MAJEED SUHUYINI A TRAVEL FREAK, ACTOR & VEGAN FOOD LOVER MAJEED Suhuyini is a vegan activist in Accra, Ghana. An actor, filmmaker, model and Ghanaian travel guide, offering his services under the name ‘A Travel Freak’. We caught up with Majeed and spoke about life, vegan food and the state of veganism in Ghana in 2022.
Majeed How is Ghana right now? Ghana is great. The harmattan is very challenging this year but climate change right? Is vegan food increasing in Accra? Just few days ago I had a box full of vegan cakes, donuts, cookies, cupcakes and all. I’m not a sweet tooth, but lord they were delicious! Haha. So that alone tells me that vegan food is becoming a thing in Accra. Now a couple of the restaurants are beginning to include vegan options in their menus. And the number of vegan restaurants is slowly increasing, compared to the past 5 years. So yes vegan food is on the rise I think. What began your vegan journey? Questions, Compassion, Curiosity… you know. I come from the Northern part of 72
FORÇA VEGAN
Ghana where meat is very cheap, from a Muslim family which means our food is heavily meaty and traditionally my family are butchers. So that is almost impossible for someone like me to be vegan. But I just started asking myself questions. And ever since I have been a child I have always had a curious mind. So imagine as a child your parents bring a goat home, and you were the ones to take care of the goat. Feed it food, water, take it around, and as playful as you are as a child, you create a bond with that animal, to some extent you don’t even have to leash it anymore but it still follows you around, as a friend. Then one morning you wake up and the animal is not there anymore. They serve you food and on top of the food is the flesh of your friend, the very same friend you were running around with just yesterday. So that was when I knew there is something up with what I was eating.
Easy to change? Easy peasy. I mean I’m an OG now what do you expect hahaha. Are you an actor? Yes. I love acting, it satisfies my curious mind, and just the idea of playing different characters intrigues me a lot. You’re a filmmaker too? Yes. I started filmmaking along my journey when I realized I had a lot of personal stories to tell, so I had to share my own voice with the camera to tell those stories. Modeling? A: So I started modeling in my early days but then my conscience wouldn’t let me do a lot of the commercials that came my way because they were non-vegan products. So I don’t do a lot of commercials these days, al-
