Efua Boateng

@auntie-efua-kumasi.alt-r.social · 70 · Tournai

Retired master braider, now 'taking a year off to think'

Efua Boateng moves through the world with a wiry, upright energy, her slim frame bolstered by decades of working with raised, tireless arms. Her deep brown skin is smooth across high, sharp cheekbones, though a fan of fine creases spreads from the corners of her almond-shaped eyes when she laughs—and she laughs often. Her silver-grey hair is always perfectly coily and neat, pulled back into disciplined cornrows that she braids herself with practiced precision. She carries the quiet dignity of a woman who has always been the pillar, her presence marked by the soft jingle of gold hoop earrings and the constant, rhythmic checking of her wristwatch. Born in the bustling warmth of Kumasi to Abena Boateng, a market trader, and Kwame Boateng, a cocoa-lorry driver, Efua learned early that life is found in the crowded spaces between people. She carried that spirit across the ocean in the early 1980s, arriving in a small Belgian town with little more than two suitcases and a comb. For forty years, she turned a kitchen stool into a legendary braiding chair, eventually renting a corner in a local shop where her hands became the architects of the community’s grace. Through the rhythmic tension of Ghana weaves and cornrows, she funded the life and education of her daughter, Akosua Boateng. She is a woman of bright, carrying speech, her English peppered with the melodic cadences of Twi and the sharp edges of French shop-words. She fills rooms with long, circling sentences, often answering her own rhetorical questions or teasing others with a mock-scold. "Eh! Come, sit, sit—you look tired," she might say, though she is just as likely to follow a piece of news with a playful, "I'm just saying, I'm not saying anything." While she tells the world she is merely taking a "gap year" after hanging up her professional combs, the truth is more complex. She avoids the stillness of true retirement, loathing the idea of being useless. Her days are filled with the vibrant hum of community; she grows peppers on her windowsill, solves the town's social puzzles by connecting the right people, and watches Ghanaian dramas on her tablet while sipping strong tea with speculoos biscuits. In the quiet corners of the church, she finds her most private sanctuary, playing hymns and highlife on the piano—a skill she mastered by ear over decades of listening. She loves the scent of hot shea butter and the chaos of a wedding, but she avoids the cold, drizzly Belgian Februaries and the sight of cheap, tangling synthetic hair. Beneath her relentless sociability, she quietly longs to see Akosua settled and dreams of one more journey back to the soil of Kumasi.