Grace Jones the tribute series - Tro tro to Lego

There is a grape-ice cream purple tro-tro** that whizzes around Accra on a daily basis, transporting it’s cramped passengers, sardine-tin style, from here to there. On the grimy back window, in bold white stick-on, it says: GRACE JONES.

I love this for so many reasons. As I caught a glimpse of it yesterday at a crowded round-a-bout, I grinned at the randomness that is my experience of Ghana. So many things are transported across cultures and time periods, that their significance is lost or warped to such a degree, it gains a new meaning altogether... Last week I saw a refuse disposal truck called ‘Annie Lennox’, but I digress.

Grace Jones was an icon to me in the 80’s, she represented a bold, defiant, androgenous beauty that spat in the face of the Farah Fawcett, Cheryl Tiegs ideal that we were fed in the media. Guys were somehow acceptable as the effeminate lace and make up wearing crooners, but women were largely in their box. Grace Jones sang off the wall music, and she was strikingly gorgeous in a scary, angular, aggressive way. I loved her.

So every time I see that old mini bus - so many years later, so far away, in such a different context, it makes me smile. I have to wonder what the driver’s inspiration was, in taking the time to paste those decals up there. I guess he thinks Grace is pretty cool too.

This all brought my mind back to Grace and her amazing, iconic album covers, which I looked up on Google in that nostalgic way. Her one album, Island Life, photographed and engineered by her partner Jean-Paul Goude, was my favourite. What I found, I thought worth sharing. It seems many others were so taken by the image, that they decided to do their own takes… with some um, interesting results ☺ Enjoy!

THE ORIGINAL - GRACE IS STRIKING WITH HER SINEWY DARK CHOCOLATE SHINING SKIN AND IMPOSSIBLY ELONGATED POSE. SHE IS ARTISTIC FORM. IT'S DEFINITELY A MEMORABLE COVER.



AND THEN CAME THE COPY CATS. I THINK THE FIRST TWO WERE ATTEMPTING THIS TO SHOW OFF THEIR FIT BODIES? BUT IT ALL JUST FALLS FLAT. THEY ARE NOT PULLING OFF THE ARTISTIC FORM...





THESE TWO... HAHAHAHA! GOTTA LOVE'EM



THIS ONE IS FROM A REMIX ALBUM CALLED SELFISH BY HARD TON



THEN THERE ARE THE WTF TYPE ENTRIES....



AND THOSE WHO TOOK IT ALL QUITE SERIOUSLY AND IMMORTALIZED THE GRACEFUL FORM IN METAL SCULPTURE...



AND THE BEST OF ALL... GRACE JONES AS LEGO!!!



Ok, I admit it... strange things amuse me.

**tro-tro - Ghana's answer to the non-existent public transport system. Private (usually old and rattling) minibuses that are used on set routes around the cities and towns, seating capacity is 12, passengers are usually between 15 to 25, plus chickens, sometimes goats... anything goes :-)

Highschool Graduation offers more than a Diploma Paper in Ghana

I am nostalgic and emotional and basically choked up. A great song will bring me to tears today. And yesterday. And the day before.

This weekend was Graduation.

Not mine – in fact I didn’t even attend my own, way back in the 80’s from my ghetto fabulous highschool. There just wasn’t that feeling of closeness as a whole class. There were cliques and segments, and like the street gangs of L.A. we moved through the halls of the windowless day prison, carefully eyeing the enemy. The uncool, the rockers, the ‘Enriched Program’ brainiac geeks, the Punjabis with the knives in their socks. There were the mysterious smokers who hung out at the back of the school, all pencil thin in jean jackets and Farah Fawcett hair – both the guys and the girls. There were the unwritten rules of segregation in the cafeteria and the danger of being in the wrong locker bay at the wrong time. It was a rough and tough school and no one really shed a tear at leaving.

On the last day of classes we all walked down the tree lined suburban side streets to the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong ‘ side of the main road – the classist line that divided the properties and caused further divergence among the students. We never looked back. We were grateful it was over and none of us had a united future, or common goals to look forward to. We passed the grade and did our time and it was over.

This scenario could not be further from the reality of the kids we watched through their Graduation ceremonies this weekend. My tears were brought on firstly by the reality that I’ll be losing a surrogate son – surrendering an amazing child to adulthood and the big world.

But what struck me during the numerous events arranged around the Graduation, was the amazing comraderie and sense of purpose among a class of 50. All alive and vibrant and determined. All of them convinced they will be great. None of them weighed down by the soul sucking weight of reality. None of them obsessed about themselves in that negative, self loathing way that is exhibited in the attitude of so many teenagers in the west today. The class has been together like a force, a swarm, for years. The friendships developed will span their lifetimes and have etched memories into each other forever.

All of these kids are forced upon each other, all taken from the comfort zones of their own cultures and dumped into a mixing pot called an International School, while their fathers do the daily grind with infinite frustrations and their mothers try to find women’s groups for tea and oversee the servants and try not to lose their grip on reality.

They come from everywhere – Denmark, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Korea, America, Australia, South Africa ... the world.

Still, what comes out of this experiment in education abroad is an amazing self esteem and sense of purpose the children gain. They are privileged but not spoiled, they travel the world and they are responsible. They are tolerant and open minded and they see the world far beyond country borders. They become leaders from within.
So at the graduation ceremony there are hundreds of photos and speeches and hugs and tears and the sentiment is real and the kids are all headed somewhere with purpose. But will definitely miss where they’ve been.

And the parties afterwards are shared with parents and families and everyone has fun. No one is too cool to dance with their mother, too bored to talk to their uncle, joke with their teachers, enjoy the love that surrounds them.

And the songs that serenaded the kids as they threw up their caps, and at the parties later will hold memories for all of us, and remind us that it is possible to have a positive outlook and have pride in the generation that we are raising. And years down the road I will undoubtedly be driving along and hear the song that pulsated, “My dream is to fly over the rainbow so high”, and I will see in my memory’s eye, the crowded dancefloor and the jumping bodies, all excited and hopeful and alive, and I will get all choked up and nostalgic and remember this graduation as if it were my own.