I have been back in the UK for two weeks now. In many ways it doesn’t seem like I ever went away. Occasionally I can see that things have moved on, but most of the time it appears seamless.
This will be the final blog entry. I'm not going to make any profound statement about my time in Ghana and how it changed me. I'm not sure I know that yet. I do know that I will follow Ghana's progress with keen interest. I was fortunate enough to be there at an important time - the end of the celebration of the country's 50th anniversary celebrations, the hosting of the Africa Cup and most importantly the peaceful transition to the NDC government and the recognition of Ghana's democratic maturity internationally. Ghana is now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nkrumah and next year will see the start of commercial oil production off its coast.
I am sure I will keep an eye out for all things Ghanaian and West African. I had some spare time in London the other day. I visited the British Museum to see what they had from West Africa (the V & A had nothing on display from its permanent collection). There was a large basement room devoted to Africa. The most obviously Ghanaian exhibit was a chief's stool. In Savile Row I noticed a tailors' with the Ghanaian name, Ozwald Boateng. In the nearby National Geographic Store on Regent Street, I was stunned by the prices being charged for Malian wooden items. One was over a thousand pounds. I wondered how much of this would end up with the carver.
I was wearing a Ghanaian batik shirt that day and when I was buying the latest editon of 'New African' in WH Smiths at Victoria, I am almost certain the black assistant thanked me quietly for the payment in the main Ghanaian language.
There was a BBC documentary on the porn industry last weekend. The journalist was stressing the profits being made by big respectable hotel chains and mobile phone companies from selling porn. In one sequence he visited Ghana to look at the impact of cheap porn DVDs there. I had to smile when he was virtually mobbed by a class of over enthusiastic school children in a small northern village. He met a Ghanaian youth who had written to a film maker in Los Angeles asking for work. The Ghanaian, painfully camera shy and a virgin, was clearly unsuited to the work. While I was in Ghana I was regularly asked, usually by young men, for help to get into the UK, or the US or anywhere that wasn't Ghana. They seemed to think that I would be able to magically get them a visa. I sympathised with their position but had to tell them I couldn't help. They just wanted something which I had by the fluke of where I was born. It was always difficult to respond to these pleas, particularly as I didn't know what I would do if I were in their positions.
