A Polarized View of the World

When I wrote about African modernity for example, I already referred to the unfairness of our European picture of Africa: we tend to think that no modernity has reached Africa, and that they have `nothing` here. Well, now I`m not trying to deny the poverty on this land, I`m just trying to say that the real picture is a lot more complex than that: they have a very interesting mixture of tradition and modernity, and an African way of involving European and American culture as well.

On the other side though, I`m just starting to realize that they have just as stereotypic picture of us, as we have of them: they usually think that Europe has `everything` - no poverty, no homeless people, no wicked people, thieves or anything like that. So many times I just find myself explaining how many problems we have at home and that our world is not perfect either – which is not the best thing to do, this is not the way I`m supposed to present my country, but at the same time, I just feel like that I have to balance this stereotypic picture.

It seems that we all tend to view our world in a very polarized way: separate the `good` and the `bad`, the `rich` and the `poor` part of it, even though the reality is way more complex than that and it would be hard to say anything that would be indeed true in general of a country. Still, this is the way how we human beings make our world more understandable, even if this way we get further from the truth…

Well, as a conclusion, I think I could summarize my point in these two pictures:

Our world is NOT LIKE this:     

 
In reality it`s a lot more LIKE this: 

Visiting the TV again: Ghana`s Most Beautiful

It`s time for me to write you about another very interesting program, that we just watched live at the Ghanaian TV3. This time we went to watch two programs: the Ghana`s Strongest`s final (which is a usual competition about strength and completing different tasks like throwing 20 kg weighs above a pole) and also Ghana`s Most Beautiful. Now this second one seemed a bit more unusual for me. It`s not just an ordinary beauty contest, the concept behind the show is a lot broader then that. The point is that they have 10 women, each representing the 10 different regions of Ghana. Every week they have different topics that they have to prepare for: they have to make some research about the certain topic in their region and represent that to the public. In this way, the beauty contest has gained an educative and informative purpose that also helps the Ghanians to appreciate their own traditions and culture. I think the motto of the show represents the purpose of the show perfectly, so it should stand here, too:

Ghana`s Most Beautiful – Redefining Beauty to Promote National Unity

 Just so that you understand better, the week when we visited the TV, the topic was traditional musical instruments. Every contestants picked an instrument (they all kinds of different drums and stuff like that) that was typical in their region, talked about how it worked and on which occasions it was used, and then also played it, which was also accompanied with dancers` performance in the background.

Other then the topic the show works the same way as ordinary reality shows: they have judges, commenting on the women`s performance and the content of what they said, and also the audience can vote for them – so this way from week to week there will be less and less contestants who are still in the competition. 

Break Time!!! – Trips to Akosombo and Aburi

Since we ended the vacation classes the end of August and we only reopened for year 2011/2012 on 13^th September, during this break we took the opportunity to take a few one-day trips to see more and more of this beautiful country. This is how I got to see Akosombo, a nice town by Ghana`s biggest lake, the Volta Lake, and Aburi, which is located in the Eastern Region`s mountains and is famous for it`s botanic garden.

Alright, starting with the trip to Akosombo – finding a car to take us there was the first adventure of the day. We took a trotro to Accra central, but then there we were sent from station to station, because everybody was only sure about one thing: that at their station you can find no car to Akosombo. Until finally we found one, where somebody pointed to the building in front of us, saying that the car to Akosombo is leaving from there – I was seriously surprised at the answer, since I almost already started thinking that a place like Akosombo doesn`t even exist. :) Well, but it does, we got there finally. The final stop was a market at Akosombo, bust since we realized that the view was way better from the village before Akosombo, we took a car to take us back. Here – after having a huge lunch of fufu with some very spicy light soup (remember, fufu is one of the traditional Ghanaian meals, made of pounded cassava and plantain, and eaten with some soup with your hands) – we found a long and pretty modern-looking bridge crossing Volta Lake. Besides that the bridge itself looks really great, from the bridge you can also have a beautiful view of the lake, the islands on it and sometimes also the small boats going up and down. 

 




















On the shores you can find real Ghanaian villages where the children are very friendly when you go to see the lake by their house and if you are lucky you can even see a cow lying calmly among the simple houses. 

Another day of the vacation period or way lead to Aburi. Here we had no problem with finding the right car, but actually we intentionally got off a few villages after Aburi, just to get an opportunity to walk back on some of the way and get a taste of the mountains of the area. The mountains that look really great: covered with deep forest, where sometimes huge trees break the surface of the bushes. After some walking we decided to actually take a car back to Aburi – just in time, since a few minutes later it already started raining. By the time we got to Aburi, we were already pretty hungry, and also a trip like this wouldn`t be the same without a nice lunch of fufu (yes, I am getting a bit addicted to fufu, which has a pretty bad effect on my shape, though… :)), so as soon as we found a place to eat, we had our fufu – this time not with light soup, but with another soup that`s made of groundnuts and a whole lot of spices, too. It was only after this that we walked to Aburi Botanic Gardens, where walking through the paths you can see a lot of plants of a rainforest – each tagged with their names, too. When we got to the gardens, it was still pretty foggy and rainy, but I guess for getting to know the plants of a rainforest, it wasn`t such a bad timing to come now after all.   

 

Cape Coast Festival

Just as a pretty much last minute decision, one Saturday afternoon we set up to Cape Coast to see a live real Ghanaian concert. This was the closing event of their festival – a festival that`s based on the traditional culture of the chiefs and queen mothers and that is celebrated at different times in every town.

Well, because of the traffic jam around Accra, the concert almost started by the time we got to Cape Coast, but we could still find a nice place in the crowd to enjoy the concert.

The music wasn`t necessarily just traditional: we had all kinds of music from gospel to pop, rap and maybe also something like reggae. Just so that you can get a taste of this side of the Ghanaian culture, here are some videos of some of the artist we saw at Cape Coast:

 

Since the concert started at 10 p.m. and ended around 1:30 a.m., we didn`t really have a good chance to get a car back home, and also it sounded way more fun to spend the night at the ocean shore at Cape Coast. We even swam in the ocean at night, although now looking back, maybe it wasn`t the best idea, considering the chilly night that was waiting for us after this. Alright, probably it wasn`t too much colder than 15-18 degrees, but if you spend long hours in it without a sweater, you can get pretty much frozen, which makes sleeping a bit more difficult, even if you have comfortable wooden chairs to sleep on in front of a restaurant by the shore. Still, sleeping on the ocean shore was one of the best things that has happened to me here – it was already really time to do something crazy! :) Anyway, not to forget about waiting for the sunrise (even though it was a bit cloudy…) over the ocean and also Cape Coast Castle! The point is that despite of the cold and the lack of sleep, this trip was one of the best ones I had in Ghana so far.  

A Bit About Education: The University of Legon

This Saturday we took a little trip to Legon, The University of Ghana. Legon is not too far from Accra, after you have got through the usual traffic jam (it`s crazy, I think I have already been in more traffic jam here, then ever at home) an d actually left Accra, it only takes about 20 minutes to get there in a trotro. Well, Legon is the oldest (it was founded in 1948) and the biggest university of Ghana and probably also West Africa. It`s one of the few public universities in Ghana – since most of the universities are private, which also means that they charge really high fees from the students. Education is absolutely not cheep here – already starting from nursery, the children can pay hundreds of Ghanaian cedis (1 USD ₌ 1,5 Cedis) as school fees. Since university is also very expensive, lots of people choose at first teaching at schools (for which you don`t need any degree apart from the highschool) to save up some money for university. Also, unfortunately most people see teaching as a temporary state for making a living and not too many consider it as an actual carrier.By the way, getting a job after completing university is not exactly granted here, either - in fact it all works very similarly to the European process: having relatives / friends at a certain workplace helps a lot in getting a certain job there.

Anyway, getting back to the University of Legon, it`s really-really beautiful, a lot of European universities could be envy of it, really! And it`s really huge, too! We had about two hours there which was hardly enough to walk around half of the territory, which includes the lecture halls, the dormitories (there are common dormitories and also dormitories just for men and women), a huge library, an open theater, a lot of beautiful green area, even with a fountain in it, as well as a huge botanic garden. There`s a lot of open space where the students can hang around during their freetime, although right now since we visited the place on Saturday, it wasn`t too crowded. Well, my whole impression about the place was that it`s a very friendly university that besides its nice outlook also provides great facilities for the students to spend their time together.