On turning 27.

13 September 2006
Rather anti-climactic really.I’m sitting here, Kenny G does “What a Wonderful World” playing in the background, remembering what I thought 27 would be.
When I was 15 years old, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head. He was 27. I realised then that all the greats seemed to have not made it to their 28th – Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and now my dear Kurt! Clearly, life peaks at 27. In the words of Neil Young “it’s better to burn out, then to fade away.”
I’ve since decided that, at least in my case, life only gets better. I love knowing myself one more year, I love every year of experiences, every year of discoveries, and every year of learning something I didn’t think before.
Sitting alone in the restaurant of the hotel, where I presume I am the only guest, in a town where I am essentially a zoo animal, I certainly hope my life hasn’t peaked on this day.
If anything, I feel much younger than I did last year on my birthday. Here in Koforidua, I am entirely dependent on other people. I literally can’t eat, pee, drink water, go home after work, get to work in the morning, or do anything except sit in my room alone writing blog entries which I will still need someone’s assistance in order to find an internet café to post them onto my blog.
I have been super laid back about it all. It’s no secret that I am definitely someone who enjoys my independence, especially in terms of being given the flexibility to manage my own time, and having the freedom to explore the world that surrounds me. So far, I have been given a total of 15 minutes of my own time and the comfort [ie. daylight] to explore my world. It only took about a minute for me to be surrounded by children screaming.
“Obruny! Obruny! Can I have your number?”
“You can’t even reach my elbow.”
“But I will grow!”
“Are you even old enough to operate a phone without parental supervision?”

When I finally shook off the first round of kids, I noticed a football field where spectators were sitting along the edge watching. As I approached the game to join the spectators, the whole game stopped, and everyone turned and stared at me. I decided, in the interest of the sport, to continue walking instead, where I was shortly met by the next pack of roaming children.
I realised then that the closest thing I have to autonomy is my peanut butter. The one meal of the day that I chose when and where is breakfast – I pull out my Swiss army knife, my jar of peanut butter, and the loaf of bread that I was able to ask my driver to find for me because I didn’t know where to find bread. I don’t even have a napkin or a plate to eat from, and when I offered my driver some bread with peanut butter so that he could taste Canadian food, I had to present it on a sudoku puzzle. I think he enjoyed the sudoku puzzle more than the PB.
NB. For anyone who ever goes to a developing country, I cannot stress the importance of a Swiss army knife, a jar of peanut butter, and, most crucially, a couple roles of toilet paper. I’m not going to elaborate on this note in too much detail, but please, for the love of God, bring a role of toilet paper and a couple of ziplock bags. TRUST ME.
So my Ghanaian name is “Yaa”. I can also go by “Yaayaa” and “Obayaa”. In Ghana, your name is the day you were born. I may as well confess now that I have been lying to everyone for the last 27 years, telling them that I was born on Friday the 13th. I was actually born on Thursday, September 13th, which gives me the lamest of all the days-of-the-week-female-Ghanaian-names. Other days of the week include: Akosua, Asi, or Ese (Sunday); Adwoa, or Ajao (Monday); Abena, or Araba (Tuesday); Akua (Wednesday); Afua, Afia, or Efua (Friday); and, Ama (Saturday). Despite this repertoire of beautiful Ghanaian names, my name is Yaa.
My most common activity at work is to respond to enquiries at the door of the Municipal Planning Office.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Yah?”
[since it’s a female voice, and I am the only female on my floor, they instantly know it must be…]
“Yaa!”
“Yah.”
Even the boy names for Thursday birthdays are better: Yao or Ekow. Considering that my world is 100% male right now – I haven’t even really spoken to a woman in almost two weeks, and there’s no rubbish bin in any of the toilets on my floor – I should at least get to choose between Yaa, Yao, and Ekow.
But there’s no choice here in Ghana, social rules dictate that my name is Yaa. This relates to how I’ve been explaining Canada to my colleagues here in Ghana.
In Canada, you’re generally free to do whatever you please, as long as it does not infringe on someone else’s freedom. You can eat dinner alone, you can go to the bar alone, you can explore the streets alone. But, the other side of the coin is that you always feel alone.
In Ghana, everyone’s your sister, everyone’s your brother, and you are always loved and cared for. But you cannot do exactly as you please, and, as I learned this afternoon when I went for lunch alone, you’re never to do things alone. As no one was in the office and I was hungry [never stand between a skinny person and their lunch!], I was too hungry to care and decided to fetch my own lunch in the form of crossing the street and buying a minced meat pocket. My office colleagues were dumbfounded by my behaviour, and I remembered similar reactions from people when I lived in Italy, France, Japan, and Turkey.
Mostly, I was just surprised I was able to find a place to buy a small quantity of food. Not only is it difficult to distinguish between…say…a hair salon, a CD shop, and a restaurant [it’s not like they have neon signs here, when you’re used to commercial establishments fighting for your attention, it’s hard to recognise those that don’t leap out of the landscape at you. How to make a distinction between rows of undistinguishable shacks? In Japan, it was rows of undistinguishable shacks that had red lanterns out front, and you needed to find someone who read kanji to know if it was a restaurant]….it’s also impossible to find anything less than a huge meal in Ghana. So far, I’ve not been able to finish more than half of a meal, and there’s no such thing as doggy bags.
I just can’t wait to have my own space…where I can cook for myself…live without burdening my colleagues and driver…maybe even exercise a small degree of independence….remembering that I am indeed 27, not 7.