Moments like this

Blurry, the park across the street melts in my view and slips down in huge heavy tears onto my t-shirt. Five minutes before, I was posing for photos, thumbs up, with my boy. Our last breakfast at a cheesy local diner, I sipped a giant diet Coke and looked around at what would be his new neighborhood. I was bursting with joy and pride. I poked and tickled him and felt the vicariousness of his new exciting life.



Soft, now my knees like marshmallows, the sidewalk so hard below me, I know I will drop, crashing like the 23 story building looming behind me. I sway in the earthquake of emotion.

Strong, the bond as he holds me, his mom, towering over my weakness. Child becomes parent, small becomes big, life shifts irrevocably. I give in to the abyss of sadness that bubbles up. I’m really losing my baby.

Common, this rituals plays itself out in dorm rooms and concrete school hallways across the continent today. But mine is different, I convince myself, mine is special, mine is my whole life that has led up to this moment! No one can possibly understand. No mother has felt this crushing pride of loss.

Buried, deep in the smell of his cotton t-shirt, I cannot face the world or the truth. I have grown up with this man, this boy, this child of mine.

Floating above myself now, I see us in the airport in Ghana, 1998. My little guy and I, after a year of volunteering, are headed home to Canada for Christmas. He is 6 years old. We are so excited and anxious to get home to the family, it’s palpable. Only, as we stand at the immigration desk, there is hesitation and the officer is upset. Something is wrong. He calls a superior and ushers us aside. My boy looks up at me with those huge innocent eyes. He whispers,

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

I shrug and squeeze his hand as they lead us into a small windowless room. We have apparently overstayed our visa and there is a massive fine to pay. We are in trouble. I don’t have the money, I am at a loss as to how this happened, as our passports are held with the NGO I am working for. We are not going to make our plane. As the minutes tick by and we sit alone and silent in the pitiful room, my heart sinks. Tears stream down my face. My boy jumps up from the chair and leaps forward. He touches my cheeks gently, wiping my tears

“Mom, don’t cry. Everything is going to be ok. It will work out. We’ll be ok. Ok?”

And it was. I squeezed him so close. My heart nearly burst.
Something was arranged and we made our plane, running, hand in hand down the runway, out of breath, we boarded the plane. Everyone was annoyed at the delay. We looked at each other with a knowing… it is the bond. We’d been through another of life’s experiences together.

Spinning, I’m jolted back to now - the world around us circles, and the moment threatens to pass. Time taps my shoulder, we will have to leave. My tears will have to be dammed.

He pulls away,

“C’mon Mom, you’re gonna make me cry.”

Which only make my tears come harder. And I’ve done it. He breaks. His strong face, cracks and our bond is exposed. Emotion all over his face. It’s sealed forever.



Our song plays in my head, the guitar he strums to me in the kitchen on Saturday afternoons back home, Bon Iver:

“I am my mother's only one,

It's enough…

I wear my garment so it shows.

Now you know.

Only love is all maroon,

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon.

I am my mother on the wall, with us all

I move in water, shore to shore;

Nothing's more.

Only love is all maroon

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon…

Gazing, incredulous, from behind he grows smaller as he skips away into the huge building that eats him up. The car carries me limp, further and further way. In the distance, the song still serenades me. My boy has grown up and the world has him now.

Letters to Shiloh - the anatomy of loss

Forks stab through soft flesh at plates, wine stains lips…

The dinner conversation lulls. I invite you in. Bursting in my mind, you are up to your mischief, a perfect story for the crowd.

You dance behind my eyes, and flirt with the room. You are alive in my animation.
I recall your stubborn beauty, the countenance with which you revered no one and the world at once. You tell us all with such charisma what defines you.

Your brother hears you and he lights up. Ever so briefly. But then he resumes chewing. Eyes cast downward. He is worried about me. Worried that you might spill out and push over my glass of wine. Splattering red like a crime scene across the white expanse of the table.

The other guests are nervous. I want them to love your antics but they wonder at the mother. A woman who could unhinge in the whirlwind of what they think is a memory.

Everyone feels trapped. By your beauty and my sorrow that bubbles underneath.

You aren’t at the table and I am the only one who doesn’t know it. Cannot see the dust reflecting in the light where you would have peeked up from underneath. Your brown hand, soft, warm, quick is not pulling at the tablecloth, toppling the fragile china. There is no reprimand for you. Only a fleeting pity for the mother.

A woman who knows a crushing void that cannot be filled by dinner conversation or the best Shiraz. A woman who lies so still in the night, straining to hear your voice in the still counterexistence of darkness.

You have not quieted in your absence. Still playing with me – dragging me to the point of tears with ease, triggered by one line from your favourite song on the radio.

Your crimson spirit so sharp, so elusive you make me crave the fiery child you were, and the boundless essence you will always be.

But for now there is dessert to serve and I must reassure the guests. I have to let go of the kite strings for now. I slump slightly in my chair, my excitement abated. The conversation resumes and turns swiftly back to the weather.



Art piece from Strange Skeletons Abstract Art, piece called Overwhelming Grief

The World's a Melting Pot - the falsity of racial constructs in pictures

Mongolia, like Siberia live in my mind as mysterious, harsh, desolate places. We watched a travel documentary the other night that sparked my imagination and opened that travel bug within me.

The show followed two Canadian guys through Mongolia. Apart from the gorgeous scenery and stark solitude of it’s expanse, I was intrigued the most by it’s people.

I have always been interested in the peoples of the world – what they look like, what they do, where they come from.

Mongolia on a map is a largely empty area between China and Russia, and not surprisingly the people look vary Asian but also with Russian or Causasian features. Some are blond and blue eyed. They defied my preconceived notions.

This got me thinking about race as a concept and how the world is held together, but apart, by defining places and people within a racial framework. We assume that people from a certain part of the world will look a certain way, and we make sweeping judgments. Ultimately we separate ourselves based on these assumptions.

All of this rekindled my passion for learning more about people. I started scouring the net about groups of people that defy our preconceived ideas. People that prove race is a box we need to see beyond. I discovered that due to human migration patterns, genetics and various mutations, people around the world exhibit far more similarities than we imagined.

Many sites discuss these topics, and include photos of people that surprised me and intrigued me further. I decided to gather some of the photos to share.
Maybe we can all learn something about our connectedness through the innocent eyes of the children:







These are photos from the Hmong peoples in Laos and the Uyghur peoples in China:










These next pictures are of kids from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India from groups like the Nuristanis, Kalash, Kashmir, Kurghan, Rajasthan (very interesting to read about these groups of people!):























So who are the redheads of the world? Who has green eyes or blonde hair? The existence of these diverse characteristics across continents and geographies should show us how alike we really are, how some of us moved west, some north etc., but we left the DNA markers to remind ourselves that the boundaries we create now are a facade. Just look at the children's faces - it's in their eyes that we all are one :)

Shiloh Nights

In the hours where night blurs the lines of day, and the laws of physics and form are soft and pliable, I often float to you.

I call out and find you, elusive and ageless. The energy of your smile dazzles and carries me into a new place where you comfort me with your presence. You take the form I know, the soft downy boy’s body I crave and adore, you come back to spend some time with me and fill my heart with just enough, so I can keep going in the day, when you’ve gone.

This is my secret – our night meetings where I give you your favourite biscuits and watch the crumbs on your tiny lips. Where your laughter is pure sunshine and your voice is an angel’s. My angel.

Last night you were three. All the memories of you then, so little, came flooding back...
And though it was such a short visit, and you slept in another room, I needed you and you came. I held your tiny warm hand. I draw around your fingernails with my mind. The rough skin at the edge of each round nail, the soft pad of your palms. I breathed you in and held my breath. Though I dreamt a regular dream, somehow we both knew that you had come to help. That I needed your eyes, your skin, your little soul.

And days that hold a silence and a dull gray emptiness, I find myself alone in the car, your song will tease me from the radio, “I will go down with this ship, and I won’t put my hands up and surrendah” I hear your proud little voice singing along. But it is only a memory and the reality of day pierces my senses. Tears roll down my helpless face.



It is only our secret nights where ‘real’ is weak and love is stronger, that I am strengthened. Your power my boy, is bigger than I and this shallow world that you have left.

I love you like my baby and respect you far beyond. At once you are gone and yet you haven’t left me.

When my brave face laughs and I feel the happiness of love, the joy of good friends and good food and the tickle of a gentle breeze, you are the one I cling to inside.

I know in a way that only mystery can answer, that we have traded places. I took care of you here, I wiped your tears away and cuddled you at night, and now you take care of me – soothing my fears and cuddling me in that special place where night blurs the lines of day.

The market children

Today in the market, the omnipotent Sun God drove us out of the jostling chaos, down a tiny grey alley called Chicken and Rice, lined with bright yellow plastic chairs, Maggi promotional thick plastic table covers… around the covered corner, where the constructed cave came to a dead end and held it’s promise of food and drink and muted lull.

The children scrambled below our plastic bags of random purchases, our drenched gritty limbs. There were five of them. Tiny, timid, they approached the counter on tippy toes, dusty little feet poking out from under long Muslim cloth dresses, the rubber of the slippers ground to nothing under their tiny heels.

Little ladies with head scarves and kohl under their deep brown eyes. They giggled as they jostled and peeked back over their shoulders at the disheveled *Obrunis.

They held up their offering to the tall counter, one small coin, and asked in turn for a miracle.

They scrambled into the seats at the plastic table, helping the tinier ones to reach. They waited, and discussed in hushed tones, while we sipped luke warm Pepsis, complaining to ourselves about the lack of proper cold Coke when you want one…

And the old man emerged from the makeshift kitchen, shuffling on his own worn down slippers. He held only one plate that held a small scoop of rice with a matchbox sized piece of meat atop the meager pile. The children exchanged glances – the moment held their hunger, desperation, excitement and fear – fear that each would not be able to carry to their mouth with their tiny little scooped fist, enough of this food to stop the aches in their belly.

The air was tight, tense, with the look you find in children’s eyes on Christmas morning in front of the unopened presents at the base of the tree. But today, like all days for these little ones is no Christmas, it is a day where they need to eat.

There the two podgy obrunis that we were, immersed, we could not look away. We were at once elated by the beauty of their impossible innocence, and humbled by the shame of the haves among the have-nots.

We called the old man and offered up a Cedi (less than a dollar) to feed the children some more. He shuffled away dutifully. His own hunger following slowly behind.

He emerged with a gruff command – shouted at the children and pointed in our direction. His finger poked the air and insisted they file over to us and hang their heads in gratitude.

Like a spectacle, we insisted loudly, awkwardly that they sit and enjoy.

The next plate arrived, this time piled far higher than the first. And we looked away as the children glanced wary at us. We nodded sheepishly. They returned to their task with fervor.

Soon the second plate was clean. The children licked and popped tiny fingers in and out of their mouths and quietly they slipped from the chairs, turned to say Thank you! And they were gone. Back out into the mayhem of the bustling market street.

Back to a life of hungry tomorrows and rough lessons. To heartache and laughter and the mysteries that held them like a dream from us.

We picked up our things and left the troubled dream, enveloped once again by the inhuman sway of the market beast.

*Obruni - white person (or any foreigner) in the Twi language

Girl in the box

Last time I was back in Canada visiting the family I found a box of my old life. It had hundreds of dusty and molding papers, photos, clippings, print outs, and mostly poems I had written.

I decided they would be worth keeping, if only for the humour and nostalgia in going over the thoughts and offerings of the teenage dreamer I was.

The plan has been to scan the lot, and then send the paper piles back for a boxed existence in my mother’s basement on some back shelf.

Last night I dragged out the various envelopes within, and sifted through. Most of the poems I found there were naïve and badly composed. They try too hard, with long adjectives and disjointed concepts. Who was that girl? I find it amazing that she lived in my frame, looked in the mirror and saw the young me.

So much has changed and I have forgotten how she felt. All that is left is the paper trail of her untidy emotions.

And then I found the following. It is dated April 22nd, 1994. I was 24 years old and Q was just over 1 year. We were living in an old row house in Toronto. The back window looked out over rusted train tracks and beyond that, lake Ontario.

The highrises around us were overflowing with the city’s poorest and most marginalized. We dodged used needles and condoms that littered the sidewalks on our daily outtings. I remember having at first thought the neighborhood was vibrant and gritty, when we had opted to move out here, for cheaper rent but still within walking distance to work.

We had recently lost our restaurant, investors had backed out right as the place was establishing itself as a fixture in the area. It was a few blocks over in the ‘trendy’ neighborhood of Queen West, and Q’s father, (my ex-locker partner and high school sweetheart) was on a slippery path to self destruction. It was the reason the business had fallen apart. Too much too young? Addiction: lies, behaviour changes followed.

This particular day, he gathered our comforter from the bed and carried it with purpose to the living room with it’s big bay window. Q and I watched him with curiousity, and I with a sinking feeling in my stomach. He hoisted himself up on a chair, and stretched from his tippy toes to nail the heavy blanket across the top of the window frame.

The smashing noise from the hammer was deafening and Q looked up at me, uneasy. I scooped him up and whisked him off to the other room to play. Then M walked by us. The light in the hallway had disappeared, shrouded in thick cloth.

M: “That old lady from next door! She keeps watching us! Well, I’ll show her…”

me: “What are you talking about?!”

Door slam. He was gone for the afternoon. I could only guess where, and did not want to take that mental journey. I lied down beside Q and his stuffed animals and sang softly, running my hands gently through his loose black curls, until he drifted off to sleep. Then I got up and decided to write, to put things in perspective and keep myself sane:

“His face was broad, the skin creamy and smooth and tight. This carefully beautiful face, created as if to make a mother question the sarcastic overtones of a ‘concept of God’.

Oh, he was no ordinary soul. A mother was sure. Why, one only had to ponder the enormous circumference of his eyes. Not uncommon was it to be stopped several times during the daily walks, with comments of praise and astonishment at the wonder of his gaze.

A mother again had to question her accomplishment. For even then she knew it was a twosome till death-do-us-part. Mother and child. Somehow she's known this while he played within her. Mompati - 'my companion', the name she'd given him after all the others on his birth papers.

And she felt comfort in that shred of stability, as everything else slowly fogged over around her.”

E-mom - Are parents on facebook a no-no?

Well it’s apparently official – I’m an E-mom. This is not a good thing. It makes me feel like someone who’s past their prime, trying to be young, hip and cool (a cougar? - hanging out in nightclubs thinking they pass for 20 something but just not cutting it in their leopard skin tights...).

The thing is that I joined facebook quite a while ago. I have a network or friends and contacts… My children also joined facebook. The opportunities for overlapping were there… Of course they accepted my friend requests, and some of their friends even ‘friended’ me… so I thought it was all ok.

But I was wrong. Apparently if you have children, you must be old and by proxy, have no business using social networking sites – because your children are on there and that is their domain … and you are a stalker!!!

Watch this news piece on the phenomenon below…



Are all mothers so uncool? I just feel lumped into this category now - ashamed and utterly uncool. I feel like the pimply pre-teen outcast in Grade 7… who has tried to join the chat in the cafeteria with the cool girls, and they all turn and look at you in stony silence.

Should I retreat? Give it all up to spare my children the embarrassment?

The real issue is that once parents are on facebook, any photos of their children that are uploaded (and tagged), can be viewed and even saved by their parents… And I admit guilt here. Our college aged son is half a world away, across continents even! We are really easy going, non-pedantic, open minded parents. But it’s nice to ‘see what their up to’ from time to time… there have been a few times it would have been better NOT to see though… The truth is that those years are all about finding your footing. Learning how much partying you can get away with, and still make it through to a degree. I suppose if you come out the other end having had fun and succeeded, then no harm done.

But how would I feel if the shoe were on the other foot? If my parents could have seen into my social world when I was a teenager – with evidence of every out of control party, and tweets professing that I was too hung over to get to class … well. I guess I would be equally horrified.

I am so glad the world has only taken this turn toward complete social invasion – with constant updates and photo proof of everyone’s movements – AFTER I got through the teenage years and college.

Not sure my parents would still be talking to me if they’d seen what I see now!

The Obruni Scooter Girl

The first time G (the Ghanaian ex), walked through our rickety compound house door with the red and white little mini-scooter I was at once excited and terrified.

At the time, being a struggling volunteer, my main source of transport in Ghana had been by tro tro. The world of tro tros is one only understood through experience. They wait in their lorry parks in a chaotic form of organization, each with their final destination , and wait to fill up before moving. This can be anywhere from minutes to hours. In 34 degree Celsius heat, as the rows get jammed fuller and fuller with all sorts of travelers and their wares, children, livestock… Needless to say, I was ecstatic to be presented with an independent form of transportation that would eliminate all the waiting and the cramped conditions, but it would mean taking on the roads of Accra directly, on the tiniest form of motorized transportation known to humankind.

The little scooter immediately became one of the family, and despite the fact that we already had five people with numerous additional compound children at any given time living in a 10 x 10ft room, the scooter slept inside with us. It fit right between the TV and the coffee table, and on the hot nights, we all lay in various configurations around it's little tires, on our straw floor mats.

At first G was the brave driver and all of us took turns on the back, feeling the exhilarating whizz of the air as the compound and the gawking, shuffling excited children were left behind in the swirling dust. It was fun! The first time we headed out into the main roads was another level of terrifying. We negotiated potholes that were bigger than the scooter, then there were goats and kids, that represented unpredictable moving targets on the sides of the roads where we carved our little path. We splashed through puddles of unidentified opaque liquids, and made it back home safely to the cheers of our little audience.

Then they all pressured me to take a spin alone. In all honesty, driving one of those things is beyond easy, and immediately I was hooked.

It wasn’t surprising then that a few years later I met many people from Tamale to new foreigners, who said I was ‘known’ as the Obruni scooter girl. That was after I had graduated to the larger, upscale model. My blue Suzuki with a custom made black ‘boot/trunk’ welded on the back. To think that I had become the thing of myths - a mysterious pale face woman, a strange foreigner, whizzing through the streets of Accra, my hair flowing in the wind...as deified as the one obruni girl who acted a few episodes of the Sunday musical drama on GTV (she had been a Peace Corps volunteer who had learned to speak Twi fluently)... but I digress.

It didn’t surprise me either though, that despite my limited notoriety on the scooter, it never became an expat trend, in fact in the 12 years I’ve lived in Ghana, I’ve never seen another white girl driving a scooter. In recent years I’ve seen two African women (who I doubt were Ghanaian, since driving scooters in Ghana is not regarded highly, but is quite common in all the surrounding Francophone countries). There are also the mad Ghanaian and Lebanese motorcyclists who use the Tema motorway to pull wheelies on their mammoth beast, with the front tire high in the air. These are of course men –as the motorcycle seems to be an ego extension, exhibiting macho prowess – the louder the better.

For me, the scooter represented ultimate freedom and adventure – it took me to so many places I never would have known or ventured. It was a catalyst to me breaking through my own fears, cultural and gender barriers, and it was always a topic of great interest to Ghanaians and foreigners alike.

I’m sure most thought I was nuts, and indeed I may have been, but I’ll never regret it.



I even took my boys on the scooter, two at a time once we had the bigger one – and this has provided countless stories that we remember with sheepish grins. It was careless, it was dangerous, it was improper – I’m sure had I done this in Canada I’d have been arrested for child neglect or abuse or some variation. But we loved it and I will forever cherish our little adventures on the scooter – just the three of us. I remember one day when I had Q on the front and we were singing at the top of our lungs, cruising down the Ring Road, en route to visit a friend, each of us with our helmets on (I think his was actually a bicycle helmet), and boom! Out of the blue were dive bombed by a bird that had just fallen from the sky. It ricocheted off my son’s helmet and into mine and bounced off, leaving us stunned and bewildered and then consumed with laughter. The things that happened on that scooter!

Even when I was unceremoniously mugged by some thugs in a passing car, the scooter cracking in two and ending up in a gutter with my passenger (a visiting Canadian friend) and I ending up scraping along the gravel….I did not give up the scooter.

When I was faced head on one day in an incredible split second game of chicken with a crazed tro tro driver, I had to succumb, jump off and watch as my scooter hit it’s side and slide off, engine running, into the roadside sellers, while I dropped and rolled off to safety in the other direction.

I still wasn’t deterred.

There came a time though when the scooter was just abandoned. In fact, it had been sent to our trusty mechanic and we just never went to pick it up. It represented the end of an era – there was a break up of the family, of the frivolousness we had all shared, and with it went our beloved scooter.

I just found these photos and had to share the days of old - from the Obruni scooter girl.

Sweet 16

Today my baby turns 16. I got up early with him this morning and hugged him as he was gathering his things at the door. I watched him walk away, out the gate and pictured him on his way to school. He's nearing 6 feet tall and his voice is getting low and he corrects me on so many things these days, but he is still my baby.

There was a time when he and I made up a family on our own, and despite the many changes that have happened, siblings that have come and gone and relationships, spouses and various others who have touched our lives, some days I still feel that special bond between us - the feeling that it's us two against the world.

He has always made a great companion. From the time he was born he observed so much around him and had a sense of calm that comforted me. He has always been comfortable in his skin and I admire that. Now, in the middle of adolescence, when kids struggle with identity, he knows exactly what he likes and what he doesn't and he has his own moral code which no one can compromise. All very admirable to me.

There comes a time in kids' lives when they finally see their parents as human beings, with faults and weaknesses, and can admire them for their true talents instead of the blind love that a child gives. They also say that parents will always see their child with the eyes of blind and unconditional love.

Between my son and I, I believe we've always seen each other clearly - faults, weaknesses, strengths - everything. And maybe because of this, I feel we share a love that is honest and open and real.

I am so proud of him.

He's been 'into' graphic design in a way that I could only imagine passion, dedication and patience in myself. He can put in 10 straight hours on an art piece - forget to eat or drink or speak. He thinks this is what he wants to pursue and judging by his talent and enthusiasm, I think he's on the right track. I'm still amazed though. Who knows at 16 what they want to be when they grow up?! Hell, I still don't know what I wanna be...

I've decided to share here one of his recent 'pieces' - he used two stock photos (below):





And came up with this:



Excellent if I do say so myself. Happy birthday Q!!! Love you.

Now blow out your wishes and make a candle...

Birthdays, like New Years Eve are always anti-climactic. Everyone wishes you the best, and says have a great day! But what if it isn’t a particularly good day? Afterall, anything could happen. You could get your period and feel like a ten ton truck with a couple extra water filled tires hanging heavily around your waist, for example. You could get up, look in the mirror and see the dark circles of life settled deeply under your eyes.

You might just be facing a work day that is particularly stressful and have a pounding headache, and not enough time to grab a sandwich even for lunch.
It might just be that you find yourself completely alone on that particular day with nothing to do but contemplate all the far flung well wishes and your own self pity.
You might come home to a quiet house with yesterday’s chili in the fridge and reruns on TV…

Happy Birthday! I’d like mine postponed this year, and while you’re at it I’d like the number adjusted by 10 years.

I’d like a big surprise party so I could blush and feel special and then diamonds and other extravagant unnecessary luxuries to prove I’m loved. I’d like a chauffeur to pick me up and whisk me off to a spa for a day of full pampering and self indulgence.

But I’d settle for good health and savings in the bank. Uh oh, both those are in jeopardy this year as well.

Probably a good idea to skip the cake too, as the number of candles needed at this stage could crush the cake and start a fire!

Birthdays put so much pressure on you to be happy, be honoured and be remembered.

But what if deep down you know that you have a great family and friends who love you all the time and that you might get a random gift on an off day when no one is expecting you to, and won’t ask if you got spoiled on the big day?

Isn’t it just as good to have a great child, be in an amazing relationship, have a challenging job and dreams that are forming into tangible future plans? Is it not good enough to wake up to sunshine and warmth and two fried eggs on a plate?

Birthdays should give you a chance to reflect on how the year has disappeared and ask yourself what special moments you can remember. And then keep them with you. Birthdays should remind you that time is short and precious and irrevocable and that every minute, day, month, year you have should be filled up with your best. Loving those around you and laughing as much as possible.

I think I’ll dust off that bottle of champagne at the back of the liquor cabinet, pop it open and celebrate near 4 decades of an excellent life, and toast the effort to make the next 4 decades even better.

It won't always be okay...

I’ve always been a rebel mom. I was pregnant at 22, and though I thought myself quite the mature adult, in retrospect I realize I was quite young. I don’t regret the path I took though, being a mother at 23 was amazing. I gave him a middle name Mompati – from Botswana, meaning ‘my companion’. I looked down at my little helpless baby and vowed never to be a ‘typical mom’ - whatever that was.

It turns out I have fulfilled that vow – having first orchestrated a stint owning my own petrol station during my son’s second year of life, managing seven staff, mostly illegal immigrants, on 24/7 shifts, and filling in myself even during the nights when staff couldn’t make it. Luckily I was young and energetic enough to juggle the baby at home and lucky to have an excellent babysitter and support of my family. I did all of this to give my boy and I a chance to move on, move up, move out. Discover the world or at least another corner of it.

When I announced to my family that I was moving to Africa with my son just before his fourth birthday, everyone reacted – mostly with astonishment and outrage. I took it all in stride, still believing I was the atypical mom, heading out on an adventure that would give my son a more well rounded world view and prepare him for life in the world, not just the suburb he was born in.

Our first years in Ghana were at times brutal, at times wonderful, but at all times atypical. We were given a large closet called the ‘boy’s quarters’ in a rich Ghanaian family’s home to live in. My son and I cuddled in our little space and decided together we’d give Ghana a chance. There were oodles of children who wanted to be his friend. They touched his hair and sang in unison and he looked up at me with his big shy pools for eyes, so trusting. “Is it okay Mom?” he said without speaking. And I assured him it was.

We enrolled him in the local school and had his uniform sewed by a tailor down the road. And when he headed off to school the first morning with the children fussing around him, all holding hands, I stood at the broken gate, and tears fell heavy down my cheeks. Is it ok Mom? I believed it was.

He learned to eat local food and speak in the sing song local speech, regurgitating the alphabet like his teacher asked. He fit in perfectly and they sent home his ruled workbooks with positive remarks, “Quinci is a good boy and listens well. He completes his exercises correctly and neatly”.

We both counted the days to the first Christmas back home. He missed the cold weather and chocolate bars that weren’t melted… I missed my family and just needed a break. The holiday was wonderful and my mother wept when we left. As we made it through security at the airport he looked up at me and saw my huge tears welling up – “It’s alright Mom” he promised and pulled me down to him for a big tight hug. And I believed it was.

The next years marked our full integration into Ghana. I met a man and we moved in to his family home of 54… We joined the ranks and my son had even more children to play with… At Christmas I couldn’t afford to spoil him in a home with over 30 poor children, and gave him a ball – one big soccer ball and a handful of candies in a homemade stocking. He beamed. I moved between guilt and pleasure at my son’s humble happiness.

The day he came home from school and showed me a welt on his hand I nearly exploded. He explained that the teacher had threatened to beat the entire class if even one did not complete their homework. Inevitably one or more of the kids let the rest down and as promised the teacher had taken out her long reed cane and lined he kids up, whacking each one. The next morning I was by his side at the school, pushing through the crowds of children who saw me not as a student’s mother but as ‘Obruni (white person), which they chanted frantically all the way from the car to the classroom door. I laid it on the line for the teacher – You touch my child again and you will deal with me. She assured me that he had not been the problem and that she beat everyone equally, she then bemoaned the soft skin of the whites and claimed he was the only child that had physical evidence of the beating. I walked out after repeating my first statement and meaning it. He walked along side me and looked up at me. “It’ll be okay now” I assured him. And it was.

The next year his baby brother came – a little Ghanaian, born and raised. We ‘outdoored’ him in the traditional way, with the elders gathered, pouring libation to the Gods... my big son sat by my side, dressed in a gold and white printed outfit with a matching hat. As they lowered his baby brother to the ground, naked and crying, to introduce him to the world, he looked up at me with those big eyes, “Is it okay Mom?” and without words I nodded and squeezed his little hand. I believed it was.

Years later when our youngest left us, dying after a three day illness in my arms, my big boy was far away visiting our relatives back in Canada. I spoke to my mother in a haze of tears and shock and then he came on the phone. His voice, like my anchor, brought me back to reality. He saved me from the oblivion of insanity.
And today I sit here helpless. He is now 15, towering above me, his feet and hands are double the size of mine. He is no longer my baby. He is grown. And he is hurting.
He has been in love and has tasted the exhilaration of a first kiss. I have witnessed his beaming face and I have felt proud and happy and ecstatic for him. I believed he was ‘on his way’ and I believed it would be alright.

But today he is quiet and confused and deeply hurt. He sits in his room at the edge of his bed, plucking melancholic tunes on his acoustic guitar. The girl has called it off, moved on, and seemingly for no reason. This is the reality of young love. And though I remember the days in tears in my room at 16, depressed and feeling I could not go on, I cannot bear to watch him feel even a fragment of that pain.

I have always been a rebel mom, never involved in PTA, always easy going, understanding, open-minded. But today I feel protective and conservative. Akin to the psycho middle American republican over involved high strung pageant mothers who cannot stand to see their child lose out. I have visions of marching straight over to this girl’s house, kicking in the door and holding her at gunpoint for harming my child. I want to make her cower in fear and give her a swift kick in the head for good measure.

But of course this is just a fantasy. The reality is far more scary. My son will have to face the world, and his own demons and enemies along the way. I can only hope that our adventures together have prepared him for the many things ahead that I will no longer be able to assure him will be okay.

A Depressing look at Baby Africa

Another poster from the site: 50 x 70

'Empty nest expat' - the emotions without the nest

Words prove inadequate to capture the majority of life’s most poignant moments and gripping emotions.

This morning I breezed by the empty bedroom, door wide open, dusty abandoned papers – the sum of eight years of private school in Ghana - left in sliding piles on the floor… Where the door would once be almost closed, the hum of the airconditioning purring and the soft breath of a teenager, sleeping, sleeping within.

It’s a Saturday morning. We’re up late, but he always woke later. I saved some bacon to fry up for him and we carried on with the day, always with the subconscious comfort of knowing he would pop his head into the lounge at some stage, bushy haired, sleepy eyed and shy, and he would find his mini soccer ball, like an old friend, to kick leisurely around…

Today is very quiet. Even with the music blasting from the speakers, to aid us along in the daily tasks, a vibrancy, an expectation is missing. It is truly a void.

Earlier this week, as the airplane lifted off, our middle son, second graduate, off to University in Canada, left the dark red soil of Ghana forever. It is the reality of living as an expat – the children don’t have a ‘home’ to come back to. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, there is no sentimentality in the company provided house, fully furnished. No bedroom to come back to forever, with all the medals and posters displayed as a haven, a fall back zone for the child, but mostly the parents – as seen in American movies… No, it’s just the raw emotional reality that the child has grown up and has gone.


I find myself, in the silence, burdened with the conflict between the emotional and the practical. Things have gone well. He has mastered the basics in life – brilliant at charming and influencing peers and adults alike, calm and affable yet the life of the party when the time is right. He found first love, and witnessing the dance was beautiful and nostalgic. But he did it better. He waited, he played and then he fell hard. No heartbreak yet, but those come. And we will not see it, feel it, we will not be part of that. He has grown up and he has gone. It’s natural. Yet it’s a sad reality for parents. He was never one day the cause of anger or worry. The rarity of this is not lost on me. At 18 years old, we can only wish him well and miss him in every way. Though the last two years prepared us for his departure – he was wrapped up in his own growing world, with emotions and passions and relationships evolving – we still felt his presence, cherished the small time together, the laughter in his eyes and the man he was becoming.

Still, today is difficult to face. He hasn’t gone away to a University a half a day’s drive away, he is gone in a much more profound way. He will live for four years at school, in a different world, a continent away, during which time the rest of his transformation will occur. He will definitely be a man. He will never be back. That process started in earnest this week.

As a step parent my emotional ties surprise me – but then he has always had a way of pulling people close, having them feed off his subtle but electric energy, and leaving you with a sense that you desire only to nurture and inspire him on his path. Four years were special, well spent, and enough to pull me in fully.
And next will be the last one. My own. I can’t as yet imagine it, though it will come, pushed along by the forces of nature and seasons and the urgency of puberty. He too has been an angel and I’m not sure whether to think we have been lucky or blessed.

I also find it strange, my melancholy. We have plans and aspirations and life affirming adventures ahead. We will not be sitting in the proverbial suburban house, on the matching opposite arm chairs, with the daily paper between us - the children’s bedrooms, ‘as they were’ upstairs, pathetically awaiting their return or a weekend visit with laundry in tow… We won’t be in that proverbial world, staring at each other over a pregnant silence… no empty nest syndrome for us. When the boys have gone we too will start a new life, like teenagers, on our boat… floating out to sea…

But still, there is the stark realization that the children we have raised are wonderful, complex and likeable people, and we’ll miss them with a love and admiration I would never have imagined until now.

What I Saw on the Way Home From Work

Back when I lived in the city centre of Toronto, my walk home from work could be quite interesting, given that my apartment was located above a dodgy martial arts studio on a main street, opposite the largest Psychiatric hospital in the country. I could bump into a wide variety of eccentrics, intensely chewing on cigarette butts or pacing in ever shrinking circles. In the evenings I would meet ladies of the night on duty, taking shelter from the wind in the stairwell. I always thought it sweet of them to ask "How was work". "Fine thanks!" I'd blurt out and add another comment about the bad weather, but never looking them in the eye or inquiring as to their 'work'... My embarassment for the most part....

Now that I live in Ghana, all traces of embarassment have been washed away by heat, time and a generous helping of in your face reality. I have long ago been hit by the stark truth that everyone is too concerned about their own troubles to focus on my shyness or lack of it.

On my trip home from work on any given day I will see things that Toronto does not have in it's vast list of possibilities or imagination. The cigarette chewing, mumblers would be fascinated, I'm sure.

And now I am never too timid to inquire, observe, absorb.

Yesterday was a work day like any other. Drove through Accra's streets and turned into our 'upper middle class' (a very rare breed this side of the world) neighborhood. We turned off the main paved road and onto the loosely defined cul-de-sac dead end dirt road we live on. As usual, we passed the local boys - some belong to the lady who runs the corner store out of a metal shipping container, and the others seem to have no home at all. They are always amusing themselves on the side road, and bow out of the way as the 4x4 pulls around the corner. We veered into the drive, honking subconsciously at the large looming gate, for the guard to swing'er open.

Except the boys looked more excited than usual, they were dancing around something, and there were flames behind them. So my curiousity won a short internal battle and I jumped ship and went to 'say hi'.

They were all too happy to show me their proud catch - roasting, popping, bubbling and ashen, limbs hardened and extended over the bicycle tyre fire. "It's a goat!" the smallest one, Solomon piped up. The others moved aside to display it. Face up in clenched defiance, the goat burned, singed black, hair gone up in a putrid acrid smoke swirl. It's captors wholly excited and obviously proud. "We'll all chop!" (A Ghanaian slang meaning to eat). "Snap us!" (another Ghanaian term, for take a photo). I happily obliged. I was then cordially invited to join the barbeque which I declined but promised, in that ever hopeful Ghanaian way, "Next time!".

I slipped through the gate and closed that world behind me. The sharp contrast that faces me daily was right at my gate today. The smoke billowed up and over the gate and led me, as if by the hand, to my door where we parted ways again. The smoke, back to it's fire and the laughter of excited children. Me, into the air-conditioned cocoon, where meat is something on the weekly grocery list, bought filleted, without head, tail, legs...normally seasoned and served with an accompaniment. And completly devoid of the sense of pride and joy experienced by the barefooted boys a few metres away...

Notes from the Edge - Liberia today

I am in Liberia for business. The whole concept is bizarre to me. There is apparently business growing here. Opportunities. Investment. Liberia has no electricity supply and no running water. Anywhere. It has been like this for 18 years.

Recently some street lights have been illuminated in the capital city, fed by a huge generator, donated by another government.

All water is supplied in huge round trucks that drive around the city constantly.

Of course there is only water for those who can pay.

This morning as I sit on the balcony of the $200 a night (less than) 1 star hotel, my view is the ocean, dotted with small fishing canoes, the beach that stretches along in front of miles of corrugated tin slums, and below me the daily water is being delivered.

One of the big trucks is parked on the street below, loudly pumping water via a hole filled pump, into the hotel building. Surrounding the truck are scores of barefoot children, sent with buckets of every size and description, to collect some of the water. They jostle and fight and wave up at the hotel guests. But the sad truth is that they are here on a mission and no doubt there will be trouble if they arrive back home, down the road in the slums, without water.

Their dilemma is pathetic. The guys from the water delivery truck are also on a mission and the dirty swarming children are to them, like flies. They must fight them off, or bear the repercussions from the hotel owner who's not interested in feeding the water needs of the people. If the kids get alot of water they will tell more people and the hotel will be swarmed, on a dangerous level.

But the children are desperate.


I focus on one little boy who is about 5 years old. Mostly because I see something so familiar in his eyes. He is alive, there is a spark in him. His long smooth chocolate brown forehead is beaded with sweat and his eyes squinting, while he bounces a wide mouthed large plastic bowl against his ashen, bony knees. He steps back from the mob and watches the men from the truck. All the while the pump is deafening. As soon as they move toward the other children to beat them away, slap and shout, flail their arms around hoping to touch skin and cause fleeing, our little boy moves up to the truck behind them and holds his bowl under the massive leak at the base of the hose. At first no one sees him and his bowl is filling. He smiles a cheshire grin to himself. He has no clue he's got a witness, a fan, a cheerleader above him looking on.

I notice as the water sprays up on him, that he's wearing a badly faded 'Rainforest Cafe' t-shirt. This t-shirt has been bought for coins, in the local market. Originally sent by the Salvation Army or other charity, and plucked up for selling to the poorest of the poor. It may have been through three children here already. And all of a sudden I am not happy for him, I almost cry. Involuntarily.

I think about his childhood. That is not a childhood. And that at the Rainforest Cafe, back in the 'civilized' world, children light up at the animals that talk, they enjoy huge lunches they can never finish, they whine for ice cream afterwards, and they get it. They never think about how they will wash or whether there will be water to drink, or whether they will have to fetch muddy slush from the potholes instead, and hope their depressed, desperate, poor mother will not beat them when they get back home...

As I was lost in melancholy, I was jolted back to reality. The water truck driver had seen our boy and lashed out at him. In his haste to get away, his slyfully attained water supply sloshed round and out of the bowl, as if in slow motion, all out onto the cracked pavement as he ran off, the water making rich brown streaks, down to his little calloused feet, down the dry grey panes of his bony legs. And he was gone.