Baring the Roots

Finally we were granted a break at school. Though first year is not over just yet, due to a probable re-sit on August 20^th , the break is effective nonetheless. Those two courses I failed will simply be passed in the 4^th term, …next year I’m gonna be a lot more serious about it anyway, of course! (…as usual) As for now I’ve pretty much been working, working out, enjoyed Amsterdam’s summer sun on the basketball court, picked up reading “The Kite Runner” again, which I haven’t turned a page in for weeks, and visited a close friend in cologne.

Additionally, in the beginning of the year I decided that this summer I would trace back my roots of origin. Not that I was going to spend the summer in Denmark and visit my granny like I used to do every summer until I was about 15, but rather I felt like I had to visit my father in Ghana this year, who I haven’t seen in four years and change by now…so I went.

Ghana, formerly Gold Coast, is a fairly small democratic republic in West-Africa bordering to the Golf of Guinea with roughly 21 million inhabitants. Being the first African country to detach itself from the British colonial rule, Ghanaians are very proud of their history and their origin although it has been “brand marked” by over 300 years of slave trade starting in the late 15^th century .  Ghana has a vast amount of commodities such as gold, lead, bauxite, copper, diamonds, oil, gas etc. , some of which are still waiting to be mined, due to a lack of investment. Obviously gold and diamonds are amongst those as Ghana is the second largest gold exporting country in the world. Recently, also oil fields where found off shore by Americans and will be tabbed on starting towards the end of 2010. Officially President Obama’s recent visit to Ghana, and which was his first visit to Africa as President, was to emphasize Ghana’s progress after the British occupation in terms of being one of the two countries in Africa which successfully have adopted democratic values into their society and should be an example to the other African nations. Obama did not word it like that, since there are also many other “democratic republics” or simply “democracies” in Africa, but we all know that apart from South Africa those nations are more likely to be ruled by (often military) dictatorship, where elections are unjust and presidents remain in office for decades. So knowing that the US has a major stake in the upcoming oil and gas production in Ghana and is also looking for other investments in natural resources, it becomes obvious hat behind the scenes of his visit, Brack Obama did not solely have Ghana’s political progress in mind when landing at Kotoka International Airport in Accra. I hope that oil, which is supposed to be a gift for a country, does not become a curse for Ghana, as it has become for Nigeria…but that, I suppose, is in the hands of Ghana’s newly elected President Atta Mills. (May God bless his decision making!)  As in many non-post-industrialized countries, for Ghana agriculture is still one of the major industries to contribute to Ghana’s gross national product. Sugar cane, coffee, tea, cauchuck, but most importantly cocoa, of which Ghana is the world’s single most producing nation, are the most important agricultural products for export throughout the world. Recently products such as tobacco, pineapple, bananas and palm oil have also been taken a shot at. Nonetheless, the majority of farmers are subsistence cultivators, who only produce for their families.

 

Accra, Ghana’s capital and largest city is where I resided. My father has an apartment in a ‘hood called Asylum Down, near by the city center. The first time I visited Ghana I was thirteen years old, so now at the age of 21 I was expecting totally different experience…and so it turned out to be!