Hours ago, Maya Angelou said goodbye to this earth.
Here are five things most Ghanaians don't know about this phenomenal woman and her connection to Ghana.
Here are five things most Ghanaians don't know about this phenomenal woman and her connection to Ghana.
1. Maya Angelou lived in Ghana for three years between 1962 to 1967.
When she left the USA, she went to Egypt with her partner. When they separated, she came to Ghana and started working in the administration office of the University of Ghana, Legon. She also worked in the National Theater and freelanced for The Ghanaian Times!
2. She met freedom fighter Malcom X in Accra.
Thanks to Nkrumah, Ghana became an attractive place to a lot of the leaders of the day. Heavy weights like Martin Luther King Junior, US Vice President Richard Nixon, and Lee Kuan Yew all came to Ghana. Maya's meeting with Malcom X in Accra moved her to return to the United States to join the civil rights struggle that was going on there at that time.
Maya and Malcom in Accra. Photo from Facebook
3. Maya Angelou actually spoke Fanti !
She really picked up Ghanaian culture. This is how she described an incident when dancing healed her wounds.
"I danced for bad judgments and good fortune .... and for the sound on ceremonial fontonfrom drums waking the morning air in Takoradi "
When an interviewer asked her how she handled criticism, she replied with a Ghanaian saying, “An elephant is rarely seriously bothered by a flea”
More details of Maya's time in Ghana can be found in her book 'All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes' (1986).
4. Maya is forever stamped in Ghana's history
Ghana loved her so much we issued a postage stamp in her honour
Maya Angelou postage stamp. Credit twitter @BlitzAmbassador
5. Maya was multi-talented
So multi-talented that some young people on social media think she was a musician. It is unclear why they think so, because even though Maya recorded a calypso album, music was not where she shone brightest. We speculate that her name 'Maya Angelou' sounds close to Angeli Kidjo, Mya and Miriam Makeeba - three grammy winning singers from Benin, USA, and South Africa respectively.
So who exactly was Maya Angelou? Barack Obama's answer is close to the truth -"Maya was many things – an author, poet, civil rights activist, playwright, actress, director, composer, singer and dancer. But above all, she was a storyteller – and her greatest stories were true".
May her beautiful soul find rest.
calypso album cover- credit Youtube
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