Blogging Tracks: IT'S A WAAKYE PARTAAAAYY!!!

Ghanaians love their food. So much so, that the current trend in Accra is what’s been dubbed locally as “foodtainment”. This weekend we went to a Waakye (pronounced wa-chee) party, an open air music concert/festival in Accra based around waakye, one of the favoured local dishes which inspired the famous Caribbean rice and peas. A few weeks ago we went to an “Omo tuo party”, a similar concept of local hip hop and hip life artists playing below the star headliner of Omo tuo – rice balls in a soup with various meats thrown in for good measure.

Ghanaian food is not exactly the nation’s biggest export, but I do wonder whether there are many nations with as strong a love for its own food as this one. Fufu, for example. I’ve discussed it briefly before – it’s an acquired taste – but

Ghanaians LOVE.IT. We stayed at Kofi’s grandparents in Kumasi for a week or so a few months ago. We ate it EVERY day. And obviously, I had to finish it, every time. Ploughing through...

The love can be seen in the dedication in preparation. The pounding of fufu is like Ghana’s heartbeat, a ritual which I’ve seen (and heard on a daily basis) take three people to contribute to and hours to get through. Kofi’s a firm believer that, if any Ghanaian fridge around the world is missing pre-prepared soup, ready and waiting for that fufu addition, then it ain’t a Ghanaian fridge. Someone once said to me that fufu is more than just a meal – it’s a BRAND. I think it’s

true. Check the t-shirts!

Despite how Ghanaian I truly have become, I’m gonna be honest, I’m not a fufu man. However

I’m feeling the Red Red (bean stew and plantain), and you can’t go wrong with a bit of jollof rice and chicken. On the snack side, I gotta say I can’t believe I’ve gone my whole life without PLANTAIN CRISPS!! They are da shit. I went through a phase with them, so much so that I had to back off for a couple of months, it was getting serious. But I’m back on it. In a big way. As for waakye – again, I need to work on my enthusiasm to be a true local, but yeah, I’m feeling it.

In all the commotion of the world cup I was hoping to hear more of a play on words,

“FUFUzela”. I still haven’t heard it. I’m sure if The Sun had a paper in Ghana I would have. Any photoshop suggestions of someone pounding fufu with a vuvuzela are welcome.

(I'm also gettin BACK on the blog in a big way...and will be introducing you all to some of our new friends here in the big GH...enjoy!)