For the Love of the Game: When Football turns Tragic

It has happened yet again; a stampede during a football game has led to multiple tragic deaths on the African continent. Yesterday, a world cup qualifier match between Cote d'Ivoire and Malawi in Abidjan turned catastrophic when a post-match stampede led to the deaths of 19 people and injuries to about 130.
It was supposed to be a joyous occasion. After all, Didier Drogba, currently one of the best strikers on the planet, was making his triumphant return to international football on home soil. Perhaps that is precisely why thousands of fans tried to push their way into the stadium eventually leading to the catastrophic stampede. Ghana is no stranger to football disasters. Who can forget the May 9th 2001 disaster when a match between arch-rivals Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts of Oak held in Accra led to the deaths of 126 people? Just like in Ghana, I'm sure there will be commissions set up to determine what went wrong. Hopefully something concrete will come out of the investigations. What is it about 'the beautiful game' that can inspire violence, hooliganism and riots in Europe; murder in South America and at the same time expose some of the major infrastructural/organisational flaws in Africa?

31 March 2009: It turns out that the stampede actually happened before the match started and the authorities still decided to go ahead with the game. Just when you thought things were bad enough!

Light it up: Getting smoked out in Accra

Some of my best friends are smokers and I have no problem with an individual exercising their right to smoke but PLEASE; not all over me. Here is a nightmare scenario for me: I'm sitting outside at a cafe enjoying the lovely fresh air and having a coffee + croissant. Some strangers approach and even if there are 20 empty tables, they choose the one right by me. They settle down, whip out their cigarettes, light up and blow wafts of smoke all over me without a care in the world. That is exactly what happened to me yesterday when three men speaking rapid Italian parked themselves directly in front of me at the Accra Mall. I was livid. Maybe I'm annoyed with myself because I did not rant and spew vitriol all over them. Mmm...blogging is like a powerful outlet for passive aggressive people everywhere!

Smoking in Ghana is an interesting phenomenon.You hardly see people smoking in public but when you go out at night, swarms of smokers come out of hiding. Well, maybe these folks are mostly social smokers. There is something socially unacceptable about smoking in Ghana. Seeing a woman smoke is almost considered an abomination and there is an unflappable stereotype that a woman smoking by herself in a club/pub is a commercial sex worker! Warning to all you ladies who may find yourself flying solo out at night ciggie in hand.

I have always been fascinated with smoking. I remember visiting Geneva in my mid-teens and being shocked that everyone seemed to be smoking! It was like being in a 1950s film....you know the type of movie where a doctor offers you a cigarette in his office or where smoking is glamorized by Audrey Hepburn. Alas, it is now a well established fact that smoking is a major risk factor for lung cancer and a myriad of other cancers. Passive smoking is no better and many industrialized countries have welcomed public smoking bans in the past few years.

What I find interesting about Ghana is the lack of real legislature governing smoking in public in Ghana. Last year there was talk (there is always talk!) about a smoking ban coming into effect in November last year. What became of that? Will Ghanaians be able to enforce such a ban?

The Annoying Case of the Pesky Midnight Caller

I am still annoyed. The curious case of the pesky midnight caller has turned out to be anything but "curious". For the past few days, Mr. Stalker has called me every single night and during the day too. Luckily his calls do not come through but they still register. On Friday, I passed on his number to some friends to try and find out who he was. Unfortunately for them (and me), he cut their daytime calls and has proceeded to stalk them every night around 1am this past weekend!! When he called them, in performances worthy of Academy Award nominations, he used fake deep voices and demanded to know who they were. That should have set off warning bells since the stalker has never asked me for my name. At last, today there has been a break-through on the case. Mr. Stalker texted me and gave me:

• My full name
• My neighbourhood
• My place of work
• The project I've been involved in for the past 2 years
  

I should be freaked out but yet I just remain annoyed. The weird part is that Mr. Stalker gave me his name (Francis) and it completely does not ring a bell. Oh, my stalker also told me he calls at midnight because it is cheaper. At least I know I'm dealing with a dead-beat cheap-skate. Mmmmm, I know a couple of guys that fit that bill.

Finding the Unexpected in Tema: Tema Central Mall

I'm seriously beginning to wonder why some things are not better advertised in Ghana. This past Saturday, I happened to stumble across the Tema Central Mall completely by chance. Tema, in case you did not know, is a port city east of Accra. How we ended up in Tema on Saturday morning is a convoluted tale that involves masses of traffic around the Accra Mall at the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange. Would you believe the traffic was a result of the graduation ceremony at the University of Ghana? So there we were in Tema. I decided to swing by the MaxMart supermarket situated at somewhere called the "Tema Central Mall" . I completely expected this 'Tema Mall' place to be a dinky little building but was pleasantly surprised. It is a cute and quaint mall very similar to the one at East Legon. Aside from MaxMart supermarket, the Tema Mall is complete with a beauty parlour, coffee shop/restaurant (Café de Lyon), a Woodin textile stop, Identity clothing store, and a restaurant that appears to serve mouth-watering entrées. Apparently there is a gym there too. There were other shops but too little time to explore. I think the Tema Central Mall is suffering from a serious case of being under-hyped when it is actually quite impressive. Why can't the businesses there come together and have a web-page or an ad in the newspaper?

The Curious Case of the Pesky Midnight Caller

I am annoyed. I am annoyed because I am being mobile phone-stalked. For the past few days, a mysterious number calls my mobile around midnight. When I answer the person does not say anything. I hang up and the person calls back immediately and does the same thing. When I call them back during the day to spew vitriol and venom, they immediately cut my call. So I have blocked this pesky mystery caller. Unfortunately, my phone still registers their calls and last night, this aimless individual called 5 times! There were 3 more calls this morning. I'm sure my mystery caller is chuckling with glee as he(she?) lays about in his (her?) pjs during the day. After all, would someone who is gainfully employed have such time on their hands? My national service person says it is no big deal. He says I should not worry since this is not America. America or not I have watched too many movies including Scream (loved that movie by the way!). A friend of mine and I had a tradition of going to see all the Scream franchise films on the big screen back in the US of A. Ahhhh good times! The first one was great but the successive Screams just got a tad weird and tired. Anyway, was thinking of publishing my stalker's number online but decided against that. I welcome any suggestions on how to deal with a pesky, cowardly phone stalker!

Fast-Food Ghana Style: Culinary Delights Part 3

After a very long day in the Volta Region today, we took a detour across the spectacular Adome Bridge in search of 'abollo'/'bodoo' (corn meal wrapped in banana-leaf) and shrimp. Eureka!! We were victorious! That is one thing I love about Ghana ; delicious culinary delights for relatively cheap.

Independence Day: A View out of Ghana

Today is independence day in the fair country of Ghana; 52 years of freedom and justice (with questionnable lapses here and there along the way). Independence day is also the theme for the communal blog topic amongst Ghana bloggers. For some reason I am completely uninspired by Independence Day 2009. There are a number of reasons for this:

• A bad work meeting over the phone with collaborative partners in Europe that ended 30 minutes ago
• The fact that it does not feel like independence day and in fact most people have gone to the mall or the beach
  
• 52 is an odd number...it is not like 50 or 55 or 60...these seem to offer something more to celebrate

Before coming to work, my family and I spent our independence day lounging around after a delicious brunch followed almost immediately by my current favorite meal apem and palaver sauce (boiled plantain and spinach stew ). Like millions of Ghanaians, we watched the official independence celebrations on TV and listened to our new President's speech. He was poised and eloquent but we were a tad creeped out when the camera man captured a shot of the president's speech script and we could see that the font size was Arial 60. After the celebrations, television quickly turned into the usual documentaries about life in the 1950s and the path towards independence.

Around lunch time, TV3 started showing a Ghanaian film classic from 1970 I told you So starring the late greats Araba Stamp and Bob Cole. We gasped at how little Accra (especially around High Street) had changed from when the film was made to now...Not a good sign.

Regardless, this day should be a time for all Ghanaians to reflect on how far we have come as a people since 6 March 1957. The struggles we have faced, the adversities we have overcome and how these have only made us stronger and wiser.
Just as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had so much hope for the future when he declared that Ghana was free for ever, so too should we look towards a brighter future filled with bigger and better things.

Rocky Dawuni's classic In Ghana very grainy video but the message still rings clear for me.

Fairtrade Chocolate: Cadbury makes a sweet move

Kudos to Cadbury! I was excited to hear this morning on the BBC that Cadbury's Dairy Milk brand is set to become "Fairtrade certified". This would mean that hardworking cocoa farmers in my country Ghana will now be paid a guaranteed minimum price for their cocoa even if open market cocoa prices fall below this minimum. Cynicism and suspicion aside, this is good news for Ghana and even more exhilarating for some of us who hail from cocoa farmer stock from the deepest hinterlands of Ghana. Time for me to ditch the day job and get back to working the land! On another note, it would be great to see more Fairtrade certification for other products from developing countries.

Reflecting on the 24th February 1966 in Ghanaian History

I'm ashamed to admit that it was the BBC that had to be the one to remind me that today marks 43 years since one of the most dramatic events in Ghanaian history occurred. On 24th February 1966, the first President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in what was the first in a series of coup d'états that blot the landscape of Ghanaian history.

Hindsight 20/20 makes it easy for everyone to present differing points of view of how Ghana would have turned out without the coup. Some insist that Dr. Nkrumah should have been allowed to continue with his seemingly promising socialist agenda and pursue his dream of a united Africa. Others on the other side of the debate argue that Dr. Nkrumah was already showing signs of becoming increasingly autocratic and less tolerant of dissenting voices. History also tells us that he seemed to be devoting more time to pursuing his vision of a united Africa to the detriment of Ghana.

Regardless of what our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles tell us or what some of people may even remember about this time, today provides the perfect occasion to reflect on the Butterfly Effect that I rambled on about earlier. How could Ghana's history be different if Kwame Nkrumah was never overthrown? The possibilities and scenarios are endless. Possible scenarios without the coup:

• Ghana could have emerged as a leading industrial nation in Africa under the Nkrumah-ist socialist agenda with an almost egalitarian society as well as marginal differences between rich and poor. However, is there any country out there where a rigorous socialist agenda actually stood the test of time?
  

• Falling commidity prices in the early 1970s could have hit Ghana's socialist agenda in the same way they hammered another socialist country Tanzania rendering it one of Africa's poorest nations. In this scenario, Ghana may only have been able to recover years later in the same way as Tanzania.
  

• Ghana could have become a reactionary one-party state with Dr. Nkrumah as the aging dictator unwilling to give up power in the vein of a certain "Uncle Bob" way down South.

• The authoritarian nature of a one-party state under Kwame Nkrumah could have lead to a rebellious armed opposition that would have plunged Ghana into a bitter civil war. This war would have pitted Western-backed rebels against Communist-backed Nkrumah similar to the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
  

Alas, as with the Butterfly Effect, the possibilities are endless. Regardless of how history did in fact play out, this 24th February is different. Simply because this year, Kwame Nkrumah's only daughter Samia has just taken up her seat as a member of parliament for the latest incarnation of her father's party, the Convention People's Party. There is something about coming full circle about that.