Obama in Ghana

We agonised for some time about whether we should try and see Obama in the flesh. When would the opportunity present itself again and if it ever did, would it be on such a significant occasion as the first visit by the first African American president to sub-Saharan Africa?

At the beginning of the week, the press was suggesting there would be a big durbar (a meeting, often a colourful occasion involving traditional drumming and dancing) on Independence Square in Accra. This would be similar to an event held in honour of President Clinton. By the end of the week it was made clear that the problematic rainy season and security concerns would prevent this from happening. Instead, Obama would make his keynote address on Africa to a selected audience in the Accra International Conference Centre.

A sighting would have needed trips to either Accra or Cape Coast. I was leaving Accra on Friday, the day he flew in (as, by coincidence, I had been the day Bush came). There were already international TV crews around, all apparently recording the same souvenir cloth and T shirt seller in Osu. There were rumours that roads around the airport and the route to Koforidua would close early in the afternoon. I was taking no chances and even in the late morning the outbound traffic was more like the rush hour peak. The difficulty in getting to either venue and the very limited opportunity of actually seeing the man at them persuaded us against even trying.

I listened to coverage of the arrival of Air Force One at Kotoka International Airport that evening on Joy FM. After a mammoth handshaking session with President Atta Mills, the VP, their respective wives, minsters, leading minority group politicians and top officials, the whole Obama family was quickly whisked away in the Beast. For the crowds gathered patiently near the airport’s VIP lounge, there was not a glimpse of them. This proved to be the pattern for the rest of the 22 hour visit.

The following day I cycled to Dan’s house to watch the TV coverage. Unfortunately his TV was producing a clear picture but no audible sound. We had to follow events from a weak FM radio signal, struggling to get over the Akuapem Hills from Accra and pictures which followed several seconds behind. We saw a brief sequence from the breakfast meeting with the current and two former Ghanaian presidents. We saw the keynote address and parts of the tour of Cape Coast Castle. The last, without any commentary, was a little confusing. While the Obamas explored the castle, President Atta Mills turned up in eye catching white robes. He appeared to wander the streets waving for a while, before thinking better of it and heading off again in a car. What was clear, was that the crowd was kept well away from the castle. You might have been lucky to catch sight of the US president waving, but you probably would not.

We decided we had done the right thing. It must have been a day of mixed emotions for Ghanaians and indeed the many Africans who travelled here from other countries to see him. There must have been great pride that he had come to Ghana, but tinged with disappointment that he had not been more visible. The visit, though largely symbolic, will have enhanced Ghana’s international standing and hopefully her tourist industry. I cycled home as the light was fading. In the house, I put the radio on in good time for the 7pm World Service news. A plane flew over. Koforidua is on one of Accra’s flight paths. When the news began, the Obama in Ghana story started with the statement that he had left Accra in the last few minutes. Maybe I got quite close to him without even trying.

The Nubuke Foundation

My visit to Legon had been to a new art gallery, the Nubuke Foundation. (‘Nubuke’ means ‘a new dawn has broken’ in one of the local languages). The walk to the gallery from the Koforidua tro took me through one of Accra’s more affluent suburbs, complete with upmarket hotels, coffee shops and vast imposing, gated, guarded and barb-wire enclosed residences. The Foundation compound greets you with a huge, joyful, rainbow-coloured, wall-filling mural. Created by Bernard Akoi-Jackson, the intricate, Kente cloth inspired design hides a variety of indigenous creatures – from a crocodile to mice.

I had come to see an exhibition of black and white photographs of Accra’s architectural heritage (in part, to see if it would convince me to change the views I expressed in May). There was a sequence of rooms with views of Achimota School, Korle Bu Hospital, the main Post Office and an extraordinary number of government bungalows. I was particularly taken with a selection of interpretations of the prints in oil paint by S C Decker. The use of colour, to lift otherwise very one dimensional images, was imaginative. The Foundation newspaper noted that many of these structures are under threat from developers and that, therefore, this photographic record was important. I was disappointed, however, that the pictures were new. It would have been good to see archive images of the buildings in their heyday. Unfortunately they all look rather scruffy, worn and neglected now.

Nevertheless, I was inspired. On Republic Day this week, I cycled round the centre of Koforidua. Within an hour I had collected a series of images of the town’s colonial past. I had easily found classical pillars, elegant balustrades, graceful arches, colonnades and even a set of caryatides. Many of these buildings could rival anything Accra has to offer.

The Great Oburoni Debate

A recent letter in the “Daily Graphic”, from an American volunteer in Ghana fed up with being hailed by one and all as “oburoni (white man)” and asking for an end to such behaviour, produced a predictable pair of responses. There was a letter from a hospitable Ghanaian who felt that maybe the practice was inappropriate and probably should stop. A second response, from a British lady, married to a Ghanaian, thought that the American was being completely unreasonable. She pointed out that Ghanaians are amongst the most hospitable people on the planet, there was nothing insulting in the action and that, frankly, the correspondent should “...go and get yourself a life and while you’re at it, take a chill pill.”

I veer more towards the second view. I am less impressed when I am addressed as ‘oburoni’ by an adult, but children, the usual instigators; clearly get great pleasure from it. Why should I deny them this? It will be odd to be back in the UK and find that I am not being verbally bombarded from all directions, often with no obvious sign of the source of the voice. There are, however, one or two peripheral practices which do need attention. Firstly, I strongly believe that the child his- or herself should decide whether to engage with an oburoni, however briefly. I provide the following illustration.

I was in a tro between Legon and Madina on Saturday afternoon. I was in the corner of the back row. The lady immediately beside me was holding her toddler son. The boy had eyed me up and down and then quickly averted his gaze by looking down at the floor. I took this as the sign that he was not happy to have a white man in quite such close proximity and made no attempt to connect with him either with a smile or wave. Some mothers realise what is going on and turn their children away from this nightmare inducing sight. This mother had other ideas. She wanted her son to interact with the oburoni now sharing the seat with her. She turned the boy directly towards me and whispered ‘oburoni’ to him encouragingly. With no alternative to looking at me, he looked more and more distressed and soon began to bawl, disturbing an otherwise peaceful tro-full of passengers. Fortunately we then reached my stop. As I stood in the road and the tro pulled off, I could clearly hear the now hysterical crying above the Madina traffic. From the back window the child’s mother, apparently oblivious to the turn of events, smiled and waved at me. I hope the boy will eventually overcome this traumatic event.

The Adomi Bridge

Spent a peaceful weekend with Catherine and Carla at Aylos Bay beside the River Volta. We would have appalled the VSO Ghana doctor, if she had known that we had been rashly swimming in the river and eating fresh water prawns. At least we didn’t eat incorrectly prepared fruit or bread from a polythene bag into which a small boy may have previously blown. The only mild annoyance was the occasional bored youth in a canoe bobbing up to ask if he could paddle us to the other side.

Aylos Bay lies ten minutes walk from the Adomi Bridge. The bridge was opened mere weeks before independence in 1957 and is one of only two which crosses the Volta south of the Volta Lake. Curiously, the plaques at either end state that the bridge was opened by His Excellency Sir Charles Noble Arden-Clarke GCMG, Governor of the Gold Coast but that the plaques themselves were unveiled by the Honourable Kwame Nkrumah LLD MLA, Prime Minister of the Gold Coast.

About a year ago this crucial link between the Volta Region and the rest of Ghana was threatened, when cracks were spotted in the superstructure. Worryingly the cracks were, apparently, spotted by passing fishermen rather than any regular inspection team. The bridge was briefly shut and then reopened on a part time basis while repairs were undertaken. Representatives of the original contractors Dorman Long have since given the repair work a clean bill of health. Like most bridges, however, the Adomi was not designed to carry the heavy trucks and buses that now ply this route. The inevitable future repairs and maintenance would cause havoc on the roads, but at least they might provide a few benefits for the youths with canoes.

One of the benefits of a long volunteer placement is the opportunity to see changes in your adopted second home. Regular readers will know that I make regular trips to Boti Falls with visitors to Koforidua. A visit yesterday provided examples of both the positive and negative changes that are occurring in Ghana.

The waterfall itself had seen little rain in the last few days and was no more impressive than it had been in April, but there is always something new to see. Yesterday it was a gently swaying preying mantis and a quite alarming pair of large smooth limbed spiders in vast webs.

We had left the waterfall and had just made the descent through the lush green undergrowth to a dry stream bed. There were strips of bark and wood littering valley bottom, clear indication of illegal logging at some point in the past few weeks. When visiting cocoa growing communities we are regularly told that one of the threats faced is tree felling. To reinforce this, it is a rare visit when you cannot hear a distant chain saw. The environmental damage is permanent, but there seems to be little interest from the authorities in dealing with the problem.

Further along the path, beyond Umbrella Rock, we began to hear children singing and the sound of drumming. Under a tree, in a clearing to the left of the path, children were enjoying their mid-morning break. They were running around excitedly and dancing and hitting anything they could find as makeshift drums. One was using a plastic bottle. The school building was new. I had seen it maybe once or twice before on earlier trips, but this was the first time I had seen it in operation. Probably not recognisable as a school, it consisted of a shiny silver corrugated roof supported by wooden posts. At ground level below it, a block of three classrooms was marked out in cement blocks up to a foot or so in height. The intention, no doubt, is to complete the walls when money becomes a available, but in the mean time there was no reason why classes could not start. Each ‘room’ had a blackboard but little else. Many of the smaller communities in the Eastern Region, even those within a few miles of the regional capital, have limited access to schools, so it is good to see a new one open. Local villagers themselves will have done much of the work to make it happen, probably including the actual construction.

Obama Coming

Coming from a country with a long established democratic process, I take peaceful elections and changes in government for granted. Sadly, Ghana is currently one of the very few examples of an African country which can claim such elections. Ghana’s fifth peaceful election and second change in ruling party, late in 2008 continues to draw praise and accolades from across Africa and beyond. There was little mention of President Mills’ recent visit to the UK by the British press (as they seemed more preoccupied with ride-on lawnmowers, pet food and moat cleaning) but the Ghanaian media recorded Gordon Brown’s complimentary remarks on Ghana’s democratic maturity. However, just to prove that some things are the same the world over, the ‘Daily Guide’ published photographs of the lavish Kensington hotel and even the bed where Mills slept. It was clearly indignant about the cost to Ghanaians of taking a party of thirty to London. (A subsequent government statement noted that the majority of the places were actually paid for the British government. Ironically, the Ghanaian government paid for the accompanying journalists!)

For many, however, the ultimate reward for Ghana’s performance will come in July, when Barack Obama will make a one night stop here on his return journey from the G8 summit. Within hours of the announcement by the White House, attention was being drawn to the fact that Obama’s first trip to sub-Saharan Africa (he will be in Egypt in June) will not be to Kenya, his ancestral home, as many expected. Kenya, as the New York Times put it, is ‘deemed to troubled to visit’.

Ghana has clearly caught the attention of the US. It is only fifteen months since Ghana hosted Obama’s immediate predecessor. The image of George W. Bush pounding shea nuts while Laura looked on, in a newspaper photograph is still fresh in the mind, as is the lengthy list of roads which had to close in Accra for security reasons. Added to a visit by Bill Clinton in 1998, this must make Ghana one of a very small number of countries to host three successive American presidents.

To say that Obama will get an enthusiastic welcome here is obviously an under statement. He will be regarded as one of their own by Ghanaians, despite his considerably more eastern origins. In 2008 his election victory was, to my recollection, the only non-domestic news story to make the front page of the ‘Daily Graphic’. I am looking forward to the local souvenir business going into overdrive.

One article I found on the internet was not concerned about Kenya, but was more interested in the fact that Obama would be visiting Ghana, rather than nearby Nigeria. The rivalry between the two most important English-speaking countries in West Africa can be very tense sometimes. Nigeria, the dominant country in the sub-region and comfortably the most populous country in Africa is regarded by many Ghanaians as a very bad place. One timely illustration of this mutual dislike is the ‘sex scandal’ which is currently ‘rocking’ Koforidua. In the past week the ‘Daily Guide’ has reported that a Nigerian videoed himself having sex with a Koforidua woman and them posted the footage on-line. The footage has been widely downloaded. Even the picture on the front of the paper drew large crowds around local newsstands, as Koforiduans tried to identify the woman. She is alleged to come from my district of town. There are certainly Nigerians in Koforidua, but with no actual proof of the identity of the perpetrator, the article on the second day referred to a student from a ‘neighbouring country’. Nigeria was not mentioned at all. The local women, famously known throughout Ghana as ‘Koforidua flowers’, are not amused at this slur on their character. According to the second article, they intend to demonstrate against ‘foreigners’.

Accra

One of the reasons I like Koforidua is that it isn’t Accra, but it is convenient distance – an easy day trip – from Accra. Accra is a something of a necessary evil. If I need to visit the VSO office, want any shopping which Koforidua cannot offer or, more extremely, want to leave the country, I have to go to Accra.

Accra has been the capital of the Gold Coast and later Ghana since the colonial administration decided to move there from Cape Coast in 1877. Also the largest city in the country, it lacks the tradition and ceremony of Kumasi and the history of Cape Coast. It has no real centre, but is rather a collection of smaller communities submerged into one big traffic congested sprawl.

Much of the early development was along the coast around the three remaining European forts – to the east Osu Castle, formerly Christiansborg Castle and for the time being the seat of government and to the west neighbouring Forts Ussher and James, most recently prisons and both now open to tourists. The British expanded the city from the forts. With the departure of the colonialists, Nkrumah created Independence Square between Osu and James Town. The square is a vast empty space bookended by two arches one classical in design to the north, the other more reminiscent of MacDonald’s ‘golden arches’. More recent development has come around the city’s ring roads – the Nkrumah Circle transport hub, embassies, hotels, NGO headquarters and the Osu shopping district off the inner Ring Road and the airport and Accra Mall on the outer one. Between these stands the brand new Jubilee House a replacement for the Osu Castle government offices, empty and awaiting the President’s decision to spend the $12 million needed to complete it. The coast in the centre of Accra has been ignored, other than as in an informal rubbish dump. Only to the east of the city is it nearly pleasant enough for a handful of large hotels to have opened. Their pool areas remain considerably more attractive options than the adjacent beaches.

Despite my dislike for the place, exploration of some of the older quarters has provided some rewards. Architecturally there is little of any consequence. What remains of the pre-independence era is not that striking and uniformly in a state of neglect. The newer stuff is on the whole ugly with only Jubilee House making any kind of visual impact, but the streets around Ussher and James Forts are of great historic value. Accra’s first school, hotel and some of its oldest churches are here. The fishing harbour was the most important in Ghana until the development of Tema and Takoradi and many of the streets are named after the mixed heritage British families who resided in the area. Nkrumah made many of his early speeches at the Palladium, a former music hall and his political party, the Convention People’s Party was launched there in 1949.

When I was in Kumasi recently I picked up a booklet which provided a guide to this area. I had been to James Town once before, about 18 months ago. It had been a grey, damp day. The road was being completely rebuilt and there was dust and earth everywhere. The James Fort prison was still in use and the whole scene was very depressing. During the week, I visited the area again. It was a completely different place. It was sunny; the sea was aquamarine, the road complete, the prison shut and generally the tone was much more upbeat. The map in the guide was good and I found many of the landmarks mentioned. I visited the Ussher Fort Museum, although disappointingly the ruins are not safe to explore. I was able to catch a glimpse of one the rings in the local boxing clubs. I could see just enough to know it was being used as a washing line, rather than for a quick spar. I climbed to the top of the 30m high lighthouse for commanding views across the city and up and down the coast. Just as much fun though, was sitting on shaded benches with locals showing them the pictures of their neighbourhood in the booklet.