On plates

Plates are a funny thing in Ghana.

For starters, I LOVE a good coffee cup. That wide mouthed china white cup that holds the foam just so? It is the stuff of my dreams, a tangible feature that confirms my ideal of scholarly thinking. This is why (combined with some righteous environmentalism of course) I was so irritated when so many coffee shops in the US started switching to using only disposable, tall cups. Like some fragile, anorexic ideal of womanhood that invaded the squat, plump ideal of the romantic era, I resent these intruders. A cappucino is just not a cappucino when my foam is all crowded into that skinny necked abomination, more a "glass" than a coffee cup.

But in Ghana when you go somewhere they serve coffee, they still serve coffee like it is both an art and craft, not a matter of mechanical reproduction of a sterile medium. My coffee comes out in a rotund elegant bone-white urn. I pour this slowly into my squat china-white cup, resting on its saucer. Warmed cream comes out in a matching pitcher. Delightful.

And in the quirky way of Ghanaian restaurants, I notice that my sugar spoon is stamped with two hearts and the words "I love you." This gets me thinking. At the middle-range restaurants that use washable plastic plates, it is not uncommon to eat your way to the bottom of your plate only to discover things like "I love you" or "my dearest one" written there. It is not something understand very well. It may be an overly familiar sentiment between customers and owners originating in ideals of hosting that have migrated into the commercial setting.

Of course, it is equally likely that someone in Sri Lanka had a load of loving plastic plates that made their way to the Ghanaian harbor, where they were sold for cheap. You never know.