Do you have an Aunty Charity?

I am afraid this is all very personal. I don’t know if everybody has an Auntie Charity. If you don’t have one, you should find one. 

I have mentioned my Auntie Charity a few rimes in my articles. I think I first introduced her to the readers of this column when the story broke that Ghanaian palm oil which contained the illegal Sudan 1V dye was being sold in a shop in South London and our own Food and Drugs Board finally issued a lame alert about the presence of the carcinogenic substance in the palm oil in our markets.

In the article I wrote about that palm oil saga, I wrote this line: “the only palm oil that enters my kitchen comes from Abutia and is made by or under the supervision of my Auntie Charity.” So you get the idea, if it is made by or under the supervision of my Auntie Charity, it means it is safe and it is reliable. 

I rely on her not just for palm oil but for a host of other things. She orders and supervises the making of the gari that is eaten in my home and as I have written in these columns, I never come away from Abutia without some plantain from the garden around her house, neatly packed in my car.

There are some foods that are disappearing from every day use and many people no longer know how to make them. It is a phenomenon that is countrywide. Sometimes, it is because those foods take a long time to cook and some of the ingredients have disappeared. But probably the main reason is that modern life makes it easier to settle for fast foods and the roadside canteens.

Well, my Auntie Charity is the repository of old recipes and would for example, make numerous dishes out of ripe plantain that you don’t see around and surprise you with the many different combinations that groundnuts and corn can produce. 

Resourceful

Auntie Charity’s usefulness goes way beyond being the source of safe, reliable and exotic food. Those of us who do not live in our villages of descent but still regard those places as our hometowns know there are obligations that must be discharged. 

You cannot go to every funeral, so Auntie Charity goes on your behalf, makes the donations and sits in at the wake during the critical hours or sends the communal food to the appropriate households. You are not around to participate in the weekly communal labour and so Aunty Charity takes water to the workers on your behalf.

Many people try to keep up with the membership of the church in the village; this probably has something to do with keeping an eye out for when they die and the body is taken back to the village to be buried. This often provides a great opportunity for the church elders in the village to impose fines and extract monies from the family before agreeing to bury the body. 

If you have an Aunty Charity, you are covered. She keeps your church membership book up-to-date and she would buy a glass of water in your name during the church harvest, so you are always in good standing.

The informal accounting between you and your Aunty Charity probably evens out in the end. A dozen tins of evaporated milk, a packet of sugar and a tin of chocolate drink that you take to her seem to count for much more than the head of plantain, bag of garri, gallon of palm oil and avocado pears that she gives you. And if you add GH¢20 or 50, then she goes into overdrive singing your praises. 

My Aunty Charity is not really my aunt in the real sense of the word “aunt”. She acquired the sobriquet “Auntie” from when she was a child, (something to do with her stunning looks and the way she carried herself, I was told) and everybody called her that and led to the ridiculous situation in her later life of children calling her “Da Aunty” and “Mama Aunty Charity”. 

The two of us lived with our redoubtable grandmother for a while.The first time I went on a long journey, I did it with her. I was nine- years- old and she was 17 and we travelled from Abutia to Akwatia to visit my aunt, Aunty Charity’s mother and her husband. 

The Adomi Bridge had not yet been built over the Volta River and the only way to go to the Gold Coast from Trans Volta Togoland was via the ferry at Senchi. Akwatia was an entirely new experience and I came face to face with what must be what is currently called “galamsey”. I recall the bowl in the corner of my Aunt’s kitchen in the Akwatia house. It contained sediments scooped from the river and we were told there might be diamonds in the sand. In other words, she and I go back a long time.

Difficult week

My Aunty Charity died at dawn last Saturday.

Last Wednesday, Sylvester Opong died. He was a retired civil servant who had worked at the Regional Administration in Ho. He was an old student of Mawuli School. Put this way, it manages to state in the most banal way, the remarkable life of an amazing man.

He was a severely physically challenged man, a quadriplegic who overcame unbelievable odds to lead an almost normal and independent life. He was not born physically challenged, but became ill when he was a few months old; I suspect from an attack of polio. 

The story of his life from Abutia of the late 1940s as a physically challenged child would qualify to be told. That he was sent to school was a testament to his own persistence and the forward looking nature of his grandmother and parents. That he dared to take the Common Entrance was a wonder and he passed and gained admission to Mawuli School. 

The school authorities were brave to take him in with no preparations for a physically challenged person.The student body was brave and treated him like just another student. I am not sure that Mawuli school has admitted anybody with such severe condition since then, but then Sylvester KwamiOpong, aka FoKwami, aka Billy the Kid, was one of a kind and an exceptional one at that.

I should write his story and tell about his mother who is into her 90s and has survived him, his loving wife and three children and his most supportive four brothers. FoKwami was my cousin. 

Aunty Charity was the daughter of my mother’s elder sister and she was my Aunty Charity. FoKwami was the son of my mother’s younger sister. They departed within 60 hours of each other. This past week has been a difficult one.