Some thoughts on West African Clothes and Plants

CLOTHES

The recent visit to the local Ghanaian village chief’s, audience with petitioners, reminded me of the impracticality of some Africa dress The elders surrounding the chief sat on low stools. Every time they rose to say anything, the elaborate toga, wrapped around the waist and then over the shoulder, had to be lifted and adjusted. Hands were constantly rearranging the folds.

When I wore a milufa in Mauritania/Mali, I really never felt totally at home in it. My smooth hair meant that the cover constantly slipped off my head and although I learnt to push my arms through the appropriate folds, it was often at the expense of dropping the material on my shoulder or exposing too much arm. Sahel Arabic men wear voluminously white and blue Niele which are worn over very ordinary T-shirts or jeans. The extended sleeves which reach the ground are folded over the shoulders. The structure trails on the ground. Both hands are needed to lift and shift and the shoulders are constantly being hitched into place. The reason for the strange garment apart from the circulation of cooling air is that it can be worn as a blanket at night. An intricately embroidered panel on the front is a pocket for money.
Thus both sexes are in contact interaction with their clothes: pulling and tucking, plucking and scrunching, pinching and swishing, pushing and lifting, smoothing and folding, throwing and dropping, holding and releasing, waving and wiping, dropping and clamping…Oh for a Thesaurus! I could go on further, but you get the idea.

In Mali, the women of the local tribes all wear only a skirt, yet not far away, culture changes and dictates different values. To cover the bosom becomes essential.
The elaborate clothes (why on earth the puffed and stuffed shoulder pads? But then I think of 18th Century dress in Europe and nothing is new) of Ghana are very striking. The material used in colourfully patterned and a piece of the same cloth, tied in the most amazing ways, decorates the head. In the Ashanti Region of Central Ghana, the styles of woven Kente cloth are sewn together to create the men’s togas. Today, many printed versions of these are used in everyday dress.

Despite the lack of bathroom, everyone is scrupbuly clean and I delight in seeing small children stand in a bowl of water and thoroughly scrub themselves from top to toe.
The same can be said for clothe. They are constantly being washed wherever a water supply is available. In the middle of the towns, by the riverside, where communal taps and wells are, on weekends when the market sellers are absent and the drying space can be utilized. Clothes are dried on grass, sand, rocks, and bushes and from washing lines.
There seems to be a special emphasis on clean feet and shoes. So far in West Africa I have not seen a shoeless person. Plastic sandals are clean and leather shoes are highly polished and proudly worn. Displayers of shoes are full of inventiveness as each seller tries to outdo the next. In Lome on a Sunday, a vast area is used for shoe selling with extraordinary displays. The only time I raw a dignified row of polished secondhand shoes--- as though they could not be too exhibitionist--- was outside the Refugee Centre in Lome. This is where people with nothing, go for hope and maybe a presentable pair of shoes.

On my way to school one morning, I passed a tiny girl in school uniform and yellow plastic sandals crying her heart out. I asked someone what the problem was “the grandmother forgot to clean her sandals”- and she was not going to leave the house until they were clean.




PLANTS

No one could love trees more than I do and I have been known to cry when a tree is being felled. But I have finally seen a tree I hate! In this subtropical climate it is very common in built-up areas where it is planted as decoration. The leaves are long and thin and the tree itself is just a simple ‘pole’ up to 10m tall with these bright yellow leaves hanging down from the top like a stack of regimental bearskins-no character or use. They also remind me of those garish car wash brushes at petrol stations.

Trees provide much needed shade and shelter and it is always a pleasure to see how they are respected and used extensively for those purposes. The cool shade of a tree cannot be reproduced. However, I did see a bad example of urban planning/clean-up in Ouagadougou where the authorities had decided to regulate the haphazardness of the street market. They built a vast edifice of concrete to supply shade. The stall-holders obviously did not like the restrictions nor the oppressive heat the concrete roof created. It mysteriously “burnt down” one day and stands as a forlorn edifice to misguided do- gooding, the gates firmly locked and happy stall-holders selling on its steps. At the end of the day, women wearing municipal jackets, come with their hand brushes and flat pieces of cardboard to sweep up and place the day’s messes in special containers. Victory to free enterprise! Trees are also extremely useful to clothes sellers, who display their wares from the branches.

One of the most extraordinary trees is the calabash tree. It looks like any other but the ‘fruit’ is enormous! If anybody has seen the great calabashes which are used for beer making, you can imagine what the tree that produces such monsters, must look like.
Imagine a very ordinary tree with vast balloons hanging off it. The very large calabashes are obviously prized, so if one develops a crack (usually from the top opening)it is taken to a street mender who carefully drills holds on both sides of the crack and then plugs the opening and ‘stitches’ the sides together. The calabash vine produces smaller, oblong calabashes which are often split and used as ladles. I am a great believer in herbal medicines (the source of most of our chemical substitutes), but sometimes one’s faith is stretched. I watched a man shaping round pieces (the size of a large checker-board piece) from dry calabash parts. These were then drilled in the center to create a round thing with a 1cm hole like a washer. Yes, they were interesting items but what on earth were they to be used for? “They are going to be sent to Ghanaian women in the U.S.A”, I was told. “What for?” “To cause an abortion”. I was totally nonplussed. But then I began to think about it. The flat ring is large enough to cause great discomfort as it travels through the body. As it will not disintegrate, the faeces can go through the central hole and the large item can well cause pressure/injury to the sensitive uterus which can result in a miscarriage. Can anyone solve this problem for me? The other major use of calabash pieces is for the intricate cutting out (about the size of two playing cards side by side) of traditional Adinkra cloth designs. These are then turned into seals which when dipped into dye are used as designs on the cloth.

Talking of mysterious uses, I wonder where the belief comes from which come from that if you put the root of a certain root in your mouth, it will keep away the lions. We happily walked the hills with roots in our mouths. But as there never were any lions in that area, are not quite sure how effective the root really was.

My agony goes out to those protected trees which stand sentinel amongst the exposed areas of cultivation. The forests are lush and the layers of canopy all interrelate with each other and are mutually dependent for successful growth. When everything except the large buttress trees is removed, those 100yr old trees cannot last very long without their groundcovers. And they just do not seem happy. Illegal logging is a perpetual problem, and in Togo, on a Saturday when the police are off duty, we could hear the chainsaws felling trees.

It is remarkable how lush the forests of Central Africa are. Here in Ghana I spent a day ‘farming’ as they call it. Plots of cultivated land are often quite far form the compound so a decision has to be made to walk over there to spend a day farming. Inevitably, one returns with a sack of yams or cassava and large green leaves and chilies. Every plantain tree or cassava stick belongs to someone. I noticed walking along a lonely road that there were some very desirable maize corps coming into ripeness next to the road. The following day, when I passed again, there were mysterious piles of stones with protruding sticks as well as a brown medicine bottle tied to one of the stalks. I wonder if that was some kind of evocation of the spirits to protect the crop and keep thieves away.

Teak trees are planted quite close together so that they grow straight and tall. These trunks are then used for telephone poles. I take great delight in releasing the vibrant red/orange of the young teak tree leaves. The color is so bright that it does not seem natural. But it makes a very successful paint! I wish and could remember all the plants, leaves and roots that supply a great variety of colours.

My favorite plant is the ‘sensitive plant’ (part of the mimosa family and not carnivorous). It has pink fluffy flowers. When one touches a feather-like leaf, it instantly starts to close and a little more touching and the whole leaf bracket instantly wilts and lies down as though ‘dead. How on earth a plant with no central nervous system can react so quickly is simply inexplicable to me. I tested the plant one day; after a vigorous wave across the plant, it took 3 minutes for the leaves not directly hit to start opening again and the leaves that suffered the most impact from my hand, started to open 9 minutes afterwards. In total it took 23 minutes to return to it original shape.


I was chatting to the headmistress of the infant school, comparing life here to that in England. “Do you have maize?”. “ Well yes, over the last 20 yrs due to global warming and chemical manipulation”. “What about cassava?”. “No, that is a subtropical plant”. “So then do you grow rice?” “No too cold”. “But what do you eat?”. “Potatoes!”. Difficult for people to understand how different our lifestyles are. Here your meal is mainly a carbohydrate like cassava, yam, cocoyam, plantain or rice and a sauce to go with it. The sauce (soup as it is called) always has chili as a base and then whatever is available that day --tomatoes, onions, large green leaves, ground nut paste, okra, garden eggs (egg plant - small round white objects). Most of these items are grown on the farms and freshly picked or dug out of the ground when needed. When I say to people that our ‘fresh’ fruit and veg in London is often days if not months old, they are quite horrified. And I know myself how healthy I feel as a result of only eating local, fresh foods. Digging cassava root out of the ground is quite hard work. The tubers (like a dahlia plant) can be very large and heavy. The plant above ground has a long stem with umbrella-like leaves at the top. When the root has been removed, a piece of stem is cut off and reinserted into the same earth. That will soon start to sprout. Farming could not be easier! Yams are vine plants which are planted in mounds because it is the root that is cultivated. Like a carrot. These can be enormous and are big business. They are very heavy and to see the overloaded lorries in the North of Ghana, which is the main area of cultivation, struggling to move makes one wonder whether they will ever reach Accra markets.


Medicinal plants are everywhere and one just needs to know what to do! Bark, roots, seeds, and so on cure constipation, remove the malaria fever… Larry’s brother was suffering with a malaria fever, so we took Lantana (a weed in South Africa) leaves and dried them. The crushed dried leaves are then made into a tea to bring down the fever. I was shown two other plants which have the same properties. The nime tree keeps mosquitoes at bay and various parts of the tree are used in anti-malarial medicines. It is also a good supply of wood for charcoal and where the nime trees are abundant, one can see small clouds of smoke rising where the charcoal burners have lit their stacks of branches cut about a week before. These stacks are built above the ground after the topsoil has been removed. The pile of wood (about 2m x 4m) is covered by fresh grass and the earth from the topsoil and a corner left exposed where a fire is lit. This slowly spreads into the wood and after about a week of slow burning, the stack falls in on itself and the charcoal is ready to sell. As a major source of energy, it is remarkably clean and efficient both in the production and use.
In the Sahel, farming is carefully managed near sources of water and it is heartbreaking to see how cans of water are carried from afar to nurture a plant. And of course, planted areas, have to be well protected from goats! Subtropical farming just needs to keep the goats way. Every tree has an owner, no matter how ‘wild’ the area may look. When I helped to weed a patch belonging to my family, there was an unseen line between her and her neighbour’s land. I was happily wielding my panga between the cassava, maize, chilies and plantain when she told me to move to another area as I had stepped into the other person’s farm. I really could not see the difference!


The coco-nut tree produces an oval-shaped yellow fruit from the trunk of the tree. Ghana is famed for its cocoa production and farmers, who may only have a few trees, are encouraged to produce good crops with fertilizers. There seem to be endless middlemen who would buy the dried kernels from the small farmers and sell them on to agents in town……… everyone making a living.


Large containers of bright orange palm nuts are sold in the market. If these are carefully pounded, the hard black kernel does not disintegrate, but the fibrous red outer shell is separated to give a reddish oil and is used to make a delicious soup. The kernel is finally pounded to extricate the palm oil.

In Lome I was taken to the outskirts of the town to see the commercial production of croton (those plants with multi colored leaves.) and delicate ivy which sells so well in Europe as indoors plants. Here the ‘root’ plants are grown in vast quantities under flame trees. The flame trees are carefully pruned to provide even shade to the plants which are then harvested of cuttings which are then expertly planted and left to mature in shade houses with controlled humidity. Once the cuttings have reached the right size, they are packed and sent by air to the flower markets of Holland. This vast enterprise, started by a Swedish man, is a major export for Togo. And the unwanted branches from the thousands of flame trees has created its own industry. Lines of women come to collect the branches and tie them into bundles to be carried on their heads to be sold as sought-after firewood.

In the North of Ghana, grow the Shea nut trees. The fruit is like a ping-pong ball and the fleshy layer of fruit is reasonably unpleasant to eat. However, through a very elaborate process of drying, boiling and grinding of the large nuts, there eventually appears a good ‘butter’ which can be used in cooking as well as on the skin. The Body Shop has exploited this market.


Although the subtropical plant-cover is so lush, there is a total lack of animal life. Apart from lizards, hardly anything moves. There are small birds above and butterflies, but generally anything edible has long since disappeared or is burnt to extinction. However, fruits are a joy. When the Germans were living in the mountains of Togo 100 yrs ago, they planted many mango trees. It was the season for ripe mangos to regularly fall from the trees and I was in Mango Heaven! Both sides of the road would be yellow with fruits and I dare not confess how many I ate every day: Apart from mangoes, I had eaten freshly picked pawpaw, avocado pears, star fruit, custard apples, strawberries, bananas, coconuts, oranges, lemons, guavas and pineapples. Coconuts are all over and the palm trees are laden. The coconut sellers use a panga and the green, heavy object is deftly reduced to the central nut area with a few judicious slashes. Then the top of the nut is quartered off so that the refreshing milk can be drunk. If you wish to eat the soft fruit inside (what we know as the hard dried white stuff which is turned into desiccated coconut) the nut is deftly sliced in half and part of the original cover is turned into a scoop which you can then use as a spoon to extract that delicious fresh fruit.