RIP Andy
Cancer is the worst!

Once a year, around Easter, I usually take a red-eye flight from SeaTac to JFK to spend a few days in New York.
From the airport I take A Train towards Manhattan, and get off the first stop in Lower Manhattan, I meander through the massive construction zone, busy traffic and pedestrians; the city is surprisingly active for that time of the morning.
I find my hotel through the chaos; it’s a welcome sanctuary. I love it here; it may not be the swankiest hotel in all of Manhattan, but they know me here, I’ve written about this hotel before.
Uncle George works here, I met him the first time I stayed here and he instantly became my uncle by virtue of the fact that he too is originally from Ghana.
He’s been with the hotel for almost a decade now, and he has stories to tell… boy, does he have stories to tell…
He was working the morning the towers were hit, and was out of a job for several months after the hotel shut down for repairs.
His stories of the morning of the attacks are gut wrenching.

My room in the ‘sky’ has views of the Hudson, Jersey City and Hoboken, the views are splendid, but it’s the view looking down that gets to you – Ground Zero
It’s a colossal construction site, it looks deceptively like any other site, you can’t tell what transpired here by just looking at it.
Yet, it’s mesmerizing I point my lens down towards the construction and I can’t stop snapping away.
It’s surreal; this is the closest I’ve come to a place where that many people have perished.

The One World Trade Center tower is almost complete, it stands tallest in Lower Manhattan, and has already melded into the skyline.
For the next few days I do the same things I do when I visit New York; the High Line, Central Park, Chelsea, and restaurants, shows, galleries and places on my to-do list, and every night I return to my hotel room exhausted.
Restless, I steady my camera on a ledge and try to capture as many images of the construction site as I can, in between I think of that morning a decade ago.
Everyone’s got their September 11 story; everyone remembers where they were.
Uncle George doesn’t like remembering too much, he’s looking forward, he says.

My friend Aisha died a month to my ninth birthday.

Aisha was my friend, neighbour and granddaughter of our landlord, Paa Amadu.
She was one of those kids who no one really paid attention to.
Her mother wasn’t in the picture and her dad was young and still in school.
Her dad’s nickname was ‘young man’, he was funny, outgoing and he was very much liked by everyone.
His daughter on the other hand was a bit like me; shy, quiet, moody and a little weird.

Sometimes she’d just follow me around and we didn’t even have to speak.
She was younger and looked small for her seven and the half years.

What I remember most about Aisha is her laughter; she had a loud shrill laugh that sounded like a cry.

Aisha was also devoted friend.

She’d be there when I got home from school and stay on most days after we’ve had dinner and watched a movie, and then my mom would make her go home.

I wasn’t always a good friend to Aisha, I was mean to her sometimes.
I’d ditch her to go play with the older kids, occasionally I’d ask her to leave me alone or intentionally pick a fight with her just so I can get in with the older kids.
My dad saw me do this once; he marched up to me and said;

“Do you know how lucky you are to have someone who adores you? Now, go upstairs and play with your friend!”

One sad day in May, Aisha suddenly fell sick, she died while being rushed to the hospital.
When I got home from school, my mom told me with succinct indifference that Aisha had died.
I could never understand to this day why she was so unaffected by it, and we’ve never spoken of her since then.
My dad was angry, he said she had died from an easily preventable disease.

He called it a senseless death!
I barely slept that night; I stayed up trying to make sense of it all.

The next day I got back from school just in time to see Aisha’s coffin procession make its way from the mosque.

It passed right in front on our house, I stood on our veranda and watched.

That same veranda we had played on many times, we used to do cartwheels on that veranda… Aisha and I.
Aisha could do twenty-one cartwheels from one end to the other, and I twenty.
In Aisha, I’ve learned not to take people for granted.

Today is the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.

I was exactly seven years, six months and twenty eight days old when my grandmother died.

My mom has told it a million times – how she came to find out. My father probably not wanting to deal with having to comfort her said my grandmother had been in an accident and my mom had to go to her. She recalls in disappointing tones how death was the farthest thing on her mind through the two hour journey to my grandmother’s home.

Family members had converged at the house; the women started crying when they saw her and that’s how she knew. She doesn’t remember passing out but remembers my brother Joe who was a little over a year then, slip from her arms.

Stories and memories of my grandmother has taken a mythical place in my life, She has somehow become a role model and iconic figure in my life, she’s up there with the saints and superheroes. She has an awe inspiring life story of fairy tale proportions.

My grandmother at a young age was forced to marry a much older man. In those days when women resigned to their fate, prayed and made the best of things; my grandmother found the courage to flee her unhappy marriage.

She’d go on to make something of herself. She built a business, a house and invested in stocks.

She never remarried though she had a gentleman companion. She lived a great social life.

My grandmother is one of those people you’d refer to as a good Christian woman and have it mean something. She was principled, kind, generous and loving – all who knew her loved her.

She left a great legacy

My great aunt Felicia (my grandmother’s sister) once told me that my grandmother lived a lifetime for all of us.

I’m so proud to have come from her house, proud that a woman like her came before me.

She was a feminist even before the word meant something.

She blazed the trails so that I never have to settle.

It hurts me that I never really knew her and I wish more people had.

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