kev in conflict

an obama that drops the "exceptionalism"

2008-09-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you all saw McCain and Obama speak tonight from Columbia University? I stood with thousands of students right outside the building with the auditorium in which they spoke to watch it on a big jumbotron. As are all mass gatherings of a political sort (I'm thinking of times I spent marching to protest the US invasion of Iraq in Boston) the aura throughout the crowd was quite electric. It's no secret as to who I'm voting for (see earlier blog posts!) or who the bloc of students on this campus will overwhelming seek to elect......

I love Obama. Still, I feel he needs to drop a word and an idea from what he says to be the candidate I really want to elect. #1 "evil" What does this word mean really? We go through this again and again, who are we to determine as Americans what "evil" is in this world? There are many innocent Iraqis and Afghani citizens who have lost loved ones that consider the United States "evil" and W. even more "evil." Why do we own and get to propogate this label? Because we are powerful? We don't live in a fictional film or novel, with good and evil and these simplistic monolithic notions, do we? People are as they are because they have acquired certain learned behaviors and carry out certain acts based on them. The acts themselves can certainly be deemed good or evil because where they objectively harm other human beings. Yet labeling any person "evil" suggests a permanence that fails to recognize that human beings lead malleable existences at all times in their life (certainly Hitler or your favourite serial killer might be all but impossible to shape or deter from behaviors they undertake). Yet to me, the world is gray and a label like "evil" only serves to polarize, alienate and cause more people to hate each other (especially Americans these days!) than to love each other (see W., Reagan, or McCarthy.... will somebody please LEARN FROM HISTORY!).

#2 "exceptional" I hate to burst your bubble but every country in the world has something that is exceptional or unique about it. It is precisely this hubris (excessive pride) in ourselves as Americans that led us into the great follies of the Bush adminstration's foreign policy. We are simply 1 of 192 (193 now with Kosovo?) socially imagined and constructed nation-states that at this current juncture in history happens to have more military, political, economic, social, cultural power than anyone else or better, hegemony. Every time, we announce our arrogance and display our ego with the word "exceptional," we undo the great and humble values and ideas that this country is founded on. Every empire that preceded this American one declined riding the waves of "exceptionalism." Rather, we should recognize the inevitable and increasing interdepedence of globalization, accept it and recede into it (see G. John Ikenberry). When we remember the loss of approximately 3,000 of our citizens on that sad day seven years ago, is there something that makes America exceptional in that? Isn't it exceptional that 800,000 Rwandans lost their lives in three months or that nearly 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives in four years or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost theirs or over 300,000 people from a variety of coastal areas in the tsunami of December 2004? What does "exceptional" (just like "evil") mean and what utility does it have to say it given the perceptions in generates among others outside this "Land of Lincoln"?

I hope Obama is only being so Amerocentric to get elected. I hope "yes we can" becomes a call to global change and neighborliness in the global village, not merely another nationalist drum to sound. I hope.

obama and mccain to speak at columbia + back to nyc

2008-09-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

So yes, it was Ahmadinejad last semester. This year, Columbia has gone and pulled in Obama and McCain. If I don't win the random lottery for an entry ticket, you can sure bet I'll be outside on the adjacent campus lawn here watching it on a big wearing the ten dollar Obama t-shirt I got made down on Spring Street. Hope and progress. Yes we can! (please refer to earlier posts as to why you should vote for Obama in my opinion).

Okay, so I've completely failed at doing the promised long and thorough recounting of my experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Complete failure. I accept it. Still, if you can track me down for a meal (sorry if this requires many of you to get airfare as well!), I promise to give you a recounting of anything you're interested in and share what I've learned. One non-failure.... you can expect this thing to be spiced up with some pictures on new and old posts starting next weekend!

So how does it feel to be back in NYC? The obvious answer is stressful. I accept it. It's more than the pace of life though and trying to do good work for and make the most of the great opportunities in everything related to conflict resolution and/or the UN here at Columbia. Certainly, one encounters stresses in West Africa and they include everything from learning to relax on transportation that feels less comfortable and safe, avoid aggressive salespeople on the street that probably perceive you as the sale to make their day or week even, and accept the limitations on your personal freedom of movement when you are in places that many people (and here I'm not talking from a Western-centric p.o.v. but where the locals perceive it too!) consider too dangerous or unsafe to be out in past sundown (ie the streets of Monrovia). The reality is that DESPITE all those stresses that one takes on coming from (growing up and being accustomed to is better!) a so-called "developed" country and living and working in a "developing" country, it's hard to get around the fact that I feel that people in West Africa are just happier. No, I didn't get sucked into working for their tourist bureau (go to Ghana now!) and I haven't looked up happiness indexes or anything like that but it is an observable fact to me as an individual that people are on the whole there smile more at each other, engage each other more often in peaceful interaction or amicable conversation and just seem to feel happier more over there than they do here in the good ole US of A. I can say the same about Vietnam and Cambodia. Is this a statement about the effects of unrestrained capitalism without enough corrective social welfare redistribution mechanisms and its effects on diminishing praiseworthy communal ethics and/or values? It might be. Is this a statement that the "developed" countries and the people that live within them and the "developing" countries and the people that live within them have a lot they can learn from each other and that communication and sharing (not imposition!) should go both ways? Certainly. This is a call to all you Westerners (you know who you are and I won't be Amerocentric in assigning blame on this one!), let's work hard not to impose or displace our feelings onto the people around us and the communities we live in or even travel to. This is a call for personal responsibility and obligation to your fellow human beings. At the very least, you can make me feel a bit less stressed. :)

Anyway, just had to let the above out. Not even sure why. All I do know, is that I am overly excited about all the amazing things that I'll be involved in here over the next school year. Stay tuned here for some impressive events I'm helping to organize. If you're in New York (or can make it here), then as they once again say in Ghana, "you're invited".....

winneba morgue for now..... liberia and sierra leone coming soon!

2008-08-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Fact. This is definitely the first post I've made on here that will be anywhere this short. So what happened to my characteristic long-windedness (this applies both on the blog and in person of course!)? Don't worry, I've still got it! However, as my time in Ghana and West Africa is coming to a close (for now as I hope to be back in Liberia to work with the UN (fingers crossed!) by next fall after graduating) with a flight out of here to London tonight, I wanted to reach out to my faithful readership (hopefully someone besides my Mom.... all right, all right, let's be honest, she's not even reading this anymore, someone besides me) and give them (myself) a bit of a teaser for things to come next week!

So yes, I just returned from a trip to Liberia (mainly Monrovia for work-related things) and Sierra Leone (the eastern parts up to Kenema and the Tongo diamond mines for pleasure-related things). I had an amazing experience and learned a ton, not least because this marked my first experiences visiting an ever-so-recently war torn country and a United Nations Mission as well as sitting in on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (all in Liberia) or because I made it unscathed through a(n) (idiotic really, with no water and complete reliance on a flip-flopped guide to machete our way along) tropical island rainforest trek amongst pythons and venom-spitting vipers and over twenty-four hours of bush taxi and motorbike rides along what Lonely Planet considers "the worst road in Africa" (in Sierra Leone). (I should say here that I have strong evidence to corroborate the fact that no one from Lonely Planet has been to most of these places despite writing about them as though they have!). Three-foot deep and flooded potholes, road that is essentially a mudslide, and vehicles that are overturned or immobile (frozen in their tracks for four years in some cases!) is just the beginning. Anyway.... stay tuned for more on that.

Here, I will first just give a shout out to Darius and Jakob for some excellent thinking and sharing on "peacemaking indicators." I hope to chime in soon, guys. Comments and/or a dialogue on any and all things is in a word, awesome.

Finally, in reference to my previous post about my friend Charles, the Liberian mortician I met at the refugee camp in Ghana, I'll just say that he indeed did "make me strong." About two weeks back, I headed over to meet him and he took me to the Winneba morgue to show me around the facility. As this was my first morgue visit ever, I can't speak to the conditions of those in the United States or those in Western countries but let's just say that this place did not look like what I have seen in your typical television crime drama. The facility and especially its sparse refridgeration units comprised a small fraction of the space I would imagine would be desired for the number of bodies housed there. I'll say only that it was extremely interesting to hear Charles and his co-workers animatedly and passionately discuss their work and the specimens on which they do that work, making in a sense the far from commonplace (for someone like me), commonplace. Since I can't judge whether a thorough discussion on this subject would lead to increased readership (someone besides me) or decreased readership (I stop reading what I write), I'll defer for now but if this experience is something you're interested in hearing more about, don't hesitate to ask me about it as I have many observations about it on a variety of themes!

Okay, this was still long-winded. Sorry. :)

alvanyo, monkeys and waterfalls, oh my

2008-08-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

After a return visit to New Tafo (the weekend before last, yes, I'm soooo behind on this thing again!), I headed northeast up into the Volta region on several back to back trotro rides. Stopping in the small village of Logba Alekpeti and hopping onto the back of a motorcycle for a bumpy (thanks to the rocky orange dirt road) five kilometer ride, we visited the Tafi Atome sanctuary, home to the (sacred and therefore unharmed, well at least until Christianity began to erode the taboo for protecting them and some interesting fetish rituals that existed indigenously) mona monkeys.

A short guided walk with Elvis (yes, it's a popular name in Ghana) through the town and then into the woods, we almost immediately started to see some of the sixty or so monkeys that comprised one of the troops (four in the area for about 350 monkeys total!) moving with agility through all of the trees above. The acrobatics of these monkeys were amazing (especially for a virgin monkey sanctuary goer like me, who normally watches from afar in the zoos of Western countries instead of amid and under) and their convergence upon us as soon as we took out some bananas was even more impressive (surprising or shocking depending on whether you love or fear monkeys really). I will never tire of having monkeys stare me squarely in the face as they one by one take turns peeling and eating a chunk of banana held firmly in my hand. To date, coolest animal feeding experience ever, hands down. Still, we couldn't help but wonder if they've been socialized not to steal the whole banana by tourguides who refuse to feed them when they do so or if they are just that polite and prefer to share with their brother and sister monkeys? What do you think?

Monkey sanctuary sadly behind us, I headed out the next morning from the Waterfall Lodge (by far the nicest place I've stayed in Ghana to date and further description below!). With my project partner Ashley, we embarked on trotros through Hohoe and then east towards Alvanyo, the site of one of Ghana's former longstanding conflicts and of which we have studied the ongoing peace process there. To get there, we traveled a thin dirt road through ever increasing lush decidious vegetation riddled with clusters of bamboo trees throughout. Just as we neared the last two kilometers before arriving in Alavanyo, our packed trotro erupted in a chorus of shouted "ha"s and "owoo"s (Ghanaian noises/expressions characteristically made when shocked or in disbelief of something.... wish this thing had audio for you). The bridge had collapsed into and been washed out by the river. Trotros waited on both sides of a the former bridge area, which was now crossed by rickety wood planks for passengers to step across on foot. This was a single trotro journey that now required two trotros (and the requisite waiting on either side for trotros of disparate size to fill up... losses to economic productivity among other things were certainly running through my mind) for the forseeable future (something tells me it would be several months for this out of the way road to garner some state development or reconstruction aid!). Once into the first of five Alavanyo towns on a road running north until it was dotted with Nkonya (the other ethnic group, with which the prior has had long running violent conflict for the good part of the last century, largely driven by fighting over territorial ownership of the area's timber resources, which inflames ethnic divisions), we began our visit by climbing a long orange dirt road ascending above the town to the waterfall and area's only known tourist attraction. We utilized our guise as tourists so as to observe the communities without any implications ("do no harm," check) for the peace process and all it took was the purchase of two bottles of gin and their delivery to the community chief to be able to visit the waterfalls and walk the towns. The ascent to the waterfall revealed an amazing jungle canopy, which quite obviously would be lucrative for either community to control, especially given the high density of bamboo. The road between the two communities, which during the fighting was completely unused and overgrown was as I imagined it and notably when asking those in the Alavanyo community whether we could take a trotro into the Nkonya communities, we received bewildered and astonished negative answers. Still, the development and rudiments of paving the road was progress wherein this community the road's former unuse meant a long circuitous drive around worse roads in a big semicircle around the warring communities. My lasting impression of the place after all the immense beauty of the forests, mountains and endless butterflies of the brightest and diverse colours, was disbelief that a conflict could ever have occurred here.

After the workday, I rushed back to the Waterfall Lodge in Afegame and to the Agamatsu (or Wli pronounced "vlee") Falls and Sanctuary, which has an amazing outdoor veranda with lounge chairs facing the upper waterfall off on that mountain face. Run by a German couple, serving some of the best food in Ghana under the nighttime stars and with thick millipedes nearly a foot long, I hurried out into the woods. The forty minute trek into the woods on a Monday ensured there were absolutely no tourists on the trail and there were just a handful of young local children gathering firewood or chopping wood with machetes. The waterfall was nothing short of utterly breathtaking and if I figure out a way to attach pictures to here (see facebook for now!), I most certainly will. The heavy rains the day before had flooded the waterfall making the whole valley cove into which we entered, a windy and misty tree covered haven that just seemed to pulsate with the whitecapping waves in the pool below the falls. I felt increasingly drenched as I photographed the half circle rainbows forming around the falls and looked at the thousands of bats and their colonies which lined every single part of the overhanging cliff faces high above. :)

A few more random observations......

Emergency medical care in Hohoe? Modern ambulances seem few and far between even in Accra but in the far less developed town of Hohoe, I was riding a trotro out of the town surrounding the Wli waterfalls when we stopped in a village where the entire community was frantically calling the trotro to pull over and looking on with concerned and scared faces. Stretchers? A strong man from the community was hauling an elderly woman on his back to the trotro, where she was placed as gently as possible into the front seat alongside her upset daughter. The sardine-like arranged passengers tried to make space but in general continued their crowded positions around the sick and motionless elderly woman as the trotro bounced up and down along the roads until we got into the larger town of Hohoe and to the doorstep of the hospital, where here too, the woman was carried off rather informally on the back of another man.

I saw a man walking through the center of the bustling town of Ho (hold your laughter, damn it, how mature are you?) balancing what was about a sixteen foot long single piece of bamboo on his head! I've seen just about everything on peoples' heads at this point but this one was new and every time he turned a corner people had to duck (myself included) or cars had to drive wide.... seriously something that belongs in a Three Stooges skit.

Continuing with things riding on peoples' heads. Walking back from the waterfalls, we encountered two thirteen year old girls (one named Edna, the other more complicated and local sounding with an e that I am trying to hard to remember but not) that were carrying massive bowls of firewood on their heads. As they backtracked through the woods, picking up piles of the wood they'd gathered, we chatted them up and they had us help them by putting the wood on their heads instead and saving them the difficulty of bending down. When Edna took the bowl off, and allowed me to lift it up and put it on her head, I realized a seventy pound girl was carrying fifty pounds of wood on her head and neck. Needless to say, I'd be bedridden with injury if I even attempted that much weight on my neck, balancing issues aside.

Yesterday was my friend Raj's birthday and I asked a few Ghanaian women working in a computer lab how I wish someone a Happy Birthday in twi (most prominent of roughly 60 indigenous languages of Ghana) to which my question was met with prolonged confusion and thought. Finally, after some initial thought that it the phrase simply wasn't popularly said in twi, they told me that I could say "me mawo awuda pa" although they warned me that the English was almost always used instead. As I enquired further, I realized that the non-use of the word speaks to a larger cultural difference from what how they characterized the twi non-use/English use. Here in Ghana, I was once again dealing with a culture far less individualistic than the West where birthdays and their requisite individualist overtones are celebrated. It seems birthdays generally aren't celebrated in Ghana, unless the party celebrating has learned to do so from Western tradition. The strong communal ethic of Ghanaian society strikes again! I probably should have guessed this especially because I've been well aware for some time now that Ghanaians, despite their having individual names, are more popularly referred to by the day of the week they are born on (ie Kofi = Friday). The individual fades, the community prevails! Remind me that I still need to develop a discussion on the similarities and disparities between Ghanaian and Japanese cultures as I have observed them.... should be fun.

peacemaking indicators, ahoy!

2008-07-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! This post will be a little less of the usual Kev is a tourist (I'd like to think I'm never a tourist and always a "conscientious cultural observer" whereever I go but my family and friends would beg to differ based on how incessantly I photograph everyone and everything) in Ghana and surrounds and delve into some academic/work/career related issues. That said, just hang on and I swear the next post will go back to the fun touristy stuff. No really, I'll be busting out some good material.... I'm talking monkeys and waterfalls good. Volta, baby, Volta.

Last Thursday, I participated in a meeting arranged by the organization for which I work with several leaders from a variety of governmental, religious and civil society bodies in Ghana. The purpose? To brainstorm together and come to some understandings about what might form a set "peacemaking indicators" that would be observable in post-conflict environments so that Ghanaians can be informed about, monitor and evaluate the growth of peace or conversely prevent a return to violence or unrest. No easy task to say the least.

Yet we must start somewhere and and so we do so by asking everyone from the military doctor to the police officer to the pastor to the imam to the psychologist how they characterize or measure the existence of peace? What are their baselines for doing so?

First I will say, simply being witness to the dialogue that ensued in a room filled with such intelligent individuals who both sensitively, respectfully and cooperatively engage one another in public reasoning and rigorous debate of this sort and on such an important subject gives me not only great faith in the future of Ghana but the entire world, where someone like myself from an altogether different place in the world has the opportunity to connect with, learn from and contribute discussion that is at many times anything but Ghanaian but so universal to the interaction of all human beings and all societies. Okay, okay, so I'm getting carried away with the overblown optimism that is ever-so-characteristic of me but that's just how it felt to me and I would say it was definitely my most valuable work experience here to date. Still, I can only hope that this is a dialogue that can be sustained by the organization I'm working with and/or others in Ghana (and promoted through other countries in West Africa as our work eventually envisions!) as the complexity of determining what constitutes peace is daunting and (developing) effective indicators (as this room only began to scratch the surface of doing!) seem at times everything from incomprehensible to ambiguous. The amount of thought that needs to go into doing this right is immense and should be a ceaseless undertaking. (see my facebook profile for relevant Dag Hammarskjold quote!).

So yes, now down to the nitty gritty of how we talked about these things. When the military doctor sees an increase of cases of military related injuries, what does that say about the peace in an area? Here we might have a way of measuring open violence but that's the easy stuff really, how do we accurately measure peace, not negative peace (the absence of violence) but a positive peace. How do we dig deeper? If that same doctor sees increases in the number of cases of malaria what is that saying? Do decreasing incidences of malaria among patients suggest that people are taking better care of themselves when not preoccupied with conflict or potential violence or does it mean that conflict is worsening because less people can access medical clinics as the fear of violence is increasing? A one-off measurement like the number of incidences of malaria can cut both ways when it comes to determining the success of peacemaking efforts, can't it? Are we better off observing objective phenonmenon (ie are people from two ethnicities riding the same bus together or shopping in the same markets or other forms of social or economic integration) or do we need to go further and ask each individual how they feel about the another individual from the opposing or different community? What is an accurate and effective way of specifically measuring peace when it comes to the regaining of mutual trust or the absence of fear or forums for dialogue which all broadly speak to greate peace? Suggestions are welcome! In my mind, it is most important that we remind ourselves that one-off or single variable measurements are to be avoided at all costs and similarly that we must avoid the tendency to make only the easier quantitative-based indicators but rather we must seek to develop multi-faceted indicators that combine a variety of quantitative and qualitative measurements or variables (ie amid a conflict, count the number of people imprisoned but simultaneously ask the prisoner and those that imprisoned him about their feelings related to the effectiveness of the penal system and then combine those measurements and more until we increase accuracy!). Only then can we to deeply assess the situation on the ground and the status of peacemaking and be communicating accurately about the lines between conflict, negative peace, and positive peace.

the keta penisula, togo and barack, barack, barack, barack obama

2008-07-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

In the interest of not letting the blog beat me down and catching up to speed on all the accumulating thoughts and observations I have, I'm going to pass on any substantial description of the Keta Peninsula or the town of Keta I stayed in on the eastern coast of Ghana and on the way to Togo. At it's narrowest, the land becomes less than a kilometer wide and lagoon and sea are meeting all around in what I now consider the most beautiful yet undertouristed (is that a word?) places I've been to in the country. Upon arrival at night, we ate and hung out at the most happening spot in town, which was a concrete block building the second floor of which was completely unfinished and missing a roof, which only added to the atmosphere. We befriended a footballer named Augustine, who showed us around town all the next day and a rastafari named Fossman, a professional artist and photographer, who was connected to everyone in town and seemed to own everything and also had the most intense eyes I've ever seen. He insisted on escorting us back to our hotel in his car and drove us all around town on the way home at like one am to show us each one of his family members' houses, the lagoon moonlit at night and a bar he was building on the beach. The entire trip was conducted at literally one kilometer per hour to Bob Marley, Lucky Dube and then best of all and endlessly on loop, Rock Rasta's Barack Obama song (if you haven't yet heard it, I'll sing it for you when I get home). That almost this entire continent down to your average man or woman on the street is not only aware of Obama but genuinely pulling for him, singing about him and believes in his ability to bring peace and development to the world are truly inspiring. The feeling that he is the second coming is real. I'm committed to getting involved in his campaign when I return and it's hard to avoid thinking about all the creative ways that the fervor here can be communicated back to Obama so that we ensure that he truly think globally in his foreign policy decisions instead of catering to domestic special interests. His global legacy is waiting to be written if he stays strong and instead of just speaking for the US, listens to the world.

Ghana to Togo was the second best border crossing I've made to date (it will be hard to ever dethrone Vietnam to Cambodia on the Mekong River for a variety of reasons and if the universe wills it, Liberia to Sierra Leone is pending for next month!) as you pass each countries' respective customs agents, the rough ocean waves are crashing less on the orange-red sand beach less than two hundred feet south of you. Just a touch more picturesque than US-Mexico at Tijuana, that's for sure. Perhaps more interesting is the way the two countries' respective colonizations are so instantly recognizable. Up to the figurative tunnel through which you are ushered across, you leave a country where cars provide transport, women sell bread in loaves and you hear English to enter a country where moto-cycles provide transport, women sell baguettes and you hear French. I feel like if someone tried to toss a baguette across from Togo to Ghana it might just morph into a loaf as it traveled through the air and towards Ghana. No really, it might.

Almost immediately into the heart of Lome, a far more beautiful city (hard to believe that some five hundred people were killed here in rioting and thousands fled to Ghana and Benin in just February of 2005 during Gnassingbe's coup after his father (and megalomaniac!) Eyadema's death) than Accra with its palm-fringed beaches to the south of the city centre and wide boulevards and rues that radiate much as they do in Paris. We stayed at a budget place called Le Hotel du Galion that felt anything but budget due to a beautiful European feeling emaculately kept courtyard (wooden tables with umbrellas, seems like it should have been sitting on a canal bank in Munich or Amsterdam or something) where we'd eat omelettes du fromage and jamon and got to try some new fanta flavours not found in Ghana (Fanta Fiesta is a berry flavoured and is heavenly mixed with fresh squeezed orange juice) and its location only two blocks down a sandy road to the Lome beach.

On Sunday, my companion Brooke and I checked out the Marche des Feticheurs (fetish market, think voodoo not leather and ball gags), which has easily been one of the most fascinating things I've seen since being in Africa. On the northeast outskirts of the city, the market contains just about every animal, reptile and amphibian (no insects really!) part you can imagine laid out across twenty large tables. Besides the shock value and sheer fun of being able to touch, hold and take pictures with everything from cheetah and monkey ("chilled monkey brains" from Indiana Jones certainly came to mind while holding this) heads to elephant tails and bones (which weigh a ton!) to aardvark skins to enormous tortoise shells and heads (heads of all things are just obviously shocking), our tour guide Joseph, who wore a black cowboy hat that read Marlboro across it, described the amazing cottage industry that exists throughout the bush of all West African countries that supply this place so that the market voodoo chief can help the sick recover through a prescription of herbs and animals parts (numbers of items chosen must be very precise). The idea of thousands of men employed to run around the forests or bush of West Africa hunting all the live versions of the dead animals you see laid out before you is just something that I hadn't conceived of until arriving here. Already not a place for those keen on animal rights, a live monkey was tied to and hanging from a tree the middle of the dirt covered and wood shanty surrounded compound. There might be a youtube video forthcoming of its attempt to attack me. We headed back for some quality French food on moto-taxis, Brooke suffering a bad exhaust pipe burn to the leg (as was later identified by a guy in Accra, who asked having simply looked at her leg, "oh, you were in Togo?"

The return from Togo was even more interesting than the way in. It's not difficult to tell which country is the more desirable to live in these days. Hassled during the exit process by Ghanaian border patrol while walking across, our van back to Accra also got pulled over twice at two checkpoints where we were required to entirely offload and once again have all our passports thoroughly checked. I was able to break the overly authoritarian manner of the officers when a younger less important guard asked me if I liked Barack Obama after he realized I was American. Naturally, I could only respond with singing the Rock Rasta song and this not only instantly changed his demeanor but that of all the guys in the office, especially when they requested that I sing it again and then they sung along. Amid laughter, this resulted in the subsequent prompt handing back of our passports and return to the van.

A side observation..... myself and any obroni (remember, white people) are the only people that are ever reading books while on trotros. I'm not sure why Ghanaians or any Africans for that matter never (or at least almost, I personally have never seen it in my time here) read on trotros (although I'll ask now!) but I will say that when I had a book of Dag Hammerskjold's (second UN Secretary-General) speeches on my lap, a man behind me commented on it and he took me up on my offer to let him read it while I read another book (yes, I admit I'm reading a Virginia Woolf novel too). For better or worse, I certainly thought about the degree to which income level influences education after that. More investigation required though.

Also, a sache (plastic packet) of pure water retails for five cents US. I'm not sure whether it's the greater communal awareness or the relative cost of a sache for Ghanaians as compared to me (I'm guessing the former) but I do know that more than once when eating on a slanted table and my pure water starts to run onto the table or ground, Ghanaians as far as twenty feet or more away from me all frantically call my attention to it to save me from losing the water. This happened to me also when my fanice (thirty cent ice cream) has a whole in the bottom of the bag and a man from well across the street started shouting at me so that I could prevent the continued leaking. It probably helps that everyone is watching the obroni's next move but still the awareness of others and proactive efforts to help them with no benefit to self is tangible even in these small things. I won't go here into the cross-section of Ghanaian and Japanese cultural values but there are many interesting similarities and differences that is worthy of exploration in a book for sure! Who would have guessed? Thinking about these two nations together like that is about as strange to me as the realization while in Iceland that Thais formed by far the largest minority group!? Ahh, glorious globalization and interdependence can continue to bring us greater peace everywhere if we just more creatively, patiently and intelligently guide the naturally occurring processes involved and more importantly, listen to everyone affected by it (with international institutions!). You'll see.

a liberian mortician named charles and return to new tafo

2008-07-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

Let's do the long weekend in (partial) reverse chronology....

On my way back from a visit to the village New Tafo I helped teach in during January, I decided to run in and out of my compound and head back out for an overnight with my friend Dana, who is working at the Buduburum Liberian refugee camp about 45 km west of Accra. A full day of four separate trotro rides with especially tight seating meaning kneecaps compressed into the backs of the seat in front of me would be painful the next day to say the least... but I pressed on. I arrived nearing sundown Monday night and ran out of my final trotro in an absolute deluge of rain. Under the leak prone corrugated roofing of the spot (spot = bar in ghana) I was standing in to await the passing of the storm with many Liberians, I struck up conversation with a mortician named Charles, who I agreed to meet the next day for more extensive conversation.

At night, I walked through camp with Dana. In some ways, the settlement had the strong feeling of impermanence (as you might expect despite the fact that most of the camps residents have been here for five years or more now) in that most of the dwellings where people lived were rudimentary wood structures and yet there were aspects of the camp that seemed far more developed than many Ghanaian communities I've been through in Accra (I would use the fastest internet connection I've had to date in all of Ghana the next day and the variety of products and services sold along the main street was impressive comparatively). I had quality fufu (liberian style = ridiculously spicy to the point of a hallucinogenic experience) in goat stew by candlelight (electricity went out) in a wooden shack of sorts along the quite lively main drag of town. Passing through the thin dirt streets, the forwardness with which people came forward to ask us for help (assuming we were both camp workers or affiliated with the UN) related to registration papers or any number of issues related to being repatriated to Liberia, remaining in Ghana or their desire to head to some third country (preferably Western!), was unique, a forwardness I'm not sure yet if I can chalk up to their being Liberian or the conditions of camp but I do know that it has been more absent among even the poorest of Ghanaian communities or individuals I've encountered so far.

After an egg and bread breakfast (the wooden stand we ate at actually had a tv with bbc news going, which caused me to fall into a trance while watching western media after so long), I started the morning with a visit to an orphanage that Dana was connected to through the NGO she worked with. This is a small house on the outskirts of camp with essentially two rooms, one (the common room) about ten feet by six feet and the other (the bedroom) about fourteen square feet. The seven foot ceilings make the rooms really feel small. This place houses about fifteen children aged one and a half to twelve (most towards the young end, favorite name was Lucky Boy) that are taken care of by two utterly exhausted adults (only one of whom Regina lives there full time). I walked in and had about five children attach themselves to me almost instantly, some of whom were especially fascinated by touching my hair (as kids here often do!). Unattaching them from me to play football (soccer for the Americans) at the side of the house with a bunch of the boys with a worn-out ball (***Jakob.... Ghana needs Play31 to expand beyond Sierra Leone asap!) and in lots of mud, led to a good deal of crying among the littlest ones. As soon as Dana and I served as a distraction for the kids, Regina passed out on a bed almost instantly, to which there couldn't be a better indication of how exhausted she was. These children come from a variety of circumstances, having lost parents in the conflict itself and/or since arriving at the camp.

After the orphanage, I went and met the mortician Charles. As I am planning to write an article or paper on the conflict in Liberia and the newly begun Truth and Reconciliation Commission (specifically how that body would do better to be less Western and rationally-based but rather incorporate the African/West African/Liberian spiritual and religious perspective in its efforts to reconcile and heal (this I feel being vital to overturn the distortion and manipulation of such beliefs during the conflict, which served as a root cause to the violence and some of the specific types of violence), I used this visit to try to cultivate a few relationships with people that I can interview in the upcoming weeks. I spent two hours with Charles, who described to me in rather detached fashion not only how his father was dragged away and killed by Charles Taylor's NPFL troops in 1993 but also his dilemma about whether to return to Monrovia or not. Having never picked up a weapon and avoided fighting at all costs, he described how he did not have to fear returning to people seeking revenge killings but that as how having been away for some time he could not get a job at home as mortician but that in Ghana he could only serve the camp (because of the particular embalming process Liberians do differently from Ghanaians who use injections, etc., his skills are valuable if well underpaid on camp) because he faced so much discrimination trying to find employment in Ghana as a Liberian.

He also elucidated the costs of a return to Monrovia for me. UNHCR's awarding of $100 US and a free plane ride back to Liberia was hardly sustainable where you could only bring 5 kilos of stuff on a plane and to move one's belongings privately via road (i saw the trucks waiting, the UN doesn't provide this service in the repatriation process, not to blame them as there's certainly no national governments stepping in here!), 50 kilos, would cost $50 US already. In the post-war economy where about the only lucrative job these days seems to be a cab driver (which requires the capital to get a car in the first place, $3000 US for something good) and the fear of a return to violence make it a high risk to return, especially when you've been settled in camp and have made new friends and surrogate families for the last six years and you are returning to a single relative as opposed the the whole family you've lost to the war. Complicated decisions, yes but that doesn't stop many from crowding around the UN board at the front of camp on a daily basis hoping their name will appear for departure. Additionally, Charles told me also that he would "make me strong" by taking me to the Winneba morgue where he works and showing me the unfridgerated bodies and having me work on them. I'll keep you posted on that one. More on the paper/article endeavor later.

Backing up to Saturday and my trip up to New Tafo. It was certainly strange to be there again without Helen and with the memories of my time there with her, the teachers and students so fresh in my mind. I enjoyed hearing Mr. Simon and Mr. Ebo tell me about their first trip abroad (to Scotland) and the sensations of their first plane flight, first cold weather (first time they ever wore jackets), and seeing snow (they didn't touch it sadly, only saw it atop Ben Nevis, which I visited back in 2001) for the first time. Adults my age, they were like little children in their excited descriptions. It reminded me of Ishmael Beah's account of his first trip to the US and NYC in his book, A Long Way Gone).

On Sunday, I went to the best religious service (of any denomination or creed) I've attended in my life. I was enthralled by a pastor who related (to the common rural Ghanaian in 2008) and delivered passages from Phillipians 2 and Daniel 10 like spears (in a good way!) into my heart. Unbelievably captivating speaker. The environment was even more perfect because of the aura of happiness and love that came during the singing and dancing and the rain pouring overhead and around the half open-air church with the town becoming increasingly flooded with water looking like chocolate milk running as high as five feet in low parts of town. Fire and brimstone, nah, this was more the immense power of love and happiness. Afterwards, Mr. Simon took me to his town to see the wedding of his first girlfriend. The bride and her bridesmaids (as did most all of the women) looked absolutely beautiful in tight fitting colorful dresses and headbands/scarves as only found in Africa. Seeing all the kids I taught the last time I was here the next morning at school was a great feeling as well for both me and it seemed for them. The headmaster Madame Juliet cried for Helen and I hugged her. She gave a nice announcement to reintroduce me to all the kids (who remembered me anyway) and to remember Helen and then showed me the Helen O'Connell Memorial Library.

Notables.....

On the return from the wedding, I was packed into a trotro with several beautiful African women about my age in the most colorful dresses. There were also townsfolk transporting sacks of rice, who crunched their way in. The mate was standing with his upper half bent along the ceiling to squeeze in and half the riders already squished horizontally had other passengers on their laps (this van would hold eight in the US yet it was holding about twenty two as I rode in it). Luckily, this was a trotro were the rice bags didn't obstruct the tail pipe in such a way as to have exhaust fumes flooding into the cabin throughout the ride (all you can do is encourage everyone to open their windows if they haven't already). Yet what amazed me most as we flew along the roadway as it steeply sloped up and down and winded side to side, is that the tough looking driver (think 50 cent with a meaner looking face) was blasting a Madonna cassette (one of her early ones) and the song Holiday (among others) was just blaring throughout the cabin. Quality.

A few more random pieces of observation......

After my trotro ride, on my walk home from work everyday I pass President Kufuor's house (mansion is better) at the far opposite end of the street that I live on. Like everywhere you walk around in Ghana, even there several goats are just hanging out, one big one of which sleeps on the sewer grates I walk along and which I have to step around every day.

Contrary to the bright and colourful wedding clothes, although I've not yet attended one here, I've often passed by many funerals with people in the same styles of African clothes and dresses and headdresses/scarves on the women except that they are mostly all black with specks of browns or deep reds and purples. As the funerals (the happy, party event that is extremely well attended) weeks after the burial (the sad, time to cry event that is minimally attended) occur on Saturdays, it seems like people are heading to funerals every other weekend here when you ask them about their weekend plans. Funerals are a thing people want to attend here unlike in the Western world where it seems people prefer oftentimes to avoid them if they're not close to the person lost.

The honking of FanIce horns honked by those peddling bike carts or walking with pushcarts selling the ice cream are heard literally everywhere you go, that you forget it is something unique to being here. I suppose this is comparable to the jingle of ice creams trucks blaring through the streets, except here there isn't just one making noise but about fifty and especially at trotro stations!

Over and out.

meeting with the national peace council and cooked corn

2008-06-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we met with the executive secretary of the National Peace Council, an independent body mandated by the Ghanaian government to open spaces for dialogue and the peaceful resolution of conflict and coordinate the activities of the subsidiary Regional and District Peace Advisory Councils. I wore a suit and enjoyed the impossible task of keeping it free from that good ole orange-red Ghanaian dirt (think Georgia clay), especially after the insane downpour last night (and subsequent mud!) as occurs frequently here during the rainy season we're in. I've never heard rain on a roof so loud as here, it feels like the whole house is going to just consume me as it gets so loud due to the combined effect of the particular corrugated roofing I have and the strength of the storms.

So yes, the meeting went very well and there was a lot of learning going on both ways for sure. It's good to hear Ghanaians say that they think it's important that they have a sense of ownership of peace processes and listen to the needs/insecurities of the particular actors involved in the conflict and with special attention to avoiding taken Western methodologies for peacebuilding and conflict resolution as things to replicate. I'm glad this isn't just the viewpoint of a few crazies in the West who are ultra sensitive to listening to and learning from other cultures, societies and people about what works for them. Phew.

Yet what might have been even more interesting was our preparation for how we would engage the NPC leaders during this meeting. During our internal meeting with LECIA, I was impressed by the rigorous effort made by my colleagues (independent of their job title/role) to make sure that each and every person had a chance to speak and contribute and that each person had the opportunity to speak until they agreed they had nothing more to say (quite foreign to me given the acceptability of commandeering personalities in many Western workplaces). Perhaps democracy is not only a Western phenomenon after all (see Sen!). Duh. Still more, the signficant amount of planning about the tone and approach as well as who would speak when engaging the NPC executive also felt like something non-Western or at least culturally high-context compared to the low-context interactions of the West (you're not dumb if you have to look up high/low context cultures, I just learned it earlier this past year.... quite interesting stuff!).

Finally, the traditional gender dynamics here are hard to break down. Despite even being some of the most educated of all our colleagues, I find that there is a reluctance among most women to be truly sociable with me (and that's not easy to do, is is ladies?). The boys talk with the boys and the girls talk with the girls, no questions asked.

Oh and yes, we pulled up our LECIA van to the side of the road on the way back and each ate fire-roasted corn on the cob and fresh coconut before heading back to the office.

you're invited, a ghanaian uncle's 70th bday party

2008-06-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've made a good Ghanaian friend named Isaac who can dance up a storm (this may be the closest I'll get to hanging out with MJ or Justin Timberlake in my lifetime, no joke, he's ridiculous). Twice this weekend he took us around to his family's home, which is more of a large compound with white walls and pretty blue shutters that opens to central open air courtyard around which the rooms are scattered, he shares a single room with two of his brothers and in general, it's mindboggling to keep up with the amount of relatives living in this place and whose kids are whose. On Friday night, he brought us around for a quiet dinner during which I had my first fufu (pounded corn into a mushy texture that absorbs the broth (usually groundnut stew) it sits in). It is hands down the best thing I've eaten in Ghana to date and his mother and sister both prepared competing bowls of it for us which we ate in two rounds. Again, like it's counterparts (banku and kenke, which are harder and include cassava pounded into the fold), we ate all from a communal bowl with our right hands, to which was eventually added some large, plump snails. That was the first non-French prepared snail I've eaten and significantly larger than anything I've had before. Good stuff.

On Sunday, I returned to the house for his uncle's 70th birthday which was quite the bash. I felt underdressed among a mass of people sitting around on plastic chairs (both inside the open courtyard and in rows along the street/front of the house where a band was playing with some quality African music and singing) who were all wearing white clothing with some minor black detail of some sort (ie speckled on a dress or a sash or whatever to incorporate just a little black). I was able to wish happy birthday to his uncle with the microphone on behalf of the obroni (again, that's white person in twi if you haven't caught it yet) and he appreciated and with the unique round cow fur hat he had on (classic white with some black spots). Isaac and his brother (who was thoroughly impressed that I could bust out some 50 cent (one of the several names he goes by, foremost being NanaAfrica (king of Africa) lyrics for him and also taught me how to say crazy in Twi, which is said with a fist movement to the head for emphasis and I plan to say a lot) have both been trying to aunction off their sister Gifty to me. I had some good conversations with her and she is a beautiful girl but I'm afraid they are all too serious. More on my potential marriage soon. ;)

internal conflict in ghana (and in me!)

2008-06-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Internal conflict in Ghana.... last week I was developing a lot of background research to familiarize myself with three prior conflicts internal to Ghana (that in the Northern region between the Konkomba and Dagomba ethnic groups among others, the Alavanyo and Nkonya conflict occurring between the border with Togo and Lake Volta and that in Accra related to the Ga Traditional Council and groups associated with several Christian churches (sometimes called the "charismatic churches") that we will be engaging with government and traditional leaders about the peace processes addressing them (through some extensive travel in the upcoming weeks) in an effort to elucidate some best practices. Tomorrow, we will be meeting with the head of the National Peace Council, a government group tasked with opening spaces for dialogue and communication throughout the country to prevent future conflict. I'm looking forward to hearing his perspective and how it may/may not differ from a lot of Western-centric publications and sometimes sensational Ghanaian new reporting that I've been reading for the project over the past few months.

Last week also allowed me to experience some internal conflicts on a personal level. Two weeks of street food finally caught up to my digestive system. Explosive diarrhea is a severe understatement for how my bowels were communicating to me for a quality 24 hours! Although my entire last stay in Ghana, I was fine eating anything and everything, I have a feeling that it might have been the result of a bottle of water that after drinking I realized was probably just filled from a tap and so not truly of Ghanaian spring quality. I will stick to the Pure water (water sold for five cents US in little filled plastic bag packets that you rip the end off of with your teeth and suck out the water from and which rides atop so many females heads in buckets for sale everywhere you go). Yet my own recent internal conflict does not stop there. I've got some strange and intensely burning rash all around my ankles and feet. A side effect of the anti-malarials I was thinking, ant bites or scabies perhaps? A Ghanaian friend confirmed that they are fly bites but I'm not sure what kind. Finally, I'll mention that I felt quite bad about spreading a computer virus ("NUM" virus, apparently this and other viruses are rampant on so many computers throughout all of Africa, something I take for granted) with a flashdrive I was using from in computer lab I was advised I could work in to my colleagues computers. This resulted in our having to take half of the computers of my colleagues to the IT people and feeling like I had personally cut our (LECIA's) productivity in half for two days (existential crises about my violation of Mary Anderson's Do No Harm as mentioned below were certainly running through my mind!). Yet, in all these things (not to mention the speed of the internet!) I feel that I am learning to accept and adjust to how working as a professional in my field in an African country and/or a developing country (where applicable) is different from doing so back home and realigning my expectations for what can be accomplished. And yet, I haven't even gotten to the real fieldwork yet!

And another random observation....

As a Westerner in Ghana, you get used to the constant feeling like you have ten layers of sweat or dirt (the latter definitely on your feet), five layers of mosquito repellent and three layers of sunscreen on you at at any given time. There is that amazing brief respite from this constant feeling for about five minutes or so during and immediately after that ice cold, refreshing shower until everything begins accumulating again.

ghana to the tune of vonnegut's slaughterhouse V

2008-06-09T06:15:00.000-07:00

After spending a good deal of time during the evenings over the last week or so alone and reflecting on the world (and my place in it) as one (hopefully) does, I decided it was time to get back out there and back to a bit of the social butterfly that I am. Fortunately, the lawyers of the compound had taken off to Cape Coast for the weekend and so coming and going was made easy. Ashley, my partner, is still recovering from a minor fall through a sewer grate (the second ranked US travel advisory warning for Ghana behind auto accidents.... I'm thinking malaria must be third) and so I headed out solo. On Friday evening, I received a text from a friend of a friend, Dana, who is a student working at the Liberian refugee camp, Bujuburum (sp? should have looked it up but too lazy), about 45 km west of Accra. After taking trotros to Osu, one of the most popular nightlife areas of Accra, I decided to take a cab for very cheap once local because the place they were at Epo's Spot (spot = bar in Ghana) was far off the main road and I had no idea where I was going. While driving there, we approached a large SUV (strange here, must have had an expat drive, and my cabbie, trying to go around it on a tight street, with the loud sound of crashing and scraping metal on concrete lodged the taxi into the open sewer ditch. I'm talking the two left wheels three feet off the ground and the two right wheels three feet down into the ditch with the whole car looking like a failed attempt of that James Bond does with the car on two wheels in Goldfinger (is that the right film?). What was more amazing, is that the cabbie, yelled a bit at the passing SUV for what had occurred but then him, myself and several other Ghanaians helped each other lift the now damaged car out of the ditch in the pouring rain. No lawsuit, no nothing. We got back in and he took drove me the rest of the way and I met Dana and a few of her friends for a drink. So it goes.

Saturday, after another night of sweat drenched sleep, I awoke for the daily egg and bread breakfast (40 pesewas = 40 cents) on the corner near the junction where I get the trotro (which happens to also have a fifteen or so wooden, free standing tables with shelves where women (and some men) cook just about every Ghanaian staple street food dish you can imagine) and then headed out to check out the Kwame Nkrumah (first Ghanaian president and pan-Africanist leader) sites near the coastline in South Accra. First, I headed to the Nkrumah mausoleum, which is a huge marble-ish looking structure amid a simple park with lots of very Communistic fake gold statues of men and women looking like "workers" as defined by that same ideology and a large statue of Nkrumah standing in the middle of them with one hand outstretched almost Hitler-like (excuse the comparison, no harm is meant by this except that it serves as an easy way to abbreviate the pose, the effect of which I've now eliminated by this long following parenthetical, doh!). Better, was the museum behind the statue which contained besides furniture and little mementos from Nkrumah's life, many black and white photos of him at all the significant events of his life as well as black and well as with all the heads of state of the late fifties early sixties (I could look at these photos all day, so think about the historical context of who he was with and what they might be discussing at that particular juncture). These included everyone from JFK to Dag Hammerskjold to Mao to Nehru to Nasser to Lumumba (the last of whom appears as a bit of a scary and imposing figure alongside the far shorter Nkrumah). I found it interesting that after Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup in '66 that he was made co-president of a fellow West African nation-state, Guinea, and until his death (I look forward to speaking about this with my Guinean professor I had for African Conflict Resolution last semester). I also found it interesting that in the pic of Lumumba and Nkrumah and their entourages flanking them as they walked forward, you could easily tell the difference between who was Congolese (the far taller black Africans) and who was Ghanaian (the far shorter black Africans). I'm now wondering what evolutionary considerations led to these height disparities across the African continent. So it goes.

After the mausoleum, I headed further east, met some rastafari who took me into their little market stalls and showed me some incredible carved masks they had done (the best I've seen in Ghana to date) and then encountered the huge Independence Memorial Park, which is a huge sports ampitheatre. Abutted to the north by a huge stone arch (somewhat Arc de Triomphe, somewhat far more communist in orientation and something I'd imagine more to be from Moscow) the ampitheatre was a huge empty parking lot with stadium seating all around it with chairs of red, yellow and green to match the Ghanaian flag. It the middle of all that stood a huge arch (somewhat St. Louis, somewhat Communist, mostly McDonald's-ish looking) through which I walked to head down to the ocean. It was overcast and the sun was setting, which beautiful dark blue sky as I walked along the shore to the recreational chanting and singing of some Ghanaian groups hanging out on the beach. I made sure to dip my hand and lucky ring (you may or may not know what I'm talking about) into the surf. So it goes.

Refusing to go home yet despite the miles and miles of walking, I pushed on to an area called Asylum Down in the hopes of finding some free Saturday night cover reggae I'd heard they had at a guesthouse there. Never able to find it or the guesthouse (guidebooks or so infinitely less accurate in the developing world than they are in developed countries, please ask me about my theories as to why that is so on this if you care to) but appreciative of the walk I turned round and headed back to the neighborhood Osu I mentioned prior and was in last night. There, I again met Dana and her friend PK (you can think penalty kick as I do or very cool guy doing microfinance and development work here). I was thankful to have eaten some rice, hard boiled egg and tomato stew for another 50 cents US at the trotro station en route before meeting them as they were at a total expats restaurants called Mama Mia, where one of their meals ($5 approx) would mean ten of mine. It's amazing you can walk around seeing no one but Ghanaians or Africans wherever you go and then walk through the gates to this place and find not a single one besides a guy sweeping out back. The restaurant had wall to wall what looked to be Indians and other South Asians as well as many Europeans. Looking out over the dining crowd in a certain direction, there were times I swore I was at a street cafe in Rome or another choice European city. After conversing with them while they finished their meals, we headed to the center of Osu and stopped in a spot that was just a ton of plastic tables and chairs on the roadside but with a DJ blasting all the latest African pop hits (and the occasional American one). We met a very nice Welsh couple who headed up to the Northern region and then spent the night with several local guys (including this guy Isaac, who Dana and PK had been three for three running into every single time they were out in the neighborhood, sort of your village rat), who had us dancing up a storm to the wee hours and all that took for me was one oversized (I believe 40 ounce or whatever the size under that would be) Star beer (one cede = one dollar) to get into it. So it goes.

Perhaps, most interesting as a cultural observation is that besides dancing with Dana intermittently, I spent a lot of my evening dancing with Ghanaian guys. As it is not unusual to see two Ghanaian men walking together and holding hands as they do so, it is also perfectly acceptable for Ghanaian men (and should be for heterosexual men the world over!) to dance together and even embrace each other while doing so. To avoid euphemisms, men were totally grinding on men (just as much or more so as they were with women as there were way more men at this particular place) as the booty music was pumping into the night air. So it goes.

Oh and as a footnote to all of the above, my camera was at some point stolen from my bag during the evening. I've had that camera since right before leaving for Japan and for at least the forseeable future it means I won't be taking any pictures here and yet strangely, it didn't even phase me to lose it. Either I'm learning to live some of the buddhist ways I've often aspired to or I've at least learned what really matters to me. So it goes.

a discussion with my colleague phillip

2008-06-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Today (5/5 as I'm still catching up!), I had a great conversation with my colleague Phillip about foreign policy and immigration issues, both Ghanaian and American. It never ceases to amaze me when two people from such different backgrounds or upbringings (he grew up in Accra is ethnically Ga, I'll leave my self-description for a later date) can understand each other perfectly and agree on signficant global issues and how you would go about addressing them (and in about an hour no less). The signficant understanding that Phillip has of how the United States operates on the international stage is not only impressive in and of itself but especially when you consider the fact that this is a highly educated man who cannot even travel to the US for business (let alone pleasure) because the country denies him a visa for doing so.

Phillip characterized for me his two experiences at the US embassy by telling some funny stories about the kind of dialogue you hear from Ghanaians who are trying to get granted a visa. In one, he mentioned overhearing a man who claimed he was headed to the US for a religious/academic conference for a few days, having spent almost ten years in theology studies. Yet when the visa officer challenged him to recite the Nicene Creed, he was unsure of what that was. This had Phillip rolling with laughter. When Phillip himself tried to enter the US on one occasion for a conference related to work LECIA (who I work with) was doing, he was asked if who an author in international relationis he had never heard of was. Having substantially studied IR, he then pleaded with the officer to ask him about other authors (ie Kenneth Waltz, who I told him works across the hall from me at Columbia!) or anything else in the field but the officer just simply started reaching for what Phillip characterized as the "rejection phone." At that point, he was so insulted not only that he wouldn't be able to conduct the work he was supposed to do in the US on behalf of LECIA but also that here, a fellow Ghanaian was treating as though he was a liar, that he simply asked for his paperwork and passport back before the officer could call and walked out. After joking a bit more about how some friends and colleagues of his have shown up to the American embassy with large portfolios containing everything from birth certificates to wedding photos to car purchase paperwork (oil changes included), he then said that he understood that the people at the embassy have to operate under the presumption that everyone is a liar and trying to stay in the US. Still, he agreed with me though that it still hurts to be judged as part of that group instead of individually.

Prior, Phillip showed me and asked me to comment on this paper LECIA is working on to submit to the Ghanaian government to move its foreign policy away from interest-based decisions and towards value-based decisions. The paper included a great chart they developed showing how cycles of violence can be broken, after which we had a good discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he completely agreed with my view that if when Rabin was assassinated, if only other Rabins of the same values stood up and filled in for him again and again (instead of opposite or security-minded replacements as usually occurs that break any such continuity of peace processes), that cycles of violence can be broken. A seemingly simple point but one that few understand once they are faced with the real costs of breaking violence and developing peace in its place.

The sun is almost set by 6pm every day thanks to our nearness to the equator and so when I leave work most nights, the few clouds are tinged with pink on the darkening blue sky, which looks quite magnificent above the orange dirt of the ground below.

first few days in ghana

2008-06-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

This is just a little bit of what I was up to my first few days back in Ghana. I wrote this on June 3rd actually in one of those cheap classic bound notebooks available at any, which I find funny as it reminds me of the journals I kept in the same exact bound books during my trips to Walt Disney World in Orlando (before my family relocated there), which were creatively arranged by my parents to take me out of school for a week at a time or more. My parents promised my teachers the keeping of the journal would be as (or more!) beneficial to me than what I learned in the classroom and lo and behold, many years later it seems they are right (can i get a hand clap for my parents right now.... hopefully they're reading this).

Anyway, on to my first few experiences post-arrival to the Accra airport on Saturday night around 10pm. I'm sure I'm glossing over many of the observations of a first timer, since I was here back in January to see Helen and teach up in New Tema (about two to six hours north of Accra depending on the status of the roads!) but over time, those little details will get filled in here and there and elaborated upon so just bear with me (and questions are always welcome!).

On Sunday, my first full day here, I went with my partner (that's of the work colleague sort) Ashley at 8:30am (way to early after a few hours of sweat-drenched sleep) and moved into a house she arranged for us on Osu Badu Street in a neighborhood in the north of Accra called Dzorwulu. All of Osu Badu Street and much of the surrounding area is comprised of walled-off compounds home to some of the wealthiest Ghanaians (Westerners might think these middle-class sized houses were hardly deserving of a walled security compound but in Ghana they are utterly mammoth). Our compound and enclosed housing being of a more small size for the block, I am living in a two-bedroom guest house that sits at the back of a four or five bedroom primarily household. The white-walled guest house has a toilet room, shower room, two bedrooms, kitchen and common room with absolutely none of the Western frills that might make a house of this size seem at all luxurious for two people to stay in (spacewise, I'm living in an area twice the size of what I just moved out of in Harlem for a third of the price = that's a good equation). Still, in spite of a mosquito net, going to sleep requires a three step process to de-mosquito (is that a word?) the house (spray my room with DEET repellent, close the room off and let it sit for about an hour with the fan on and lights off and then light other parts of the house to attract remaining mosquitos once reentering the dark room for sleep).

The main house of the compound is populated by two Ghanaians, Nana, the owner, who makes his money by (legally!) importing things from Home Depot in Texas and is just a big friendly guy who endlessly asks you questions about how you're finding life in Ghana and acts repeatedly and happily surprised when you tell him again and again how good things are or how easy something was to do and Ekhansa, his caretaker and groundskeeper of sorts, who does just about everything for the property and Nana that Nana doesn't want to do himself, which seems to be everything except having the occasional Star beer in a lawn chair in the driveway. Sadly, within that house there are five American law students (one who is redeemable) who have apparently not read Mary Anderson's Do No Harm. Their desire to recreate everything Western in Ghana when they can and feeling that the importance of their work here needs to be supplemented by sitting around on the porch drinking and smoking and calling attention to the things they're missing back home and the things they don't have in Ghana is something I again and again avoid as I walk to and from my guest house in the back of the compound and as I seek to "empty myself" and absorb the local culture and people as much as possible. It's amazing that you observe this phenomenon everywhere you go and I'm sure we'll revisit I'll the psychology of why I believe people like them show up in places like this. But then again to judge them not as the individuals they are and engage them in a way that could change their perspective is my own shortcoming but again.... time is limited and we need to make choices (see the film Amelie).

Ahh and yes, at the front of the whole compound is a security box which one of our two host Ghanaians are in and out of most of the day and especially to unlock the heavy metal doors through which people and Nana's car passes. Oh and I should say here that having seen so many people bent over and working to machete huge swaths of grass (cutting the lawn basically), it is Nana's import business that can be thanked for the very rare that have a power lawn mower. I'll reserve judgment and leave you to decide whether that is a plus or minus as concerns global welfare. I suppose it can go both ways. Oh and notably, President Kufuor resides on the far opposite end of the same street as me.

All right, enough living space details and especially as they will change in a month to something, dare I say, even cheaper and more affordable. My first full day was made special by attending the latter two hours of a three hour church service at the Everlasting Peace Church. Ashley and I went for a walk to find some staple rice with tomato-based sauce and hard-boiled egg from a street vendor (only five hundred pesewas or fifty cents) and then followed the music along some dirt roads until we stood outside a church where they insisted we come in. I thought we'd check it out for about ten minutes or so but we were privy to two hours of sequences of singing, dancing and prayer with the intermittent fainting of several women wearing white (tongue twister alert!) (very bridelike) on the front stage portion. It was interesting that both men and women sat separately and that most of the functions involved in leading the ceremony were conducted by women. Afterwards, many from the congregation spoke with us and and invited us to meet everyone.

Our first two trips up to where we are working and meeting our Ghanaian colleagues with whome we will implement the documenting peace processes project were good. As to be expected in Ghana, our first day and interaction with our colleagues included questions about families and a nice lunch (as opposed to the more traditional taking of palm wine as during my first trip here) at a place called "Tasty Treat," (the upscale dining on campus) restaurant, a place on the outskirts of campus filled with plastic chairs (all which contain the Ghanaian symbol for "accept God," sorry I can't draw it here :( ) under a canopy with afternoon thunderstorms coming and going and cornfields in the distance. Discussion about our work as custom dictates would come later.

The University itself is spectacular, a massive place with little to no modernity, your simple yet elegant concrete stuccoed buildings with orange or brown tiled roofing and bright orange dirt footpaths running alongside paved roads, the two separated by thin, open sewers/drainage chutes. Pedestrians are all over the place at all hours and at least while campus is in full swing as it is now.

Where every hour or so, you pass one of the other white people (obroni is the local word for us), you can't help but be fascinated as to why they're here too, especially as it's only one in every thousand people you pass or so. I think it's odd that I'm not as equally intrigued by all the Ghanaians and Africans and why they are individuals are here.... shouldn't I be? Well, it seems only my conscious mind allows that. Still, for all the times when I was here to see Helen in New Tema, that "obroni" or "where are you going, white man?" was shouted hundreds upon hundreds most always with big friendly Ghanaian smiles, it is remarkable that here, it is never heard except among the rare little child that passes. I suppose it is the world over that a lack of education allows such monolithic (and public!) labeling (or worse judgment. On a side note, shouldn't then an American president be better than labeling someone or some people "evil" or "communist," or doesn't that just make them uneducated or undereducated. I'll leave that to you.

Yet back to a little self-criticism. Despite always believing that I am egalitarian to the nth degree and able to look beyond cultural, ethnic or socially constructed differences, I realize that it is still my conscious mind that allows me these abilities. Sadly, it was not until I saw endless Ghanaians and other Africans spread out through literally every available table and chari in the university library with piled books and notes surrounding them (looking like they were camping out) that I realize that my subconscious mind still has further to go to unlearn certain things. Yes, black Africans if given the opportunity will study their balls off (or the comparable female expression). It could take a lifetime to internalize these things or maybe just one day at the library at the University of Ghana, to see people working as hard or harder (given that they enforce pin drop silence and nobody has laptops with the internet as a distraction) than me and my friends in libraries elsewhere. Still more, with my discussions with my Ghanaian colleagues and our near uniform feelings about nearly every issue in global politics or the national politics of our respective countries, that you see that education and the empathy and understanding it brings are tremendous things and can mitigate or undo the unique ways in which we've all been socialized to the world's detriment. Game on.

retuning the blog for ghana and thoughts i shared with helen o'connell

2008-06-06T05:49:00.001-07:00

Now that I've arrived in Ghana to begin work on the documenting peace processes project I developed with my partner Ashley this past semester (for the Legon Centre for International Affairs at the University of Ghana as funded by the United Nations Development Program), I've decided to take a step back with what I write here, move a bit away from the academic to more observations and things that appeal to a broader audience (especially for the summer, those that have not been to Ghana or Africa).....

Why am I doing that? A simple fact. The more you move around in this world, the more great people you encounter and the more friendships you naturally develop. Modern men and women have the opportunity to easily communicate with and stay in touch with more people than during any previous epoch in history. Yet as it always does, time forces constraints and choices or worse, dilemmas, on us all about who we communicate with and how much time we devote to that communication with certain individuals or groups of people. Those choices can inevitably lead to hurt feelings or conflict. Truth be told, I already feel so thinly spread in my relationships with those I love and care about and yet as I continue to pursue a career and life devoted to the values and principles of the United Nations and the requisite decisions that will require, I sadly see these feelings getting worse. This blog will be an effort to prevent that situation where possible and communicate in a meaningful way with you who are close to me and hopefully choose to read it (regardless of how non-sensical or boring it may be at times!). I hope that heals some of the inevitable wounds of distance and time or at the very least my own guilt about it. ;) I figure we can have this dialogue (however one-sided it may be, although I will read your blog too if you have one!), which will help keep our relationship on track and how our feelings for and understanding of each other strong.

I just read Milan Kundera's Ignorance, which by beautifully weaving the analogy of Odysseus' homecoming to Ithaca into the (minimal!) plot surrounding the feelings associated with several emigrants, helped me understand a lot of the thoughts and emotions that develop between those that leave their home and those that stay behind and the gap of communication and feelings that exists upon their reunion. I've been feeling all these things for some time (probably first since I went to live in London but definitely after a year in Japan) but leave it to the big man on campus, Kundera, to be able to articulate them. Way to go! This is hardly your pop novel so beware, it reads more like a psychological study at times, which I absolutely love but you may not....

Ahh and one more thing, I'm also writing this blog to continue to shore up the "unification of my personality" (for lack of a better term). Here, I'm playing the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony in my head and especially the lyric that goes "But I'm a million different people people from one day to the next, I can't change my mold." As a person who has finally in the last year or more once and for all committed myself to the idea that you can please everyone best.... NOT by being a million different people according to what the million different people you meet want you to be but rather by being yourself (hopefully yourself is a good person who doesn't want to harm anyone ever but only spread love and empathy to those you meet and with all your energy). With every chance I get, I will continue to try and undo my socially learned behaviors where they are painful to me and where there undoing is not painful to others. "I can change."

This post is dedicated to Helen O'Connell who struggled with me through these same things in each and every way over the last four years. I will miss those conversations more than anything. I miss you, Helen, but will love you always.

Ziggy and Ms. Power, if you please?

2008-04-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

So I am realizing for this thing to be a success, I'm actually going to have to take all these things spiraling in my head and put them down here....

As far as its ability to deliver some impressive political figures, Columbia University has been running a close second to my experience of working at the United Nations during the General Debates (yes, it would be hard to beat taking a piss only five urinals away from Jacques Chirac and being able to tell Bill Clinton "I love you" in a private setting (my colleagues there will never let me live that one down but oh well, the emotions were just bursting forth). On the very same day last week, I saw both Zbigniew Brzezinski in the afternoon and Samantha Power at night.

Before loosing a bit of his cool to a bunch of undergrads claiming his connection to Bilderberg, Ziggy criticized W. as being the first president in the history of the country to (irresponsibly!) propogate an atmosphere of fear, using that atmosphere not only for personal promotion but as the central driver of foreign policy. Ziggy further implored us as the future generation to think seriously about the world and "not in historically deterministic terms." Why should we ever trust W. to predict that our next hundred years will be defined by fighting terrorism and isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy as we do so? I don't think it's a far leap to ask why we ever trust our leaders to tell us that something is "good" (us) and something else is "evil" (communists or the axis, foreigners generally, you name it) without exploring it for ourselves?

As for Ms. Power, the love in the large auditorium was tangible. There to discuss her new book on Sergio de Mello (#1 on my summer reading list!), the hordes had come to ask about Obama and "Monstergate" (her reference to Hillary as a "monster"). You could feel the deep regret she was still holding onto for her oratorical misstep in everything she said related to Obama's campaign.

At the end of the day, both speakers reconfirmed my choice of migrating from Hillary to Obama over the last few months (although they should both still suck it up and run on the same ticket). Hillary is still peddling fear (the 3am emergency phone call ad) according to Ziggy and Ms. Power's repeated characterizations of Obama as a deep and empathetic listener speak to the kind of American president I want making decisions on foreign policy and the United States' role in conflict throughout the globe. Further, how about a president who stands up and flat out apologizes for his predecessor's decision to invade Iraq? A sincere apology is one of the most powerful things in the world in my book.

All right, so I'll leave it to the next post to discuss how my career choices have completed alienated my parents and propose the notion that maybe the heart of conflict resolution is just simply the provision of hope. Fun, fun.

open covenants of peace, openly arrived at...

2008-03-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm starting this with some words from the former American President Woodrow Wilson..... "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at" as incorporated in his famous Fourteen Points.

Yes, I am still damn angry at him for being so visionary as to push national "self-determination" and then being so close-minded as to apply it only to Western white people (see the rejection of Ho Chi Minh at the Paris Peace Conference post WWI as yet another example of the short-sightedness of American foreign policy, which will become a recurrent theme here!). So then why this throwback to Wilson?

In the last year especially, I have learned some valuable life lessons and whether its in my life or the lives of others across the globe, one theme rings true. If we are going to continue to work together to have a better ride on this starship, we must continually engage ourselves in creating spaces for open, honest and empathetic communication. That goes for everyone from me and my family or future leading lady to the leaders of nation-states.

Ahh yes, of course it's so much easier to judge at a distance and make assumptions about things we don't know but we can all have a hell of a lot more fun together if we stand up for something greater, if we stand patiently and empathetically amid conflict seeking to understand it and transform it towards peace. Kev in conflict will seek to do just that both personally and at all points beyond. Game on.