Childhood in Ghana...Asoma Asoma Galore!

Things have been all serious in here for a while, which is good. We think a little, we laugh a little, not so?

Ah, so i've been itching to write a blog post on growing up in Ghana for months! And not just what it's like to be a kid in Ghana but one unavoidable aspect of childhood in these parts.

Yiee!

Asoma Asoma

How to say this in english?

Adults sending you left, and right to run errands.

It wasn't easy.

See the errands that filled my childhood:)

1. Going to the Nikanika

The Nikanika (tr: corn mill) is where we went to...well, mill corn. You know, the place where all the mbɔr (dough) came from before we could buy them in places like Shoprite. Does Shoprite even sell corn dough?And my childhood was filled with many many many trips to these mills. I'd go to mill all sorts of grains. Of course there was the usual corn that had been soaked in water for 3 days - which is used for banku, kooko, and kenkey. Yes, indeed my Bono (someone from the Bono Ahafo region) mother learned how to make Ga kenkey after which  we stopped buying from the kenkey seller so you can imagine the corn mill load. Hmm! Besides that, I also would mill something that my family calls Weanimix - (a mixture of roasted corn, beans, and groundnuts). Some people call this Tom Brown. Other times, I'd go to mill hausa koko ( a mixture of millet, akakaduro (tr:ginger), hwentea and dried pepper). Oh charle! Everything including hausa koko was home-made. We did have a house help but she was older than me so, since I was the only kid in the house, which meant more asoma asoma for me. There was even a period when we were grinding dry corn for grits and ekuegbemi. So when it came time to go to the nikanika, the house help would put the kehyire (i don't know the english word for kekyire so  please use the translater on the right hand panel of the blog) on my head  and then i'd carry the grains in the Holsum bucket. Does anyone remember the Holsum bucket? Yeah, and then I'd walk with the bucket on my head to the Nikanika. If the light was off, or the line was long, then it would be a long boring wait. Who else on this blog did this?! And is it just coincidence that all the Nikanikas in Ashale-Botwe were owned and operated by Ewes or was this the case in other places as well?

2. Burning Rubbish

Only in Ghana is burning rubbish a child's job. Before the days of door-to-door waste collection, we used the land opposite our house as a rubbish dump and I had a weekly ritual of heaping all our rubbish into a pile, pouring some kerosene on it and lighting a big flame. Then I'd stand there and watch it burn, inhaling all the smoke.  In writing this blog post, I discussed this point about burning rubbish with a friend and he said mine was nothing and then he told me his horror story. He says his friends had come to visit him and he was sitting on their porch talking, and generally trying to be all cool. Next thing he knows his mother is shouting from inside the house...Kwame! kwaaame! Kaawoho kɔhye toilet papers no (hurry and burn the toilet papers) Can u imagine!!? He said, the whole place became diin (tr: quiet). hehe. I would have died of embarassment. It's in times like these that the earth is supposed to open up and swallow you. lol.

3. Going to Market With a List (including momoni or koobi)

I have written all about my experience buying momoni in madina market here. Seriously, don't parents ever think about us and our "image?" haha. How can they send us to the market to go buy momoni? What if we meet our friends there? How shall we survive the teasing? Thankfully, I was never "caught". hehe.

 

4. Going to fetch water in buckets when the taps go off

Anyone from Madina, Adenta, Ashale-Botwe here? Water simply did not flow regularly in those parts. So before the days of water tankers, and Polytanks, when the taps went off, you'd be given a bucket and you'd have to go in search of water. I remember once, going as far as 2 miles away to fetch water from some lake so we could use it to flush toilets. Charle...that was not fun.

 

 

5. Going to buy alcohol, especially akpeteshie in a coke bottle.

I hated, hated, hated this one. Arrrrgh! I didn't mind being sent to buy sodas or minerals as we say, and actually, I didn't mind being sent to buy beers or guinness. But I hated being twelve years old and having to carry a coke bottle in a black plastic bag, to a woman in a kiosk exactly as in the photo below to buy akpeteshie. I hated it.

 

6. Going to Deliver a Message

This was before the days of the cell phone, and even before most homes had landlines, so my mother would send me to go deliver messages to her friends. Often I'd get sent with messages that I was not meant to understand, and sometimes I'd forget the message on the way there. When I didn't forget, then the whole deal would go like so:  I'd get there, and greet and deliver the message. It usually went like this: Mepaakyɛw good evening. Me maame se, menkankyere wo sɛ ɔkyena ontumi mba asɔre enti me nka nkyɛrɛ wo sɛ adeɛ no, fa ma Mrs. Ahovi ɔmfa mbrɛ no wo edwuma mu. (Good evening, my mother said i should tell you that she won't make it to church tomorrow so you should give the thing to Mrs. Ahovi to bring to her at work) Money was always adeɛ no. lol. Why didn't adults just say the message as it was? Like I didn't know that adeɛ no referred to money. lol. I'm guessing kids of today don't go on such errands anymore because adults can just call whomever they need to call.

 

Yeah, these are the errands I spent my childhood running. What about you? Where did your mamma like to send you? Which did you not like? What was it like? Any funny errand stories, like our friend Kwame whose mother needed him to burn the toilet papers? lol.