(Uncle Sam worked in America to get kids to do their homework... I heard they were going to put him on their 1GHC bill.)
I’ve been saving up pictures for this ever since the tour of the slave castle at Cape Coast. It’s a pretty gruesome place, that slave castle, not unlike the dungeons outside Masaya, Nicaragua, I saw last year. And that disgusting building in Masaya changed hands several times between Samozas and Sandinistas; each improving upon the torture of their captives. And it is not too unlike other buildings across the globe that record in nightmarish detail inhumanity at its worst. Well here in the pit of one of the dungeons, near the end of the tour, our tour guide showed gifts left to the museum by countries and other organizations. He held up one gift, in relic-like reverence, for us to see. “This [arrangement of plastic flowers]” he said, “was left last year by Barack Obama, our president.”
We BYU students thought wait, our president, right? I heard an opinion the other night that explained it. I was listening to a Ghanaian successful business leader on the radio. Students were asking him questions about all sorts of things. Most lectures of successful blacks to blacks have a similar sound. They vent frustrations of the current situation, negate all excuses, and call them to do better. All this with a tinge of embarrassment. This man in his speech referenced Barack Obama as the greatest black man that ever lived. Of course there was Nelson Mandela and others (I think he left out MLKing, somehow King didn't transcend the American culture) but Obama has become the President of the United States of America. He has shown that blacks can achieve anything. I have to share this side note that I thought was interesting. He followed up his Obama remarks with a call for respect for women. "Think of the women that raised Obama, his mother and grandmother." I'm paraphrasing here but essentially women deserve respect because they can raise men like Obama. You can gather a lot of subtle cultural tones in his remarks.
So this post is not supposed to be a psychoanalysis of the black man and his machismo milieu nor a political statement of internationally inspiring policy platforms. It is just another aspect of Ghana that I see every day. One thing I can say, as these two months were supposed to be about business in a developing nation, is that there are products that have complete market penetration in a very short time. Take cell phones and LED light bulbs. They both spread ubiquitously through all of Africa in a timeline of months not years, decades, or generations. And remember the list of African countries includes a good number of very corrupt governments. So there are compelling, market penetrating products, which previous to the product launch, one (pretty much everyone) would have looked at the market and been satisfied that only a little progress could be made or was even needed. But then some product finds a need that was either unreachable or hidden and within months everyone has the tshirt and is singing songs about it.
Obama Mania... mmm
makes you feel a little special doesn't it...
calm, cool, collected, and collectable
they wouldn't be able to get more american flags hanging in taxis if they made it federal law
no, they haven't forgotten Michelle
my personal favorite for so many reasons. some might say too rigid in comparison, blatant even, but the balance, composition, and meaning carry the day for me.
