It's time: Obama on the home stretch

My bestest buddy El sent me an email this morning entitled "Look at the cover of the Economist". Unfortunately El did not include any text in his rather cryptic email and I have no clue how to get the Economist in print aside from those dudes who sell magazines on the street. Well, I suppose there are also the Shell shops, Max(y) Mart, Shoprite etc etc...but I digress. So I checked out the Economist online and their cover article is "An Endorsement of Barack Obama : Its Time" Now the Economist is hardly known as a left-leaning publication and at some point earned the wrath of some socialist types for being a mouthpiece of world finance capital. Now they are basically telling America to get on with it and elect Barack already and indeed I am inclined to believe these economist types know what they are talking about!
But what about the Bradley Effect? I heard somewhere that although this new buzz word may come into play, the power of the socalled Black vote may conteract this and influence the outcome of the election more than ever before. Indeed, African-Americans are turning out in record numbers to vote this year. I saw a window into this yesterday when I was hustling at the American Embassy in Accra. While I was bored out of my skull waiting for an appointment and being audibly assaulted by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, I was struck by the number of African-Americans coming to register to vote and chatting excitedly about Obama. Of course, African-Americans living in Accra cannot possibly represent African-America in general but it was interesting to see. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate of voting for Obama on the basis of his colour but in him I see someone who is young, dynamic and exciting. Also, he represents a radical change for America as well as for the world in general. Watch me jump on to the winner band-wagon at the 11th hour!
But is an Obama Presidency good for Africa? I listened to a debate on BBC's "Africa Have your Say" the other day and the general concensus was that a Democratic presidency (traditionally more domestically focused) may do less for Africa compared to what Bush has (supposedly) done for us over the past 8 years. However, the experts concurred that regardless, having a Black man in charge of the free world would do amazing things for the African psyche. Bring it on!

Finding the unexpected in Osu

I spent last week in an antibiotic haze hobbling around in flip-flops after splitting my big toe in a hair-raising jump I made over our gate at home induced by 3am callers from MTWAG (Machete Wielding Thieves Association of Ghana). To add salt to my wounds, my laptop adaptor decided to pack in so I was forced to go out in search of a new one. So I dragged along my national service person (NSP) Kwaku. No, I actually do not have him assigned to me but rather to my department...There are about 10 young'uns in our department but Kwaku has interned with us before and is so much fun to pal around with.

To pal around: [definition] Associate as friends or chums, as in Bill and [Obama] have been palling around for years
Definition courtesy of Dictionary.com. [Obama] addition courtesy of Mrs. Sarah Palin

I should mention that Kwaku is a great sport about driving 'cross town to get all sorts of weird things for people including myself.
Anyway, Kwaku and I made our way to traffic jammed Oxford Street in Osu. For some reason, this seems to have turned into the IT store centre of Accra. We went to a couple of stores, in the first one the dodgy people in charge asked if we wanted the real adaptors for GHC 70.00 (approx. $70.00) or the fake type going for GHC 35.00 ($35.00). When I eventually found what I wanted in another store for GHC 70.00, I had an uncomforatble feeling that I may be buying the so-called fake type for double the price!

So anyway after dealing with computer stores, we made the obligatory stop over at Frankies for some ice-cream. It had been over a year since I last went to Frankies and I was left in shock when I saw that the price of 2 scoops of delicious home-made ice-cream had gone up dramatically. I wasn't sure if this was due to:
1. Sky rocketing fuel prices
2. World-wide increases in the price of basic commodities
3. Credit crunch and sub-prime mortage debacle
4. Stock markets crashing world-wide
These days things that happens in one part of the world has an effect elsewhere right? All about the Butterfly effect.

As I hobbled over to the door of Frankies something flashed before my eyes briefly to my delight....a vendor with The Wire DVD Season 4! Having watched Season 1 -3, I had been searching for Season 4.
So at last, I have another great way to procrastinate! I love this show. Apparently it is a bleak and realistic portrayal of life in Baltimore. It does raise some controversial questions about urban life in an American city where corruption, dirty politricks, poverty and a chronic drug problem all reign supreme.
One cannot expect any warm and fuzzy endings for any of the characters and the bad guys often win. Interestingly, some of the actors on the show are real former thugs and cops. I was really confused the first time I watched the show and one of the characters was called Jay Landsman and when the credits were rolling I saw that one of the actors was also Jay Landsman. I found out later that Jay Landsman was a decorated detective in Baltimore who the character Munch in Homicide: Life on the Street was modelled after. To make it more confusing, the real Jay Landsman also plays a cop in The Wire. One of the producers of the show who played a cop on the show and another actor who also played a cop both died while The Wire was being made. The other cops had wakes for both characters. Another actor Felicia "Snoop" Pearson uses her real name on the show. Apparently she was a former drug dealer and hoodlum. Basically, there are blurry lines between reality and fiction over at The Wire.

Trashy bags - Environmental Innovation right in Accra

Sometime at the beginning of this year, a sign went up at the end of our street directing people to "Trashy bags" which is a couple of houses away from me. I had no idea what they did. I only found out last week and I'm just amazed. They take old ice-cream, yoghurt and water plastic satchets which are causing a serious eyesore all over Ghana, they disinfect and clean 'em. Guess what...they use 'em to make bags! Yes! The good people at Trashy bags make totes, messenger bags, backpacks and even briefcases. This is so cool that I wish I had thought about it. All in the name of reduce, reuse and recycle. It is kind of sad that Ghana is only taking recycling seriously now. Recycling was big in Swaziland when I was growing up way back in the late '80s when we were still listening to New Edition and Brenda Fassie. Well, I still listen to New Edition and Brenda Fassie so I guess things never really change! But I digress, we are talking about Trashy Bags here... You can check 'em out at http://www.trashybags.org.

The Bradley Effect

Something I heard on the BBC last week was all about the "Bradley Effect".



Bradley Effect: = tendency for white voters to tell interviewers or pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, but then actually vote for his white opponent.

[SOURCE: wikipedia.com]



Apparently, The Bradley Effect is named after the 2nd African-American mayor of an American city, Tom Bradley. Mr. Bradley lost the California governorship race in 1982 and 1986 to the same Caucasian opponent. Apparently the Bradley Effect may be putting Obama ahead of McCain in the polls…. if Obama was the same person but white, he would be heading for a landslide victory. Such is the world we live in.

Of Colds, Night-callers and 15 seconds of Fame!

Without a doubt, last week was difficult but full of learning experiences. First of all, I was down with a pesky cold and then Wednesday night there was a medical emergency at midnight and me feverishly driving the young lady who helps us around the house to a local hospital.

Thursday night was filled with even more drama with a 3am house-call by 3 members (in good standing) of the MWTAG (Machete Wielding Thieves Association of Ghana) who stopped by to unload us of our mobile phones. The experience was so harrowing that I can only make light of it. Friday was spent shuttling and providing monetary “breakfast” to trusty law enforcement officers just to get them to do that thing called their job.

The week ended well, I got props from Mr. Emmanuel Bensah in his Science/technology column in the Sunday World Newspaper. Thank you Emmanuel! My lovely national service person who picked up the newspaper for me said I shouldn't be too excited because my procrastinatory ways have been exposed in print. The young man should not worry since no names were given! The big bruv was so impressed that after the reading the article he said:

"Do you want me to have a blog?, I can have a blog, I can blog too!"

The big sis sent her props from South Africa. The whole family has checked out the blog. Would you believe my 11 and 14 year old nieces are internet aces and are on facebook?

So, I have decided to chronicle the lessons I learnt over the past week. From the Bradley Effect, YouTubing in government hospitals to adventures in the Volta River Authority heartland. Stay tuned!

How to do useless procrastination on the internet or at least how Abby does useless procrastination on the internet

The beauty of having access to the world wide web (CREDIT: I'd like to thank Mr. Albert Gore for this fine invention) at work is that you have access to ample amounts of procrastination right at your fingertips! This is a fact I know way too well. I'm sure the people monitoring the 'net use at work wonder why I do the things I do on the 'ol net...I just can't help myself!! Anyway, here are my top 5 favorite internet sites:


1. www.google.com. Can you remember a life before google? When I first interneted back in 1996, there was netscape navigator and then came yahoo which was like the best thing since fried plantain. Then suddenly there was Google... It is so fabulous that you can be grammatically correct by saying you are "googling someone" but can you "yahoo someone"? Yes and boy do I google up a storm...From the guy I had a crush on in primary school (now what was that surname again?) to ...for vanity's sake...myself....well, unfortunately for moi some illustrious Ghanaian lady has the same first and last name as me so you will only find me on google search page number 4…and in reference to drugs..No, no, no, it is honestly not what you think. I'm being thanked as a hardworking research assistant in another life in drug addiction research in mid-town Manhattan..Isn't it strange how you grow up with a supposedly strange name that everybody butchers and mis-prounces when you are a kid.Then when you move to your home country in your mid-twenties everybody there is surprised how you have such a common name combination! Of course they first insist you must be a foreigner who has decided to take up a local name..since you supposedly look East or Southern African...Ahhh...misunderstood everywhere!

2. www.bbc.co.uk. My source for the news…Even though sometimes I wonder why...After all, do I not spend all day listening to the beeb on the radio? For some reason I only seem to believe news if it from the beeb...Used to check the infamous ghanaweb.com for news but then realised it was more opinions and speculation than actual news..
I must admit that the ‘ol beeb is sometimes slow to update news and has a thinly veiled disdain for Robert Mugabe which sometimes worries my quest for news impartiality…(DISCLAIMER: Abby has not been a fan of Sir Bob since the late 90s ...I beg, fire those salvos elsewhere!! If you are a fan of Sir Bob please endeavour to find a Zimbabwean and ask them how things are in their country before harping on about the evil colonialists trying to bring down a true African revolutionary). Even though I believe the beeb, I'm still waiting for the follow-up on a story they broke saying that the Kenyan government had armed Kikuyu militia at the state house which sparked the so called "post-election violence" ....don't you love media-derived catch-phrases like that?! Was this story clarified when I was stuck in the deepest equatorial forests of central africa for 2 unforgettable months recently? Must've been coz not a single beeb reporter has uttered a peep about it.

3. www.imdb.com : the internet movie database…what can I say I’m a movie freak...being a filmfanatic comes with being a procrastinator....Although being in Ghana my movie intake has lessened in recent years due to restrictions on variety. But in my heydey I watched anything and everything. The good...the very very bad and the plain ugly. I promise not to be smug with my movie knowledge so I will end here. I welcome challenges..thought! I have this scary genetic affliction where I retain a whole bunch of useless knowledge and facts...that's why I get along with my big bruv so well...we speak the same language and most of Ghana think we are mad.
Finding the 6 degrees of separation that tie together all BBC productions is my latest fascination. I just found amazing links in my head between Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually...Emma Thompson's husband at the end of Sense and Sensibility (Hugh Grant) was her brother in Love Actually while her husband in Love Actually (Alan Rickman) was her brother-in- law at the end of Sense and Sensibiltiy...Her real-life husband (Greg Wise) was her would be brother-in-law in Sense and Sensibility while her real-life brother-in-law (don't know his name) became her brother-in-law at the end of Sense and Sensibility...do you need any more proof that I am crazy? Who cares about these facts anyway?

4. www.wikipedia.com: even if you can’t trust everything they say. In fact some of the things that pass for facts are plain scary! They really have to improve from their African stubs..You can imagine how great wikipedia is for a retainer of useless information like myself. I can check up everything from Southern African cuisine to a list of Kings of Asante Empire..When you are travelling to a new place you can always wiki it in advance.



5. www.facebook.com: First it was hi5 but that became snooze-worthy…For some reason, the 'ol buddies in the US of A had never heard of hi5...Now on facebook keeping up with friends and family has never been this fun!….provides excellent procrastination opportunities for a champion procrastinator such as myself…I recently found my best friend from primary school who was friends with someone else from our class who happened to be friends with my arch-nemesis from secondary school. Only Facebook can do that. Very soon “to facebook” will be a new verb in the dictionary alongside "to google", mark my words!

Life on Mars: Flashbacks to 1973 and endless possibilities

2 years ago my big bruv brought home a BBC TV series called “Life on Mars”. Since I had never heard of it, I stared at it for a couple of days and eventually forced myself to watch it out of boredom.

I stayed up all night watching episode after episode…mesmerized…Eventually I got the next season off Amazon.

I hear ABC has a remake lined up for an American audience….talk about ruining a good show!

Anyway, back to Life on Mars. I just could not get over the concept: in 2006 a policeman in Manchester (Sam Tyler) gets hit by a car and wakes up in Manchester in 1973, is he in a coma? has he travelled back in time? He is completely clueless and so are we.

Poor Sam is stuck in a 1973 nightmare without the internet, mobile phones or computers. While everyone thinks he is odd, he struggles to get home to the real world (2006) and in the meantime has to put up with police colleagues who are sexist, racist and smoke too much.The best character on the show is Sam's whiskey swigging wise-cracking boss from hell Gene Hunt: an expert in making off colour sexist comments, planting evidence, carrying out grievous bodily harm and taking bribes.. It is all a paranormal experience and Sam Tyler eventually meets his mum and the dad he never knew and they are both younger than him….The show is half fantasy half mystery with a little bit of police work that all seems to be related to Sam’s life in 2006 or to his past…

I don’t think I would have liked Britain in the 1970s. I think it would have been a depressing place with few foreigners and rife unemployment....After all, Maggie Thatcher was able to become Prime Minister back in 1979.

I think I was fascinated by the show because the idea of going back to Ghana in 1973 intrigued me. Back in 1973, we were hit by turmoil, we had just had another military coup and had just entered what is now considered the darkest era in Ghana's history. On the other hand, bell-bottoms, afros and platform shoes (“guarantees) were a la mode. I was not born yet and neither was my big bruv…My big sis was 3 years old and my parents decided to move to Lesotho in Southern African.

So if I had a chance to go back to 1973 what would I do?

1. Warn Ghanaians to keep the population hovering around 9million so we could all be REAL cedi millionaires
2. Invent the laptop or scout the world for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to marry
3. Be an environmental campaigner and warn against the thinning ozone layer
4. Warn people about the coming plague in the form of HIV
5. Hang out with my parents
   
   

Time travel offers so many possibilities. There are so many paths we can take in life and given the chance to do it all over again, which way would we choose?…if we choose a path opposite to what we chose the first time around, would that change our entire destiny and the course of our lives? Kind of reminds me of the Butterfly Effect.

Butterfly effect (noun): the phenomenon whereby a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g., a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro might change the weather in Chicago

wordnet.com

That's where the endless possibilities lie. If my parents had never gone to Southern Africa, I would probably be a completely different person. I would have never had the life I did, the friends I have as well as the experiences that make me...me! It is amazing how life experiences actually shape your destiny and open or close possibilities.

Of Churches, Classrooms and Sleep Deprivation

I think I am an open-minded person. In fact some of my more liberal rantings cause my Ghanaian friends and colleagues to shudder and groan. Okay, to be honest, I tend to keep these to myself especially at work. Being open-minded means that I think I am pretty tolerant of other religious beliefs. I do not want to turn this blog into rant-central but after being kept up last night by religious zealots, I feel I have reasons to whinge.

There is something that I just don't understand that happens in my country Ghana. That is , the conversion of school classroom blocks into churches once schools out .Granted not every church has a building and individuals wishing to fellowship and share the word of God cannot be prevented.

I myself am fortunate enough to attend a church that has had a church building that dating back to the "Gold Coast" so maybe I am just being churchist.

The fact of the matter is that I live next door to a junior secondary school. So,as would be expected each Sunday there are about 4 different congregations meeting in different classrooms from 8am to12 noon. In other words, one is privileged to fellowship from the comfort of your own living room!

My beef however is the inexplicable midweek all-night sessions similar to what happened last week and this week. Almost everyday from the time I got home at 8pm to the time I woke up at 4am, my Christian brothers and sisters were still fellowshipping! On a Tuesday night? Don’t any of them have work on Wednesday???? Doesn't this also affect the productivity of our great nation? Sometimes I wake up at 2am to hear the strangest sounds emanating from the school. Are these really church meetings?

Two years ago, the illustrious citizens of my ‘hood decided to revive the neighbourhood association. With vigour and energy we met and shared our grievances…it was great while the association lasted. At one meeting, an elderly respected member of the community stood up and raised the issue of being kept awake at night with the church all-nights… To my shock and horror, the chairman of our blossoming organisation told him that next time he is bothered, he should make a solo trip over to confront the church in session and ask them to pipe down…Was he kidding? In Ghana? Tell a gathering church to keep the noise down? Did the old man want to be cursed and branded the spawn of Satan? I was bemused…Needless to say the ‘hood watch thing soon collapsed and we have been left to our own devices with bumpy roads and all-night church services…*Sigh*

The Effects of Lunch on the Ghanaian worker

My big brother, the same one who told me in the early 80s that my heart-throb Michael Jackson would never marry me because I was black…years later when Michael transformed himself from a black man to a Japanese woman, I admit that my big bruv may have been right..

Anyway, I digress…this is not about Michael. My big bruv has this theory that there is a direct correlation between our lack of productivity as a nation and the meals we indulge in at lunch….

So class, the equation is:

Ghanaian Worker + Typical Ghanaian lunch = Sleep for the rest of the afternoon

I have direct experience with this phenomenon. After a lovely fermented meal like banku (fermented corn and cassava dough), I have to prop open my eyes with tooth-picks.

In fact most Ghanaian lunches from Waakye (rice and beans), fufu (pounded plantain and cassava) have that effect.

I think my brother may have a point because when I was in the Netherlands earlier this year I noticed a different phenomenon:

Dutch worker + light sandwich lunch = 30 minute lunch + Nonstop work ‘til 6pm!

Eureka, I have solved the reason why we have a productivity problem in Ghana!

To elaborate on the equation:

Ghanaian Worker + Hot weather +Typical Ghanaian lunch = Lack of productivity for Mother Ghana

So if we could replace “Typical Ghanaian lunch” with “light sandwich lunch” we could in fact reverse the phenomenon and claim our well-deserved position as a middle income country!

Ghanaian Worker + Hot weather + light sandwich lunch = Productivity for Mother Ghana

Of course there is still the problem of the hot weather....

New York State of Mind

Days like today I have flash-backs to a former life that seems so distant. I feel like I have many former lives...No! I'm not suffering from multiple personality disorder or talking about re-incarnation here. I'm harping on about occupying a different world and reality for a moment in the seemingly distant past. There was the Southern African life, Mass life, (harrowing) London Life, Ghana life and of course the New York life. I think my love affair with New York started from around the age of 5 years old. For most of the mid-80's my Dad constantly listened to Simon and Garfunkel over and over again..for some reason. I guess images of a New York I never knew were subliminally imprinted on my brain. So when I finally got to discover the real New York as a fresh undergrad, I was extremely disappointed! It was noisy, big, dirty, unfriendly and the people were obnoxious. So after 4 years in a quaint, small town tucked away in semi-rural Massachusetts, landing a job in New York was met with fear more than excitement. Things got much worse.. my new roommates and I spent 4 days walking around Queens in the hot sun trying to find an apartment to live in and all we were shown were matchboxes under train bridges...if we were lucky! I swore there and then that I would never like the city. Then we settled into our place on Steinway street in Queens and suddenly it became the city I love the most. NYC never truly sleeps, there is th 24 hour subway, Harlem, Times Square, Brooklyn, the cheap restaurants, interesting freaks, beautiful parks, hot dog stands, bagels, comedy clubs, poetry james, celebrity sightings and of course Chinatown. Indeed, New York is actually a state of mind, freedom and adventure. But it was not all bliss...the negative sides were crime, high rent, scary freaks, the sad state of the homeless, the rundown neighbourhoods, the high prices and of course after September 2001, everything changed but we won't get into that. Despite it all, I will for ever have a New York State of mind

Top Ten TV Series to Combat Boredom

My blog has caused quite a buzz...I can't keep up with all these comments being posted on my posts! Must be my wit, charm and winning personality (hehehe!!)

Top 10 TV series I have spent hours and hours watching lately to combat the mind-numbing Accra Boredom:

1. Prison Break Season 1 - 4 (worrying about the Schofields and Burrells of this world really helps combat the boredom....it is also fun to count the number of times Lincoln Burrell's accent lapses into unintentional Australian English under duress)
2. Lost Season 1 - 4(where the @#$#@ are they?)
3. Desperate Housewives (can’t stopping watching these suburban types!)
4. The Wire season 1-3 (aside from Season 2, the rest had me glued)
5. Everybody Hates Chris (This show had me laughing out loud for hours!)
6. Rome Season 1 and 2 (period dramas with debauchery are always fun)
7. Grey’s Anatomy (Black woman written, directed and produced...fantastic show!)
8. Life on Mars, Entire Series (the original UK version) (fascinating and nostaligic…granted I don’t remember much of the 70s …especially not Britain in the 70s but still a lot of fun)
9. Robin Hood Season 1 (so, so)
10. Heroes Season 1-2 (actually did not enjoy this one..unlike millions of comic books fans out there)

Do any of my regular blog followers have their own list? 5 will do if you want....2? Any?

Entertainment in Accra ?!

Lately, I have been bored out of my brains in my fair city of Accra and have been soliciting views from friends and coworkers on what their top 10 ways to amuse themselves in Accra are. So far I have found I'm not the only one seriously bored in this city! Here is my Top 10 list of ways to spend time in Accra:

1. Hanging out at the Accra mall surrounded by all the 15 year olds in the land who are barely wearing clothing
2. Hanging with friends drinking beer and eating kebabs at a seedy spot on the side of the road, blocking traffic and getting your ear-drums shot by blaring music …this seems to quite a popular activity among my fellow Ghanaians…
3. Watching movies at Busy internet….mmm do they still show movies there?
4. Hanging out at La Beach; if you don’t mind being solicited every 2 minutes by beach hawkers and hanging out with 1000 people, this might be your thing
5. Hanging out at Accra mall…did I say that already? Eish! shows how much there is to do around here!
6. Walking the vibrant streets of Osu going from restaurant to restaurant, bar to bar, club to club all while avoiding "narrow streets of cobbled stone"…well, not quite cobbled but narrow for sure
7. Hanging out at a nightclub or lounge dancing and drinking...when you get to my age there is that slight problem of NOT being able to stay up past 10pm!
8. Hanging at a hotel with friends drinking and listening to live music…is drinking like the only thing to around here?
9. "Counting blue cars" while stuck in traffic..
10. Out of ideas…care to go to the Accra mall anyone?

Well, my friend in Boston says that she is pretty bored up there too...so maybe it is a general boredom spreading the globe. So my dear Random Internet Surfer, I'm collecting views on how you spend time in your fair town, city, village, hamlet where-ever you are!