"Nothing but the truth furniture"Kwame Nkrumah was the first president of independent Ghana and his statues and portraits are still commonly visible around the country. He was elected to prime minister in 1957 when the Gold Coast colony became the independent country of Ghana and became the country’s first president in 1960. He was ousted in a military coup d’état in 1966.
Kwame Nkrumah
During his presidency he laid the foundation of modern Ghana. He was also the leader of the pan-African movement that advocated an African political union. One of his major contributions was getting the Akosombo dam at the Volta River built. To build it he took out massive loans transforming Ghana from one of the richest African countries to one of the most indebted ones. In 1964 he declared Ghana a one-party state with him as president for life. Ghana was excessively corrupt as well – by paying off government officials you could sell anything to the country. The Russians actually managed to sell snow plows to the sub-Saharan country. In 1966 when he was on a state visit to Vietnam, his government was overthrown in a coup led by the military. More unrest followed and Ghana managed with the feat of having six different governments and seven successful coups. The last coup was in 1981, after which the country stabilized. It had its first democratic elections in 1992.
Nkrumah ended up as co-president of Guinea and never returned to Ghana. He died in 1972 but despite his failures in office is considered a great hero by most Ghanaians.
Kwame Nkrumah statue version
Today we were going to visit Nkrumah’s memorial park in Accra. Ghana in general and specifically Accra lacks any major “must see” attractions so you take what you can get. The memorial park was nicely kept – the cleanest and best maintained part of Accra we saw. A large number of school children were there on excursion. As soon as they saw us the “Obroni-ing” started, but their teacher hushed them very fast and surprisingly we were left alone. The memorial park also housed an air-conditioned but thoroughly uninteresting museum of Nkrumah’s life. My comrades who don’t have air condition at their place took a suspiciously long time to study various trivialities in detail. Well, I can’t blame them – it was excessively hot outside.
Nkrumah memorial park
After the memorial park we took a walk near the Makola market (although never entering the market itself). The girls were looking to buy some African fabric. At some point we found a very narrow passage completely filled with various stands, salespeople and their customers. The others seem to enjoy it. I on the other hand was not. I was being pushed around by rude women whose passage I was apparently hindering. I was pushed, pulled, prodded and yelled at. I exited to the street and lit a cigarette in the inhuman heat. Soon some old bat was yelling at me for smoking. Ghanaians don’t smoke in general and older generations consider it to be an immoral habit. When I could no longer stand the heat on the street, I entered the passage again to try and find the others. After another session of manhandling by the people there, I was ready to punch somebody in the face. I was thoroughly fed up with Africa and was on the verge of exploding.
After lunch at Galitos we set our aims for the Art Market. It was a place specifically aimed at tourists selling all sorts of African trinkets – from woodwork to fabrics. The catch is that there are really no tourists in Accra to speak of and the market is huge. The salespeople are therefore very aggressive – even for Ghanaian standards. Having been cooled down and fed, I was however in a good mood and ready to take them on. I led the group decisively through the long entry passage and it was going quite well until I tripped and was cornered by a number of salespeople. It wasn’t too bad though, because it was at a place where they sold shirts – which was something I was looking for. I bought two and although I negotiated down the price to a third of the original, I was still most likely ripped off. I didn’t mind though – they were nice shirts. Måns bought a shirt as well.
We wandered the Art Market for quite a while. Although the salespeople were very motivated, unlike the people in the passage way earlier, they were generally polite. Most of the market consisted of people selling various woodworks – it was interesting, but nothing that I really liked. Matilda bought a small wooden chair that had a traditional Ghanaian symbol on it. The meaning of the symbol was “Except God” (common expression which we never figured out), but despite that both Matilda and Måns liked the design of the chair.
Ghanaians are very religious people. Most of the country is fundamentalist Christian with some Muslims in the north. The southern states in the US are no match for Ghana in terms of excessive religious influences. Radio and TV shows all have a significant religious undertone. Taxis and buses are decorated with bible quotations. The perhaps most amusing thing for a visitor are the names of businesses like “Hands of God Auto Mechanic” or “Innocent Blood Restaurant”. One of the more amusing scenes we witnessed was a fight (not serious) between two taxi drivers that who had collided in an intersection. One had “Jesus’ Lamb” written on his taxi and the other had “Love thy neighbor”.
Typical Ghanaian sign.After the Art Market we took a well-deserved break at our usual beach hangout at the Riviera Club. In the evening we took a long walk to the Shangri-La hotel and had pizzas. The walk was interesting for two reasons. First we passed by the president’s house which was guarded by a tank and second we had to cross the motorway. In Ghanaian urban planning (on the rare occasions that it exists), pedestrians are not considered. So to cross the main motorway you basically try to find a gap in the massive traffic and then run and hope for the best. Incidentally, the pizzas were the first meals that we all got approximately at the same time (+-15 minutes) since we got to Ghana.
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