The Date Palm at the Entrance!

“Where are you going?” asked Azanpoka, “I am going to Bolgatanga” I replied. I had not walked more than 20 meters from Mr. Tony’s house, where I lived, and Azanpoka was the third person asking me where I was going!! Such was the culture in Namoo, a small village, located in Bongo District, on the Ghanaian border with Burkina Faso. Asking where you were going was a way for the community to make sure they knew where you were at all times and if you did not come back they would know where to start looking for you. Since I was a visitor they felt an extra sense of responsibility for my safety!

Having cleared five-levels of Namoo security! I got to the roadside waiting for the taxi. The taxi having crossed from the village of Yelwongo on the Burkina Faso side into Ghana, had already pick up 5 passengers. The taxi driver stopped, having recognized me as Anamoo (local name given to me by the Chief of Namoo), he looked around in his taxi and asked the passengers to shift around and make room! I was able to fit myself inside this beat up Nissan. I got very close to the passengers, we all got too close… but hey as my dad used to say, “Cheltaa Darvish tooyeh yek Poosteh Gerdoo Zendegi Mikardand!” “40 Dervishes lived in a walnut shell!” For those who are trying to understand what does 40 dervishes in a walnut shell have to do with 6 passengers in a beat up taxi, basically it means that if we live simple like a dervish, then there is always room for everyone….OK…never mind!

So the taxi started to move. Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region in the north most part of Ghana, was about a 45 minutes ride from Namoo. As we passed by the village of Sambolgu towards Zoko, I saw a beautiful palm tree, and for a second I remembered the palm trees filled with dates that use to decorate Ahvaz, the city of my birth, in southwest Iran. And at that moment I craved those sweet dates we use to eat with no end in sight!!! If you put a million dates in front of us, we would finish them all!!

We got to Bolgatanga and were dropped off at the the Namoo/Bongo transport yard. I got out of the taxi..a bit soar, a bit dusty and a bit nostalgic! I started to walk towards the town center, where I would usually stop by the Traveler’s Inn, a small restaurant/shop. This is where I would get a cold Coke to drink, a luxury considering that Namoo at the time did not have electricity and therefore no cold drinks to enjoy! And with temperatures well above 100, anything cold was heaven send.  As I sat there with a bottle in my hand, the thought of the date palms of Ahvaz lingered in my mind. I looked around and then suddenly out of nowhere appeared a woman with a big round tray on her head!

“Sir, do you want to buy?” she said as she brought down the tray and long behold there was a tray full of dates!!! I looked at the woman and asked, “Are these dates?” asking for a second opinion in case my mind was playing tricks on me or I was hallucinating…maybe someone had put something in my bottle of Coke! Out of nowhere had appeared a woman with a tray of dates…”Where did you get these dates?” I inquired and she pointed to the sky and said, “by Bawku side”. I later found out the dates were from Niger. But at that moment I was so excited I did not care where they had come from. I bought everything or almost everything this woman had on her tray and made her a very happy person, she did well that day!

In matter of minutes I ate most of the dates, but I did control myself enough to save a couple of pieces for Mr. Tony. I returned to Namoo that evening and sat with Mr. Tony eating our dinner of Tuo Zaafi (TZ) with Bito Soup and Guinea Fowl meat. After dinner I introduced him to his first date! He ate it and liked it. After a few days when the excitement of eating the miraculous dates had died down and I had gotten back to my senses! I remembered that I had saved some of the seeds and brought them back from Bolgatanga. I went to Mr. Tony and said why don’t we plant these seeds and see if they will grow, he readily agreed. Mr. Tony was desertification’s worst nightmare! He would plant any seedling or seed he could get his hands on!! So he called Ibrahim and Abdulai, two of the kids in our house to come and dig a small hole in the ground and we brought the seeds and planted them. From that day we all kept a close eye on the spot that perchance we could get a sighting of sprouting vegetation, after weeks of not seeing any growth we stopped looking.

Then the rainy season started, when after about 7 months of no rain, windy weather, and extreme heat, the brown, parched earth was revived and born again. One evening, a few weeks into the rainy season, I heard a bit of commotion, and soon after I heard a knock at my door, it was Ibrahim, who said, “Mr. Anamoo come on, come on and see”! So I followed Ibrahim to the front of the house where he and the rest of the kids had gathered looking at and pointing to the ground! I looked down and there out of the ground were two baby leaves that had shot out from where the date seeds had been planted! We again continued to keep an eye on this small seedling. The dry season came around and Mr. Tony made sure the baby plants were getting their fair share of water. Soon after I left Namoo and Ghana and returned to the United States, leaving behind a home, a family, and a village which was my community for two years and had contributed greatly to who I had become. That was November of 2000.

 

Ten years later I was back to Ghana and made my way back to Namoo to visit Mr. Tony.  The next morning after we arrived, he took me to the front of the house and pointed me to a tree and said, “do you remember the date seeds we planted? Here it is! And there stood in front of me a small palm tree that looked like it had struggled to make it! The seeds that had been planted all those years ago had grown to a youthful date-palm!

Five years later, again I am back to Namoo and our palm date has grown into adulthood! She stands next to the entrance of Mr. Tony’s house as if to welcome the visitors. We found out that the tree is a female and needs a male next to it to produce dates. As the saga continues, we are looking for a husband to be planted next to her! One day she will bare dates for all to enjoy, the same enjoyment I experienced, on that miraculous day in Bolgatanga!