Ghana Days 45-47

Friday was something of a boring day. My only productive activity that was work-related was making an appointment with someone at the EPA for Monday morning and then coming up with questions to ask him. The paper was all-Obama all the time again, and I’m sure tomorrow’s will be as well, so I think the pressure for getting actual news is somewhat alleviated for a while. On the up-side, it’s possible that the Graphic has improved its internet system. Wireless internet showed up for the first time, albeit only for ten minutes that I was aware of. I got a couple more people to fill out my survey, and chatted with Letitia, who is a National Service Personnel with 2 months left in her journalism stint. She’s very sweet, but she’s decided not to pursue journalism, which is her original degree (she’s going to go back to school to get a degree in HR or something).

Saturday was more interesting because Obama was in town. I watched him land on Friday night, and then Saturday morning hung around with all the children who eagerly awaited Obama (Grandma and Mike were at a wedding, and the other obrunis in the compound weren’t nearly as excited as they should have been about the speech, so it was me and the kiddies). We did not have a set time for anything to start, so starting from 10am I just hung out in the living room while the half dozen children marched in time to the soldiers performing on tv or danced to the Obama music videos or got in pillow fights or combed doll hair. (During the pillow fight, 2-year-old Aku who is extremely cute and makes me less annoyed with the idea of children wanted in on the fun, so she got a pillow and repeatedly hit the ground with it. It was pretty adorable. When she slobbered on the doll comb and then tried to comb my hair with it, though, it was less endearing.) Probably needless to say, for the actual speech I decided to find a different, less noisy tv.

The speech was good and you can probably find it or a summary in a lot of places, but here are the main points. Obama first and foremost said that African development is up to Africans, and while the western world should be partners, they can no longer be held to blame and expected to fix things. This has mostly been the message for a while, but I think this might be one of the most direct ways it has been said, and Obama is one of the few leaders who can say it with complete credibility and not look like a jerk. He also outlined the administration’s four priorities for Africa, which are democracy/ good governance, sustainable development (teach a man to fish sort of thing), health (he promised $63 billion for health initiatives, I think for Africa but he didn’t rally go into allocations), and conflict resolution. My big takeaway here is that the number one priority was “strong and sustainable democratic governments,” which alleviates any fear there might have been that Bush gave democracy-building a bad name and we were going to draw back from it a bit (thus putting me out of work before I even got a job…). So I’m pleased with his speech, but it’s not a huge policy shift from what I can tell and did not shatter any earths.

The guy (Matt) volunteering here at the hospital has a much better Obama story. Obama actually visited his clinic, and because he looked American I suppose was singled out for a handshake and a hi-how-are-you while the president was greeting the staff. He also got a ticket to the goodbye party that saw Obama off, and he got two extras as well. Sadly, he took Katey, who had (apparently not as foolishly as I had thought) gone to the hospital to see Obama wave his arm out of the window of his car, and also a British volunteer here who had been pretty psyched about the visit and is a bit closer to Matt than I am. I tried not to be too jealous.

(For those of you keeping track, the Saturday paper was also Obama-filled, although today Monday the paper is only half Obama, with 1/4 ads and 1/4 real news to supplement.)

After the speech I went and had a look at some coffins. Ghana is renowned for its use of creative coffins, and I pretended I was in the market so they would talk to me and let me take pictures at a shop in the neighborhood. They’re pretty cool, and if they weren’t coffin-sized I might have considered bringing one home. They’re only 100 cedis ($70) for a regular-sized, and the child-sized are 50 cedis ($35). It might sound morbid, but they are sort of cool.

After that I hung out with the other whiteys for a bit and went out to eat at a far too expensive restaurant on the beach, but I got fried rice with real vegetables in it, so I was happy enough.

Sunday I didn’t have any real plans, but Katey showed up mid-morning and wanted to know if I wanted to go an hour west of Accra to a beach and cultural show there, and since I had nothing better to do I went along. The beach was nicer and less trashy than the ones in Accra, and the dancing was cool. I got lots of video, but I don’t think I can upload it from here so you’ll have to believe me.

I’m sorry if my posts are getting a little shorter and less interesting! I’ve been putting them off too long and forgetting the cool parts : / I’ll try to be better in my last week and a half here.