la badi beach, february 2010
Photo taken by SK Kakraba.
I think this picture is great – so striking and bizarre.
Might have even posted it before…
Lanier Philips
Lanier Philips has been a hero of mine since I first heard about him –a few years ago– from my friend Scott Penney, a native Newfoundlander. I heard this story on the CBC today and it made me tear up.
Lanier Philips was born in Georgia in 1923. He was black and experienced great discrimination growing up, as well as in the US Navy, which he joined when he was 18.
In 1942 he survived a shipwreck off the coast of Newfoundland. Washed ashore he worried he was going to be killed because he thought he was in Iceland, a country where black US Navy officers were not permitted. However, instead of being killed he was treated completely differently than he expected. He was treated with equality. “Gently prodded to his feet by a local resident who told him he’d freeze to death if he didn’t get up, Phillips was confronted by a experience that was totally new to him: “I had never heard a kind word from a white man in my life.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanier_W._Phillips)
Never having seen a black person before the Newfoundland women who cared for him thought the oil from the wreck had seeped into his pores making his skin black. She tried to scrub the “oil” off him.
This story is particularly touching to me because it shows how one single experience can change a person, and how innocence and naïvety are sometimes a blessing.
Lanier Philips died this week at the age of 88. Listen to his story here.
Lagos / African Fashion Week
Exciting to see more and better international coverage of Fashion Week in Lagos, which is the biggest/most relevant fashion week on the continent, and just ended. Arise magazine is largely responsible for a much improved showing that managed to attract media from all over the world.
http://www.stylebubble.co.uk/style_bubble/2012/03/arise.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2012/mar/14/lagos-fashion-week
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/03/13/fashion-week-in-nigeria-_n_1342228.html
http://www.arisemagazine.net/amfw
Not to mention some great clothes!
Things are certainly getting better and better around here, stylewise.
Here are a few designers I think are really doing exciting things:
Dress by Iconic Invanity:
then and now
Elena tipped me off to these pretty B&W images, from here:
http://www.retronaut.co/2011/09/cape-coast-ghana-1940s/
Amazing that, throw in a couple of cell phones and a motorcycle, and these could be current images taken in any village.
texture
First photo: Molly Keogh, second and third photos: Zya Levy.
Ode to visiting friends and family
We had several dear friends visit us this production schedule, each helping us keep sane in their own ways.
Laurel came at the beginning and stayed for three weeks. She helped with quality control and keeping us healthy with wonderful meals and exercise programs.
Elena, my younger sister came for 3 months and helped with the business plan, though the heat and the stresses of Accra led her slightly astray. She hauled water everyday, and made sure we always had lunch, even if it was fried chicken and rice day after day.
Emily came for the shortest time (12 days), but her presence was much welcomed. She brought a years supply of New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly magazines and we spent some relaxing days at the beach.
55 and counting
March 6th is Ghana’s Independence Day.
Fifty-five years ago Ghana became the first autonomous nation in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by a flood of other nations. To hear old timers and taxi drivers describe, it was a heady optimistic time. The youth were politically engaged, government projects and therefore work was plentiful, and big new ideas were actually being put to practice. Most Ghanaians I speak with have mixed feelings about how things have progressed since then. They usually acknowledge that Ghana is relatively safe and prosperous, but still has miles to go before the economic and civil systems are truly healthy.
Today we celebrated by going to buy used furniture from a French woman who is leaving the country. We met there a German accountant, a Ghanaian journalist and her baby, and a Ghanaian private consultant – all young strangers buying furniture, pots and pans. We sat together and enjoyed European Grade Coffee (a rare treat, ironically, tho thats a whole nother post…), and talk immediately turned to how Ghana can continue to improve itself. How the new motorway that the US funded Millenium project built makes a trip to the beach easier, but how 10 pedestrians were killed in the first week. How the Northerners who have squatted on valuable land in central Accra for several generations will eventually get forced out. Whether a democratized African nation allows bad behavior to be institutionalized, while a military – run nation only has room for it at the top… And on and on….
The topic of improvement is a national, and given this crowd, an even international obsession. Conversations like today’s are by no means uncommon. I so much enjoy these spontaneous discussions with random people, and they seem so hopeful and constructive to me, that I cant help but think that the spirit which led Ghana to break free remains alive and well here. I thank this generous and open country for teaching me so so much about the different workings of the world, for being patient with my western prejudices and assumptions, and for showing me over and over again how to think in new and foreign ways.
Viva Ghana!
The North
All Photos Zya S Levy.
Gargantuan
In honor of Leap Day, I would like to show you…..
Sulley Muntaris GIGANTIC car.
Azonto Madness
In case you haven’t heard about it yet (and I am very late in posting about this trend) Azonto is a dance that originated in Ghana and is taking the dance world by storm… Its like you have one leg that is lame and the other side of your body is making up for it. Molly once watched a guy dance for 20 minutes thinking he was injured, only to see him walk off the dance floor in perfect form.
Azonto music often keeps us up all night on Fridays during the wake keeping that happens out behind our house.
High school kids doin’ it
Babies doin’ it
Kool kids doin’ it