Today I had an inspiring catch up with an old friend at the Tate members bar – a place with surely one of the capital’s greatest views.
Colin Charles is currently Executive Creative Director at Publicis West Africa (based in Accra, Ghana), but we go way back. I first met Colin in 1995 when he worked in South Africa, as A&R for Melt 2000 Records. With him organising, I played one of the most amazing music projects I’ve ever been part of, touring townships with my UK/SA jazz group Barungwa (featuring the likes of Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, Shazula Max Mtambo, Jethro Shasha and Chris Bowden). It was a crazy, ambitious thing to try. I felt I was going to die on more than one occasion, but I survived and learned an awful lot.
Fast forward to 2007 and the last time we worked together. Colin was based in Accra by then. His production company was commissioned to produce the Ghanaian version of the British Council cultural festival WaPi, that I was rolling out across Africa. Maybe less crazy this time, but his production was similarly ambitious – music, film, dance, a chat-room, fashion shows. The British Council director, Moses Anibaba was awarded an OBE in this year’s New Years Honours. I’d love to think these two things were someway related.
Colin is half Guyanese. He grew up in London, but has lived and worked in Africa since he left the UK in 1993. He says our city has change for the better since he left (I’d hope so. The early nineties were basically the 80s – Tory controlled, pinched and mean, – just with baggier jeans). We talked a lot about working in Africa. How things are similar; how things are different.
I wanted to share two short stories he told.
The first is about the TV show Big Brother. Colin told me that his (Ghanaian) family has pointed out that in the African version, people mainly interact and do stuff as a a big group.This is in contrast to the UK version of the show. In Big Brother Africa, they’ve joined the Big Brother house, so are the Big Brother community; the Big Brother family. So, they get in the hot tub all together and generally hang around the house in big groups. Issues are discussed, aired and solved involving everyone. In the UK version (which his family has also watched) the housemates hang around in ones and twos.
As Mark Earls’ book Herd, put it, maybe we’re the anomalous culture in the West thinking that people act as individuals. It’s not for nothing that the only African saying most Westerners can recall is “it takes a village to raise a child“
The second story took place when Colin first moved to Ghana. He went and bought a bottle of Guinness and took it from the bottle shop to drink later. Soon he was joined by the store owner, asking for his bottle back.
“What do you want the bottle back for?” asked Colin
The store owner replied, “I have to have it back. I can’t give a crate back to the suppliers with a bottle missing. I need to give a full crate so they return me my deposit.”
“Oh, okay.” said Colin, surprised.
“I’ll just wait for you to finish it here”. Said the store owner with a smile, and patiently waited for Colin to open and finish his drink.
“You know,” said Colin, probably a little put out by his unexpected alfresco drinking session, “We’ve got recycling in the UK. We have black bins that you put old uses bottles into.”
“Really?” asked the store owner intrigued. “Recycling. What’s that?”
“It’s to save energy” replied Colin. “When the bins are full, a truck then comes along and picks these all the empty discarded bottles and takes them to a factory where they get sorted into brown and green and clear bottles. The bottles are then crushed, and melted down to make into new bottles, then shipped off and sold back to manufactures.”
“That sounds really good. We should have that kind of thing here in Ghana!” The store owner sounded impressed. After a polite pause, the store owner then asked, “I’ve just one question.”
“What?” asked Colin, finishing his Guinness
“What’s energy saving about that?”
The post Big Brother Africa and an alfresco Guinness with Colin Charles appeared first on amissingham.com.