Not that I'm counting or anything, but it's already September...it will be exactly 6 months until I set foot on Canadian soil. It does seem very far away but at the same time I've been quite busy this last week and time does seem to be slipping through my fingers. As I promised in my last entry, I will give you an update of the last week of events.
Last Friday, I went to see a play at the National Theatre called "The Dilemma of the Ghost", which was based on a Ghanaian folktale where a ghost is stuck at a fork in the road between Elmina and Cape Coast and cannot decide which road to take. The play highlighted the challenges of introducing a member of the diaspora to their native culture. A Ghanaian man marries an Afro-American and brings her home to Ghana where the man must decide between honouring his wife or his family. The costumes were amazing and we are hoping to go back next week to see another play. The series of plays being shown are free and being sponsored by the "Ghana @ 50" celebrations. The national theatre is also somewhat of an architectural marvel. It reminded me of a cross between the Museum of Civilization and Noah's Ark.
Let's see then last Saturday after our plans to hit up the Botanical Gardens were rained out we decided to go see the National Museum in Accra but after taking a long winded trotro ride through the city we ended up at the National Monument. Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah is buried here and the monument was erected in honour of him. There was a museum there about his life and he's work as a pan-african politician. The most interesting part, apart from the photos of Kwame dancing with Queen Elizabeth, then smoking cigars with Castro, then shaking hands with Mao, was talking to the young man that tended to the museum. We asked him how one would purchase the written works of Nkrumah and he told us that they were very hard to find in Ghana becasue current governments do not want the youth to read his works and start anything radical. Nkrumah had "socialist tendencies" as I like to call them, which I'm sure the current government, which seems largely interested in its revenue accounts than its people would want to control amongst the people. I am always amazed to hear about this lack of access to information and it is somewhat disheartening that the youth of Ghana are not being taught the ideologies that formed their country.
Apart from these cutlural and educational moments, my week has been spotted with random highlights. The girls and I ate dinner with the Nigerian producer of the African reality show, The Next Movie Star. Our friend works for the sponsor of the show which is how we ended up at this restaurant on the coast watching the housemates doing activities on the beach. I could have spent hours at this place because the view was breathtaking and I got lost in staring at the moon and listening to the waves crashing. A moment that reminded me with great admiration of sitting on the Malecon in Havana and staring into the sea.
Jody and I somehow managed to get invited to an AIDS walk being hosted by the housemates of this reality show, which is somewhat like American Idol. I can only describe the walk in the following way:
Take a bus full of potential movie stars, a box of flyers about AIDS, a crate of half-dried t-shirts with the Next Movie Star logo and an AIDS message on the back, one 6-person brass band, several Nigerian show-biz men on cell phones and two Canadian hippies looking confused...and what do you get? Yes, an AIDS walk...they somehow pulled it off, but Jody and I knowing full well that the show was being promoted first and foremost over the need to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless we were entertained for the afternoon.
I do have a lot more to share about events of the last week but I will save it for later. The picture, if posted successfully is of an elderly support group in a neighbourhood of Accra called Bubiashie.
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