Today's Los Angeles Times has a thoughtful op ed by Gregory Rodriquez which is worth reading in its entirety. Here is the beginning:
Obama at Ghana's Door of No Return
In his visit to Ghana, Obama offered a vision of history and the future that only he could have provided.
I don't say this because of the adoring African crowds that treated the American president's visit as if it were the Second Coming. Nor because I believe that our first African American commander in chief will somehow deliver the continent...
Rodriquez Here
My friend, who is a USA citizen and 70 something, lives in Ghana. She sent me these messages about the breakfast and some personal/funny stories. I have done a little editing to protect identities.
We were lucky to receive an invitation to have breakfast with the President and Mrs. Obama.
It was a gathering of "Who's Who" of Ghana Society. Obama spoke briefly and greeted everyone and was delighted by a song a reggae artist wrote and
recorded during Obama's early fight for the White House.
Instead of Obama entering the breakfast with some formal Presidential sounding music, They played the song and everyone was delighted as he walked
in shaking hands and joking and laughing with everyone. The composer was there and was called up to meet Obama and take a photo with him.
There were many American visitors in the gathering and were treated to a traditional Ghanaian breakfast. There were eggs, Ghanaian style, with
bacon and chicken sausages and rolls. The Ghanaian food was tom brown, which is a ground corn dish, a northern dish which is similar made of ground rice or some other grain. Watche, which is beans and rice cooked together, jolof rice, similar to jambalaya, black eye peas, with pepper and onion and green peppers. We also had fried fish, and a few common pepper sauces, and local fruit. I am sure I forgot something, but the Americans were able to sample a different version of breakfast.
A day later she sent this message.
I think Ghana has come back to earth after floating on air for 24 hours..
It is so strange the way Obama affects people. The xxx Ambassador and his wife were there to greet the Obamas, when they arrived. I called the wife and she was like a little girl, very excited and kept going on about how lovely they are etc.... The next day she called me to tell me that she called her aunt, and told her all about meeting Obama. Now this is a lady, who is a seasoned diplomat, but she was as excited as a teenager meeting him. I have never seen anything like it. I saw the zzz Ambassador at the breakfast and I said " I saw you last night" He was the same, all excited and said, " I was only one of 4 ambassadors invited" and was so happy!! So if people like these, who meet heads of state, all the time, act like this, you wonder, what will the common man in the street feel like when they see Obama?
Next is a draft of a newspaper article she helped edit. I do not know if it was ever published.
In 2008 as the United States moved toward the election of a new president and new Congress several US citizens living in Accra wanted to ensure that every vote was cast and counted by the American expatriates living in Ghana . With a healthy population of American citizens living in Ghana and being inspired by a message of collective and communal change that now-President Obama espoused a small group began organizing events to educate Americans living in Ghana about their right to vote from overseas.
The group of Obama supporters organized several events in and around Accra that evolved from registering people to vote to generating enthusiasm for the Obama campaign and then ensuring that everyone registered actually voted. Events to educate US voters had turnouts both large and small but considering past US presidential elections have been determined by just a few people every event and every new voter held significant importance.
In the end, President Obama won by more than just a few votes but his large victory was a direct result of a culmination of excellent get out the vote efforts that began during the Iowa causes in early 2008 and continued throughout the United States during the primary and general election season, and travelled around the world to countries such as Ghana where groups of individuals decided to ensure that their voices through their vote were heard along with the voices of others who believed that Barack Obama was the best person to lead the United States of America.
The organizers of the voter registration and get out the vote efforts are pleased that President Obama chose Ghana as his first sub-Saharan country to visit but more importantly they are enthused to have President Obama leading their home country in difficult times.
People of diverse views came together and worked to bring about change in government. Obama’s platform resonated with the desire everyone had for a change in how the government related to people’s needs and to their goal to change how the world viewed the United States of America.
There was a unanimous feeling that Obama would project the kind of image Americans wanted their President to project – Articulate, intelligent and confident, without arrogance. All who voted for Obama feel vindicated by how he has conducted himself in these first six months in office and how he has lifted the image of America beyond all expectations.
For older African Americans, who well remember when they risked their lives in the south, in their attempts to vote, which was their constitutional right to do, who well remember being barred from equal access to services available to all other Americans, who well remember lynchings and wrongful incarcerations of black men, who might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, who well remember the germ warfare perpetrated on African American men, by injecting them with Syphilis without their knowledge and coldly observed them for more than a generation, in order to determine how the disease evolved over the years and impacted on the general condition of the victim, have finally felt that they were full Americans, judged not by “race” but by the same standards all other Americans were judged by. On one can know the feeling we had as we watched Obama’s swearing in. The emotions of all our ancestors flowed in our tears of Joy! Why?, Because the vast majority of African Americans have been and are now patriotic, hardworking, totally committed to the Pledge to America and could never understand the rejection by White America.
Those African Americans, who choose to divide their time between the United States and a Black African nation, namely Ghana, are aware of the vast exchange possible between the two peoples, who are, in fact, one people. These courageous Americans longed for the experience that was not “race”driven, but at the same time opened our eyes to the facts about who we are – that we come from a tribe, a clan a village an extended family, who have a language, a culture and customs unique to the group.
Once here, that longing to know “Where did I come from” slowly waned. The sub-consious carry overs our ancestors had that the slave masters couldn’t smother, were all too familiar in everyone around us and day by day, we gradually surrendered to the life around us and thought “yes this is where we come from” and then we relaxed and began to live our lives with a new sense of our identity as a people of African origin.
Perhaps the greatest significance to African Americans reference the United States of America electing the First Black President is how it has inspired and motivated African American children to raise their aspirations with the knowledge that these aspirations are attainable and not unrealistic as many had been led to believe.
The local newspaper has several Obama related articles.
GhanaGraphic