Mamobi Clash...

This afternoon I was on my way to Mamobi with Wisdom, who had just come over to hangout, and we were not but a few hundred yards outside of the campus and I saw a huge crowd of people in the street. As I got closer I realized that it was a political rally for the NPP, the incumbent party. It is important to note that Mamobi and Nima (the neighbors I live in and around) are staunchly NDC, the opposition party. I stood there with Wisdom and just watched the people as they got on 3 busses and numerous flat bed trucks and about 50 motorcycles to apparently drive around to try and drum-up support. The motorcyclists started driving around in circles in the middle of the street yelling and honking and actually standing on the seats of there bikes! One guy was riding around with another guy riding on his shoulders, not just on the back of the bike, but actually on the drivers shoulders. As I, and everyone else is watching this (and the rest of the Ghanaians who are NDC supporters are frowning upon all of this) about 50-60 NDC motorcyclists show up. All of a sudden there was a huge tension in the air. The girls at the intersection that are always there selling pure water ran off the street and all everyone watching took a collective step back. One lady came up to me, the only obruni, and asked if I wanted to go inside. We moved back some, but I wanted to see what would happen. I was thinking that this was it. This would be where and when the trouble would begin; two days before the elections in Mamobi, a notoriously lawless and rough neighborhood in Accra…and I forgot my camera!

The NDC motorcyclists turned on to the street where are the NPP supporters were and started to drive, on the wrong side of the road, directly at them, so NPP did the same thing after a few minutes of them just riding in and out of each other, the NDC supporters simply left. About 5 minutes later the NPP people were all loaded up and drove off yelling and shouting party slogans. The entire thing was peaceful. No conflict. No violence. An entirely peaceful expression of democratic ideas and freedom. It really was pretty neat to see. After the NPP group left the Mamobi ladies had nothing positive to say about the group and all seemed to want to tell me.

The runoff election will be held this Sunday and I am hoping to go around and take pictures. I think that it will be an interesting day to be out and see what is going on. On the 7th, I went out to see, but everywhere was very quiet. Rumor has it, that, with round two, it will still be peaceful, but that the city will not shutdown like it did three weeks ago. We will see, I will keep you posted as to the outcome, assuming we get one this time.