Akwaaba and happy birthday Materia! Yes, the small one known as "Weensy" is not so weensy anymore--she's four! As is the tradition, Materia awoke this morning to cinnamon toast (with candles) in bed and a rather groggy rendition of happy birthday to celebrate the beginning of her fifth year on the planet. She's already something of a traveller, having been born in Saskatchewan, then living in Manitoba for a year, and now she is in Africa. What's most remarkable about Materia (whose name, in Latin, means "of the human world," and is taken from the great Canadian novel
Fall on Your Knees), is that she has thrived wherever we have taken her and the Ghanaian accent that she is developing is making her all the more endearing.
Her birthday just about coincided with a Winnie the Pooh event at Accra's National Centre, and being the loyal corporate licensing fans that we are (not to mention the fact that a good number of us were born in the city after which "Winnie" was named), we decided to cough up the 15 Ghana cedis per person to attend. It was not without some (rather discriminatory) trepidation that we did so, as the event was rush seating, we had never been to the National Centre, and our tickets were for 2:00 p.m., with the first show at 12:00. We wondered how they would get the first crowd out in time for us to see the show, but we also felt the 2:00 p.m. show would give them time to work the bugs out. Of course the thought also occurred to us that the power has a tendency to go out in the mid-afternoon every day.
On the Sunday of the performance, we had a small family birthday party at home (homemade, Ghanaian cocoa, chocolate cake--hooray for mom!--and FanChoco ice cream) and then we left. We arrived about fifteen minutes early after a brief pit stop at the Pizza Inn, to find that our timing was perfect and they were just letting the next wave of "fans" in. The trouble was that the last group of people were still in the building and they were just starting the on-stage pictures with Pooh and Friends. There were about 150 people waiting and I commented that it was at least a two hour line up. To the credit of the event organizers, they moved the pictures into the lobby, to make way for the opening acts (we did not know that there were any!), which consisted of a child modelling agency fashion show (Bronte knows
exactly what she wants to be now...imagine her father's delight) and a youth dance troupe. Both were a pretty decent way to wait out the start of the Pooh performance, which did not begin until just after 3:30 p.m.!
All in all, it was a pretty darn good day and the kids were excellent. This, despite the fact that the performance lasted just over fifteen minutes (yes, your math is correct, that is 6 Ghana cedis a minute for our family!) and they had to wait so long. There were a few moments where Carmilla and I shared a giggle as the whole exercise of seeing Winnie the Pooh in Ghana was surreal and a little disjointed. We are not surprised though, as people are pretty quick to embrace western goods and consumption habits, and the CEOs of corporations such as Disney must get goosebumps thinking about the market potential of a largely untapped African consumer population. Of course the English teacher in me thinks it can't all be bad as Pooh's creator, A.A. Milne, is a literary giant who deserves a posthumous readership well into the future. To paraphrase Eeyore, who celebrated his "tail-aversary" in the performance, with a bit of literary license: "It's not much of a blog, but I'm kind of attached to it." I hope you are too!
The Land family "birthday season" can really wreak havoc on the psyches of parents who are trying to convince themselves that they are not really very old, but at least there is a brief reprieve between Brontë's birthday and Cuyler's. We might be able to recover our sense of youth by then, what with Christmas being oh-so-restful! As you will soon deduce from closer examination of the pictures, Brontë's party was co-sponsored by Coca Cola, the Granada Hotel pool, and Pizza Inn. Bronte invited Devina, a friend from school, and we did cake, presents and fun at the pool. As it gets dark at 6:00 p.m. and we were the only people keeping the attendant from closing, it was a whirlwind of a party that lasted about two hours. Brontë was happy though, especially since she got some Ghanaian dresses for her birthday, and a new DS game (thanks Granny!). 
We had the party on the actual day of her birthday, so it made for a hectic day (especially for Carmilla--thanks mom!) as it was a weekday. To complicate matters, the waitress from the restaurant at the pool refused to serve us, claiming there was "no menu and no food." She just happens to be the very same server who tried to double our bill the last time we were there, trying to tell us that the prices had changed since she handed us the menu. We did not fall for this age-old Ghanaian custom (reserved for obruni) and simply did the math ourselves, included a small dash, and went on our way. The patrons, "Douglas the Driver," and staff of the pool were on our side (as they knew the real prices as well as the "custom"), so we left her with a rather sour expression on her face and went on our merry way. Her revenge meant I had to dash out and get pizza, which was probably for the best as the last time our food took more than an our to arrive and the order was wrong. Alas, this will probably be our last visit to the Granada, as the pool was also quite dirty! Welcome to Ghana, have a nice birthday! 
