Tag: Ghana
-
DORA AND THE FIERCE VOLUNTEER
Some crops don’t wait to be planted. They arrive uninvited, establish themselves in the gaps between everything else and dare you to ignore them. They just show up – fierce, thorny and needing nothing from anyone. Smart farmers don’t ignore them. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that you can reap where you did not sow – if you pay attention. They watch, they learn to work with the plant and not against it, and then they build something from the volunteers. Dora Ansong Yeboah is one of those farmers. The…
-
DANCIN’ UNDER THE BAOBAB TREE
The baobab tree has a most significant importance to the people of northern Ghana. The leaves and fruit provide an excellent source of nutrition while the bark has medicinal values. And it’s a magical tree venerated by the locals. My colleague, Scott Christiansen, travelled to the village of Punga, just a few klicks south of the border with Burkina Faso in northern Ghana, for the Crop Trust to learn how a women’s association uses the baobab tree to its fullest potential. We sat for several hours in the shade of an…
-
THE DOOR OF NO RETURN
Today my colleague, Scott Christiansen, and I stood inside Osu Castle in Accra – Christiansborg – built by the Danes in the 1660s on a rocky promontory above the Atlantic. It’s a beautiful building. But that is the first, uncomfortable truth. The second truth is darker. In the dungeons below its whitewashed walls, up to 60 men were crammed into a single airless room for months at a time. Women, 30 to a cell. No light. No sanitation. No dignity. They waited there – sometimes for six months – not knowing…
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.