back did we hear that the night too had not been too good. It was already very late when they arrived so they had all quickly eaten together and gone to sleep. But there was no place to sleep for John, which was another unbelievable thing as I had been on the phone so much with the father about this arrangement. “Please, the kids can stay with Baffo, or John alone can stay with Baffo, what do you think?’ ‘Oh no, no Dr Bosman, John should come to sleep with us, our house is big, let him come!’
Next morning they went back to Nkoranza and the event was not mentioned much anymore. ‘PaaYaw how was your stay with your parents?’ He would nod ‘Yes’, nice. But his eyes would not follow with their usual shine. . Never again!
PaaYaw calls his father every Sunday morning and every Sunday morning the father has promised him that definitely over the Christmas they will come to Nkoranza, he and his wife. With two presents: shoes and a watch.
Every day for the last two month PaaYaw would point at his wrist (‘Yes, I know, you will get a watch!’) and to his feet (‘Oh my God new shoes too? Your parents really love you!’) He would constantly point to the phone saying: can I call my father, can I call my father… in the end Kwame gave him a toy phone, and old one that does not work anymore. The whole day you could see PaaYaw on the phone. If he had lost his phone he would be talking into a block of wood. Telephones anyway are popular in Ghana and it is a hot new game for kids to talk into a block of wood. But PaaYaw had an ulterior motive, reconnecting with his father of whom he is so proud: ‘Dad, Mum, hello yes!’
Everyone of the Christmas-days you could see the hope and expectation rise in PaaYaw’s eyes and at the end of the day you saw him a little reflective. Happy all the same but somewhat of a wounded happiness. When by New Year’s day there was still no word from them I found it hard to forgive his father but who am I! PaaYaw got the phone and called his dad and wished him a Happy New Year.
With a watch around his wrist that Bob in his goodness had bought for him. Not as a replacement for his fathers watch but still. ‘This is for you, from Pappa Bob, while we wait for the visit of your parents.
He wore that watch day and night from the moment Bob gave it, and showed it to everybody who wanted to see it. ‘Oh, PaaYaw, what a nice watch! Who gave that to you?’ And PaaYaw would point with his arm far away ‘over the rainbow’, assumedly to Accra where his father lives.
By the way. For whoever is interested.
We have a wonderful Photo/Music DVD of our Christmas celebrations of this year.
We would be pleased to send it to you for cost-price (1,5 Euro plus postage). If you are interested mail me at inekebosman@Gmail.com
Archief Ineke's colum aug 2007 tot december 23th 2007
Archief Ineke's colum dec 2006 tot July 26th 2007