Kwabi Hanson......the barber chosen for the Belgian twin documentary

April 7, 2008
Story and pictures : Doreen Allotey
A Belgian crew working on a documentary that would compare the lives of people who have spent the same time on the globe have chosen Kwabi Hanson, a barber in Accra, as part of the project. He was born on October 5, 1968.
The crew have only made contact with Hanson on phone so far but intend to visit the country to do more. The interesting thing for the crew is that Hanson has a job( barbering), which is very recognisable to the Belgian audience, even though there may be little differences as a consequence of where Mr Hanson lives —Ghana.
I traced Hanson to an area in Accra popularly known as Abuja and found his wooden kiosk situated on what can pass for a hill in a little settlement near one of Accra’s markets known as Agbogbloshie. His shop is almost opposite a pile of firewood for sale and among many other kiosks that serve as workplaces and sleeping places for most travellers from other parts of the country, who arrive in Accra in search of jobs. His shop has “No money , no woman” boldly inscribed in front of it.
Hanson says he loves this saying very much because he has found from his experiences in life that women, whether wife, sister, friend, girlfriend or daughter, love to go where there is money and that women could easily disown you in the absence of money. Guided by this saying , Hanson is not married but has a 16 -year- old daughter— Dorothy Hanson— who is living with his relatives in Aflao, the border town between Ghana and Togo.
Hanson charges 70 Ghana pesewas for a haircut, but at the end of it all, the earnings are woefully inadequate to take care of his basic necessities.
In his barber’s shop sat a huge black box serving as a loudspeaker that has the notice ‘For sale’. To complement his earnings, Hanson makes these boxes himself for sale. He makes them one after the other as they get sold out and advertise this ware when he blares music out of it.
He has another love, which is acting. He has been working with Prime Media in Accra on a number of productions and showed me an album of himself in various acting scenes.
One of his favourite movies is “Finished man”. On a daily basis he responds to demands of carving out a career and hobby in film acting. As soon as he hears of places where auditions are taking place, Hanson dresses up and heads there.
His daughter Dorothy and one of his six siblings were in the album. The picture showing his siblings was taken at Osino, a town in the Eastern Region of Ghana, where Hanson hails from.
His father, Mr Awuah Hanson, a retired teacher and his mother, Joyce Ama Serwaa, a trader in foodstuffs, live in his hometown.
Hanson has travelled widely across the country. This is because he followed his father anywhere he went on transfer to teach.
Hanson did not train to be a barber; it was something that came naturally to him while in school. He found himself being asked by friends and mates to give them a hair-cut. With time and practice, he perfected the art of barbering.
This act was to become a major earner of his daily bread.
Hanson’s real dream of becoming an accountant was cut short when he was involved in an accident a few days to writing his final examination at the Rans Business College at Osino. He stayed in hospital for six months waiting for the injury to his leg to heal. At that time, he didn’t believe he could walk again.
Hanson explains that his time in hospital disrupted his whole direction in life, and because his father had as many as seven children, including him, resources at home were always very little. He is sometimes very angry with his father for having many children.
“ Wishes are not horses for me to ride; sometimes I feel like giving up but what would I eat if I don’t go on,” Hanson urges himself to go on.
“ But I will never take part in any illegal business. I like my freedom very much, maybe as much as I love reggae music.”
Before going into barbering, Hanson was doing some work as a draughtsman in the very kiosk that is his barber’s shop today. He took part-time classes at the Super Techinical College in Asylum Down in Accra in that field of study. He learnt to do that manually and with time, this became outmoded, causing his customers to leave him.
Even though Hanson lives in Amasaman in the Greater Accra Region, he often goes home at the weekends because he cannot afford to use all his earning on transportation from his barber’s shop in Accra to Amasaman everyday. He attends a Pentecostal church and even though he does not attend very regularly, he believes “that is where my salvation is”.
Hanson is not very clear about the objectives of the documentary and how beneficial it would be to his life but is keeping an open mind.
On what the documentary seeks to achieve, an editor on the project, Annelore De Donder, says “It has to do with an interest in other customs and traditions”.
“The responses to the search from Ghana by the project in Belgium were so many that I even had to stop accepting people who kept on calling. Strangely, most of the people who called were born on May 3, 1981,” she said.
In all, 20 responses from Ghana were received by the project. Other people chosen for the project are two other men living in Chile and Canada. The episode will result in parallel portraits of these three men and their Belgian counterpart— but in very different places all over the world. All four of them were born on October 5,1968.
The interesting questions the documentary will seek to answer are : What have been their life experiences? Did the cultural context in which they grew up influence those experiences? Are there similarities in the lives of these people? Does it really matter where you are born?