Obama Inaguration...

President Barack Obama! Yesterday Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States and, from what I gather, it was a huge event, not only for Washington, DC, but for all of the Untied States. Here, the W.E.B. Dubois Center held an inauguration celebration that was open to the public. I decided that I wanted to go and see it, but as I thought about it, I decided to try and take my government class, what a neat thing for them to witness! I talked to Madame Headmistress and she not only agreed to it, but also wanted to come along. After lunch most of my government class (the day students could not come because we would be out too late) met at the school bus and we went to the Dubois Center. The girls loved it. They were all very well behaved and watched and listened intently to the inaugural proceedings. We got to the Dubois Center around 2pm (Ghana time) and Obama was not suppose to be sworn in until sometime after 5pm. The girls watched CNN on the big TVs for awhile but they also walked around and looked at some of the “Barack Obama” wares that were being hawked. At one point a group of dancers took the stage and wanted to teach everyone “The Obama Glide”, an original dance. I told my students that if they went up on stage to learn then dance, I would go with them. 8 or 9 decided to go and I walked them up on stage, but then, like a good teacher, let them “experience for themselves”. They all did a great job and the crowd loved it. All of the major radio and TV stations in Ghana were there and they all recorded the girls dancing. After they came off the stage, the cameras and reporters came over and began to interview, not only them, but the other girls as well. (I was not able to watch the news, but I am sure that they were on it. One of the biggest papers here in Ghana, The Ghanaian Times, ran a cover story the next day about the celebration at the Dubois Center and Accra Girl’s Secondary School made the front page.)

I know that the girls had a great time and I think that they learned a lot from it as well. If nothing else they were able to have the cultural experience of interacting with so many Americans, and not only Americans, but 6 other Fulbrighters came and met and interacted with my students as well (it was a strange experience for me in that I don’t think that I have seen so many white people in one place since leaving America). They were also able to witness how excited people were about politics, government, and their country in general. Unfortunately, the government class does not meet on Wednesday, but we will meet tomorrow and discuss their reaction to the inauguration. I think that they would be hard pressed not to have gained something form the field trip. In the end, I had a great time, and when push comes to shove, really, what else is important?

Election Results...

I know that this has been a little while in coming, but, as of January 7th, 2008, Ghana has a new President: Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress. Mills was the Vice-president under President J.J. Rawlings during the 1990’s and was the challenging candidate in this most recent election. Throughout the election, most polls showed him to be trailing, but still close. After a first round that saw no candidate obtain the necessary “50% plus 1” majority needed to win the election, a second round run-off was needed to determine a winner. In a very closely contested run-off, Mills was able to just barely squeeze out a victory over the incumbent party candidate. The official election results were announced on Saturday, January 3rd and Mills was inaugurated 4 days later.

All in all the election went well. I believe that many people are happy with the outcome and those that are not thrilled still want what is best for Ghana. Most importantly, the election was, for the most part, peaceful. Although the process was long and challenging (nearly a month from the first election day until the winner was announced) Ghanaians successfully rose to the challenges of democracy.

With that said, on December 30, two days after the run-off election, the results were supposed to be declared by the Electoral Commission at noon (in actuality, they were not officially declared until January 4th). I heard a rumor that morning that a large group of people had gathered outside of the EC waiting to hear the results. Myself, and a few other people from Accra Girls’ went down to the EC to see what was happening. When we got there we saw a huge crowd of thousands of people, all NDC and Mills supporters, blocking the streets and celebrating what they thought would an NDC victory. It was a cool thing to see so many people out and exercising their democratic rights. However, it was not quite what I have seen in the states. Many people were carrying bricks and two-by-fours. Ironically, some of these same people were also running around yelling “Peace! We want peace!”. As we were walking through the crowd, you could see hundreds of army officials and police in full riot gear with humvees, tear gas canisters, and fully automatic weapons. At one point a man drove through the crowd and made a gesture showing support for the NPP, the incumbent party and the crowd chased after the car, caught it and jumped on it and beat on it in a gas station parking lot. The man got away but the mayhem changed gears and the crowd tried to loot the gas station. As I was watching all of this a man ran in front of me holding a brick, saw me and yelled “This African Democracy, man! This African Democracy!”. Within a few minutes a huge van showed up and 15 or so police in riot gear jump out and subdued the crowd nonviolently.

The results announcement did not come at 12. (They did not come at 2 or 4 either, as rumor had it, but finally around 5:30 an announcement was made that the results would not come out until Saturday the 4th.) While waiting, we decided to go to a local radio station, RadioGold, that supports the NDC party and Mills. When we got there we saw a sea of people even bigger than at the EC and even more police…and a lot more tension in the air. The story was that a rumor had gone around that NPP members were going to show up at RadioGold to shut them down because the radio station is pro-NDC. Many NDC supporters would not stand for that so they went to protect the radio station. When the police heard that there may be a conflict, they sent troops. When the troops arrived, the NDC supporters assumed that they were sent by the NPP run government to shut down RadioGold as well, so the NDC supporters would not let the police enter the radio station. The people, again carrying two-by-fours, bricks, and other homemade weapons surrounded RadioGold and made a human wall, barring the police from entering the radio station! As I walked around and took pictures, one man came up to me and told me “Tell your people what is happening here.” I am not sure what exactly he meant by that, but I said yes, and took his picture. This went on all afternoon until, finally, the police left. When we left, there was still a lot of tension I the air, but it had been peaceful.

Being able to witness democracy here in Ghana is a truly unique experience, very different than the US, but, when it was all said and done, it was a relatively peaceful election that should help the people of Ghana.

Monkey's Heads and Voodoo...

Last week Andrea, one of the Fulbright researchers, and I went to Togo and Benin. We took a trotro for between 4 and 4 and ½ hour to Aflao, the town, in Ghana, that borders Togo and the capital city of Lome. We walked across the border and proceeded to get around Lome by taking “mototaxis” everywhere. Instead of having regular taxis all over the place, there are tons of small motorcycles and scooters around that are personal taxis and are really a ton of fun. The first night we had to check at a few different places, but found a place to stay relatively easily, and everyone we ran into was very nice and helpful.

The next day we were able to go to the Fetish Market, the largest one in West Africa and maybe the world. This is a market filled with items that are important in the “Voodun” religion. In the US we know it as Voodoo or Juju. Somewhere around 30% of the people in Togo still practice and the majority, more than half, of the people in Benin still practice. I learned, however, that Voodoo here is much different than what most Americans know it as. As slaves were taken from West Africa to the Americas, Voodoo came as well but changed as it made a home in the Western world. Plus, movies and books have demonized the religion as well by highlighting things like “black magic” and Voodoo dolls. These things do exist in the religion and are very real to its followers, but are not the main components of the faith. The market itself was pretty ghastly. It consisted of monkey heads, cheetah heads, monkey paws, snakes, elephant foots…you name it, it was there. It was really creepy to see and, like many things I have seen here, seemed surreal. There was a guy there that took us around and explained some of it to us and promised that all of the animals had died a natural death (not sure I really believe that). We were also able to meet the son of the Voodoo Priest (the priest himself had already left for the Voodoo Festival in Benin, more on that in a minute). The son of the Priest took us into his hut and told us about “gris gris”, charms, of sorts in Voodun. It was pretty cool and a very different experience than I have ever had before.

After a few days in Lome, we went to Benin for a Voodoo Festival that was pretty cool. There were a lot of tourists, a lot of white people, which, honestly, was a little strange to see. We walked around the festival and saw a lot of dancing and drumming and celebrations that I really did not fully understand, but neat to see because it is so different than anything I have ever seen. I am not sure if I will be able to upload it to the internet or not, but there were these large costume things that some of the people wore that looked liked a huge skirt but had no head. Again, I don’t really know what it was or what purpose it serves in Voodoo, but it was crazy.

After a few hours at the festival we decided to go and get back to Accra. Getting back through Benin was easy (again, taking mototaxi wherever we could) but getting into Togo presented a little bit of a hassle. Before having left Accra we had gone to the Togo embassy and purchased a visa that is good for all West African Francophone countries (Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, and Benin). This was so we would save time at the borders by already having the visa and save a few bucks as well. However, the fine print on the visa stated it was only good for “single entry” into those countries. Getting in and out once is no problem, but we had already entered and exited Togo and wanted to reenter. The border official took my passport, looked at it, stamped it, signed it, and handed it back to me without hassle. As I stood there and waited, he took Andrea’s, looked at it and asked for mine back. Not thinking anything of it, I gave it back to him and he proceeded to cross out my entry stamp and told us that we each needed to pay 15,000 CF (30-35 dollars) to get another visa! We took out all of the CF we had and, all together, it amounted to exactly 14,500, not even enough for one visa. We told the guy and asked what we could do (all of this is in broken West African French by the way), and he was not happy with us. He called over another guy, who was very large and did not look particularly happy with us either, and he escorted us back across the border and told us we had to stay there until we had 30,000 CF! Luckily we had met another American at the festival who was going back to Accra at the same time we were. She saw that we had been escorted back across the border and she came over, found us, and loaned us enough money to get back into Togo. Once in Togo, we had/have multiple entry visas to get back into Ghana so the rest of the trip home went smoothly. For about 15 minutes, however, it was interesting to think about how we were going to get back to Ghana.

Traveling anywhere can be a challenge. Traveling in Africa is a whole new experience and a new challenge for me. Plus, the fact that everyone, on this trip, spoke French, but not just French, a strange combination of traditional West African languages and French, made communication difficult. Togo and Benin have been marred by political instability and Togo itself was rocked within the last decade by a bloody civil war that forced the withdrawal of much foreign investment. Everything worked out ok for us, luckily. All in all it was a great trip, but not without a little bit of drama near the end.