After the uncompleted hardwork of research, it is time for a little celebration to mark the end of my NWO Veni project. It has been quite the adventure undertaking this research project involving fieldwork in Ghana, Suriname and the Netherlands. Now in 11 weeks time, I want to bring together the various elements of my project in a commemorative celebratory event I’ve christened as “The Calabash Onder de Bigi Bon”. This is a language mismash of the languages spoken across my 3 case study countries and simply translate as “The Calabash Under the Big Tree”. It is an event to commemorate transatlantic relations through music, dance, arts, food and film. An event of encounters across all dimension and symbolished most viscerally in the event location: the old Aula building (now Visum Mundi ) of Wageningen University and Research. This is a building that embodies the absent presence of the university’s colonial heritage and what I call the embodied absence of the past. The Calabash Onder de Bigi Bon will be an opportunity to discuss some of these issues.

The inspiration for this event name comes from the wonderful and brilliant Dr Afua Twum-Danso Imoh who is an Associate Professor in Global Childhoods and Welfare currently at Bristol University, UK. Dr. Afua graciously consented for me to borrow from her own “The Calabash” event that she organised when we were both based at the University of Sheffield back in December 2018. I’ve always admired her work approach which has also been part of the inspiration that led me to the path of making a film (edumentary) about my project which will be screened at the “The Calabash Onder de Bigi Bon” event on Friday 6 December 2024 in Wageningen.

Save the date, don’t be late and look out for the registration links coming soon….

You can check out the short edumentary film I made at the start of the project to get a foretaste of the forthcoming final edumentary film