He describes the colours of his mother’s home town of Damongo, in northern Ghana:
The sunsets went from orange to violet; the sky was pristine blue, save whatever feathery white clouds were floating. Between earth & sky were as many shades of green as imaginable, trees & bushes & shrubs & more trees, more bushes, more shrubs
That in turn revived memories of some of my own experiences of the colour green.
The idea of England’s ‘green & pleasant land’ was so engrained in my childish mind that it came as a real shock to me to find that other countries too were green. (Ireland was Emerald, which was different).
The country in question was northern France & I was only 10 years old. I suppose my ignorance may be further excused by the fact that many of the images of foreign landscapes to which I had been exposed were in black & white - & certainly no satellite images in those days.
I later learned that not all of France was green – at least not the Midi in August – but I was once again taken aback, at the age of 16, by the discovery that Belgium was pretty green too. In that case I think my expectations had been shaped by school geography which taught us that Belgium was one of the world’s most densely populated countries. So it must be that Nimby nightmare of concrete everywhere. However, the aspect of density which most impressed me was the intensity of the way the land – at least in the environs of Brussels - was used for food production, with fields planted right up to the edge of the road & even traffic islands given over to crops – I am sure remember seeing greenhouses full of tomatoes on one particularly large roundabout.
But my biggest shock came at the age of 21, when I found that even the tropics can be green.
Obviously deserts can’t be green, but I am mystified now, trying to recall the colour of the jungle in my mind (rain forest had not then been invented).
I think it must have been khaki, since that was the colour of the tropical gear worn by film stars and explorers (both male & female). Surely that was the colour chosen to provide them with camouflage from unfriendly natives? And the impression of sludge & gloom could only have been reinforced by those horrible David Attenborough BBC documentaries which ended with him taking a baby animal from its mother & packing it in a crate to be sent to London Zoo.
Links
Public Personality Profile: John Dramani Mahama
My First Coup d’Etat
Related posts
Black & white world
Khaki
