01/31/08
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General
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@ 3:00 pm
Los Angeles –> New York –> Accra. That’s my plane route to Ghana. Accra (emphasis on the second syllable Ac-CRA) is
Ghana’s capital. Ghana sits at the lowermost rim of the West African
coast on the Gulf of Guinea. I’m at JFK airport at the
moment, waiting for my flight this afternoon at 4:30 PM. I got to the
airport at 11:30 this morning. Why so early? I have a habit of checking
in anything from three to six hours before my flight. Some people think
I’m nuts, but I’m not. Okay, maybe a little neurotic - I’ll give you
that.
I left Los Angeles from LAX yesterday. My checking in early there did not
prevent my baggage getting lost, however. Yes. Every traveler’s
nightmare: my suitcase was nowhere to be found when I landed at JFK.
After a very long evening of back and forth between terminals and
between JFK and my hotel, the suitcase was finally found. Two friends
of mine came in from the city to meet me and very kindly drove me
wherever I needed to go in the chain of confusion.
It’s been many years since I’ve been in Ghana. Brief word on my ties to
Ghana (see more in the “About” section) A naturalized US citizen by my
parentage, I was born in Ghana to a black American mother and a
Ghanaian father. My novel Wife of the Gods is set in Ghana.
I’m going there wearing two hats. One as a physician to check out the
state of things in health care and hospitals in Ghana, the other as a
writer. In Wife of the Gods, a murder takes place in a rural area against the background of an old custom called trokosi. Practiced
almost exclusively in the Volta Region on the eastern border of the
country, a family “gives away” a young woman to a fetish priest to
atone for a family crime, often committed by an ancestor.
There’s a movement against trokosi, and International Needs
is one organization dedicated to eradicating the custom. Opponents of
trokosi say it enslaves young women and submits them to physical and
sexual abuse. A story about trokosi was run on 60 Minutes some
years ago. The fetish priest, a revolting little guy, claimed that all
his several wives are “treated well.” One of my goals is to meet face
to face with one or more of these wives as well as a fetish priest.
That should be the highlight of my visit.
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