GHANA

READ

After struggling with the book I chose for my post about Germany, I was happy to find a book for Ghana that kept me interested and entertained. I hesitate to call The Seasons of Beento Blackbird, by Akosua Busia, a beach read, since that conjures up an image of literary fluff, which this book was not. But it was full of romance, sympathetic characters, and beautiful descriptions of exotic locations, making it the perfect book to take on vacation.

Solomon Eustace Wilberforce is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who writes bestselling children’s books under the pseudonym Beento Blackbird. He is tall, handsome, wealthy, charming, kind, well-spoken – in short, he is the epitome of the saying, “Men want to be him, and women want to be with him.” He has a complicated life, although apparently it works well for him. He spends winters with his Caribbean wife Miriam on the island of Cape Corcos, summers with his second wife Ashia in a small village in Ghana, and spring and fall in Manhattan writing his books and dealing with his publisher, where his agent Sam is secretly in love with him.

Why, then, is he living as a hermit in a cave on the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Germaine when the book opens? He has been missing and presumed dead for five months, leaving behind a trail of broken-hearted women.

In spite of outward appearances, Solomon’s life is not as perfect as it seems. He has abandonment issues, stemming from no relationship with his father in the early years of his life, followed by an uneasy relationship with him in Solomon’s teen years, and rejection by his father’s wife and other children. His biggest sorrow, though, is that he has no children of his own, despite having two wives. Hiding from the world for five months gives him the time and space to work though these issues and decide what is really important to him.

The book’s author, Akosua Busia, is an actress who played the role of Nettie Harris in The Color Purple. The Seasons of Beento Blackbird is the only book she has written, which is a shame, because I would certainly like to read more of her beautiful writing.

COOK

Peanuts are an important crop in Ghana. During one of his visits to the small village where his Ghanaian wife lives, Solomon, Ashia, and her little brother and sister visit a peanut farm and eat their fill. “Solomon felt like Kummaa looked, and Kummaa looked stuffed.” With that in mind, I searched for a recipe that included peanuts and found one on Mealz.com for Ghanaian vegan peanut soup. Mealz.com is a website that advertises various food brands, which meant that the peanut rub the recipe called for wasn’t something I could find at any local grocery stores, so I left it out. I also skipped the fufu. I thought this soup was exceptionally good – the type of thing I’d be thrilled with if I’d ordered it in a restaurant, and the perfect dish for an unexpectedly rainy day.

GIVE

In The Seasons of Beento Blackbird, Solomon is passionate about making life better for children. In one part of the book, he reminds himself about why he writes the Beento Blackbird books: “Beento Blackbird, freedom flier from the Ashanti gold mines of Ghana, West Africa. My mission is to protect, enlighten, and inspire all the underprivileged and misinformed children of the world.” Solomon has traveled all over Africa doing research for his books, but the place that has been seared into his soul is Gorée Island off the coast of Senegal, which, according to the UNESCO website, “was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast” from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. In particular, he agonized about the room where the children had been kept. “Once alone inside the room, Solomon had slid down, leaned against the stone wall, and grieved over all the children who had died in that very spot.”

We like to think that slavery is a thing of the past, but in looking through the projects in Ghana listed on the GlobalGiving.com website, I found one titled, “Saving Children Sold Into Slavery in Ghana,” and this is the project that received my donation. According to the description on the website: “Lake Volta is one of the world's largest man-made lakes and sustains a large fishing industry. Due to extreme poverty and lack of information, some parents/caretakers give their children to fishermen, unaware of the harsh living and working conditions awaiting them. The children work extremely long hours, are mostly deprived of education and often malnourished. Some of them are exposed to physical and sexual abuse.”

The International Organization for Migration works to rescue these children, and also to educate communities about “the rights of children and the responsibility of parents and communities to protect them and not give them away to fishermen.” More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/africa-child-trafficking/.

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