South Africa… Land of the Big Six and the Proteas. Land of Mandela’s birth. Land where edges go to DIE. One of the things I was most excited about in moving to South Africa was the prospect of having my hair slayed every week. Compared to prices in the States, cornrows and braids are delightfully […]
Amnon and Tamar In the course of time, Amnon son of David fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David. 2 Amnon became so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill. She was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her. 3 Now Amnon […]
I suffer from infrequent bouts of depression. This should come as a surprise to no one. I’m an almost 40-year-old African American woman who is living in a time of state sponsored violence against Black people, a possible Trump presidency and Super Gonorrhea for which there is no cure. So yeah, I have dark days. […]
As I’ve mentioned on many a previous post, I grew up in a suburb of Accra called Labone. It’s hard to believe looking at the area now, but there was once a time when rents were reasonable and a lower middle class family such as mine could afford to live there. The house I lived […]
Honestly, I forgot it was there. Just wait! Let me explain. August is Women’s Month, and last night I went to our school’s annual ladies get together: Fabulous Women. Fabulous Women…what? Dancing? Eating? They said, “Haibo! We said ‘Fabulous Women.’ Finished! You just buy your ticket and come. And so I went. The event was […]
I can’t believe I’m about to write this…but what they hey. Carpe dat diem. My Dearest Excellency JDM| President of the Fourth Republic| Father of a disputed number of children| Dead Goat | “You Mean As a Human Being?” Asker| Charmer of panties off Real Housewives of Atlanta. I greet you. I know I […]
When well-meaning women beholden to archaic traditions lovingly perform barbaric acts like holding their daughters down and slice off their clitorises with rusty blades or yank them out of classrooms to sell them into marriage, women like Nana Oye Lithur spring into action. It’s not that the former group of women gave birth to bring […]
In our Junior Secondary School (JSS) history books, we learned about names, dates and places on the African continent that were so distant that they might as well have been on the moon. We learned about the importance of Fernando Po, the Bight of Benin and our own Cape Coast castle in Ghana – all […]
An article on BBC about a man hired by a community in Malawi to have sex with children went viral this week. Eric Aniva, the man featured in the story, is locally known as a ‘hyena’ and is paid approximately $6.00 to have sex with girls once they reach puberty. The members of this community, […]