I was born in Bolgatanga, in the Upper East region of Ghana. My mother is from Navorongo, a kasenna nankana woman who knows her way home through dawadawa, millet, and shea butter. Her father’s house in Navorongo is surrounded by shea trees, almost like a shea parkland in the dry season, and in the raining season, the house is wrapped by maize, sorghum, millet, bambara beans, and groundnuts. I know my way to the house by heart, but to be honest, it is the two huge baobab trees just along the roadside that serves as my landmark. I can spot my uncles house, Sunday, to the right as I make my way to grandfather Adura’s house.

My father is from Asante Bekwai, he is Akan. His mother, my paternal grandmother, who I am named after was a farmer and a cook at a secondary school in Bekwai. I was told she was fiery, fierce, and that I take after her. I did not spend much time in the Ashanti region among my father’s people, from birth until age seven, I attended the Bolgatanga Preparatory School.

During vacations, as a child, my mother would always take me to Navorongo, her village. I remember how the bus rides made me nauseous, the goats were tied to the top of the bus, the Guinea fowls, roosters, and hens were usually underneath the seats. A passenger beside my mother and I will be eating fried fish and bread. I literally cannot stand the smell of that, but the memory brings me to that time and space. Another passenger sitting in front of us will be eating eggs and pepper. My stomach would always turn at the smell of food on a bus ride. There I was, sitting on my mother’s lap, holding tightly to her cloth to cover my nose and keep the clash of smells at bay from puking. I have not changed, I cannot stand any strong food being consumed on a bus ride, and I always sitting at the edge of my seat to yell at people who do this, to remind them that they are not the only ones on the bus.

In front of our house in Bolgatanga, at residency, I remember my mother planting millet and corn during the raining season. I remember how they would kill a Guinea fowl, slit the throat, let it die slowly, then put it in a bucket of hot water to remove its feathers. I would dip my hands in the bucket to help take off the feathers of the fowl. I still remember the pungent scent of feathers cooked in hot water. After school, when I had roamed around the area before getting home, I would come home to dawadawa jollof, made with local rice. The local rice was not always completely free from small stones, and so sometimes I would break into a stone as I ate the rice. But we learned how to eat dawadawa Jollof and use our tongue to remove the stones while enjoying the flavors. My father worked in Wa, in the Upper West region, I would travel to Wa, to visit my father, who would buy Fulani milk, stocks of honey, and have us jog in the mornings on the Wa road to Tamale. It was my father who introduced me to yoga as a child, he had a book with yoga positions, and each mornings after our jogs, we would do yoga. I remember how tall I felt my father was at that age, the memories have cemented in my bloodstream.