Come Make We Talk About Barack Obama

I'm baaaaaack! I'm so sorry that I've been out of touch for almost two weeks without letting anyone know why. I just spent the last two weeks in a northern city in Ghana called Kumasi, and I had heard that there was a way to access the internet there. However, there was NOT! Haha. So we were "really roughing it" in Kumasi.

Also, since tons of people have been expressing concern about my brief encounter with malaria, I believe I have made a full recovery! At this point, I don't think I'll be able to donate blood for a good number of years, but other than that, I'm back to feeling good again. There are some good malaria medications on the market nowadays, and I took something called Coartem which knocked me out while I was taking it, but then left me completely mended after taking it for three days.

This post is long overdue, so just pretend I wrote it about two weeks ago :)

My Gampa wrote me a birthday e-mail :) and in it he asked about how Barack Obama was received in Ghana when he was here on July 10-11. I had completely forgotten to write about this (although I had planned to) so thanks to Gampa for the reminder!

I'm sure that the other countries that President Obama has visited have been excited for his arrival, but in Ghana this was less of an excitement and more of a mania! From the day I arrived here, in late June, people had been talking about Barack Obama coming. In fact, on the drive from the airport, I caught my first glimpse of one of the many billboards in downtown that sports the greeting "Akwaaba" (“Welcome” in Twi) and Barack's big beautiful face. This link: http://news.myjoyonline.com/photos/news/Obama%20Mills%2009.jpg
shows a similar image that has been all over the place. The man on the left side of the photo is the democratically elected President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills. Also, since I've been here, I've probably been called "Barack Obama" as many times as I've been called "obrunni."

Barack Obama novelties are all over the place. So many shirts. So many sports jerseys. So many paintings. Billboards. Radio talk. Songs.

Songs. I have heard at least three different songs on the radio about Barack. And one of them is super super popular, to the point where before the President came to Ghana, I heard it about once a day on the radio. There is a big rasta scene in Ghana, which is so cool, and the most famous and popular rasta artist is Blakk Rasta. He even has his own radio show on top of having tons of well-loved songs. Well, Blakk Rasta's song, "Barack Obama" is one of the catchiest and most overplayed songs in all of Ghana, and it's great! In fact, here it is as a youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L85YF0pyPH0. Fun, right? This video is also a great example of how well-dressed African women look. The gorgeous colors and varied prints are exactly what everyone wears. The men in the video are a little more colorful and rasta than most Ghanaian men, though. And the montage of adorable children at the end is also exactly what beautiful Ghanaian children look like. They are everywhere, and they are glorious.

Ghana was SO excited for Barack to be here. In fact, on the day he arrived, one of the Unite for Sight nurses was driving in a taxi to get to the clinic, and he got delayed by traffic from the President's procession. He was stuck for suuuuch a long time in traffic, but it was all worth it because he got to see Obama waving out of a limo window! He was bragging all day long about how he got to see our President and we didn't. Haha.

The funny thing is that Barack was only in the country for less than 24 hours. In that time, he gave three important speeches, one which he gave on the first day in Accra and in which he outlined what he foresees for the relationship between Ghana and the U.S. It should be easy to find the speech online if you are interested in reading it. Basically, Barack chose Ghana as the sub-Saharan African country to visit because he sees Ghana as a country that is truly helping itself. Ghana has a democratically elected leader and is one of the more developed sub-Saharan countries, and in his speech, he praised the progress that Ghana has made. It's amazing to me that this place is more developed than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (minus South Africa) because it's hard for me to imagine how other countries could be less developed. Most of Ghana has no electricity and no running water and people live in dirt huts. Perhaps the development in cities like Accra in Kumasi is better than large cities in other sub-Saharan countries? I'm embarrassed to say I don't know for sure. Perhaps it’s also the lack of an extremely corrupt government that puts Ghana ahead of the game.

The second speech that the President gave was at Cape Coast Castle about four hours out of Accra. The castle was a major holding-place for Africans who had been captured and would be sold into slavery and shipped to the Americas and European countries back in the 1700 and 1800’s. Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle are two of the largest slave castles on the West African coast, and Barack visited one. A few of us volunteers visited the other about two weeks before Barack came. Our visit to Elmina castle will be the subject of another post, worry not. I'm just very behind. However, it was very important to many Ghanaians that Barack visit a slave castle, because some of the few locals that I've talked with about the President's visit mention that they believe his visit helped to lay the souls of many dead American slaves to rest. They think that Barack helped to return their souls to their home in Africa so that they could finally be at peace.

The President gave his final speech at the airport on his way out of the country. I didn't watch this speech on the television like I watched the two others, but I imagine he thanked Ghana for his stay and highlighted his excitement for the continued development of US-Ghana relations and for the progress of Ghana as a country.

At the end of this post, I request that you listen to the Barack Obama song at the youtube link I gave you. It'll be stuck in your head all day, I promise :)