Update Number One

It's nice to be awoken in the early morning by the sound of a cock crowing. It's refreshing and remarkably earthy, and reminds of just how close to nature one has been in the last few days. It becomes even nicer when one realises shortly after waking that the cockerel was only performing a brief solo, and that he's in fact the lead singer in an orchestra of birds, with the amazing dawn chorus in full flow that follows.

It's not that pleasant, however, to be brought round prematurely from one's afternoon nap by the loud 'poom, poom' of next door's lady-of-the-house pounding foofoo, with a mortar and pestle, and with gusto, almost as if how delicious the foofoo will turn out depends upon just how vigorously it is pounded in the mortar.

Another thing, I'm pretty glad I gave up smoking, because, had I still been a smoker, I would be tearing out my hair in frustration by now. I have not seen a single person with a cigarette in their hand since I arrived in Ghana last week, neither have I seen a single cigarette sold in any shop or store. I've even gone so far as to search with my eyes for discarded cigarette butts by the roadside, but have not discovered a single butt as yet. Oh, of course I know there must be some people here who do smoke, but they must be very few indeed, next to being almost completely unnoticeable, invisible. What a far cry from Europe, a continent where the smell of tobacco smoke mixed with perfume hangs heavily over entire city districts; where housewives hang out of windows in high rise apartment buildings puffing away at a cigarette held daintily in one hand, mobile phone clutched to ear with the other, (for that gossip must continue, even while making the effort to spare the toddler in the flat from inhaling second-hand smoke); a continent where workers routinely skive off their duty posts when at work, to go for that "crafty fag".

I've been at a place that thinks of itself as a suburb of a regional capital city, but which in fact is little more than a small rural village that just happens to be located geographically a few miles from that regional capital city. The thought that came to my mind immediately upon arrival here was of the similarity of this place to my own ancestral hometown of Twon Brass, in far away Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The pervasive smell in the air in both places is the aroma of woodsmoke, from the open-air wood fires commonly used for cooking, which is how I remember that place when I visited it for the first time in the 1970s. Unlike in Twon Brass though, where the woodsmoke smell is flavoured with the aroma of smoked fish, because the prevalent occupation there is fishing, here in this place in Ghana where farming is the main occupation, the woodsmoke is complimented by the musty aroma of milled maize and cassava. The woodsmoke aside, the aroma of the homemade alcoholic spirit akpeteshie, also known as ogogoro, kaikai, (or atuwoh in Twon Brass) hangs in the air in both places.

Another point of similarity between the peoples of the two places is in their fondness for a big, noisy, raucous funeral, or "finral" as they say in Ghana.

Let me conclude this update by saying that since my arrival here I have been searching, but in vain, for red bell peppers - 'tatashe'. I have been wanting to surprise my host with my culinary skills by preparing a Nigerian red stew. Alarmingly, I was unable even to convince the lady who sold me some fine large green peppers at the market that there are in fact peppers of that size and shape, but which are red in colour. She was incredulous, she said she'd never seen nor even heard of such peppers. So there I was standing in the middle of the market, confused, bewildered, scratching my head. But I'm now determined to get to the bottom of this and find out why in Ghana's Brong Ahafo Region there appears to be no knowledge of the existence of red peppers. 

So later.