Let there be Jay Adams

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"When God decided to create skateboarding, he said 'let there be Jay Adams". Stacy Peralta

I'm a fan of boxing. I love it, everything about it, even the things I'm told are bad and gruesome and that I'm not really supposed to enjoy about it. I love the completely irrational fire in my belly feeling that I get when against the odds, you watch a guy who started out just boxing, you watch that same guy become a fighter. I love the story of it. 

I never really knew anything about skateboarding when I was growing up. The two things I did know: one, the red skateboard that mostly just sat in my brother's room, did not get much use in Ghana, west africa apart from on the limited space on the terrazzo at the entrance to our house. Two, my eldest sister repeatedly told me that she knew how to 'tic tac'! 

My mother is the sports fan in my maternal family. She's the one that regularly watches sports, athletics, formula one, tennis, rowing, all that stuff. So, it was at her house that I found myself aimlessly flicking through sports channels nearly twenty years ago when I stopped on a programme talking about the history of skateboarding. I saw a skateboard not far off the look of the one that had sat in my brothers room all those years back. I would later discover that what I'd actually come across was the legendary documentary, Dogtown and the Z-boys. I still didn't know anything about skateboarding, I still don't but that familiar feeling, that adrenaline pumping, fire in the belly feeling came along and I found myself completely swept up in the story. I love the story of it all!

One thing that is certain, be it amongst skateboarders or non skateboarders alike, there's only one Jay Adams! When I heard recently of his passing, I felt real sadness. The kind of sadness that feels a little embarrassing when it's a person you've never met. The kind of sadness that comes from bearing witness to a great fighter losing his title. The kind of sadness that occurs when a fighter that could have been 'champion of the world' misses out on his shot at the title. The kind of fighter that every fighter says was the best but just didn't get his shot. And the powerful story of it all has you up late at night wondering what could have been, on their behalf. Well, this is the story of Jay Adams. To talk about him only serves to tell a small part of his story, to watch him do what he does unveils the greater picture. Everybody should watch a great fight in their lifetime, it's the only way to determine the difference between someone that fights great and someone that's a great fighter. Jay Adams, you were a great fighter. 

The Day I Met Azumah Nelson

Drawings of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter from a boxing series I did years back.

Yesterday, as I was keeping my eldest company whilst he was on the toilet he asked me to tell him a story from my childhood. One that he hadn't heard before. He had at first asked me to re-tell the one where I said someone had stolen money from me, the one where I eventually had to admit I just lost the money, but he already knew that one. Then I thought of telling him about the time that Lassi (my cousins pet dog) caught rabies and was running around foaming at the mouth until two men entered Aunty Gita's compound with a fufu stick and put Lassi out of her misery. But I wasn't ready to tell that story since stories about dogs dying entirely break my heart and then ...  it came to me. One that I was reminiscing about just recently, one that had me googling a certain name as I challenged my own memory and questioned if the events in my mind had actually taken place. The one about the day that I met Azumah Nelson

I had just begun my walk home from school. I attended Cambridge Preparatory School in South Ordorkor, near Chorkor and not far from the capital Accra. I was aged either eight or nine at the time which would make it either 1983 or 1984. As I made my way home I walked part of my journey with a boy from school, I now have no idea of his name or if he was in my class but I knew him and he began telling me about how he knew Azumah Nelson. Growing up in an area that was poor meant that local heroes were a subject of much talk, any success story was celebrated and boasted about particularly if you could claim to have been part of the successor's story, part of their journey. So, as we walked and talked, this boy from my school asked me if I wanted to meet the boxing success story that was Azumah Nelson. Without thinking twice I said 'YES'! (At this point in my story I repeatedly said to my eldest 'You would never do this, ever! You would never enter a strangers house EVER!')

Again, growing up somewhere where there were always eyes watching out for you and where I felt protected by my label of being Dr. Acquaye's daughter, and in a community where it was valuable to know a local doctor, I never feared anything bad happening to me. My only fear was that I would be spotted doing something that I shouldn't, like selling my mum's oxo cubes to the local women after a care package arrived from my Grandma Peppermint. And so, as I entered Azumah Nelson's compound I was simply extremely pleased with myself that I would be afforded the same privilege as my companion, that I would be able to go home and go to school saying that I had met Azumah. I don't remember the exact dialogue between us, only that he was polite and friendly and told me that he knew of my father. He asked a young boy to bring me a drink of 'minerals' as it's traditionally called, in this case a tall cold glass of fanta - a real treat at the time! As I left, he told me to study hard and make my father proud and that is really all I remember of the encounter.

I have no idea if this was the trigger for a life long interest in boxers and boxing but I do still love a local hero and I'm blown away each and every time I read a success story with boxing at the centre. It gives me hope, that goosebumps feeling that you can win against the odds. After all who would've thought that a young boy who had to walk for miles and miles to school each day barefoot because he had no money shoes, would end up in England completing his medical training and marrying some white woman and having four mixed kids. This was the story I loved to hear over and over again when I was around my eldest boys age. It's funny how really, nothing ever changes.