Sunday, June 28, 2009

Cooking Lessons: Jollof Rice

It has rained virtually non-stop for the past 3 days. Sometimes it's only a drizzle, but then thunderstorms with wind will pop up without warning. As a consequence, the roads are a mess and everyone stays home. We spent the weekend home in Teshie rather than travelling (which we are telling ourselves we will do next weekend no matter what the weather... there are simply some places we must visit). But as a happy consequence, because we weren't travelling and because the ill weather kept us indoors, I had a chance to cook on Saturday.

Sam and I decided we should cook a Ghanaian dish for dinner to be followed by an American dessert. The decision for the main dish was quite easy to make and we quickly settled on Jollof Rice, a traditional west African dish. Deciding on a dessert was much trickier given our limited access to ingredients (no leavening agents and no flour). After much discussion and website perusal, we decided we would try our hand at brownies made with a combination of recipes and substituting pancake mix for flour, though our particular mix lacked any leavening agents. James was kind and offered his assistance and expertise in making the Jollof Rice.

Our "Ghanaian Brownies" turned out to be quite a success, though unlike any brownie we have had before. We did encounter a few technical difficulties in the process of making the brownies, however, including discovering that James has never used his oven and doesn't know how it works. Sam and James had to drive to his brother's house took bake the brownies while I began on the Jollof Rice. In theory, this was a great plan. In practice... the oven heated unevenly and so it took twice as long to cook the brownies as it should have. On the way home, James, his brother John, and Sam were stopped by the police at a road block. The police here are quite corrupt (more on this later), and they were checking all cars with flashlights. As soon as they saw Obruni-Sam in the car, they stopped the car to search it and asked for a cash bribe (quite common here in Ghana). The police had to have been quite disappointed when they learned that all the money Sam had with her was tro-tro change -- less than 1 US dollar! Not all white people are rich...

While all of this drama was occurring, I was well into making the Jollof Rice and was waiting for James to give me the next instructions when the power went out. It's common here for the power to go out for periods of time, but I think I heard a transformer blow. Perhaps it was all of the rain. Fortunately, I had a flashlight to cook with and James, John and Sam were home shortly thereafter, and we all finished cooking together.

Given the chaos of our cooking experience, I am quite happy to report that Sam, James, and John did an excellent job on the brownies, and that the Jollof Rice turned out delicious! I've done my best to record the Jollof Rice recipe if any of you are interested in trying it out! I'll post the brownie recipe too if we re-visit and try and perfect it!

James Dzandza’s Jollof Rice
(Makes enough to serve five & takes about an hour to cook once prepped)

1 small onion, chopped
6 or more cloves garlic, chopped
6 small carrots, peeled and chopped
2 small bell peppers, chopped
Handful of green beans, chopped
6 green onions, chopped
3 small tins tomato paste (1 large in the US)
Spices: ½ tbs rosemary, ground hot pepper, dried shrimp powder (cube), 2 stock cubes)
Rice
Water
Hard boiled eggs cut into quarters

Directions:
1. In a large stew pot, saute onion and garlic in vegetable oil

2. When the onion is translucent, add in other vegetables and cook until tender

3. Add tomato paste, spices and enough water to mix everything together. Turn heat to low and cook 5-10 minutes while stirring frequently.

4. Add as much rice as equals the volume of stew. (ex: 3 cups of stew = 3 cups of rice). You can remove some stew if you’d prefer less rice, but remember that when serving Jollof as dinner, you can always use extra rice! Turn the heat to low and stir until rice is fully mixed with the stew. Cook for 10 minutes, scraping and stirring often.

5. Add water, stir and cover tightly. Cook for a few minutes before stirring. Repeat this process until the rice is fully cooked.

6. Serve the rice with the hard boiled eggs.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

So, what am I doing in Ghana?

I've been asked this question quite a number of times and by quite a number of people. Hopefully this posting will help inform.

I am in Accra this summer working for the Women's Health Study of Accra (WHSA). This is a study funded by the United States' National Institutes of Health and consists of 2 waves of household interviews and 1 wave of comprehensive clinical exams. The first wave and the comprehensive clinical exam were completed in 2003 when slightly under 3,000 women from the Accra metropolitan area were interviewed and half of them then taken to Korle Bu teaching hospital where they had blood tests and physical exams. The first wave led to intriguing clinical findings including high rates of hypertension, obesity, and diabetes mellitus -- typically "western" diseases. Though food security, malaria, cholera, and high rates of maternal and infant mortality are still a concern in Accra and throughout Ghana, the "epidemiological transition" (the move from communicable to non communicable diseases as the leading cause of disability and disease burden) is well under-way in Accra. Because Ghana has one of the most stable West African governments and one of the most progressive legislatures, Accra is looked upon by her African neighbors as the way of the future. How health care, health policy, and health in Accra progress is of extreme importance.

This said, given several questions raised by the first wave of the WHSA and a curiosity about the impact of several new policies implemented during the last 5 years, a second wave of the WHSA was conducted in 2008. Wave 2 of the WHSA involved locating the same women interviewed 5 years previously and re-interviewing them with a similar survey instrument to aid in comparability but also to ask about topics not included on the previous survey. These topics
include areas such as national health insurance and health service usage and mental health needs. Though locating the women for interview was quite a task (many of the "addresses" for women read as follows: "Walk towards the yellow house, turn right at the big tree, third hut on left." Despite the difficulty, the office staff managed to re-locate 2/3 of the original women. Those who could not be found were replaced with women of similar age, geographic location and socio-economic status.

The data collection and entry for the second wave of the study is just now finishing. So here's my job:

I am in Accra this summer to begin the basic descriptive statistical analysis of the findings from the 2nd Wave of the WHSA. Additionally, I am conducting a stakeholder analysis and identifying the priorities of organizations and agencies working in Accra responsible for health policy and programming. Once I have discerned the priorities of these influential parties, I am preparing a series of topical briefings from our data with the intent of aiding in evidence based policy and programming in areas concerning women's health and urban health that are of current political and programmatic significance. The goal behind my work is to make our data accessible and available. Publications will certainly result from our data, but it will take years for them to be published, and our data will be made publically available in raw form, but not all agencies have the capacity to process the data. My job is to address this information gap.

After two weeks of work, the task is still overwhelming and challenging. But I am passionate about evidence based policy and programming and am passionate about helping to facilitate the process, particularly as this seems to be the only morally responsible way to conduct public health research.

Though my task is challenging, it is quite fascinating to have the authority and the opportunity to meet with some of the biggest health stakeholders in Accra. In the past week I've had the chance to meet with: the director of the Population Council in Ghana, one of the key drivers behind the current National Health Insurance Scheme Reform, the regional and metropolitan directors of Ghana Health Services, faculty at the University of Ghana, physicians at a public hospital, and many more. In the upcoming weeks I hope to have meetings with representatives from the WHO, USAID, UNICEF, the Ghanaian Ministry of Health, UNDP and more. This is an amazing opportunity to learn about how these organizations function in their country offices and to gain exposure to job opportunities in my field. My hope for this summer is not only that I produce products of use to Ghanaians, but that I gain insights into my own career aspirations.

To complete my work, my daily tasks include lots of phone calls, some statistical analysis, some research, and meetings. At some point I will need to begin writing, but a fair amount more analysis needs to happen before then! The WHSA has an office in Adabraka Official Town and is staffed entirely by Ghanaians. Even though I could do some of my work from my home in Teshie, the office is such a wonderful environment that I look forward to going in. Becky, the office manager, is the sweetest girl you will ever meet. Richard, Maame, Comfort, Silvia, and all of the other staff are incredible people who will make you laugh and try and convince you that you work too much.
One of my biggest challenges in working here in Ghana is relaxing my intense work ethic to come closer to the relaxed Ghanaian pace. Work days here often end quite early (2:30/3:00), and I find myself pressured to leave my work. There have been a few evenings with me working in the office long past when all the other staff have left, and I think I may need to get in the habit of doing this, even if it isn't the Ghanaian way, to ensure that my work gets completed in the short period of time that I am here. Or if not completed, at least to a point where it can be finished in the USA.

I hope this answered some of the questions about what I do and why I am here without being too academic or rambling. If you would like to know more about the study, or my work, I could talk about it all day, so feel free to ask!

For your knowledge:
Ghana, Ministry of Health: http://www.moh-ghana.org/moh/default.asp
Ghana Health Services: http://www.ghanahealthservice.org/

I almost forgot... Samantha, the other Harvard student in Accra with me, is working for the same study as I am but doing a different task. Sam's job for the summer is to organize a verbal autopsy project. There were 177 women who were recorded as having died between the first and second waves of the survey though we have no information as to why. Sam's task is answering just that question. There are fieldworkers going out to locate the families of these women (using the only information we have--the last address of the woman, from 2003) and interview them with a verbal autopsy (a questionairre that attempts to discern cause of death). These interviews will then be reviewed by 2 physicians who will attempt to determine from the information provided the cause of death. If they both agree on a cause, this will be compared with hospital records and the death certificates. In Ghana there is no reliable information on the major causes of death, because physicians will record causes of death as "old age" or "exhaustion." Of the 177 women who died, their ages are fairly evenly distributed across all age groups.

Because we're in the same department at Harvard, we are helping each other out on our projects. This means Sam gets to come along on some of my meetings, and I get to go out on some of the interviews from her study. I quite enjoy this collaboration and enjoy having Sam's company!

Accra: Traffic and Transport

Los Angeles, meet your new competition.

2009 marks the year in which for the first time in human history more people in the world will live in urban areas than rural. The metropolis of Accra lays witness to these growing pains. The increase in migrant population from the North and neighboring countries coupled with the middle class desire for more spacious, free standing homes has transformed Accra into a sprawling metropolis with horrendous traffic.

Because I commute into work (in Adabraka Official Town) from the suburb of Greda Estates, Teshie where I am living with a delightful Ghanaian family, understanding the ins and outs of Accra’s traffic is of the greatest importance to me. Though the distance can’t be much more than 15 kilometers, it takes up to two hours to travel between my house and my office at work. I’ve tried to best the traffic by leaving for work and leaving for home early, late, and at a reasonable hour to no avail. The first thing you learn about Accra’s traffic is that there is no rhyme or reason behind it. Perhaps part of the reason there is no rhythm to traffic is because of the system of transportation.

There is minimal public transport in Accra. A state run bus company runs routes connecting Accra with other metropolitan areas in Ghana. Aside from this, the road network is navigated by private car, taxi, and tro-tro. Tro-tros are retrofitted minivans, ambulances, and small coaches likely bought as used vehicles from other countries and re-constructed to hold as many passengers as physically possible. An ambulance sized van will hold 25 people, and a small coach, like the one I rode in today (see picture below), will hold close to 50. Guide books all warn against taking tro-tros because of their safety record, and after just one look at them (especially from the inside), you know your life is in the drivers hands. The thing is, however, there is no alternative to the tro-tro for most Ghanaians.

The ride across town on a tro-tro costs a matter of pesewas (cents) compared to 10 cedis (dollars) in a taxi cab. As further reference, a ride across town in a tro-tro costs the equivalent of a large, filling meal purchased on the street while a taxi ride is the equivalent of dinner at a nice, western restaurant.

In addition to their inexpensive price, tro-tros also have the ability to go off road to avoid traffic. While there is a direct, paved road between my subdivision and my office, congestion on this road is horrendous in mornings and in the evenings. While taxi cabs and private cars must wait in the traffic on the paved road, tro-tros get creative and head off on unpaved, bumpy roads trying to both avoid traffic and pick up more passengers. They are always successful at picking up more passengers, but not always so lucky at avoiding traffic. On these back roads the puddles from the rainy season can be at least a foot deep (I’ve seen a car trying to pass a particularly deep puddle get stuck and flood its engine through as a consequence). Each tro-tro ride is a completely different experience which depends greatly on the skill of the driver, the size of the car, and the amount of rainfall the night before.

My commute to work involves: a shared taxi to the main road, a tro-tro into the city and a second tro-tro to the part of the city in which I work. Not only is there no discernable pattern to traffic, but tro-tros leave when they are full and arrive at their final destination sometime later. When travelling in Ghana you always have to allocate more time than you hope to reach your destination. In addition to the lack of schedule, because so much of Accra is unmapped and streets are unnamed, there are no marked tro-tro routes. You must known the general area into which you are heading in order to tell the driver (tro-tro and taxi alike) where to stop. Eventually you learn the routes you can rely on and the names of the landmarks near where you need the tro-tro or taxi to stop, but when you are first learning the lay of the land, it is an utterly overwhelming experience.

I think there is a market to be made somewhere if an enterprising couple were to operate a slightly more expensive tro-tro with a fixed departure time and a non-stop route into the city. I would pay for that. Gladly.

In the mean time, I view my commute as an exercise in patience and a meditation on relaxing my Western, goal-driven mindset. Sometimes I get so frustrated while hot and sweaty and crammed in an unsafe vehicle with 24 other hot, sweaty bodies watching other traffic cut us off and watching women carrying heavy loads pass us on foot. Sometimes I just want to scream, stop the bus, make all the people in front of me disembark in order that I may continue on foot, arriving at work no quicker, but on my own schedule. Then I take a deep breath, remember that I am in Africa, and
return to my lesson in patience and in Africa time.

(Sam, in the last photo, is practicing her patience on a tro-tro trip home that capped off a 2 hour commute. This was the biggest tro-tro we've been on yet.)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

White like me...

Obruni! Obruni!

One of the first words you learn when you arrive in Ghana is ‘obruni’ or ‘white person.’

As a six foot tall, pale skinned blonde, I certainly can’t hide. Wherever I go children call out "Obruni!" Sometimes it’s just a friendly smile, sometimes it’s a shout, sometimes it’s a chant of sorts. There is no way around it, white people just stick out in the sea of beautiful, black skin and vibrant fabrics. Sometimes I forget that I am an obruni and find that, on the rare occasion of passing another white skinned person, I myself am whispering “Obruni! Obruni!”

Obruni is part of my identity in Ghana, just as it is part of my identity in America.

In America I don’t identify myself as a “white person” when asked to respond on questionnaires and surveys. Though I study demography, I disapprove of classification on skin color and find this to be an artifact of times past and an attribute I hope to see discarded in future generations.

That said, I am an obruni. But the difference between being an Obruni and being a white, American young woman is quite extreme. Having grown up in the American South I attended schools and played on sports teams where my skin color wasn’t a representation of the majority. And, to be honest, I often felt uncomfortable and unwelcome. As a white woman from the south, not all staring eyes are friendly at home. There have been a number of occasions where I’ve felt so uncomfortable by my surroundings that I’ve wondered if I’ve not become unconsciously racist in my thoughts and opinions. Being in Ghana, however, has opened my eyes to the fact that nothing could be further from the truth.

I do not feel the slightest bit uncomfortable around the Ghanaians I have met and the Ghanaians I live with. I am the only white woman for miles around, but I don’t feel unwelcome or out of place. What a difference there is between Ghana and the American South! It seems odd (if not flat out wrong) that black Americans and white Americans alike could come to Ghana and feel more comfortable around strangers than they do around their neighbors in the South of the US.

I wonder if others have had this or similar experiences?

Intro to Ghanaian Food


Those who know me in the United States know that I love to cook, and that I am a vegetarian. I have been a vegetarian since my freshman year of college when I abandoned meat and fish for health and environmental conservation reasons. When I travel, as I am now, the issue of being a vegetarian comes up often. It’s a struggle to walk the line between how you choose to define yourself and graciously adapting to the cultural norms and resource limitations of your new home. It can be challenging to explain why one chooses to abstain from meat consumption to fellow Americans, and it is even more of a challenge to do so in other countries. My personal compromise so as to allow me to accept the generosity of my colleagues and housemates who enjoy cooking or buying Ghanaian dishes for me to try and to allow me to experience such a big part of Ghanaian culture—it’s food—is to eat fish, avoid eating other meats, and to abandon worries about whether or not a meal was

prepared with meat. For example, stews made with meat often are made with large portions of animals attached to the bones; I will eat this stew but will decline the offer of including one of the hunks of meat in my serving. That said, in a single week I’ve managed to experience most traditional Ghanaian food. And I’ve enjoyed them all.

Where to buy Food
In Accra, most people purchase their food from street vendors. On nearly every corner, and often in several places in between corners in populated areas, there are little wooden frame boxes in which a particular woman will set up shop during the day selling semi-prepared foods. She will arrive in the late morning with coolers filled with rice or rice and beans and plastic bags or Tupperware (more often plastic bags) filled with the other ingredients needed to assemble a particular dish. Depending on what she is selling she may have a make-shift grill set up next to her stall or a make-shift deep fryer. Both the grill and fryer use as their base a large, metal pan that looks very similar to a wok. Sometimes the stalls will be painted to advertise what dish the woman will sell, but more often than not, you just have to know. Foods prepared and purchased from these stalls never costs more than 1 Ghanaian cedi (current exchange rate: 1 cedi = 1.45 USD) and are sold to you in little black plastic bags, the same kind as in the US elicit novelties are sold in. Soups, stews, rice, dough… everything is wrapped up in a plastic bag, tied, and given to you.

In addition to street vendors there are little restaurants known as Chop Bars that p

epper the city. One particular such spot near to my office makes big cauldrons of soup and stew beside the building and sells them either to people wishing to take them away to eat or to people who would prefer to sit a spell and eat at a table there. A healthy sized serving of stew with a large hunk of dough (more on this to follow) costs only 40 pesewes.

For those who prefer to cook, fresh produce can be purchased from street vendors who sell tomatoes, small red onions, spinach, okra, tiny spicy peppers, “garden eggs” (a kind of eggplant), eggs, pineapples, oranges, plantains, bananas, carrots, cucumbers, and coconuts. Often a particular vendor will only sell some of these foods and sometimes they will sell fish as well. Boxed or canned food items needed for cooking can be purchased from small convenience type stores. It is at these stores you purchase your “pure water” as well.

In Ghana you cannot rely on the tap water to be safe for drinking (if you even have a tap). You can purchase water in bottles, which is quite expensive at nearly 1.5 cedis for 1 liter, or you can purchase a large bag of ½ liter water bags/satchets which have 32 satchets and costs only 1 cedi. Suffice it to say, most people, myself included, drink the latter. Depending on the brand of water the chemical taste varies, but overall I find it to be quite tolerable.

There are some large grocery stores in Accra, but only in the center of the city near

the embassies and the western areas. The majority of these stores are run by the Lebonese and see anything you could ever imagine or want. Betty Crocker cake mixes, specialty sodas from the US (that actually cost less here than in the US), canned goods, frozen goods, Swiss chocolate, paper towels, paper plates, yogurts, icecreams… Shopping in the grocery stores however can be quite expensive and is not how the majority of Ghanaians get their food.

There are proper restaurants in Accra as well. Most are not traditional Ghanaian food and most are located in the western part of the city—Osu. Restaurants charge near American prices for their foods, and, in my limited experience, have the potential for making you feel quite uncomfortable due to the excess of wait staff and the scarcity of diners. One Chinese restaurant I ate in (not my selection) had only 3 tables occupied in an expansive dining room with nearly 15 Ghanaian waitstaff standing around the edges of the room watching you eat.

The last place I can think of at the moment where you might purchase food is from individual

sellers on the street. Women walk around with big baskets or buckets on top of their heads holding everything from plantain chips and yams to pure water satchets. Boys carry bags of apples, loaves of bread, or push carts with Fan Ice, an icecream like product. These women and boys walk through traffic selling their goods to people stuck in taxi cabs, cars, or tro-tros (busses). You could almost do all of your grocery shopping sitting in traffic. You could do more than just your grocery shopping in traffic too—CDs, DVDs , Q-Tips, toilet paper, phone cards, superglue, and the list goes on.

What Food to Buy
I am quite fortunate in that the office I work in is staffed entirely by Ghanaians, so come lunch time, I have expert help at choosing which street vendor to purchase my lunch from and to suggest new things to try. Every day I go out with Becky, the office manager, to buy lunch for all who have requested something. It is my goal that before I leave I have the knowledge, the confidence, and the linguistic ability to purchase my own street food. I think I’ll be able to do this quite soon, actually. My first week of lunches included the following:

Dish 1: Waakye (sounds like watch-ee)
Waakye is a mixture of rice, beans, spaghetti noodles, tomato paste, salad, and gari (dried and ground cassava in granules like cornmeal) and is topped with hot sauces and red palm oil. You can have it topped with an egg, a piece of fish, or a piece of other meat if you choose. I prefer to take mine with an hardboiled egg. It’s not too spicy of a dish (by Ghanaian standards), and is actually quite tasty.
Now when you read all of the guide books, among the things they tell you not to do are: 1) eat street food and, 2) eat salad. On my first day, at my first lunch, I was eating both. All is well so far, but you do wonder if you are tempting the fates. My logic goes something like this: if everyone else in the office chooses to eat the same thing I do and they aren’t ill, it should be okay for me too. Though I may have to go look up the study referred to by this article and re-evaluate my love of waakye: http://www.modernghana.com/news/10266/1/waakye-eaters-prone-to-contamination.html

Dish 2: Banku and Okoro stew (see top picture, bottom bowl)
Banku is a doughy mixture made from fermented maize and cassava and boiled. You use the banku to eat the okoro (okra) stew. The okoro stew is made with tomato paste and okra and in my case had fish in it as well. These were little

fish with many fish bones. I love okra and liked the concept of okoro stew, but the fish were just a little bit too fishy for my liking. You eat this dish with your hands, as you do most Ghanaian dishes.

Dish 3: Fufu and Light Soup Don’t ask me what is in light soup, because I don’t think I want to know. It is spicy and delicious, but I’m pretty sure it has every imaginable kind of meat cooked into the broth. People call it “goat stew” (which makes sense given the number of goats living in this city), but in retrospect, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some bushmeat in here too. Either way, I was sure to only have the broth put into my plastic baggie. Fufu is similar to banku in that you use it to eat your stew. Fufu is a combination of cassava or plantains and maize but they are pounded together by two people working as a team: one uses a huge wooden pole to smash the plantains and maize and the other uses their hands to fold the mixture over as if kneading dough. Having watched this procedure a few times now, I’m always terrified for the woma

n who folds the dough over in between poundings by the wooden stick as the timing between the couple must be just perfect for her to avoid having her hands smashed.

Dish 4: Kenkey and Pepper Stew (see top picture)
There are 2 types of Kenkey: Accra kenkey and Fanti kenkey. Both types are made of fermented maize in the same process as banku only these balls of fermented maize are wrapped in leaves before being boiled. Accra kenkey is similar to a tamale, wrapped in corn husks. Fanti kenkey, on the other hand, is boiled in what appear to be banana leaves. Again, you use this dough to eat the stew it is served with. This stew was the spiciest of any I’ve had so far, and perhaps my favorite. I love spicy food, and things could even be a bit spicier and I would be happy.

Dish 5: Jollof Rice and Fish
Jollof Rice is a traditionally Muslim dish coming from Senegal and the Gambia and is quite similar to “dirty rice” served with Creole foods in the United States. It is spicy and cooked with tomato paste and onions, salt and spices including chili peppers, nutmeg, and ginger. You can cook it with meat or without meat.

Dish 6: Groundnut Stew and Chicken
I didn’t eat the chicken in this groundnut stew prepared by one of my housemates, but the stew itself is made with peanutbutter, chilis and palmoil. Maybe there was something else in it… but I’m pretty sure it was quite basic. It was tasty and not too spicy, and had a red shimmer from the palm oil. Most, if not all, foods here in Ghana are prepared with a healthy portion of palm oil. There is just no way around it.


Saturday, June 20, 2009

An Introduction to Ghana and Me

I arrived in Accra, Ghana on Sunday, June 14th on a direct flight from New York City's JFK Airport with very few expectations and remarkably little luggage (at least compared to my fellow travellers all of whom seemed to have managed to pack small houses into suitcases)! I will be in Accra until July 31st--seven weeks from now--and I've brought with me a little over a week's worth of clothing, some books, and my work things. Needless to say, I hope, and expect, to return home with more than I came with, things both material and non.

Why am I here? I was sent to Accra by a professor at Harvard School of Public Health who runs a health study in the city. My professor, Allan, enlisted my help and offered me a summer internship working for the Women's Health Study of Accra counting towards my degree in Global Health and Population. The study is funded by the NIH and supported by Harvard University and the University of Ghana. In brief, I'm working with major health stakeholders in the city, determining their priorities, and constructing a series of policy briefs on topics of interest to these stakeholders following a basic and first time analysis of the data that has been collected. I will discuss my work in more detail in a future posting. For the time being, suffice it to say I am both passionate about my work and overwhelmed by it.

I haven't written until now because I've had a difficult time just absorbing all of the new sights, sounds, smells, systems, and emotions of my own. The thought of having to distill all of these experiences into a legible, intelligible posting has been simply too much. Now that I've had a week to let the newness of my surroundings, the stress of work, and the jetlag dissipate, I am hoping to squeeze time into my days to post a few thoughts and meaningful tidbits.

If there is anything you'd like to ask about, feel free, and I'll do my best to answer your questions in the form of a blog posting. Thanks for your interest, and Akwaaba!

--
Akwaaba = welcome
Obruni = white person