May 6th is Ghana’s Independence
Day. In 1957, workers were given the day off to celebrate, a tradition that
continues. It’s not the best day therefore, to have an accident such as
breaking your ankle, but this is what I managed to do, in Ho, Volta Region. Not
only was it dislocated; it was also broken in three places. True to Ghanaian
style, various staff were cheerful when called in on their public holiday in
order to carry out x-rays and to plaster my leg. The man who un-dislocated
my ankle did so with huge skill, and when he said, smiling, “I’m caressing your
leg”, I did have to join him in smiling, despite a certain amount of pain. I
was treated more speedily than I would have been if I was in an English
accident and emergency room and I don’t believe it was because I was white.
Well, maybe a visiting professor from the UK does get special privileges but
the kindness and consideration with which I was treated can’t simply be turned
on like a tap – they are there in Ghana anyway. My heartfelt thanks to all
those who treated me so well.
Back in the UK and after a week’s stay and an operation in
our district hospital, the clinicians commended the excellent work of the
bone setter in Ghana and when I said that the staff there were superb but the equipment
was poor, old and much used, the doctor quipped that here in England it’s the other way
round….
So my March didn’t include writing a blog.
We were in Ghana to work in partnership with the new University of Health and
Allied Sciences in Ho, one of two new universities being established to provide
for currently under-served areas, (the other one being in Sunyani). It was a
delight to meet up with so many Leeds Met alumni and a privilege to give public
lectures in Kumasi, Accra and Ho, the latter one being from a sitting position,
post-accident. The coming together of health promotion alumni and the discussion
promoted by the lectures helped to regenerate discussion of the re-formation of
the professional association for health promoters in Ghana. One of our alumni
currently heads the national health promotion team in the Ministry and others
have reached similar high positions. It
was fantastic to see so many doing so well. There’s a lot going for health
promotion in Ghana! My lecture was intended to stimulate how health promotion
can be driven forward in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ghana has a long history of good public
health in its Universities, principally at Kumasi (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and technology) and at the University of Ghana at Legon. What we will be
offering in Ho is slightly different, with our Masters’ programme reflecting
our social model of health, focusing on the social determinants of health and being
taught by health promotion specialists. The course will start in the autumn of
2013 and is aimed at strengthening training for health promotion in a similar
way to our work in Zambia and The Gambia. Hopefully by then my limbs will be
intact. Having something wrong with a part of your body is always a humbling
experience and reminds us how easily life can change (I was simply walking along
a reasonable road and slipped after a rainy night), and of how lucky we are
that we will recover.
Ghana is a country close to my heart and I
have known Ghanaians since the 1960s. I heard first hand accounts of the coup
that deposed Kwame Nkrumah. Shortly after my return, the great Nigerian Chinua
Achebe died. He too was aware of the significance of Ghana’s independence. Jesse
Weaver Shipley, in an appreciation of Achebe wrote:
“The most common misreading of his first novel, as Chinua
explained to me, was to understand it as an idealized recollection of pre-colonial
African life. This was exacerbated by the fact it was often included in
American and European syllabi as a representation or token of Africa or
non-Western expression, a sign of Africa for outsiders to imagine an authentic
vision of its peoples and cultures. But if you listen to Chinua this simplistic
nostalgia dissipates. He recalled that he was writing Things Fall Apart
as Ghana became independent from British rule in 1957. The Pan-Africanism of
Ghana’s first leader Kwame Nkrumah was especially influential on Chinua: “They
were ahead of us [in Nigeria] so we were looking to Ghana to see the path to
independence. It was an inspiring moment.” This novel and his other tales are
stories of multiple encounters of loss and impossibility, humor and survival
that point to the future; they are meditations on the experience of time. Things
Fall Apart presents Ibgo life from multiple angles simultaneously forcing
consideration of the question of cultural stability and its representation; it
is a reflexive mediation on the possibility of storytelling itself to encapsulate
history, memory, and new ways of life; it is an extended proverb in content and
form. Chinua is the poet of encounter, a primary trope of 20th century life.”
Chinua Achebe wasn’t merely the ‘grandfather
of African literature”. He was also an outspoken critic of misrule and
corruption, calling for social justice and good governance. His novels and
other writing certainly influenced me and now make me want to re-read them. His
critique of for example, Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is essential for anyone
wanting to move away from their learned (white, European) ways of ‘seeing’ Africa;
he thunders about how dare we use Africa as a mere backdrop for exploration of white ideas and concepts. Achebe wrote about
the Biafra war of course, and the struggles of micro-nations to have their own independence
after the colonial powers with their arbitrary boundaries created all sorts of
divisions and alliances that made no sense to the communities living on the
ground. These themes can be seen in younger writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose
‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is a devastating rendition of the Biafran conflict. Taiye
Selasi, brought up in Britain, America, Ghana and Nigeria is another young
writer who has written an essay called “Bye-bye, Babar: or, What is an
Afropolitan?”, exploring the experience of Africans brought up in a cosmopolitan
world of the middle class diaspora and who are asked the question, “where are
you from?” In my new-found spare time whilst unable to walk, I am reading her
latest novel, “Ghana must go” which is about a Ghanaian doctor who practices in
the USA and returns to Ghana. Chinua Achebe of course spent much of his life outside West Africa,
dying in Boston, USA.
Taiye
Selasi also talks of how to “be herself” on African soil. My close encounter
with African soil reminded me of how red it is. It’s silky after rain, a
beautiful dark terracotta. When I look back to my accident, out walking alone,
I see myself sitting on red earth, waiting for the inevitable person to appear
out of the brushwood. I don’t recommend being brought abruptly to earth but slowing
down and having to look carefully where you put your feet has its
compensations.
