By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra- 7 October, 2018.
When I was prompted that this blog had not written about the visit of Melania to the land of melanin, I already knew what our angle should be.
I guess we all agree it was a successful trip; Melania Trump got to work on her tan, hug babies and say the right things.
And we of course, welcomed her with our traditional Ghanaian hospitality.
It’s all in our DNA.
And yes, Donald we do have some good things.
Etsew na dokon (wona de otsiaw)…Balls of starch made from corn (maize) wrapped in leaves…GM free. The fake version has the dough wrapped in plastic bags before the leaves are wrapped and then boiled…toxic.
Mfantse dokon na kyenam na moko….Fante kenkey with sardines and fried pepper sauce. Sometimes served with the White man’s gravy.
Sometimes our soup does have many different types of fish and meat; our printed cloths have many colours.
And our forests have what Prof Edwin Gyasi, my Legon Geography lecturer, will repeatedly emphasise as ‘agro-biodiversity’.
We build compound houses in circles; we have a circular view of time.
Rev. Fr. Dominic Amegashitsi, Catholic priest, Accra Archdiocese, christens a baby on the eighth day or a convenient day after, following Ghanaian culture
‘Nna awotwe’, translated from Fante meaning the eighth day, suggests that the days must go round for that very same day of birth to meet us before we name a child as our own; not a property of its Spirit Mother.
But Awula Naa Nii Amon (Dr Gloria Amon Vanderpuye) the Nubian Empress, a phenomenologist and United Nations Indigenous Department rep from Nungua, Ghana says melanin is a Ga word which means ‘Mi ‘i la ni’, to wit, ‘It is of my blood’.
Learning from Awula Naa Nii Amon, we will then configure Melania to mean “ONE OF US” is occupying the White House right here before us.
It is all “googleable”.
That makes it two in a row.
Or is that three? Or three strikes?
Is it not in the nature of things that Melania has come down and offered atonement for her husband’s uncomplimentary remarks?
If atonement is at-one-ment, then melanin is mi-mi-la-ni and Melania or Melanjia (with Greek root Melas….black/dark); and its laudable association with piety and charity.
Talk about restoring order.
Going through the Gate of No Return, Cape Coast Castle. From here the slaves boarded the ships which berthed right where Melania is stepping, into the Atlantic Ocean. The berth is now occupied by canoe fishermen.
This is the scene Melania met when she stepped through the Door of No Return.
How can we overlook the multiple layers of symbolism involved with Melania walking to and fro from the infamous “Door of no Return” at Cape Coast Castle?
We cannot forget that slavery has existed on all continents and spans most of human history until it was finally formally abolished everywhere in 2007.
Sadly the word “Slave” has its roots in “Slav” which takes us to pre-medieval Slovenia….the native country of Melania where her home city, Svenica has a 900 year old castle.
Prof Robert Addo-Fenning, my Legon History lecturer was emphatic that slave evolved from the word Slav even though there is still some controversy on the origin of the word.
Thus the wreath that she laid with reverence in the Cape Coast dungeons assumes more than a local importance.
If the White House had a strategic communication agenda to undo the effect of Trump’s uncomplimentary remarks then it won big time.
Now to some of the pictures of her visit and our reception.
The first church in Ghana, top floor of Cape Coast Castle…with slaves right underneath. If you have dared to replace the roof you inherited, why don’t you paint the castle…our White House?
The traditional Ghanaian hospitality which includes cleaning our homes, painting and emptying water jars to refill them with fresh water to welcome our guests including newborn babies is now severely truncated.
What water could we have offered our visitor apart from bottled water?
Satchet water would have created a diplomatic incident and aesthetic carnage.
We can no longer serve drinking water from our algae infested tap water sources.
Some years ago Ambassador James Victor Gbeho was waxing eloquently about Ghana’s readiness to receive Queen Elizabeth ahead of other African nations which had pending invitations, some for about seven years.
‘Jimmy…….The Queen is accustomed to the scent of new paint,’ the British diplomat retorted on Kwaku Sakyi-Addo’s The Front Page on Joy 99.7 FM in 1999.
The controversial diplomat (name withheld?) was saying in so many words that please don’t start this; we are all here; we know your feverish preparations to please the Queen and the Duke HRH Prince Philip.
It was embarrassing; the studio was tense; you could feel it on your radio.
Some listeners applauded the British diplomat for his candour.
But that was then, we painted and did some maintenance; at least it was a sign of respect to ourselves and our guests; to renew relationships; to prepare our hearts to receive at-one-ment with our ancestors for revisiting us in a new child.
‘We have not been able to maintain even one of the things bequeathed to us’, my mentor will charge every now and then. ‘I dare anyone to challenge me.’
Yes I have Bantu antecedents, but I cannot deny myself the opportunity of being a global citizen.
As Kofi Annan said of his father, ‘He was African in identity, but European in outlook’.
‘Our shared humanity and the perennial problems of life mean that we can always learn from and identify with the thoughts and practices of others, no matter how alien they might at first appear’, wrote the philosopher Julian Baggini on www.theguardian.com on 25 September, 2018.
If Baggini could argue for the Western world to adopt the rest of the world’s concept of time, then I can also urge that we adopt progressive Western attitudes.
‘All cultures have a sense of past, present and future, but for much of human history this has been underpinned by a more fundamental sense of time as cyclical. The past is also the future, the future is also the past, the beginning also the end’, Baggini wrote.
In the Western worldview, ‘When God created the world, he began a story with a beginning, a middle and an end’.
With this eschatological worldview that we have imbibed from Western Christianity, we have become indolent, expecting ‘a new heaven and a new Earth’ on a Final Day when this Earth will have passed away.
But we can strive to create that better world here and now, by cleaning our environment, acting in a professional and disciplined manner, and enjoying our lives here on Earth, with or without the expectation of a guest or visitor.
Let us then be up and doing; let us create a new Ghana, where we will not wait for a visitor before we clean our homes and environment.
C’mmon my people! Be Best like the Melania Trump PR campaign.
After all is she not one of us?
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