With Love From The 'Power House'

‘Akwaaba!”  That’s ‘welcome’ in the Ghanaian language ‘twi’, the other common language is ‘Ga’ and they are to Accra as Yoruba is to Lagos. I had a warm welcome and in my over one week stay I’ve had the opportunity to take a walk around, been to ‘Tawala’ beach ,went to the forex bureau to change money to the Ghanaian Cedis and I find that they still spend coins( Pesewas).

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Some of the things I find interesting so far are the food and the language, especially the pronunciation of specific English words. This reminds me of being an…(please pardon my Ghanaian accent) ‘asher’ (usher) in my ‘cherch’ and the chief-asher  who grew ‘ap’ in Ghana would ask another  ‘asher’ to summon me and he’d say  “call me Miss Gehrge, tell ‘hair’ to ‘cam’ right now”, and she’d relay the message in that same accent and we’d have a good laugh! In the same way, we the Nigerians here are having a good  time imitating and exaggerating the accent and learning to eat the Ghanaian way, for example ‘wache’ is rice and beans cooked together ‘bat’ not in the ‘naija’ way. The rice is cooked with the beans water so that it ‘terns’ brown and is mixed together with the beans and eaten with plantain, spaghetti, garri, fried yam…is somebody’s eyes popping out? Hold on, that’s not all… coleslaw, boiled egg,fish and ‘shito’ (black sauce), ok now let your  eyes roll on the floor, as that’s what as a Yoruba girl I’d call ‘ijekuje’! Then there’s  ‘kenke’  which is the cornmeal eaten with the black sauce, fried fish, raw onions and tomatoes. I also had boiled yam with vegetable soup- at least that feels normal ‘bat’ I didn’t  ‘anderstand’ why there had to be boiled egg in the soup, now that’s some ‘fart-food’! I  ate it anyway!


Being in the ‘power house’ with my fellow Nigerians and our neighbouring friends has also been quite interesting- getting to know one 'anather', their ‘fasheen’ history and ‘ather’ stuff.  We haven’t started ‘wek’ yet, we’re still at ‘orientasheen’ stage .  Meanwhile I’m ‘brashing’  ‘ap’ my ‘azonto’ dance skills and ‘amanda’ as well, so ‘Charle’ (friend), I'd keep you posted! 'etsiree' (bye-bye)!