Music from the continent

Rome:

In the hope you all had a merry time in the past days, here are two of the big hits in Ghana at the moment. (no connection with cristian festivities)
This is the song Black Rasta, a radio DJ (or as Thomas the taxi driver says: a Rastaman!), dedicated to Barrack Obama.
And this is a very popular song about some Angelina girl.

Below are some (random) pics of family and friends from the past few days.

"The Maverick and The Spin"


cousins on christmas day...

and

a big bug.

Take care, big hug to everyone.

journey into the abyss

Rome:
Long journey to get here. TIA still applies, but inseìtead of Africa this time read A for Alitalia.
I'll come back tomorrow with more details. Now I need some sleep.

Stay tuned

How weird does this look?

Republique Togolaise

Welcome to Ghana.

No matter how long your visa, when you reach ghana you'll be stamped in for a max of 60 days.
Approaching the end of this period you have two possible routes to follow. The first is through the Ghana Immigration Service: you leave them your passport, the money and hope that you'll get it back in two weeks with the right stamp on.
Stories you hear tell you that none of these will necessarily happen: it can take a lot longer, and you might end up getting something completely different from what you asked for.
The second route goes east of Accra along the coast until the Aflao land border. Cross into Togo, and when crossing back you'll be allowed to stay for another 60 days.

As the title of this post may have suggested, we followed the second route and spent the weekend in Lomè, capital of Togo.
The border is exactly as wild as you expect a land border to be in Africa, and perhaps a little kore than I expected. As a piece of advice: if anyone offers you help in anything: REFUSE! it's much easier to do it yourself and you'll avoid having to pay tons of dodgy officers.
Now I am making it sound worse than it was, I only left about 3 dollars to that kind of people. However, as I realized a few hours after crossing the border, the folk that exchanged currencies made magically vanish 30 dollars from my hand. No big deal, there is always a first time.

Togo is cool. Quite diffrent from Ghana in many ways. From the first step in, it is clear that it is a smaller and poorer country.

Lomè is more chilled than Accra. According to the guide it could once claim to be the Paris of Africa. Not too sure about that, but I have a few more african capitals to see before I can judge.
Unlike Accra however it's colonial past is quite evident. Streets are better designed, no open sewers, nice sidewalks, and every so often you bump into beautiful colonial buildings in a crumbling state. One of the main Boulevards runs parallel to the beach, making the ocean much more noticeable then in Accra, which feels more landlocked.
Motorcycles are all over the place, and most of them are used as taxis, this too is quite different from Accra where there are very few motorcycles and the most popular mean of transport is the "tro tro", a beaten up minibus.

Food is extremely good and cheap, mixing french and african dishes. Croissants and baguettes can be found all over the place. We didn't get much chance of exploring the nightlife, but on the streets there is quite a number of jazz bars. Shame we only saw them at 9 in the morning when looking for breakfast.

All in all, a very pleasant stay. I want to go back and see more, this time possibly learning some french before.

And the winner is...

Hello to everyone bored enough to be on radioghana!

Elections came and went leaving no troubles nor winners. According to the Ghanaian constitution, to qualify as winner of the elections a party should have 50% of votes plus one.
NPP scored little above 49
NDC little below48
CPP less then 2
and other minor parties shared the remainder.

A rematch will be held on December 28th between NPP and NDC.
Meanwhile all you hear on the radio is political debates.

On the way back from Togo this weekend we were stopped and checked by the police countless times. Two possibilities: Either with Christmas coming police officers go hunting. Or someone someone fears troubles and wants to prevent guns being brought into the country.
Time will tell.

Coming up soon pictures and stories from Togo.

Stay tuned.

Presidential elections 2008; kwik update

Results of the elections are not out yet,

The atmosphere is very sweet: all radios and tv in the country are tuned on a station where they broadcast counting poll by poll. It's all in Twi, but it's fairly intuitive: they give out the polling station number first, then the count and the percentages.
People gather in front of the little shops on our street to listen to the count together.

No major problem was recorded so far, only a few recount requests.

Ghana presidential elections 2008:

Hi,
Polls have opened this morning for the fifth democratic presidential election of the history of Ghana.
There are two main parties in Ghana: NPP and NDC.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is the ruling party at the moment, and it's been in power for the last 8 years under president Kufour. Presidential candidate for NPP is Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, one of the founding members of the NPP and first chairperson of the Ghana Committee on Human and People's Rights.

On the other hand hand, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which evolved from PNDC: flight liutenant Jerry John Rawlings' party. This party has been in power for a long time through a number of coups first and winning the 192 and 1996 elections. Even though Rawlings is not the presidential candidate for the NDC, he still plays an important role in the party.
Leading candidate for NDC is Prof John Evans Atta-Mills, Phd in Law from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS.. the worls is a small place!), with a long career as an academic.

There is no substantial difference in the policies proposed by the two main parties. While NDC has a more populist approach, NPP is relying heavily on the populariry of the outgoing president Kufour.

People realize that NPP has been in power for a long time, and wish some change to enhance democracy, but on the same time are wary of the long ruling history of NDC. Voting for one or the other is in many cases a matter of tradition.

A third Party worth of mention, which for it's history and non populist approach has grown to be my favourite, is the Convention People's Party CPP, led by Paa Kwesi Ndoum, A man with a vast experience of the private sector who has lived abroad for so many years that now speaks with a funny accent.
This left looking party ruled Ghana from 1957 to 1966 under it's first president Kwame Nkrumah,

Plenty more information on the three candidates above is available here.

No Problems are expected as Ghana has a respectable history of peaceful elections. However there is a combination of factors that make people nervous.
Both NPP and NDC are very strong, and the probability of a tie is very high. Furthermore, the discovery of oil off the coast, makes the winner automatically in charge of an incredible ammount of money flowing in from 2010.

See the economist's articles here and here. Here are some pictures from the election process.

Black star surf

After a cool week, why not enjoy an amazing weekend?

And yes sir, that is pretty much the description of last week: as the world bank consultant came to build up a financing model for the update of the education sector reform stuff started to move at the ministry, and it was great. Finally I am involved in something in something and am doing what i came here for.

Now the weekend... Rushed at the bus station at 5 o'clock as the ministry closed to meet up with Cami and Oli. Lived a few minutes of thrill when we found out that there is no room for us on the bus, until we find a new one, and off we go.
They say never to travel at night (night here falls at 6 and quite abruptly too), and there are good reasons for it. So far we have done a fair deal of night traveling with no problem... but we did see lots of horrible crashes.

Anyway, got to Busua at night and spent there a day and a half... What a sweet place! It's a bay facing south east, sheltered by an island about... 1.5 km away, waves coming in neat and tidy and no currents at all. Very unlike other beaches I have seen so far.
The original fishermen's village is still pretty poor, open sewers and naked children are the norm. But there is plenty of hotels up to very high standards, and locals make an effort (...ok their children do) to keep the beach clean from plastic bags and stuff. I think this place will look very different in a few years.
I will have to go back if anything to take more pictures, because I couldn't take many while surfing.




The pics you see in this post unfortunately are not mine. Next time they'll be.