Maya Angelou loved Africa
It seems eerily fitting that I should find myself sitting behind a desk in a hotel room in Accra, Ghana, with a box of Kleenex by my side, writing as I mourn Dr Maya Angelou.
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She preferred to write in rented hotel rooms, preferred the anonymity and transience of such spaces. She would sit with a pen, paper, Bible and box of Kleenex by her side and write for hours.
Maya Angelou and Ghana
And Maya Angelou loved Africa, especially Ghana. In 1961, having spent the previous year living and working in Cairo, Egypt, she moved to Ghana, which four years earlier had become the first sub-Saharan nation to win its independence from colonial rule.
She taught at the University of Ghana in the School of Music and Drama, wrote for numerous local newspapers and also worked with Ghana’s first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, to forward his pan-African vision of a united and free continent.
She often spoke of her time in Ghana as being extremely influential in the shaping of her life as an artist and a humanist. She immersed herself fully in the culture and engaged deeply with the people, even gaining fluency in Fanti, one of the local languages.
“While the rest of the world has been improving technology,” Dr Angelou once wrote, “Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.”
It was during Dr Angelou’s time in Ghana that she met my grandfather, Dr J.B. Danquah, widely considered the doyen of Ghana politics. She subsequently also developed what would turn out to be a lifelong friendship with his son, my uncle, Paul Danquah, a British-Ghanaian barrister, arts activist and actor best known for his leading role in the classic film, A Taste of Honey.
Return to US
After living in Ghana for three years, Dr Angelou returned to the US to work with Malcolm X. A few years after that, Uncle Paul immigrated to Washington, DC to work with the World Bank. Dr Angelou became a frequent visitor to his home.
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Uncle Paul often hosted dinners and salons there. His guests were luminaries of the arts and literary world, people whose names have been indelibly etched in history, the likes of Jimmy Baldwin, Roberta Flack and Nina Simone.
I first met Maya Angelou at one such gatherings in Uncle Paul’s home. I was about seven or eight years old. I found her quite intimidating. She was tall but it wasn’t just the stature, it was her carriage, full of grace, pride and a little bit of sauce. And then there was that voice. There was power in that voice.
For some people, it’s all in the eyes; for Maya Angelou it was all in the voice. With a change of inflection, her voice could carry within it a welcome embrace or the aura equivalent to “the evil eye.”
She invited me to call her “Auntie Maya.” It is customary in Ghana to address one’s elders by an honorific title— madam, mister or, for close friends and relations, auntie and uncle.
That day, Auntie Maya also invited me to join her and her then husband on a drive to Baltimore. Her first memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” had recently been published and was a bestseller. People would stare and do double takes of her as they passed us by in their cars; at red lights, they would lean out of windows with pen and paper in hand for an autograph. The whole experience left quite an impression on me. I hadn’t known she was a writer, that she was famous; I only knew that she was somehow a part of us and she referred to my uncle as her brother and my mother as her sister. And after that initial day we spent together, much to her delight, I would refer to Auntie Maya as my godmother.
Relationship with Maya Angelou
From then on, my relationship with Maya Angelou shaped nearly every aspect of my life. She encouraged me during my youth, scolded me in my teens and celebrated me in my adult years as I began publishing. Maya Angelou enjoyed the details of life, the moments that many of us so easily dismiss, moments filled with the pleasures that come from good company, good food and good music.
Still, in many ways, the relationship I had with Maya Angelou on the page was every bit as defining as the one I had with her in person. Like so many black girls in America, I grew up reciting her poetry and learning pride and self-love through her words:
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Maya Passes on
When I learned that Maya Angelou had passed on to become an ancestor, I immediately phoned my mother in Washington, DC. She was distraught. I told her about a photo I have of her and Auntie Maya cooking, as they always did when they were together. “That was from the book party Paul and I threw for her when I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published,” she said.
“She wanted only Ghanaian food,” Mum explained. Together they’d prepared nkontomire (a spinach stew) and groundnut soup. But, Mum added, weeks before the party, Auntie Maya had placed one special request.
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“She wanted me to make dokunu.” Dokunu or kenkey, as it is also called, is a ball of fermented cornmeal that is wrapped in either corn or plantain leaves then steamed. Though it is a classic Ghanaian food, it is not one that is usually favoured by foreign palates.
“But she wouldn’t let us put that out for the guests,” Mum said. “She kept that for herself and ate it after the party was over.”
And right then, I could picture Auntie Maya, as I knew her, dressed in a traditional Ghanaian kaba and slit outfit with a duku (headwrap) sitting at Uncle Paul’s kitchen table, eating dokunu with her fingers, flashing that huge, full-toothed smile of hers and fully enjoying the richness of her life in that moment.
Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is author of the memoir, “Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression,” and the forthcoming memoir, “Truer Than the Red, White and Blue: An African Childhood, American Style.”
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This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on May 28, 2014.