It has been a year since Life and Living It's first entry was posted, and since then we have come a long way! A year on, 87 posts later and with 49 followers we are still going strong. I would like to thank everyone who has stuck with us even though we haven't always been faithful with our posts! I would also like to congratulate Sankofa, Nsoromma and Friday's Afro on not backing out. Anyway, I'll stop here because it's starting to sound like an acceptance speech. But before I go, I'll leave you with my top 5 LALI blog posts.

1."SuRpRiSe"
2.Getting up Close and Biblical
3.Mind the Gap: Some General Observations About London Travel
4.Bonkers Banking in the Land of Gold
5.The calm compulsion

Have a nice weekend!
Afrocentric

I love the video to Boga Boga by Sarkodie, I thought it was slick and well done. It fits the song so well, which is rare for a GH music video. My GH people's finally making it happen behind the lens for the good music. So I did a little search on the director of the video, Gyo Gyimah from Phamous Philms.

This is just a quick one but I just saw a couple of articles on BBC that made me "hmm" a little. First up is a man I'm tempted to call an idiot. Hey it's just my opinion! Anyway, this lovely gentleman from our esteemed country has decided to name his son Silvio Berlusconi. O_O Really? You're going to name your child after the Prime Minister of a country with, quite frankly, dodgy immigration policies (particularly towards Africans) and a country where one can find signs claiming "There are no black Italians" at football games? This man who is a walking joke to most people (including Italians). This is a man who is more known for calling Obama "suntanned" and his numerous plastic surgeries than anything actually worthwhile. This is a man, who after a devastating earthquake in Abruzzo region of Italy last year, advised the homeless survivors to treat their plight as a "camping weekend". This is a man who has happily admitted that Italian deportation centres are no better than concentration camps. I could go on an on about Berlusconi's numerous faults but then I would just get more depressed. No wonder somebody clocked him one.

This was on the front page of the news section btw. I just think it's sad that this is the second time in a few months that I've seen Ghana mentioned on the front page of the BBC news website. The first time for a bogus earthquake, and the second time for this nonsense. Makes you wonder....

Here's an excerpt from the article:

A Ghanaian immigrant to Italy has named his son after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, despite his government's tough policy on immigration.

Anthony Boahene told an Italian newspaper: "I like the way Berlusconi talks, the way he moves."

Asked about Mr Berlusconi's tough stance on immigration, he said: "It's fine, laws need to be observed."

Mr Boahene said he would like his son Silvio to study politics and to become president of Ghana or Italy.

 Second up is this story about a recall on baby slings in America and Canada. I used to love baby slings and I remember eagerly waiting for Friday's Afro to drop mini-Friday's Afro just so I could carry him in a sling! Then one day I realised that baby slings are just posh versions of this:
End of story.

I'm feeling positive for once on a Monday. I have completed two of the three application I wanted to do for the weekend. I'm not stressed about the other one. It probably just isn't for me. I'm just gonna keep working hard.

In this short post I'm going to talk about my body, I know I know.

 Tangerines: When I first saw these, I was like "why is this woman trying to palm us off with unripe fruit?" Let's just say that I finally saw the light when I took them home and got under their bright green skin. Yummy's not even the word. Here they are in my fruit basket with one random "normal"-coloured tangerine.



Oranges: I have a sliiiiiight obsession with oranges but I've never really taken to English oranges- too tasteless. In the ATL, the oranges from the Korean supermarket were a fave because they tasted "like Ghana oranges". So here's the real thing and they're a dream for a lazy cow like me because you can get them ready-peeled! This is a before and the after after I completely demolished it, complete with lip-gloss marks....




Alasa/ Adaswa: I literally screamed when I saw these. I remember them from when I was little and I hadn't had them since my mum randomly brought a couple back from a holiday when I was around 12/13. When ripe, these are quite sweet and they have about 4 shiny black seeds inside each one. Smallish in size, if you chew the flesh for a while it turns into chewing gum! How cool is that? They can also be incredibly sour when not fully ripe; kinda like any sweet from the sour section in a pick 'n' mix. Everybody tells me they're called alasa but I swear down I used to call them adaswa or something like that when I was little. Can anybody help me out with this?


Mangoes: I kept meaning to take pics of the small Ghana mangoes you rarely find in the UK but um, they never lasted that long. Ghana mangoes are my all-time favourite fruit so that's my excuse.

Pineapples: Eating pineapples in Ghana makes you steadily pissed that you've been spending money on impostor fruit that can't hold a candle to the ones here. Sweet is not even the word. Amaaaazing and the taste is simply sensational. Cutting pineapples, however, is not the business....

So here we are for starters and hopefully I won't take the piss in producing a part two!

This is the wonderful Tic Tac line from Kwani Kwani which me and the other girls love so much. In fact I have always wanted to say it to somebody. Which actually sounds quite mean however, I don't want to say it to be mean...well actually....errmmmmm...look right, THAT IS A LINE AND A HALF!

This is a very quick one. I just really want to wish Ghana a happy 53rd birthday, and happy independence day to all of you. Ghana has come a long way, and we have a lot to be proud of. However you choose to celebrate, have fun and stay safe.

Remember late last year when the colourful and lively "Zingolo" advert lit up our t.v. screens? If you need reminding, then check this out.

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Before that, I had never been so excited to see my fave show break for adverts. And I STILL love watching it. As annoying as the "Zingolo" tune may be, we can't deny it is catchy. Also, to see a Ghanaian artist on another channel other than on OBE really is something! But the most important thing is that the advert made the British public aware of where the cocoa beans that make their chocolate come from. It also confirmed Cadbury's move to Fairtrade. Fairtrade is a non profit organisation which ensures that the people in poorer parts of the world who produce the raw materials needed to make some of the things we enjoy, such as tea, wine, or even cotton shirts are not ripped off.

Sadly, there are not a lot of companies that are Fairtrade certified. And it's sad that there are people all over the world who are not given the opportunity to make a decent living. I'm not going to pretend that I always check for the "Fairtrade" mark before I carelessly throw a packet of biscuits or a bag of sweets into my shopping trolley. But the Cadbury's advert has made me more aware.

The news of Cadbury's takeover by American food company, Kraft, left us in the UK wondering what would become of the Bourneville factory in Birmingham. Most importantly, what will happen to the thousands of jobs it provides, if it is to close down?

I would hate for all those jobs to be lost, trust me, I would. But Kraft's chief executive Irene Rosenfeld said "[she] warmly welcomes Cadbury employees into the Kraft Foods family". However, what will happen to the Cocoa farmers in Ghana? There has been so much discussion and dialogue over the loss of British jobs, but I haven't heard a peep about the fate of the Ghanaian farmers with no welfare system to fall back on and with little else but their cocoa farms. I have searched up and down the Cadbury's website, and can't find anything about how Kraft's takeover will affect the livelihoods of those producing the cocoa beans.

Let me finish by congratulating Cadbury for it's efforts in supporting Fairtade all over the word; in countries such as St. Lucia, India and South Africa.