Archive for March 2013
On Independence Day
0Monday, 11 March 2013 by Renee
So this Wednesday past was Ghana's Independence Day, marking 56 years of Independence.
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
On Finding Fame and Fortune
1Monday, 4 March 2013 by Renee
Ok Ok Ok. It's been a while. The start of 2013 has been a rather hectic one, so I must apologise. I now have rule of drafting one blog post or writing at least one email every night that I'm home, to keep on top of things. And that was going really well until this week when there was er, a case of consuming bad food. Or it may have been the public pool I swam in. Or some lovely combination of the two. Perhaps we'll never know....I should be happy that I've managed this long without such affliction....
ANYWAY...
We have so much to catch up on!
So I've been waiting a while to write about this one, but we had to wait for the er, final product to be ready. Also, since Kenya is going to the polls tomorrow, it seems appropriate for us to travel back to Ghana's elections in December last year. You may recall that there were issues with the biometric registration machines, which meant that voting had to be extended an additional day. Which meant another day for us to lay fairly low, moseying around in our compound, perhaps going for a walk down the street, you know, nothing too crazy. So there I was sitting on our balcony eating lunch, when a man I did not recognise came bouncing into our yard, yelling my name. And then I remembered....
Our house is owned and tended to by the same folk at the hotel across the road. The previous day, Prince, the hotel manager, had stopped us in the street to tell us that he had a musician friend who "needs some white people for his video clip" and was hoping we'd be up for the task. They were going to film in our compound. They needed a white lady in particular, and some other people as well. Prince is known for his tall stories so we giggled at the thought of being film stars in Ghana, said sure, we'll be in your mate's video clip, and headed on our way.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Adam, and two of our housemates, and I, ended up starring in a Ghanaian music video clip. Within an hour or so, we had a film crew and a whole entourage in our backyard.
Needless to say filming just a four minute clip took a whole, long afternoon, including numerous takes, too many fits of inappropriate laughter, and since we're in Ghana, the car breaking down and needing to be pushed during filming of the car scene.
This guy had the right idea. If only I could have hidden in a pizza box.
Film and TV in Ghana is usually pretty low budget - if you're a professional actor, it's still just something you do on the weekend, say, when you're waiting for the voting to close. So in this instance, everyone had to chip in. Including Kofi the hotel security guard, starring as, the security guard, and Old Man Joe, the hotel caretaker, as the male lead. Who's relation to my character (love interest? father in-law? friend?) was never really made clear to me...
It was a long and tedious process, but how often do you get to star in a film clip? Finally, after the mandatory culmination in a dance scene, it was a wrap.
And now, all post-production editing has been finished, and the video is in our hands and tearing through youtube as we speak. So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Nton Tom by Wallace.
Nton tom kika kika kika for those of you playing at home, means "the mosquito, it bites and bites" - sadly, for those of us who can't speak fluent Twi, we'll miss the subtle joke that the mosquito has bitten me somewhere, er, awkward...
ANYWAY...
We have so much to catch up on!
So I've been waiting a while to write about this one, but we had to wait for the er, final product to be ready. Also, since Kenya is going to the polls tomorrow, it seems appropriate for us to travel back to Ghana's elections in December last year. You may recall that there were issues with the biometric registration machines, which meant that voting had to be extended an additional day. Which meant another day for us to lay fairly low, moseying around in our compound, perhaps going for a walk down the street, you know, nothing too crazy. So there I was sitting on our balcony eating lunch, when a man I did not recognise came bouncing into our yard, yelling my name. And then I remembered....
Our house is owned and tended to by the same folk at the hotel across the road. The previous day, Prince, the hotel manager, had stopped us in the street to tell us that he had a musician friend who "needs some white people for his video clip" and was hoping we'd be up for the task. They were going to film in our compound. They needed a white lady in particular, and some other people as well. Prince is known for his tall stories so we giggled at the thought of being film stars in Ghana, said sure, we'll be in your mate's video clip, and headed on our way.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Adam, and two of our housemates, and I, ended up starring in a Ghanaian music video clip. Within an hour or so, we had a film crew and a whole entourage in our backyard.
Now you may or may not know this about me, but I cannot act. Not even a little bit. I don't know how but for some reason I went through my entire schooling without a lesson in drama. So when I somehow became the female lead in the story I was faaaaairly apprehensive.
Needless to say filming just a four minute clip took a whole, long afternoon, including numerous takes, too many fits of inappropriate laughter, and since we're in Ghana, the car breaking down and needing to be pushed during filming of the car scene.
Film and TV in Ghana is usually pretty low budget - if you're a professional actor, it's still just something you do on the weekend, say, when you're waiting for the voting to close. So in this instance, everyone had to chip in. Including Kofi the hotel security guard, starring as, the security guard, and Old Man Joe, the hotel caretaker, as the male lead. Who's relation to my character (love interest? father in-law? friend?) was never really made clear to me...
It was a long and tedious process, but how often do you get to star in a film clip? Finally, after the mandatory culmination in a dance scene, it was a wrap.
Nton tom kika kika kika for those of you playing at home, means "the mosquito, it bites and bites" - sadly, for those of us who can't speak fluent Twi, we'll miss the subtle joke that the mosquito has bitten me somewhere, er, awkward...
