{"id":580,"date":"2009-07-16T12:14:41","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T10:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=580"},"modified":"2015-04-27T20:21:08","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T18:21:08","slug":"obamas-message-to-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/obamas-message-to-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s message to Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Barack Obama had told me he was going to Ghana, I would have warned him. The country is a dump<\/span> \u2014 parts of it quite literally<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, I knew it as a place where very little functioned as it should have. The currency<\/span> was worthless<\/span>. Families often had 10 or even 14 children. Garbage<\/span> was simply thrown on the ground. Electricity and telephones didn’t always work. Fish at the markets were tiny<\/span> and covered in<\/span> flies<\/span>. People defecated<\/span> right on the beach.<\/p>\n

Various young Ghanaians tried to convince me that this state of affairs<\/span> was somehow my fault because of centuries of slavery and colonialism. But I reminded them that Ghana had been independent since 1957. What had they been doing all this time?<\/p>\n

In Ghana, nobody seemed to care about improving things<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I’ve been to much poorer countries \u2014 some of them next door to<\/span> Ghana \u2014 where the buildings were not rusting or crumbling away<\/span> and where the sanitation<\/span>, even without running water, was a lot better. In Ghana, things were the way they were because nobody seemed to care<\/b>. It was too easy to blame their corrupt government, the West, or other Africans. Nobody wanted to take responsibility. Instead, they wanted help from outside.<\/p>\n

For every angry racist who greeted me with the words “Hey, white man! Give me money!” or every schoolchild who felt I owed<\/span> him a ball-point pen<\/span>, I did meet an honest, hard-working, usually older person who apologized for such behavior. But even the good people said their country offered no opportunities. Could I move there and employ them? they asked. Could I marry their sister? Could I pull some strings<\/span> at the embassy<\/span>?<\/p>\n

The turning point for me came when, like President Obama last week, I visited one of the former slave castles on the coast. The slaves were kept there in dark, empty rooms like animals for days or weeks before ships arrived to take them to the New World. I was the only tourist, and the caretaker<\/span> was happy to show me around. Then he told me this:<\/p>\n

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“In those days, the jungle went right up to the coast. Do you think a white man could get even a mile into it without getting yellow fever or malaria? No. It was our own people. They captured<\/span> other Africans they didn’t like and sold them into slavery.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was just as amazed at what Obama told the Ghanaian parliament on Saturday: “Africa’s future is up to Africans.<\/b>” His words.<\/a><\/p>\n