Ghana, Days 91-95: Bring Out the GIMPA

Hi Ruth!  I'm still in Ghana, alone now.

Mommy left on Day 72.  You and Grammy and Grampy left on Day 90.

On Tuesday (8 Nov., to get us back on track) I got a call out of the blue while I was helping Grammy and Grampy get ready to head home with you.  It was from someone at the Ghana Institute for Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), who had gotten my name from the Embassy, inviting me to an event at GIMPA being put on in conjunction with the Institute for Defense Analysis, about building civil society in West Africa.  "Civil society" is about all the people who don't work for the government, but try to make sure that the government does good things, or that people get help when the government can't or won't help them - there are lots of things that it can mean!  This was a meeting talking about how to make it easier for people to put together groups that can help people, and why there may not always be so many of them.

The meeting started with dinner on Tuesday, but I was making sure that you and Grammy and Grampy got safely back home.  And then on Wednesday I had to teach.  But I told them I could come on Thursday, and I'm glad I did!

First, though, when I looked at my map, it looked like GIMPA was pretty close, only about as far from here as the train station is from our house.  So I decided I'd walk over there, instead of calling Mr. Lartey or Mr. George, especially since GIMPA is inside the Achimota Forest Reserve, so I thought it might be a nice walk.  And it was!  Mostly.   I wish I'd thought to bring my camera with me!

When I got close to where I thought I was going, I discovered that one of the roads on my map was... not really there.  There was some construction, and as Ms. Anna-Marie might say, "it is my hope, my wish, and my dream that this may be a road some day."

I could see on my map that, to avoid walking in a long loop around, I'd also have to walk across about twenty feet of what looked like lawn when I looked at the satellite maps.  Wrong again.  I crossed the construction zone, but then I found out that it was only about twenty feet... through incredibly dense foliage covered in prickers!  I got about two feet in and then saw that there was also a high wall there that I hadn't been able to see.  So I just decided it would be better to walk around.  I'm not sure they would have liked me coming to the meeting by jumping over the wall!

GIMPA itself is beautiful.  I hate to say it, but part of what makes it so nice is that it's a lot less dirty and dingy than things can be here at the University of Ghana.  But GIMPA gets lots of money from outside, and is very expensive to go to, while University of Ghana at least tries to keep things inexpensive so that anyone can come [but, adults, its admin has real problems - I wish I could say, "hey, GIMPA is spiffy, but we're the people's Uni..."].

The meeting itself was pretty interesting.  We spent the morning talking about schools in Africa, and then I had lunch with a bunch of Ghanaians who had lived near us in Maryland before coming back here to live!  In the afternoon we talked about how to make the civil society groups more influential - one of the people from the US talked about how they should join the agenda of international organizations, and try to raise money to get celebrities like actors and football players involved in their campaigns, both of which I think are really bad ideas!

After the meeting was over, we were all invited for dinner at the Rector's house, which was pretty impressive!  It was a huge place, and dinner was very impressive.  They had a highlife band [adults: and, free of charge, everything from Star to Courvoisier] and lots of food.  I sat with Mr. Tai, who is another Fulbright person, at GIMPA, and Ms. Ofie, who was there because she helped organize the event, but is mostly a singer!  She invited me to come and bring my friends to the restaurant she owns half of, Taverna Tropicana.  Apparently they have really good fish - I wish I'd known about it when Grampy was here! [Her other part-owner is Serbian. ME: Oh, my brother is engaged to a Bosnian. OFIE: He tells me that they're all pretty much over that by now. ME: Yeah, don't say that to my brother's fiancee...]
Here's Ms. Ofie singing at her restaurant.

They even gave me a free ride home!

Friday, I mostly just worked, but then I got to talk to you and Mommy on the computer!

Saturday, I worked during the morning, but then Mr. Bill, Ms. Theresa and I went down to Osu and walked around.  I got a surprise for your and one for Mommy!  Then we had some Chinese food for dinner - it was OK - and went to a free concert we'd heard about, part of a thing called the High Vibes Festival.  It was outside of a very big expensive place to go hear music (and eat) called Citizen Kofi - normally it's so expensive that I couldn't even afford to go inside!

When we got there, they immediately showed us to the very front, past the ropes into a section for special people - we think they thought we were from the French Embassy!  And then, who did I see show up, but... Ms. Ofie!  It turned out she was singing in the concert!

The concert itself was a tribute to an important Ghanaian musician named Mac Tontoh, who played trumpet and was one of the first musicians from Ghana who got really popular outside Ghana, with is band Osibisa (their symbol was a crazy flying elephant!).  Unfortunately, he died last year, and so people were celebrating his life and being sad that he died by playing music.

Here's some video from a while ago of him playing music with his band!



So, lots of different Ghanaian artists, some of whom knew him when he was alive, got up and played music and talked about how much they liked him, or were influenced him.  Don't tell Ms. Ofie, but my favorite one was Nana Yaa (Ms. Ofie was pretty good too!):


Nana Yaa, Girls Speak Out 2010 in Ghana from SHOKOLA on Vimeo.

Anyway, Ms. Anna-Marie and Mr. Carl met us there, and we watched the music until we were too tired!  We had to go home but they were still going strong!