Eli My Ghanian Mother

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The Elmina Master Chef

Meet Elizabeth. She is my closest Ghanian friend, and it’s pretty obvious she would become my closest friend considering how she cooks me these wonderfully scrumptious dinners and endlessly supplies me with Star, a Ghanian beer. Every day after work I head over to Eli’s place to chill out and watch her prepare meals. My favorites? Definitely Elizabeth’s Special Egg Stew (ask me when I get home and I’ll make it for you!), palava (a sort of fermented spinachy dish), ground nut soup, red red (sort of a chili like dish), fried plantains, tue (rice balls) and fufu (ground cassava and plantain that almost takes like Korean dduk (glutinous rice)). YUM! And it’s amazing how she cooks all this in just a few hours every day with the materials she has. I mean, she cooks outside with a charcoal box thing and peels fruit and vegetables with these dull knives. And here I am thinking that without a Williams Sonoma peeler vegetables cannot be peeled properly. HA! Boy was I wrong. I got a real kick out of writing down recipes for these stews and stuff. So umm Eli, how many garlic cloves do you put in the stew? How much butter do you put in your muffins? How long do you fry the plantains for? Doesn’t really matter what question I would ask, the answer was always the same: Giggling, Eli would make some sort of charade-like hand symbols, to which I only assume translated to “enough to make your eyes burn” or “3 whopping handfuls” or “fry until the sun sets.” Who needs measuring cups and designer brand cooking utensils when you have your five senses, beautiful skies and friends to keep you company? Try that for a new cooking concept!

Marrying Me Off

Also much like my real mother, Eli is trying her hardest to marry me off. I have had many a marriage offer while chilling with Eli, as early as 8am on my way to work to all hours of the evening. One morning, I was walking to the road to catch a ride to work when I hear Eli calling my name from her place, “Sue, come over here, meet my friends!” so of course I head on over, and who do I meet but two men competing to see which one shall win my hand. Of course they do not know my name but merely call me “China” but hey, they say they see me every morning walking to work and they are in love. There is another guy Eli introduced me to who tells people I am his wife. And recently since I’ve fallen a bit ill (can you believe I have a cold in Africa?!), he tells me he is praying for me because he does not want his future wife to be sick since I need to be able to cook and raise lots of kids and stuff. Then he tells me not to laugh at him, it is not polite to laugh at your husband! I don’t really know what his name is, but I think he is called Jones or Jonas or something. Other suitors that have come calling, grâce à Eli, include: an old man from the neighborhood with one tooth, and a man who asked me to come work for him on his farm (and I unknowingly said yes! Here is one case where “just smile and nod” does not work to your benefit…). I think my real mom would be so happy to know there are others just as equally concerned as her about my marital status!

Life Through Eli’s Eyes

I have to say I am pretty lucky to have spent so much time with Eli. Through her, I learned so much about the way people live in my neighborhood, and I have met so many Ghanians and they have changed so many of my former beliefs about development. Here I was coming into Africa thinking I could change it, thinking that of course I knew how to fix what I thought were obvious development problems, but what would you know, it has had the complete opposite effect, and I am only grateful I did this before school or I would have wasted all that money learning about things that didn’t really matter at all. What exactly are those things? Wait for my next entry (which will be my last one from Ghana)….

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