Ghana's Most Beautiful

Faiza (Kalila's mom), Uncle Nasir, and I went on Sunday evening to the season finale of Ghana's Most Beautiful at the National Theatre. It's kind of a beauty pageant reality show with a big dose towards promoting discourse about the intersection of Ghanaian culture and economic development.

(The first picture shows Faiza with me wearing the beautiful African dress she had her seamstress make for me and which I wore to the show. Thanks, Faiza!)

The show started out I guess 4 weeks ago or so with one contestant from each of the country's 10 administrative regions (kind of like states). They lived together in a house and one was voted out by SMS voting each of the last few weeks. With 6 contestants still left, the finale was a ridiculously 3.5 hours long (we didn't get out until 1am, and then the car wouldn't start so it was a very late night...) One of my host family's many cousins was the contestant from the Upper North region, and wound up coming in 4th overall.

A few key observations:

• I very much appreciated the fact that the women did NOT seem to have to fit any particular strict definition of body proportions, height, etc.
• Winner of Most Bizarre award: Ghanaian male models escorting the competitors (exquisitely garbed in traditional-yet-modern dresses) in outfits consisting of cowboy boots, the loudest boxers you've ever seen, and grim-reaper-style hooded cloaks. I kid you not. The photo hardly does the image justice (especially because they don't have their hoods up), but hopefully you get the idea...
• The show's production was not very professional. I was especially unimpressed with the lighting, which was a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope of color. I wish I could have seen what it looked like on TV, but I can't imagine it was very good... The dancing, however, did at least make up in enthusiasm what it lacked in precise choreography!
• The integration of education about economic development (when was the last time you went to a beauty pageant where the contestants had to recite the UN's Millenium Development Goals?) was impressive.
• I also appreciated how very explicit and thoughtful the discourse about preserving Ghanaian culture was -- especially interesting was the clear consensus that some parts of Ghanaian culture should NOT be preserved because they hindered development and kept people in poverty, while other parts certainly should be preserved.
• Winner of the "American Cultural Exports Suck" award: An otherwise quite touching song about baby Jesus in which all the dancers were dressed in Santa outfits. I can't imagine a less climate-appropriate theme.

Anyway, the next time someone refers to "GHB," I expect you all to think of Ghana's Most Beautiful, not the date rape drug!

Unwritten blog posts

I'm still doing way more bloggable things than I have time to blog about. So, here's a partial list of things that I haven't gotten a chance to really tell you about yet!

1) The press conference I stumbled upon by the CPP -- a minor political party that currently only has a single seat in Parliament but was the party of Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana after independence. Also, the old woman who sat down next to me and turned out to be one of Ghana's first female MPs, during the Nkrumah era -- we talked for almost an hour before the press conference actually started.

2) Nkrumah mausoleum -- fascinating memorial to Ghana's first president and one of the most influential Africans of the 20th century.

3) The courts/law firms -- I shadowed Sarah for half a day, through two court cases and at her very prominent law firm. Most surprising: The judges and lawyers still wear white British-style wigs when court is in session. Sarah and I are pictured; I'm holding the wig.

4) The Accra mall -- it's new and shiny and if you squint you'd think you were in Tyson's Corner.

5) The Burkina Faso embassy and visa-acquisition experience -- remarkably smooth and fast.

6) The voluntary service scheme -- I stumbled across the final round of the national selection process for the voluntary service year (kind of like Americorps).

7) Cape Coast and its castle -- 3 hours west of Accra, the Cape Coast castle is one of the dozens of remaining monuments to the horrors of the slave trade. Fewer than 7 in 10 of those held in the castle survived to make it through the door of no return onto a slave ship; even fewer made it to the New World alive. Pictured is the "Door of No Return" -- through which, after an average of 3 months packed like sardines in underground dungeons, you were herded onto a slaver. (Sorry about not being able to rotate the picture...)

8) WEB DuBois memorial & museum -- The house where DuBois lived out his last few years at Nkrumah's invitation is just a few blocks from my host family's house.

9) The National Theatre -- I stopped by this imposing Chinese-built structure to ask what the performance schedule was, and the guys sitting outside guarding the entrance had the schedule for the next few weeks printed on a single piece of paper in a binder, and didn't even have any way of telling me what the names of the movies coming up were.

10) Parliament House -- I toured Parliament House and observed Parliament in session for about an hour as they were debating a proposal to borrow money from other countries to expand Ghana's ambulance fleet.

11) Kakum rainforest -- one of the small surviving slices of rainforest in Ghana, Kakum is home to hundreds of species and has the sketchiest and most rickety-looking canopy walkway I hope I ever traverse. Pictured...