New meetings-new discoveries

Me and Kajsa started our day by meeting up with a friend of hers, Astrid, at the private university where she is working in Accra. Once again i had jollof, but with fish this time, very tasty. It turned out that the majority of Astrid´s family is living in Kumasi, the city and region where i´m planning on spending most time in for my study. That was great news! A Nigerian colleague of Astrid joined us a bit later and we ended up having a interesting talk about Ghana and Nigeria. I have to admit that up until yesterday i didn´t know much about her country, part from it´s capital, because i landed there just a few days ago and i had heard that it´s an oil producing country, but that was it. This friend, who i´m sorry to say i don´t remember the name of, was very opinionated. She was very frustrated and angry about the corrupted government, she meant that for it to be a change they´d all have to go. Apparently a Nigerian senator earns more money than the president of the US. She said they had lost touch with reality. Because you have people that are extremely rich, but also "people that cannot even afford water". Another thing she brought up was the situation for the women of Africa and their cheating husbands. She could not believe that women, like her own mother, didn´t see it as a problem if the husband was cheating. After all, as long as he stay married to you, that is what matters. She told us she doesn´t get along well with her mother. With all this frustration going on, i asked her about hope, is there any? She replied by giving me an example of the telecom business in Nigeria. She said that the telecom industry is extremely successful, yet the country only controls 60% of the market. The rest is provided by foreign businesses. I would say, once again her frustration shine through. It´s a known fact that when the western countries built up their economies they did so by protecting their own economies, which in reality meant getting their own (national) production going. It would simply be more expensive to import goods or services from abroad than using the national resources. Is Africa part of the world economy, and if so, what role does it have? Does the west want to help Africa get out of poverty? I don´t think so. Economist Wallerstein claims that for some people to increase their living standards, some others have to decrease theirs... But that´s only one theory. Take Ghana for example, it is cheaper to import goods like rice from the US and tomato paste from Italy even though both goods are produced in the country! An effect of subsidies. The opinionated friend at the lunch thought that people are not angry enough to act on it.
So that was lunch:) Afterwards me and Kajsa went to a meeting with a man named Kwami who is working for an organisation that has just been granted money from the EU to improve cultural events in Accra. It was a very nice man who also had an AC in his office, which is very much appreciated in this heat! They were talking about how to organise themselves and we got some interesting broschures. Ghana had according to this man, before the financial crisis in this country, a vivid nightlife. But now there are not even light in the city (only in some streets and the rumour says that is a sign of someone considered to be important living there). Yet the Ghanaians get electricity bills where street lights are specified... He aims to continue the positive change (that has already began) of reinforcing cultural aspects in Ghanaian society, focusing on Accra.
Kajsa then had a meeting with her colleagues at a fancy hotel, but when we arrive we found out it has been moved. However, we bumped into two women, one of whom we had met the day before at the beauty salon and also at lunch earlier that day... Small world. She had brought a friend along, who basically gave me the creeps. She was all smiles but i did not want to be around her, bad vibes, and on top of it all she implicitly accused us of claiming that Africans are stupid and that we really should not assume they were. To me, she is a racist. I was happy when we left that place.
Then it was time for a poetry evening organised by The Ghanaian Association for Writers, which Kajsa had an invitation to. Her boss had sponsored the event. I enjoyed being there, listening to five different poets. The themes were mainly Ghana, migration, love and religion. The event started and ended with a prayer. Ghanaians involve God in everyday life. To give an example, yesterday when going for lunch we passed Churcheese (say what? I asked the Nigerian woman and she told me it´s a fast food restaurant)... And people like to put sacred messages on their cars, on the window in the back. Big letters, often in yellow or orange, i´ll see if i can take a picture, shouldn´t be difficult since they are everywhere.
That was my second day. It´s intense, in a good way. Today it is 52 years since Ghana got their independence, a national holiday. I am curious to see what this day will bring. All i know is that we are invited to an event on the beach...