MARKETING GHANA: BETWEEN OBAMA, FACEBOOK DEBATES, STRAY COWS AND TOILET WARS!! (Part I)

Cry A Beloved City

Being a Ghanaian and living in Ghana has its own dynamics and is often like a roller-coaster ride – one minute you are up, the next minute you are down, and the very next minute, you are somewhere in between up and down. Often, I feel like the schizophrenic ghost in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Dilemma of a Ghost, wondering whether I should go to Cape Coast or Elmina. When President Barack Obama’s trip planners were faced with this choice, they chose Cape Coast, much to the angst of the good people of Edina: the land where in 1471, the Portuguese Don Diego d’Azambuja met wise King Kwamena Ansah, and learnt about the sea’s impossible dream of living in the houses of men. Things happen in Ghana that literally send your mind to the Elmina-Cape Coast junction and make you wonder whether we can turn this wheel on which we turn.

There was this sinking feeling when Joy FM carried the news item from Cape Coast of a threatened brawl between the Metropolitan Chief Executive some members of the local NDC over the control of public toilets. Public toilets? In the 21st Century? As the story has it, in many parts of Ghana, the immediately past NPP government gave control over public toilets to its ‘people’. Thus, come the change of government, members of the NDC in those parts of the country believe that it is their time to also assume control of such toilets and the ‘riches’ that are derived from the desire to ‘answer nature’s call.’ Has anyone listened to the latest political satire of a song by the always irreverent Hiplife artist called A-Plus, where he belts out the question: ‘dem tsi-efi yi, whana ne tse-ifi aa…?”

THIS is the country and the very proud city of Cape Coast that Barack Obama just visited!

I like to say that this is the country of “beautiful nonsense” and that I will never exchange my Ghanaian passport for any other. If anyone tries to take away my Ghanaian-ness, we will be headed to court for a brutal fight, and I assure you, there will be blood all over the floor – not mine. And it will take quite a bit…, quite a bit…, ok, really a whole lot, to get me to live permanently outside Ghana.

I am also one of those ‘local mixed breed’ and ‘proudly, ethnically impure’ Ghanaians, who claim lineage to quite a few tribes in Ghana. Of all the tribes that I have blood connections with, I think that I am most in love with my Akyem and Fante sides. The Akyem is from Achiase, from where my mother (when all the other tribal connections are discounted) hails, where my late father was born and grew up, the home of the Jungle Warfare School, the only city with a railway junction in Ghana, known and dearly called ‘Russia’ by ‘Achiaseans’ in the diaspora, which includes even those residing in Accra. My claim to being associated with Fante-ness is because my late father really came from and is buried in the beautiful, serene beach city of Biriwa. But there are other reasons why I love my Fante links. I lived and schooled in Fanteland, and somehow, there is something about being associated with Fante that never leaves you. And, the Fante language is the smoothest language on earth. For instance, almost every language I know of has a monosyllable for the word ‘Yes’. But not Fante – we have the dual-syllabic ‘ee-nyo’.

I like to think that I have roots in Cape Coast, the capital of the Central Region, and easily Ghana’s education capital. I did one term of primary education at ‘Master Sam’, where we sang the same song at each Friday worship service: Captain of Israel’s Host and Guide. The two verses of that Methodist hymn are literally etched in my brain! Then I spent seven years of secondary school at the only School on earth, Mfantsipim, the birth place of secondary education in Ghana. How do you say Dwen Hwe Kan in English? Impossible! Yes, yes, there are other institutions of learning scattered all over God’s earth, but there is only one School! Although I have spent more years living and working in Accra, my Ga has never been as good as my Fante. Cape Coast holds many good memories for me, as it was the city in which I really grew up. The city whose biggest football clubs are called DWAFS and VIPERS. It was in Cape Coast that I first heard the phrase “ahwen pa nkasa” to wit “good beads don’t bling.” But it was in the same city that I heard the proud statement:

Oguaa akoto, akoto dwrodwroba aa ogu won tu ano
Aduasa nye apem koo ee, aa apem antum won
Eyee Oguaa den na Oguaa aanye wo bi?

Tomorrow, I will post Part II of this writing, to introduce Barack Obama into this mix.