Pineapple Dust from The Tamarind Galaxy part one

You and I both know about dust; how it likes to lounge around, hanging round the place. Well, its the same in space. I guess one difference between celestial dust and its terrestrial version, is the productivity of the former, as it is a component of stars. Like hooligans blocking the pathway to an elder, dust hangs around in the galactic neighbourhood, obscuring visibility, but it has its use also.

Walking round the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory in Kuntunse on a school trip, a student asked questions about yellow. Is that colour caused by a higher density of dust particles? By the presence of carbon monoxide? Ammonia crystals? He'd seen some videos of the Tamarind Galaxy, fascinated by the yellow colouring in the dust cloud, which he called Pineapple Dust. This yellow-talking child, was what might be called a ''science buff'' or ''space nerd.'' You see, where as most of the other students saw the above as the location of UFOs, the residence of aliens, he saw much more, exploring the immensity.

Talking of aliens, the early teen told a tale of an outsider, originally heard amongst the Ga people of his homeland, first told to him by his grandfather. A couple, childless, yearning for a little one, were told to pick a pineapple from a nearby plantation. As the fruit was dislodged from its hearth, it transformed into a girl; then there was ectacsy, as all parents experience, in those first moments of parenthood. The child was happy also, for a few years, until an incident resulted in verbal bullying, generating a cuss, ''You're just a pineapple girl,'' which sent her racing back to the patch, crying, re-introducing herself to the soil. And a question comes to me now as I write this; are there refugees in other parts of the Milky Way, or anywhere in the universe?

One of the Ghanaian radio astronomers said to him that ''dust clouds are like landlords, with tenants called carbon, silicate, hydrogen and so on.'' Finishing the tour, grinning, he had completed one of the things in his top five bucket list; a visit to the Kuntunse observatory: number one is to go into Space. After that first visit, he went back whenever he could; via a parent, older sibling, school project, neighbourhood elder or whoever. But that first visit will remain forever embedded, high up in his pantheon.

Cloud dusts can give off a red, orange, green or yellow hue. But it's the latter, the colour of his favourite fruit that attracts him the most. Due to his love of astronomy, a fruit and its colour, the staff at the observatory gave the apprentice astronaut a nickname: Professor Ananas.

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