Category Archives: Thoughts raging in my head

“Ghana was ‘green’ long before there was a Green Movement.”

That’s one of the expressions my Green friends and I have often smugly repeated to one another. Our pride is in a Ghana that just 30 years ago was so verdant and eco-responsible, it put Norway, Denmark and all those other northern European countries who now boast the top spot in the Earth’s friendliest nations to shame.

I took this picture about 50 feet from the beach

There was a time – and I’m only 36 mind you – that you could drive for miles without seeing a single piece of trash on the street. Truly, I promise you! Oh sure, there was a carelessly dropped newspaper here or a pile of dog crap there, but overall, people respected the environment. There was this understanding that we ALL share this space and that it doesn’t just belong to you or I; we are merely tenants of what God and the ancestors gave us to look after until the next generation comes. I vividly remember going to shop for groceries with a woven basket to put all our foodstuffs in. Canned goods were at the bottom, rice or gari in the middle, eggs and tomatoes were at the top. When you wanted a drink, a girl selling ice water would scoop it from the bucket on her head from a calabash and pour it into one of 5 or 6 cups dangling precariously from the side of said bucket.  Very rarely was there a need for any sort of plastic material to get ones food from the market to the house. And then suddenly, like crack in the Black American ghetto, plastic was everywhere.

And I do mean everywhere.

Now there is a plastic bag for everything. If you buy an egg, it’s robed in plastic. If you buy a bag of rice, it’s cloaked in plastic and then secured in yet another bag of black plastic. One has merely to look down any main street in Accra to see how much drinking water the metropolis consumes. Empty sachets of Everpure and Ahenfie Nsuo clog gutters and drains like opaque boils waiting to be lanced. Ghana embraced the benefits of the Industrial Revolution without the assumption any of responsibility. It’s been 54 years after the first plastic bag was used for consumerism, and we still haven’t implemented a plan for proper disposal.

I don’t need to rehash the problems that come with failed (or lack of) waste disposal policy. You can see the results for yourself on any given street in Accra, Tema or Kumasi, or simply take an hour’s drive in either direction of those cities to the villages where Ghanaians from big cities have their garbage dumped. What else are we to expect from a government whose Speaker of the House does not know that GMOs are obtained through genetic engineering or whose Deputy Minister for Gender, Women and Social Protection recent relevant job experience includes standing on the road with a tripod making B-movie Kumawood class films. Heaven have mercy, do we need new leadership in this country! Did you hear what John Mahama said in Davos about his government’s failure to implement a windfall tax policy on mining because the big mining companies threatened to lay off workers? Say what you want about Mugabe, but he would never brook such blatant impudence! You come to my country to mine gold and won’t “let” me tax you?! How ludicrous!

Okay, okay. That’s for another day.

Let’s talk about what Ghana can do differently. There are a few individuals who are making small scale impacts on the environment with green initiatives that I disgustingly proud of. Green Ghanaian (@GreenGhanaian on Twitter) regularly sounds the alarm about destruction of forests, rivers and lakes and lagoons that often go unmentioned in mainstream media until all the fish have died and the children have contracted unpronounceable diseases. Golda Addo  works tirelessly in the field of renewable energy development for Ghana, and has devised creative ways to repurpose discarded materials such as empty juice cartons and ice cream wrappers for practical uses. I recently discovered there was a bamboo bike manufacturing initiative going on in Ghana, although it’s hard to say how many people have embraced the idea.

These are just some of the small steps that can and will implement change and bring economic prosperity to many more Ghanaians if we have the right people leading the charge. Let’s take a simple problem and solve it here on MOM today. Are you ready?

Eggs.

How do we get eggs from the seller to our houses now? Some of you reading will send your house girl to the shop to buy for you, but for the rest of us who are forced to do our own grocery shopping, we buy them either in crates of singly in plastic bags. What if instead of cardboard crates (which I have no problem with because cardboard is biodegradable) and plastic bags, we each carried our own dozen or half dozen egg container to the market with us? What if that container was manufactured in Ghana, using technology implemented by Ghanaian polymer scientists who have studied how to reuse that discarded plastic in our streets and mold it into something useful? What if the government actually rewarded Ghanaian innovation, instead of begging Swiss and German contractors to fix our 18^th century problems (i.e. how to dispose of our own poo)? Suddenly, we’ve got a new industry that can train and empower people, and solves the problem of ecowaste. Will people still litter? Of course they will – but their trash would eventually and inadvertently serve as the nation’s treasure.

You know what would make my nipples sit on edge? Is if parents and teachers would start talking to kids about creative ways to birth new industry in Ghana. Kids are full of wonderful ideas, and I daresay there are many primary 4 pupils who could run Ghana just as well as if not better than many of our sitting MPs. I know at least 3 dozen children who have told me they would harness the power of the sun to power all of Ghana’s houses, cars or bicycles if they could. Someone should look into that. Someone with some decision making power. Someone who is bloody fortunate enough to live on the equator…

Some of you reading are from Australia, Japan and other parts of Africa. You can’t hide. I checked my stats this morning. What green innovations have you seen in your countries? Are they working? And finally, what steps have you taken to make the earth a cleaner, safer place?

Question: Would you buy a can of Pepsi from someone who looked like this? Really think about it, so we can talk about it.

Photo from People Mag

It’s no secret that I am an unabashed fan of Lupita Nyong’o. She literally burst from obscurity to superstardom overnight. I’m sure she is absolutely brilliant in 12 Years a Slave, a film that has won critical acclaim for dealing with the heavy subject matter of slavery and man’s inhumanity to man as told by Solomon Northrop. I say “I’m sure” because I have not watched the film and have no intention of doing so. You all know how emotionally invested I get in – well – everything. So instead of looking at Lupita’s portrayal of Patsey, we’ll look at Lupita’s portrayal of herself. In real life. As the face of everything!

I asked this very question to a new e-friend of mine yesterday, i.e. did she think Lupita could usurp Beyonce’s place as being the Face of Errthang? Beyonce sells/has sold perfume, Pepsi, cable TV (as in Lemme Upgrade You to cable TV), hair color, cosmetics…the list goes on and on. There was a stretch in time for about 3 years where ALL you ever saw was Beyonce singing and selling something. She was overexposed and became an irritation, as far as I was concerned. But advertising agencies and corporations kept booking her and throwing her in our faces, whether we liked it or not. Is the world ready to receive Lupita in such a manner?

Let’s just state the obvious. Lupita and Beyonce are two very different looking women. However, there is no question in my mind that there are rivals in beauty, and certainly in style. While Beyonce is often overtly sexual in her dress, Luptia’s style is more demure and structured, and yet no less sexy. The story of her rise to fame is absolutely compelling. She got her start in show business as a production runner (the go-and-get-it girl) on the set of The Constant Gardner, and has been running towards her dreams ever since. She speaks eloquently, works with passion, and has been gracious in every interview I’ve seen her in to date. Did I mention she’s drop dead gorgeous?

Would I buy a Coke from her? Heck yeah! But I don’t think the rest of the world is ready.

Back to my e-friend to whom I posed this question: Could Lupita Be the Face of Errthang? Her reply shocked and saddened me. She said:

I fear this may be a phase. I don’t want it to be but it’s all too sudden. There is a tokenism about it that I’m not keen on.

I was shocked because we’re supposed to be living in a “post racial society” now. I was saddened because she is most likely right. I had taken deep gulps of Kool Aid and now this woman was forcing me to gag and spit it back up with her bloody common sense, practicality and truth-talk! All the same, we admitted it would be nice to dream; and so we did. We conjured a campaign through which Lupita Nyong’o would sell us all Malta, and we would like it!

It would be interesting to see how well African’s would receive Lupita as the Face of Errthang on the continent itself. On my most recent trip to Ghana, I was struck by how images of lighter skinned Ghanaians – and most noticeably, mixed race Ghanaians – were being used to sell everything from life insurance to Indomie. In fact, the only time I saw a dark skinned woman in an ad campaign was on a Guinness Black Lager poster in which she had been artistically molded into the liquid contents of the bottle.

What say you? Would you be willing to receive Lupita as the next overexposed starlet? Why?  Or do you like my friend think this is all a phase which will soon pass?

I for one hope she gets a Cover Girl contract. It would be nice if Procter & Gamble could mix up some nice dark girl foundation for once…The darkest paint they have gives me this weird Casper in Mexico ghostly glow. Ech.

I feel strange writing this piece today. It’s been four days since Komla Dumor’s passing, and in this Western society in which I’m firmly planted, I’m supposed to be over the shock by now. But I’m not. When someone of importance dies, we talk about it for a few days (or in some cases a few hours), mourn for an “acceptable” amount of time, and then go back to talking about the antics of the rich and stupid on Real Housewives, or Vanderpump Rules,  or politics, or whatever one’s daily cup of poison may contain. It seems to me that the “acceptable” time of mourning is getting ever shorter with so many items competing for our attention.

This is why it feels so strange to write this post today. I can’t seem to move on or get past Komla’s death as quickly as some of the people in my circle seem to have done. I can’t conform to these new rules! But then I pause and consider: Maybe Komla might want me to?

I’ve spent the last four days poring over tributes that have poured in from across the world. It’s amazing to see that at just 41, Komla Dumor touched so many lives and affected people in such a positive way. Someone summed up what I have been struggling to conceive in my heart: He was the big brother you never knew you had, and just when you got a chance to meet and love him, he’s gone. I have yet to read any negative expression where Komla is concerned. None of us is perfect – and I’m sure he would certainly never claim faultlessness – but he is in my humble opinion an impeccable example of what the pursuit of perfection looks like.

I believe he would all have us do the same; that is pursue excellence and compete at your own best level in whatever it is you have chosen to do with your life. I think for those of us who are looking for ways to honor him, this would be the best course of action. They say Komla was a man of great faith, and this is borne out in his many motivating Facebook posts and tweets concerning his trust in God and his gratitude for all that he had been blessed with. Certainly he had much to be thankful for: an envious career, a beautiful family and the adoration of his many fans across the continent. But having lived with Black men my entire life, I know that none of these things came without some sort of cost. A man of his stature, build and coloring (and by that I mean big and black) living in the UK would have faced prejudice at on or many junctures, but you never got the sense that it got him completely down. I think Komla had love for his enemies, which is why he died with more admirers than he did adversaries. Matthew 5 says in part:

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If those are the requirements for “perfection” then I’d say he got top marks. Again, I have yet to hear a solitary disparaging word spoken against him or that he had spoken against someone else…not counting primary school yard insults. Who can get through life in Ghana without screaming “Your MODDA!” at least once?

It was reported that Komla died of cardiac arrest in his sleep and that his blood pressure was a concern. Heart disease is the 10^th leading cause of death in Ghana, and yet it is one of the least talked about and most neglected illnesses in the country today. With so much focus on “brand recognizable” diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria, chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease get swept to the side. I clearly recall several men dying of hypertension when I was young, but I don’t have a clear memory of any sort of media campaign to stem the flow of these deaths.

Studies have shown that before age 50, men of African descent’s heart failure rate is 20 times higher than that of men of European descent, yet they are least likely to pursue or receive treatment. On the continent the reasons are varied, and are fraught with problems including access, availability and affordability of decent healthcare. Living in the UK, Komla Dumor was in a better position to receive quality healthcare, but I get the sense he didn’t make the time to do so. The man was dedicated to his craft…was it that dogged dedication that was his undoing in the end? Only God and his doctor know for sure.

So what might Komla want for us all who would seek to honor his memory and legacy? Each of us will make up our own mind about that, but I think he’d want us to find balance and honesty. Have an honest discussion about the real issues affecting people on the African continent; not just what’s considered “sexy” by the media. Let’s start talking about heart disease and high blood pressure, and how it disproportionately affects our people. Let’s continue to tell the African story as seen from African eyes and spoken through African lips. Let’s pursue excellence and perfection, yes, but let’s make sure we are assigning proper weight and importance to those things that deserve it.

It took you from us in the end, but we thank you for your big heart, Komla. Thank you for sharing your gift with the world.

I certainly didn’t want this to be the news to pull me out of my writing funk.

I was in the grocery store an hour ago, thinking privately about how there hasn’t been a single event lately to motivate me to write. Nothing has quite called for my indignation. I spent the better part of 2013 being “outraged”, “indignant” or just plain old “pissed off” about something. I don’t want to spend 2014 waxing on about the latest cause de jour or ranting about what’s irritating the general public, so I’ve opted for silence, waiting for inspiration. How could I imagined that it would be Penthos – ancient god of grief and lamentation – who would spur my fingertips to carve out a note to the man I’d hoped to one day to call an acquaintance if I were so lucky, and “friend” if fortune ever smiled so brightly upon me.

So there I was in the grocery store, paying for my cheese and bananas when I got a message on my phone.

Oh did you hear Komla Dumor passed away?

I was stunned. The woman who had sent me the message was not in the habit of spreading baseless rumors. I knew before I asked her to confirm that it had to be true. No, she was not joking. (She never jokes.) Yes, it had been confirmed, but not yet made public on the media. (At the time, Komla’s father had not been personally informed.) Yes, she agreed, it is devastating.

I am utterly devastated.

There are very few public figures that I feel any sort of connection with. When Michael Jackson died, his passing touched millions of people around the world, myself included. The King of Pop was supposed to reign a while longer, we all thought. When Nelson Mandela passed recently, we saddened, but were all prepared for it in some fashion. We could accept it. He had lived a long and fruitful life, and done all that he was born to do. But now, now Komla Dumor has been snatched from us at just 41. This is much harder to accept.

I have only recently become acquainted with Komla Dumor a year ago when he did a Tedx event in February last year.

He talked about telling the African Story. I was an immediate fan. I went on to follow his work on BBC, whenever I could get a hold of it. He was personable, likeable, and relatable. He was the consummate journalist, weaving stories and relaying them in a manner that compelled you to care. His personal demeanor and professional conduct merged to make him a standard in his own right. Komla spoke with authority and clarity, and was always dressed impeccably. He was a son of Ghana, and more importantly, an example of what it means to be exceptional. He was a mentor to more people than he ever met in person.

Gosh, it seems so unnatural to refer to him in the past tense.

It was just a little over a week ago that Komla began following me on twitter. I was ecstatic!

Perhaps this would be the beginning, I thought to myself. If I worked hard enough, became important enough, maybe – just maybe – I would begin to move in circles that would allow me to touch the hem of one of his silk garments. He was always clad in the finest suits…

My last words to him on twitter are the only sentiments I have on my heart in this sad hour. I hadn’t envisaged that they would be our final interaction with one another.

Rest in perfect peace, Mr. Dumor. You will be incredibly missed.

I was there you know…when the tweet was first sent on December 20^th. I saw the RT from @Reads4Pleasure’s time line:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Ah. Who was this fool who had said something so insensitive, classist and subversively racist? I clicked on her profile. She only had 228 followers or so. She was “nobody”, as far as I could tell. I dismissed her tweet as the ramblings of a silly, privileged “white girl” and then went on about my evening watching reruns of Tavis Smiley.

And then suddenly, like a bad case of scabies, #JustineSacco was all OVER my time line. For the next 18 hours, that’s all anyone was talking about. #HasJustineLandedYet was trending worldwide. This grinning, blond and obviously very self-satisfied woman had gone from having a mere 200+ followers to well over 8000 in less than 24 hours. Ah! I was puzzled. But who was this individual and why did we care so much about this silly tweet she had sent?

Fortunately (or unfortunately) the online world is an open oracle – a well of information, useless and otherwise. As we now know, Justine Sacco is/was a pretty big fish: and there is nothing humanity likes to do better than to bring the mighty low, to hunt for sport, to watch the once proud slither at our feet. Justine Sacco, the originator of the puerile e-pronouncement, was IAC’s Communications Director; the same IAC that owns About.com, The Daily Beast and Vimeo.

That’s right. Justine was the head of communications for ALL of that money.

And in 17 hours I watched her go from obscurity, to infamy, to unemployment… and it was scary. The world wanted blood and they got it. Within minutes of the tweet, her company distanced itself from her statement, and within hours of her landing in Africa, she had been fired.

I’m not here to shed tears for Justine Sacco. Her father, whom it was reported that she had gone to Africa to visit, is a billionaire white South African. It’s fair to assume that Ms. Sacco has a very soft place to land following her fall from grace. And the real truth is that despite the fact that she has been fired from THIS position for an unseemly faux pas, it does not preclude her from getting another within the same company. That’s the brilliance of privilege: what you know will never matter more than who you know.

And for the rest of us? Well, things are a little trickier for us 99%ers.

As we have seen in 2013, there is a blood lust prevalent in our culture. The days of Roman gladiators – when men thrust spears, swords and spiked balls into bone and flesh – are long past; but that mob mentality with an insatiable need to watch something die violently still remains. So when the world piled on Justine, I didn’t feel bad for her in particular: I felt dread for the next victim…

What if that victim turns out to be someone I care about? What’s worse, what if that victim turns out to be me? I would only have myself to blame, right? Sure, Justine Sacco said something that can only be qualified as absolutely brainless, and we have all come to the consensus that as a PR executive, she should have had sense enough to make her tweets private, particularly since she basically admitted that she is prone to making stupid statements “when drunk”, but did that mean she deserved to have her life threatened and menaced with the idea of being raped? She is not the only person to lose her livelihood over something stupidly said online. The girl who dressed up as a Boston Bomber victim for Halloween comes to mind, as does the idiot who dressed up as Trayvon Martin’s corpse. Were they idiots? Absolutely. But do we need to repay their feeblemindedness with violence? I don’t believe so.

The online world has evolved rapidly in the last few years, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse. Who knows what advancements 2014 will bring? For my part, I will be spending more time consuming online content, rather than creating it. I have had just enough troll attacks to know that people are absolutely crazy out there, and I don’t need to feed into the insanity. I will be more watchful of the things I say in the hopes that I will not offend. My apologies in advance if I do! I beg you o!

My resolution for 2014 is not to be the next #JustineSacco. I don’t wear rape threats and unemployment very well.

Oh. And Happy New Year!

You know how it is when you’re on social media: People post and re-post memes and quotes meant to exemplify insightful profundity in 140 characters or less and the masses nod, “like” it, and carry on chewing cud, just as we’d been doing x number of hours before we logged on that morning.

But sometimes – every once in a great while- someone posts something so breathtakingly stupid in its essence that it brings all bovine behavior to a halt. For me, it was this post from a certain gentleman’s wall this morning.

Now, to put this in context, this was posted by one of those guys who fancies himself “more spiritual” than thou and therefore “more intelligent” than thou, and who believes Obama is the second coming of Satan. I usually ignore his posts, but I keep him as a friend because every once in a while he posts a good vegetarian recipe that I think I might try on a summer’s day. No doubt that when he posted this, it fell under his self-assessed segment of truth or “chu’ch”, as he likes to call it.

I upon reading it, however, was livid.

You might not understand why. The statement seems harmless on the surface, doesn’t it?

“Money attracts the females you want, but struggle attracts the woman you need.”

What’s the harm in that?

First of all, implicit in the statement is that there is only ONE type of woman who is attracted to money, and those are “gold diggers”, as hip hop has so fondly dubbed them. To indicate that only selfish women are after money is over-simplistic at best. Money is what puts food on the table, bathes our children and keeps the electricity on. Every human being, man or woman, wants money…unless they live in a convent, in which case their physical needs are provided for by alms or growing their own food and herbs. Very little of humanity resides in a monastery. We ALL want/need money. I want money as much as the next woman, and that does not diminish my worth as a human being, let alone a woman.

Second, it implies that only “good” women are attracted to struggle. What exactly about struggle is so attractive? Nothing! We are all struggling in this life. If I’m going to brave the ills of this world with a potential or actual mate, it’s not going to be even remotely based on the idea that we need to be struggling to prove my salt. That’s just nonsense. Struggle attracts no one! Ask the homeless man in the street or the guy who’s about to be kicked out of his home how many dates he’s been on in the last month. Not many, my friends, not many. Potential to do better attracts a mate, not struggle.

The part I have the most difficulty coming to terms with is the very first portion of the statement, and this has everything to do with me being the mother of a young boy whom I hope to raise into a good man. “Money attracts the females you WANT.”

The implications of the statement are that what men want in a woman – in totality – is a physically attractive being. They want the airhead trophy wife who smiles prettily for pictures and bears him equally pretty, racially ambiguous (or purebred White children). Is this what men say about themselves? Is this their faithful confession about their values? That if given all the money they could ever hope for, their WANTS in a mate would be packed up in the personhood of an airhead groupie? How were you raised then?! Why wouldn’t the desire of your heart be a woman who’s hardworking, dedicated, smart and compassionate? This is what all men should WANT in a mate, isn’t it? So why must it then be solely by trial of fire and ‘struggle’ that you come to understand this? If that’s you, then Momma definitely raised a fool.

I guess the most shocking (and I don’t know why I was surprised) thing I encountered was the comments from men who agreed vehemently and wholeheartedly with the statement, and offered to have me call them if I was “struggling to understand it.”

No thank you, I replied. I understood it fully and didn’t want any of these individuals debasing themselves in order to justify this sub-par, high school inspired prattle. When I probed further and offered the notion that most women might – just might – be looking at other factors in a mate beyond money to include talent, physical prowess or spirituality, I was hit with this reply.

Un-freaking-believable.

Of course I asked him which women in his circle he would consider to exemplify this pervasive gold digger trope. He has yet to respond. This is what I find with men whom I ask these questions to… these questions that bring it home; they make broad generalizations about women like “they should keep their legs closed” or “stop being sluts” or “MOST women are money grabbing gold diggers”. They clam up when you ask them to name names within their own personal circles. So someone else’s sister is a slut but not yours? Niggro, please.

I’m not trying to create controversy where none really exists, I promise you I’m not… but this is my frustration with American thinking; Black American thinking in particular. There is no critical thought, no probing past the surface, no depth or consideration for what lies behind these seemingly innocuous statements!

What’s worse is that all the men thumping their chests saying “that’s right!” are barely employed anyway! The numbers bear this out. WE are still in the Great Recession. Guess what Black America: You are ALL struggling! You are better off contemplating the character of your mate than worrying about what he/she is going to do if you make the big time. The majority of us aren’t going to make it past lower/mid middle class in this country.

Does anyone else get why I’m so annoyed by this meme? What are your thoughts on it? If you’re male and you’re reading this, would you agree that the type of woman you want and need are not one and the same? What does that say about your values and how you were socialized to think about women? Discuss! ↓

*Disclaimer: I don’t how much of this is me or the meningitis talking (I contracted meningitis last week, hence the long silence. FYI.), but I have some things to say about White Christmas that need saying!

You see, Twitterverse? What did I tell you? No sooner had I gotten off the plane then there was “outrage”! I told you I wasn’t looking forward to coming back to America for THIS very reason. There is always something to spark “outrage” or “controversy” in the American media. And predictably, Fox News was at the helm of Controversy Cruise liner.

As you may – or may not – have heard, Megyn Kelly, host of America Live on the aforementioned cable news network, had a panel debating a Slate Magazine article that proposed that Christmas should be symbolized by something more inclusive -like a penguin- and not just the jolly White man we have all grown up knowing as Ol’ Saint Nick.

“Santa is a historical figure!” she bellowed. “And he is White!”

Well, Megyn is right. All facts point to the fact that Santa is White. He just is. He was a German toy maker who carved dolls and figurines for disadvantaged kids in his neighborhood and somehow between 1765 and today, he relocated from his Bavarian town, developed magical slimming superpowers and procured eight reindeer (nine if you count the one with a radioactive nose) and flies into the home of every child around the globe to deliver toys! Well, every home except African ones. All those kids want for Christmas is a sip of clean water to hold them until the next Yuletide season.

Why are we debating Santa’s skin color again?? Santa, as we know him, is a MYTH. Just like most of the Christmas “traditions” we hold dear, they were all created by some wealthy guy in politics or entertainment. Our Christmas traditions are aberrations of European pagan traditions. The Christmas tree is a modification of an Irish pagan tradition. December 25^th was designated to celebrate Jesus birth after Western Christians first celebrated the holiday in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity “the empire’s favored religion”. Pagans were already celebrating their deities in the same calendar space, and the church commandeered it! Christmas is a fake holiday through and through. And now we have believers and non-believers debating over what color Santa was? Who gives a CRAP?!?

Behold! The face who preached racially equality in South Africa!

The fact is Santa Clause is WHITE. I have no problems with that. If there ever comes a day when we celebrate Nelson Mandela or “Father of Freedom” as the news outlets have dubbed him, in 300 years I don’t want a picture of Hendrik Verwoerd floating around out there in an effort to appear more “inclusive”. Making Santa Black just to be “inclusive” is nonsense. We have Papa Bronia in Ghana for that. He wears kente and brings soup to your house.

Just when I ready to put the whole thing to bed, Megyn took her indignation too far. She added to her initial statement something so odious, so sinister, that it blew what little of my brain the meningitis had not consumed.

“Jesus is White. And that’s a historical fact!”

What in the name of White Supremacy…?

Ok. Let’s just break this down to its core: There’s only ONE way to make a White person, and that’s with TWO White people. There are about 145,000 ways to make a person of color, but only ONE way to make a White person.

Is Megyn Kelly saying The Holy Spirit – the spirit of Almighty God, ruler of heaven and earth and all that dwell therein, the Spirit that gives each of us life, leads us to kindness, conviction and repentance – is WHITE??? Because that’s what I’m getting if I hear her correctly.

Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and conceived of the Holy Spirit. This in turn means that in order for Jesus to get that pinky glow that 60% of India’s population strives to achieve with every purchased bottle of Ponds bleaching cream, Mary would have to be White and the Holy Spirit would have to (unquestionably) be White. You can’t mix White and Chinese and get White. You can’t mix White and Aborigine to get White. You can’t mix White with anything else to come up with a White kid, which means Megyn Kelly believes God is White!

You see? This is the same course of thinking that justified the transatlantic slave trade.

Before I carry on, let me unequivocally state that I personally don’t care what color Jesus was. He blood was shed for me. His skin didn’t save me. Human blood, like goat blood, is red. Red, red, red. That being said, it’s my belief that it’s highly unlikely that The Holy Spirit is White.  I think He might look more like a Mayan Aztec. You know… Racially ambiguous. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Jesus looked more like Keegan-Michael Key than Rush Limbaugh.

You should watch Key and Peele. Key man is just a genius! He’s mixed race, as you’ve probably guessed, and can play just about any character you present him with. He’s a master of imitation, and can play a gangster, a Mexican fry cook, an Indian Healthcare provider, an 80’s glam cop, whatever. These are just the kind of skills you need to survive in a world where Herod is trying to kill you. I presume Jesus/Yeshua possessed just such skills. You think a pale little blue eyed Messiah kid was going to be able to hide out in Egypt until the coast was clear? He’d stick out like a lily in the muck. And then Herod’s forces would have caught Him and then there’d be no salvation for any of us. Nah son. Jesus was racially ambiguous, which means the Holy Spirit is NOT White, which means Megyn Kelly was WRONG on that count.

I get really uncomfortable when people try to paint God as one thing or another, like they did in the Baroque period. Have you studied Baroque art? It’s European hubris at its finest. And then there was its half-bastard cousin the Renaissance which completely decimated common sense within the context of Christianity. Even David didn’t escape the imposition of White ideals in his portrayal. Have you seen the penis Michelangelo afforded him? It’s miniscule. Great warrior David has a tiny…rooster.

Here’s the hard truth. Jesus was NOT White. And He was NOT Black. White people want to make Jesus White to maintain their sense of superiority, and Black people want to make Him Black to contravene their sense of inferiority. Shame on both of you. What about the Inuits?!?

Can we all just agree that Jesus was born, he lived, he travelled, he preached, was tried and crucified for his pronouncements? All this extra debate is just noise. Now pass the pumpkin pie and go kiss someone under the mistletoe.

I was supposed to go to Morning Star School, but I didn’t get gain admittance. I can’t remember if the fees were too high or I bombed the entrance exam or if they just didn’t have room for one more student… I just remember the sense of relief I had when we walked away from the wrought iron gates and my parents told us we wouldn’t be going to school there.

I couldn’t have been more pleased. I had just come to Accra from Ohio, and Morning Star didn’t look anything like Garfield Elementary. The playground sucked. That was all that mattered to me.

So my siblings and I spent another week content at play in our lodgings at what was once Ringway Hotel (which is now nothing more than a ruin, last I checked), scrambling over the mighty wooden elephants in the lobby and making polite requests for fried eggs and excellent sugar bread from the cook. And then suddenly, it happened: my parents announced that they had found another school for us.

“Soul Clinic International,” my mother said.

My sister and I burst into a fit of obnoxious laughter.

“What is it? A hospital for your soul?”

*giggle, giggle, giggle*

“Yeah… what kinda name is that?!”

*har, har, har!!!*

My parents let us have our fun and then drove us up to the untarred parking lot of what was to become our new school. We met with Mrs. MacCaughley, who was a Black American. I don’t know why this comforted me. The woman never smiled and made no pretense of showing me any favoritism, but I felt more secure knowing there was an American on the premises. I was then led to a classroom where I was to take my placement exam. I had just left third grade in America and naturally assumed I would be moving on to fourth. The entrance exam proved I wasn’t ready. I knew what a + and – sign were… but what was this x all over my paper?

I repeated my grade.

I had fleeting memories of what it was like to live in Ghana from earlier visits my family had taken. The pleasant sort of childhood memories that one associates with travel – like eating a mango for the first time or seeing a lizard scurry past you in pursuit of a moth – made up the bulk of my expectations for a now permanent life in Ghana. Soul Clinic showed me that those idyllic moments were relics of the past. I was quickly thrown into the fray and would soon learn what it meant to be a child – a girl child in particular – in Rawlings’ Ghana.

The first thing I had to do was learn to shut my mouth. As you can imagine, this was particularly difficult. Only by the grace of God and seven fairies did I manage to not say anything to get me into too much trouble. There were soldiers in those days looking for anyone critical of the regime. If I said anything out of turn, my dad could have been punished for it. And then there was danger that loose lips brought in the class room. Some of my teachers routinely gave out misinformation in class. (I knew this, because I had the benefit of several years’ instruction in NBC’s after school specials.) But I quickly learned that even if a teacher was unquestionably inaccurate in any regard, it was not my place as a student to bring that error to his/her attention, let alone correct them. That was suicide.

Second, I had to come to terms with physical punishment. No teacher had ever struck me before, and my parents only spanked us for the most grievous offenses, like lying or stealing or running into the middle of the street in traffic. Suddenly I was being hit for everything; wrong answers on a test, taking an object with my left hand, not paying my school fees on time. There were days I wished I could march my parents up to the school and demand that my teacher lash THEM. I could not help that my fees hadn’t been paid!

Third, I had to accept my limitations as a girl. This was by far the hardest.

Soul Clinic would teach me that there were hard and fast gender roles which informed the rules that governed our society. This was not peculiar to Soul Clinic alone, of course. It was the way things were done nationally – like assembly and marching to class. Every primary school student marched to class. For me, there was no better way to start the day than with a song. That’s one thing Garfield Elementary didn’t have.

We were very fortunate because we had a “marching band”, which comprised of three boys, two drum sticks and a one drum. They pounded out rhythms that set the pace for our little stamping feet. Everyone admired the marching band, and one boy in particular was considered the best drummer in the whole school. I wanted in. Desperately.

“But you can’t drum,” said Prince. (Remember him?)

“Yes I can!” I shot back. I knew I could. In the 80’s girls could do anything. Punky Brewster had proven that.

Prince chuckled condescendingly.

“No, you can’t, Malaka. You’re a girl… AND you’re too soft.”

Fortunately, by this time, I had lost my crush on Prince and he was just a friend whom I was free to tease. I’m sure I deserved his denouncement. I was such a jerk in those days. Still, the fact that he said I couldn’t play the drums because I was a girl really stung. What nonsense!

My class was filled with bright girls, who were special in their own right. There was Peggy Baah, whom we dubbed “Iron Lady” because she NEVER cried, no matter how hard the teacher lashed her. There was Nicole Klugeson, who was considered the prettiest and smartest girl in all of third grade. She had shoulder length permed hair and blue berry juice dark skin. And then there was Kate Nartey.

Kate Nartey was the poster African child. She had short hair, big eyes, and skinny legs. In fact, she had skinny everything. She was nimble. Everything she did was quick. When she knew the answer to a question, her hand shot up faster than everyone else’s. When she walked, it was with a purpose. When she swept the compound, it was with lightning efficiency. Kate was always quiet, but you always knew when Kate was there. She just had an energy about her.

Kate was the only girl that the boys allowed to play football with. The rest of us were relegated to skipping rope or ampe. I used to watch with awe as she skirted past boy after boy with the football connected to her feet. Kate was good at every sport – basketball, volley ball (we had an imaginary net, delineated by a chalk line in the ground), high jump – it didn’t matter; Kate could do it.

So what came next should not have surprised me.

The following term, after that fruitless conversation I’d had with Prince, we all lined up for assembly and prepared to march as usual, once all the announcements had been given. One of the senior girls called out the song we were to sing and the marching band boys departed from their ranks and got ready to drum. Something didn’t look right though… there was a girl up there holding the sticks.

Kate.

There were whispers all over the various classes. “Ei!” “Whoa” and a couple of phrases in Ga. I don’t know about any other girl that day, but my heart leapt. I marched a little harder, sang a little louder, and felt a lot better about my day. Oh guys, I wish you could have seen her. Her spindly arms were in perfect position, and she stood like a tiny marble statue, eyes trained on her drum. It was as if she didn’t dare look around in case she missed a beat and ruined the moment for every girl there. Because indeed, that’s what it was: a moment for us girls. It was a moment that proved that ability has nothing to do with gender, but with giving people an opportunity to prove their metal if you just give them the right arena.

I know I didn’t deserve to play that drum, but if anyone did, it was Kate Nartey.