America is coming to Ghana

“America is coming to Ghana” is something I heard frequently from people last week as Ghanaians looked forward to the arrival of President Bush. There was a lot of excitement and pride that Bush was spending two days in Ghana during his Africa trip, longer than he would spend at any other destination. I watched the live coverage of his arrival aboard Air Force One into a cleared out Ghana International Airport. When I arrived it felt like a chaotic circus of people sleeping, hawking goods, holding signs for expected visitors, yelling ‘taxi, this way,’ carrying large amounts of luggage, and just all kind of craziness that felt very overwhelming after a long day and a half of traveling. Bush didn’t see any of that as things had never looked so calm at the airport.

All four of Ghana’s TV stations covered the arrival. A group of traditional dancers had spent several hours performing in their traditional clothes and the cameras showed George and Laura take a quick walk past them. Quickly, he was in his limo and headed toward La Palm Hotel. La Palm is where I spent my first trip to the pool for about $10. It is probably the city’s nicest hotel and sits right on the beach. Ghanaians told me that military ships pulled in outside of the hotel to guard the waters surrounding it. An entourage of 80 reporters arrived with the President along with over 200 staff members. I’m guessing that they booked up the entire hotel for the two days and didn’t let anyone else enter the casino or the restaurants during that time.

Bush’s visit was highly secure. The day before he arrived, the papers published the road closings that would take place to enable Bush to visit different sites around the city. The people in my office were horrified. This city struggles a great deal with traffic and the roads being shut down were some of the main arteries of Accra. The papers simply said “find alternative routes.” That is much easier said than done because this is not a grid city like New York or LA. There is typically only one way to get from point A to point B. The office staff decided that they would have no choice but to work from home. They were unsure whether I would be able to walk to work knowing that I would have to walk by the embassy. They assumed security would direct me toward a mile-long detour to avoid the embassy. Tawiah’s husband ended up seeing Laura Bush pass by his office. She was in a convoy of nearly twenty vehicles followed by armed military personnel standing on humvees. They headed to the Ghana International School where the president was to meet them and lead a game of T-ball with the students.

What had started out as positive fervor about the impending visit devolved into frustration and negativity about his visit. New comments started replacing the prideful ones such as, “Why is Bush even coming here so late in his term,” and “He is only here to get Ghana’s oil.” A lot of this negativity was exacerbated by a comment Bush made when he was first asked why he wanted to come to Africa. He was quoted in the Ghana papers as saying that he wanted to visit a continent of “disease and hopelessness.” It was one of the more ignorant and indefensible statements I have heard him make over the years and was insultingly patronizing to Ghanaians. There are certainly challenges here and malaria is a concern to everyone, but it is in no way a hopeless and disease-ridden country. Other concerns directed at Bush during a televised interview between him and President Kufuor was of Africom. The US is establishing a military command specifically for Africa in Germany though. Some Ghanaians were speculating that Bush wanted to build military bases in Ghana to protect US interests in Africa (people were connecting this with Ghana’s oil supply). He stated that Africom was purely for training African troops so that they would be able to curb internal violence or defend themselves.

People frequently asked me what I thought his intentions were for the visit and his responses to some of the questions. The lack of transparency in this administration has really made me think anything is possible with them, but I kind of felt like this was more a PR trip for Bush in his last few months to scramble for a last minute positive legacy builder. It seems that there are few countries really friendly to Bush right now, but Ghana was just honored to be visited a second time in a decade by a US president. The amount of questioning and conspiracy theorizing going on about Bush’s visit grew somewhat wearisome. I felt put on the defense trying to defend the US against accusations that it wants to “control the world.” I was also asked what Bush is so afraid of in Ghana to need to shut down the city so that he could move around.

At first it seemed somewhat logical that a president would take extra precautions, especially in foreign cities. However, the Ghanaians were able to contrast Bush’s visit with Clinton’s visit in 1998. Clinton was in Ghana for 8 hours and traveled around the city like any tourist. He stopped to talk with people on the street and many Ghanaians lined the street to see him. He shook hands with many of them. I would say that Ghanaians are still very much in love with Clinton, as are many Americans probably. There seems to be something about Clinton that really resonated with people around the world. The staged meetings with traders (one paper’s front page photo was of Bush using a giant mortar and pestle to pound fufu) and high security around Bush seemed to confuse people here. The inconvenience it created further deteriorated the positive sentiment around the visit. I buy water and cokes from a little shop on the corner across from the embassy and the owner, Felice, told me that she had never seen such a slow day before. I thought about the informal food shops that line the road near the embassy too. Most of them live day by day on what they earn from selling fried rice and roasted plantains. I am not sure how they were going to fare through two days of no business. Felice said that many of them couldn’t get to work this morning because the tro tros weren’t able to get through.

I had always heard about presidents’ trips to foreign locations, but it was rarely on my radar and I certainly didn’t know how it impacted the people in those countries. While Bush was here, I kept looking onto CNN.com to see what news coverage there was in the US about the visit. I saw very few mentions of it and, aside from my mom telling me that the local news channel is northern California was doing a story each day on Ghana, it seemed like most people didn’t hear anything about the visit. It was all over the newspapers here and at the forefront of everyone’s minds. I am not sure if the complexity of pros and cons Ghanaians credited the visit with is necessarily warranted, again it feels like an attempt to have one success to grasp onto when one is building a legacy.

Bush has pledged $17.4 million to distribute mosquito nets around Ghana, assuming congress passes his budget. This was his one major initiative targeted at Ghana, however mosquito nets are seen as problematic by NGOs here. While they welcome the money, it is not a sustainable solution since the mosquito nets have a limited lifeline, at least the treated ones that are most effective against malaria last only five years. Ghanaians would like a more concrete solution to reducing the number of mosquitoes here, and one that does not involve spraying pesticides regularly. In Accra, there is a lot of standing water that is pretty heavily polluted. The open gutters collect garbage and debris and the water just sits there. I asked Tawiah if it would help to at least cover these open drains, but she said that because the water doesn’t flow anyways, it will still just sit there. One reason it doesn’t flow is that people put their trash into the drains and it clogs up the flow and no one is responsible for ensuring the drains flow properly. It also seems like low water table levels prevent the water from moving. Essentially, this has created a breeding ground for mosquitoes throughout the city. Besides for the fact that mosquito nets have an expiration date, they are said to be much hotter to sleep under. I don’t find this with mine, but I also have a fan overhead that I keep on high all night long. Without the moving air, I supposed it could get hot in the net. So, on very hot nights, many people would rather not sleep in the net and are willing to risk malaria. Parents do usually keep their babies under mosquito nets for the first few months of life here. Anyways, it shows that the problem isn’t simply solved by more mosquito nets. Certainly education around proper usage and storage of the nets is essential, but Ghanaians would also like assistance in more preventative action toward combating disease in the region.

All in all, by the end of Bush’s visit and his departure on Thursday morning for Liberia, Ghanaians seemed to be left with more questions than answers. It also seemed to increase their support of Obama and Hillary. Amongst the various Ghanaians I talk to, about 75% are for Obama and 25% want Hillary. Some question whether the US is ready for a female president and others aren’t sure whether the US would elect a black president. Interestingly, my African dress tailor assumed that JFK was black. Like many Americans, Ghana is ready and hopeful for the US’s next president and is happy to continue to move the relationship forward to build stronger bridges between the countries.