Akonwa nie - a chair is here

This is the house I rent in Nwoase, one of the many little communities of Kintampo. Here live a mixed bunch, representing many of the different communities in Kintampo, a meeting place of migrants. My landlady, sister Agatha, is from Ashanti region, but married and moved to Kintampo. Now a widow, she has her hands full raising six sons, plus two 'adopted' children. Most families have this kind of inbuilt flexibility - incorporating children of sisters, or poorer relatives, and often children who not related at all. They are brought up as part of the family, although sometimes, perhaps often, they retain some lesser status, and often take responsibility for many of the household chores. The system can work as an effective form of 'social security' but also provides a possible avenue for abuse.

Sister Agatha has built this new house which will eventually be her own home, an upgrade from her smaller house across the compound. The house is in the usual village style, made from concrete with a corrugated steel roof, and slatted windows. It is also built with the usual haste - walls, doors, windows even electric sockets askew, and rudimentary plumbing which springs frequent leaks. The waste water flows out around the house where the hens pick at the food scraps. Sewage is stored in an underground concrete-lined pit which will be emptied once it is full. Not the most pleasant of tasks I imagine.


Whenever you visit a house people hurry around to find you some form of seating - usually a plastic chair if they are better off, often a simple wooden bench or stool. As they do saw they invite you to sit - 'Aknowa nie', a chair is here. My living room, definately at the luxury end of the scale in Kintampo, features a dining table and chairs made by one of the many local carpenters, who also made the wardrobe and desk. Ready made furniture is not the norm in Kintampo - but the carpenters do a busy trade in wardrobes, beds, and sofas, as well as chicken coops, shoe racks, tables for traders to display their wares, and the ubiquitous little stools which are used to squat on for cooking, doing the laundry, eating or entertaining. The cane sofas are not common here, but made in Accra or Kumasi, again to order and by hand.



This is my landlady's compound next to my house. The wooden benches positioned in compound yards, or under the shade of mango trees, are used for entertaining visitors, and in my case for interviews. They also serve as church pews in the poorer churches or double up as beds for an afternoon or evening snooze. Sister Agatha uses her benches for her weekly Jehovah's Witness Bible study meetings which are held in her compound. The boys also gather on them to play Oware, a local game. And most evenings after eating her daily bowl of fufu, I find sister Agatha balanced with apparent ease on her side on one of the narrow benches, eyes closed, her head pillowed on one arm, lost in dreams.


On my verandah is another form of local seating, these chairs, ingeniously woven from slender sticks of wood bound together with strips of old rubber tyres. A couple of cushions and they make a nice chair for lounging in. The old men next door position them under the trees to while away the day gossiping, greeting me with a warm 'Akwaaba' - welcome- when I return.