big day, big weekend
you'd think that today is the biggest day in Ghanaian history the way some newspapers are reporting. Ghana plays the US this afternoon and the whole country is taking the afternoon off work. the excitement here is more than we can imagine for hockey playoffs or anything comparable. people are psyched. if Ghana wins today they will go onto the next round and the whole country will go crazy. i cant wait.
yesterday there was a major protest on the street near our building. a bunch of students, well hundreds of them, all dressed in red were protesting their lecturers being on strike. i think they wanted the government to pay the lecturers more so they would come back or something like that. anyway along with the hundreds of protesters, some of whom were lying in the middle of traffic, were dozens of policemen in riot gear, and on horses and with their usual ak-47s. for a while i was wondering how police deal with protests in this country and was starting to worry when the protesters started not moving when the police told them to. but things were peaceful and eventually they left. it was cool though, i felt like an international observer.
so i found out on tuesday that this weekend im going to Sogakope, which is town two hours east of accra, to a government workshop. my boss can't go so she is sending me in her place. the workshop is called the "broadcasting law stakeholders workshop" so i guess that i qualify as a stakeholder. we've been invited by the government to have some input into the new proposed broadcast legislation. MPs, media people and all sorts of civil society will be there. and i have to go by myself. ive been thinking about it in two very different ways.
on the one hand i get an all-expenses paid weekend at a fancy hotel, but on the other im going to be the only obruni there, the youngest person by 20 years and i am expected to make contributions to the discussions or else nana won;t be invited to anymore workshops. Nana also mentioned to the organiser that my father is in broadcasting law in Canada, so they expect me to be a semi-expert in canadian regulatory law, which im definitely not.
so this will be an interesting weekend.
yesterday there was a major protest on the street near our building. a bunch of students, well hundreds of them, all dressed in red were protesting their lecturers being on strike. i think they wanted the government to pay the lecturers more so they would come back or something like that. anyway along with the hundreds of protesters, some of whom were lying in the middle of traffic, were dozens of policemen in riot gear, and on horses and with their usual ak-47s. for a while i was wondering how police deal with protests in this country and was starting to worry when the protesters started not moving when the police told them to. but things were peaceful and eventually they left. it was cool though, i felt like an international observer.
so i found out on tuesday that this weekend im going to Sogakope, which is town two hours east of accra, to a government workshop. my boss can't go so she is sending me in her place. the workshop is called the "broadcasting law stakeholders workshop" so i guess that i qualify as a stakeholder. we've been invited by the government to have some input into the new proposed broadcast legislation. MPs, media people and all sorts of civil society will be there. and i have to go by myself. ive been thinking about it in two very different ways.
on the one hand i get an all-expenses paid weekend at a fancy hotel, but on the other im going to be the only obruni there, the youngest person by 20 years and i am expected to make contributions to the discussions or else nana won;t be invited to anymore workshops. Nana also mentioned to the organiser that my father is in broadcasting law in Canada, so they expect me to be a semi-expert in canadian regulatory law, which im definitely not.
so this will be an interesting weekend.
posted by Z at 3:38 AM
1 Comments:
You've probably been celebrating pretty hard with your Ghanaian brothers, so you might not get this for a bit, but both me and my dad think you'll bullshit something really decent at this weekend conference you mentioned. Either way, wear the headband.
Matt Hume
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