My and Roachio down the schoolyard...

For weeks now, Ghana has been abuzz over the impending visit from President Barack Obama. (And by "impending", I mean the one that just went by this weekend.) After touching down in Accra on Friday, the President held closed-door talks with the newly elected Ghanaian head of state, President John Atta-Mills, before taking the First Family to the city of Cape Coast for a tour of one of Ghana's most important landmarks. (Check out my previous blog posts for thoughts on Cape Coast castle and the slave trade.)

Anyway, seeing as we really like Cape Coast, and also really like Obama, Jessi and I decided to head down that way and see if we could catch a glimpse of the man - or, at the very least, partake of Ghana's excitement over his arrival. For those not in the knew: Obama chose to make his first state visit to sub-Saharan Africa to Ghana, rather than the more obvious choices of Kenya (his father's country) and Nigeria (the most populous and also most self-important African nation). The reason for this choice? Ghana's success at creating and maintaining a stable democracy. And if you're feeling cynical about that, I can confirm that yes, the average Ghanaian does indeed have at least as thorough and levelheaded understanding of democracy as the average Canadian. It's more than just hype, folks!

Needless to say, both Kenya and Nigeria were royally shamed by the snub. (Nigeria a little more so - see above comments re: self-important). Ghana, by contrast, was thrilled. The streets were suddenly filled with vendors selling random Obama paraphernalia. The most striking was probably the wax print cloth bearing a repeated pattern of Obama's face on a Democrat-blue background. I have been joking for days that I want to buy several yards of this cloth and make sleepwear out of them, a.k.a. Obama pyjamas. (I've spent all weekend singing Paul Simon's "Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard", with "Obama pyjama" substituted into the first line.)

Somewhat more disconcerting is the amount of swag that has not been manufactured for the purpose of promoting the Obama visit, but instead has capitalized on it by randomly attaching the name "Barack Obama" to it, like a brand name. We saw a kid in the station wearing a denim ensemble with the Obama label embroidered glaringly over wherever the embroidery for the actual brand name used to be. Jessi bought me an irresistable pair of flower-printed underwear with "Barack Obama" silk-screened over the ass. It's like witnessing the birth of the next generation of kitsch. Really moving stuff!

Meanwhile, on Friday we lobbed ourselves haphazardly into a tro=tro and took off for Cape Coast. It's minimum five-hour journey, done in three stages - first the three hours to Accra, then through Accra (which is usually congested enough to merit its own stage), and then two hours further west to Cape Coast. We did it on Friday, and then again on Sunday in the opposite direction, so we're understandably tired. However, the results were worth it. WE SAW OBAMA!

Allow me to qualify that. Our Ghanaian friend who came along with us saw Obama - as in, she actually saw his face, waving from the car. Jessi and I, unfortunately, were only able to glimpse the motorcade. However, through holding up her camera and snapping wildly, Jessi was able to get a somewhat grainy picture of the President's hand waving out the window of the car. Thus, there is genuine photographic evidence of our close encounter with the American President! (I mean "close" in the sense that we got closer to him than we did when he was in Ottawa. Our standards aren't that high.)

A fuzzy photograph might have been disappointing to me, if I weren't equally as interested in Ghana as I am in Obama. And Ghana did not disappoint. Let me say from the outset that the security forces on hand (both police and the military) were admirably restrained and very professional. Now that that's been established, let's move on to the "Holy Crap" portion of the story.

We had reserved a room in advance at Oasis, the hip hotel on the beach that we spent all our time at last week. The road on which Obama's motorcade was to pass runs right outside. Sadly, although it was close to the action, Oasis was on the wrong side of the road. All the spectators were being coralled onto elevated ground on the other side of the street. Our side, as it turned out, was being used as a parking lot for various official vehicles of the Secret Service and the Ghanaian military - including, I kid you not, an actual tank. Needless to say, we didn't find out about these arrangements until we were actually in the hotel, and by then we were no longer sure where we could walk outside without being shot. That's an exaggeration: the police never did anything other than point us away from where we wanted to walk. Also, they didn't have guns. The soldiers, on the other hand, were armed to the teeth.

Despairing of getting close to the road, we borrowed the upstairs portion of the hotel and sat by an open window. This looked like it would be a totally serendipitous position, where we could watch the President's arrival in comfort. Alas, we were a tad too conspicuous. Two soldiers wearing helmets and carrying enormous semi-automatic weapons came to secure the hotel and told us very politely that we'd have to go to the street with everybody else. Sigh.

So, contrary to every piece of traveller's advice ever issued by DFAIT, we went outside and joined a large and exuberant public political gathering. In order to get to the spectators' hill, we needed a police escort across the road. The police, again unfailingly polite and patient, were more than happy to help the white folks get into position. (Locals, although they were also treated with comparative good grace, were marginally more likely to be chased with sticks.) In the crowd, there was little chance of a good view, but luckily we managed to secure a large rock that we could stand on. Unfortunately, several other people recognized the genius of this plan, and we spent the next three hours packed like precarious sardines on our small slab of elevated ground.

Finally, helicopters flew by overhead (to enormous cheers), announcing the arrival of the President. Minutes later, the motorcade roared down the street and parked not far from the spectators' area. According to reports and assumptions, Obama got out and greeted the local chiefs, before getting back in and continuing on to the castle. We couldn't actually see him at this point. Jessi was wildly snapping photos; I was leaning dementedly off the rock on one foot, holding myself up primarily with the muscles of my neck, trying to see anything other than hordes of adrenilated Africans. I managed to hold this position for upwards of fifteen minutes. I can assure you, I felt the consequences in the morning.

The real fun started once Obama moved on to the castle. Portions of the crowd decided they'd had enough for the day, and blithely pushed past the fence the police were using to corral them. Out come the nightsticks! Suddenly our little concrete island is surrounded by a miniature stampede, as the youthful male segment of the population wisely gave way before a pair of cops in riot gear. We began to feel like Simba on the rock in the middle of the wildebeest stampede. One agitator told the lead officer to go to hell, with the result that two of the riot police chased after him into the crowd, knocking him down and giving him, shall we say, a stern talking to. Luckily, the police were very heavily outnumbered and also were not brutish Hobbesian animals; the situation was quickly defused by calmer bystanders, and no actual violence resulted. Muddy clothes and my sanity were the only casualties.

However, the reason the police got cranky was that, according to them, nobody was supposed to leave the spectators' area until after Obama had left the city. (I can't say I blame them - urban Ghana is almost impossible to secure.) This meant that we were all confined to our little hill in the hot noon sun, sans bathrooms, with only the food and water being sold from people's heads to keep us sated. Eventually, the police thought the better of it and let the city's natural porousness take over. Most people stayed on the hill anyway, hoping to see Obama on the way out.

And see him we did! He took a moment, God bless him, to lean out the window and wave to us all as he left the city. This was when our friend actually saw his face. It was an incredibly joyful moment. Our hearts were lifted, the blind could see and the lame could walk. Nobody got shot or mutilated, and Ghana lived happily ever after. The End.