Canada, As I Have Never Known It: A Londoner’s Story Part II

Perhaps, it is all too well that the location of a place is not exactly the same as its locale. If the location is what you see, the locale, let’s assume, is what you don’t readily see, which synonymously speaking, is part of the location, if you know what I mean. So what do I see in Canada? Like many immigrants, I had come with a few expectations of what my new location would look like. And because America rules the world, I had constructed my own league of nations, in which I had placed Canada second, being America’s richest OECD neighbour. For, that was the ‘Abrokyire pantheon’ we were used to in Africa. Folks used Europe as preparatory grounds for the American Dream. Italy was always at the bottom of the pantheon, because we thought the only jobs available there were tomato picking and packing of bread. So, whenever Ghanaian-Italian ‘buggers’ visited home, we were happy to spend their Euros but we were also wary of their waste, especially the men. Most Ghanaian women preferred Canadian buggers to Italian mafias, but of course America won the day. The impression was that whereas most European countries were only good for making quick money the hard way, Canada was ideal for long stay and promised peaceful life. And I would confess that I still held that view after living in the UK for six years. Besides, most of my mates who completed PhD programmes in Canadian universities had moved on to America, their permanent residence status in Canada failing to tame the Big American Dream.

So, I wasn’t expecting to find many Ghanaian-American immigrants here. I have met a few, who after enjoying the peace and quiet of Canada for seven years, swear they are going back to New York. But, then, isn’t that characteristic of Ghanaian immigrants everywhere? “We have had enough of this boring routine here. As for this year paa dee, we are going home. Home is home.” But home hardly becomes home after ten years in somebody else’s home. The slow integration into our adopted communities may have paid off: children attend better schools, cars can be traded in for the newest version the next year, and the price of chicken is never tied to fluctuations in fuel prices. But there is another price to pay: not much money is saved to guarantee a comfortable return to the sahara, thanks to Western Union and SSB Moneygram. The year they trumpet their eventual return home is the year they celebrate their continued stay in grand style: baby naming ceremonies in rented hotel premises, P Diddy-style birthday parties and funeral celebrations that are bigger than Kofi Annan’s pension. There is never a book lunch. I have received about eight funeral invitations from Toronto alone in the few weeks that I have spent here. Most of the funerals have already been held in Ghana; these are the Abrokyire versions. Buggers cross continents from Germany and Australia to partake.

Canada looks beautiful, but you appreciate the beauteous forms better when you understand the system. Understanding the system means learning how to wrap up warm in the cold for some five years. You appreciate it more when you see people skating to work on ‘iced river’ in the winter, with shops erected on the sides. If you had been around the previous summer, you would have noticed that the same river had melted to allow boats to cruise about. You have understood the system when you have seen the icebergs in Newfoundland and Labrador or the rocky mountains in Alberta. This is a big country with vast land. Ottawa, the capital city, is not strikingly beautiful but it has character. The action is in Toronto, where you meet Ghanaian-Canadians who have succeeded in transporting Oseikrom to Ontario. The competition is almost palpable. 4x4 vehicles jostle for space in front of houses that boast of double garage rooms. They are vehicles only to the extent that they have wheels tucked under them; 4x4s carry a status symbol, and their owners do not give you reason to believe that hire-purchase agreements save anybody a buck. “I am shipping it home next year; I have ordered a new one”, as if it had been paid for in cash. Of course, like in the UK, it is not easy to tell their professions from their appearance, because you never get to know what they do for a living. But you can easily tell that they live large. It is also in Toronto that you see KLM airplanes taxiing right in the middle of town. In the evening they go to sleep in their hangers, like any other aircraft, just that they are quite different. Apparently, KLM is the term for youngsters who were brought from Ghana when they were children. They understand Twi but cannot and will not speak it. They are called KLM because they are usually dropped off by that airline. Those children are also called born-again: born in Ghana but born again in Canada, beating Nicodemus to it. In the UK, they are called coconut: white on the inside but black on the outside, making Michael Jackson a waste of resources. The Chinese call them Banana: yellow on the outside but white on the inside.

Toronto is a city of strange stories. There are Ghanaian shops everywhere, serving the ever increasing fufu community. I visited one of those shops to compare their customer service with the apology I was receiving in London. There, I experienced a Toronto ‘transfiguration’, in a way that the disciples of Jesus never did. A KLM girl had walked into the shop, speaking a high-tech English that was unintelligible to all of us, while producing a multi-syllabic noise with the chewing gum in her red painted mouth. A minute later, she was exiting the shop when the shop assistant grabbed her: “Kronfoo, thief, awi; I saw you, bring them out”. KLM had stolen two pieces of artificial braiding hair. “I aint no thief; I brough(t) (t)hem from somewhere”, she moved. I approached her and asked her to confess, to avoid having to deal with the police. To the discomfiture of everybody in the shop, KLM asked us to pray before her confession. She knelt down and prayed, confessing in the prayer why she was tempted to steal for the first time in her life. Still in a very engaging spiritual mood, she ended her prayer by asking God to “talk to the shop owner to forgive me”. Amen, we all said. I thought that was really creative; it would make a good story for the next week’s column, so I offered to pay for her. But KLMs are usually shameless. She quickly grabbed a few more things and added them to the $90 bill she was yet to settle. I decided against the gesture and left the shop, wondering how a character like that is the envy of some Ghanaians back home. Tweapease is a lot better.

Well, it appears strange stories help in the making of big cities. You would need to suspend your disbelief, like an audience member is the theatre, to believe some of the stories in London. For, it is only in London that a tongues-wagging Christian would donate money as offering to his church and later go back for it, on the instructions of the Holy Spirit. Incidentally, it was the same spirit that had commanded him to give 1,000 pounds to support God’s kingdom, in agreement with the biblical commandment on giving and tithing. But a few weeks later, the giver realized that God has two kingdoms: the kingdom of heaven and another one on earth. He didn’t find it difficult believing that the pastor’s new BMW convertible was part of God’s earthly kingdom, but he continually wondered why it was not God himself who was driving the automobile. So, he started hearing voices: “Brother Joseph, go for your money, it would help the completion of your building in Kasoa. That saith The Lord”. His wife, a Saphira of a born-again Christian, reported her husband’s encounters with the God of Abraham to the pastor. They took back their money and warned God never to have anything to do with their savings.

The stories aside, I am enjoying Canada very much. After forcing myself to be left-handed, because I had been changing gears with my left hand on the narrow roads of London for six years, driving has suddenly become a pleasure. The roads in North America are much bigger. Well, not as big as I thought. But the houses are just as large as I was told, making my house in London seem like a chicken coup given a close angle shot. Rooms in the UK were particularly small. A three bedroom apartment in London (they call them flats) is architecturally speaking made up of three different rooms, but because architecture has nothing to do with biology, the builders often forget that when beds are forced into bathrooms, people’s body would also need to adjust. Houses in Canada are not just bigger; they come with basements, something I am seeing for the first time. The basement, where my host is accommodating me, is a house on its own, complete with a wine bar, a living room, a bedroom and toilet facilities. I also have an office to myself. I am not reminded of Austrian monster Josef Friezl, because I could pop up anytime to the main house for dinner. It is also in my host’s house that I learnt how to change a baby’s diaper for the first time, an adventure that at once upped my admiration for young parents. I decided to play in-loco-parentis when my hosts were away, as a reward for their hospitality. Their 17 month old daughter had done it, and she was under my care. I summoned every skill I had accumulated in my life to clean the girl. But as if the little angel had observed that I was struggling with the ordeal, she kept laughing throughout. Just as I was about tightening the wrappers to complete the process, she did it again, this time in greater quantity. But she was kind to report it: “Uncle poo, uncle poo.”

But that is not the only thing I would learn in Canada. Having lived in the West for six years, I was confident that I should be able to go around town without any difficulties. Shops here have different names but they have the same character as Debenhams, House of Frazer and J. Sainsbury’s in the UK. So when I walked into a Mr. Big and Tall store in town, I wasn’t expecting any embarrassment. “Do you want something for somebody, sir”, the gorgeous lady asked. The question sounded quite odd in my years. Couldn’t I buy anything for myself? I picked a Polo shirt that looked an elephant’s size. The boxer shorts would fit more as a pair of trousers on me than shorts. When I thanked them and made my way out, the lady asked: “Are you from England?” How did you know, I quizzed. “Oh, your accent”, she said. I left the shop a happy man, impressed that my English accent had wowed the Canadian dames. But it when I popped my head up and looked at the shop once again, that I realized that the girls had been making fun of my 5ft 7in frame. That is also when it dawned on me that I don’t have an English accent.

Well, I guess I have so much to learn here, including French. So I have to invoke the residue of my secondary school Pierre et Siedu lessons. I always thought “Ill travail” meant ‘Has Pierre traveled?’ until much later. After that the only good French I learnt was from my landlord in Ghana: ‘Cest ma fu la pa’, which meant ‘I will eject you soon.’

Benjamin Tawiah: The author is a freelance journalist; he lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Email: btawiah@hotmail.com, quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk