Cultural & political influences in West Africa

A few notes on my observations of cultural and political influences on West Africa:

• US culture is most prominent on TV, where many American movies and TV shows are on. In the Gambia the family I was staying with also watched CNN. However, we are far from unchallenged in the role of cultural supremacy. Al-Jazeera is the primary international news source for my host family in Accra; TV in the Gambia has lots of Bollywood; many if not most English-language programs have Arabic subtitles (example shown in the parlor of Ibraheem and Sirah’s home in the Gambia); and South African shows also seem popular.
• France is of course hugely influential in Senegal but not much so in Ghana and less than I might have expected in the Gambia given that it is landlocked by Senegal. France had a different kind of approach to colonialism than the Brits, and ties seem to be closer between France and the Francophone West African intellectual/cultural elite than the corresponding British relationship.
• Germany, for some reason, has a lot of well-marked development projects in the Gambia. Not sure why.
• I met a real live person, who spoke enough English to have a real conversation with, who had not heard of Barack Obama! She is 16 years old and from a tiny rural village in northwest Ghana, near Wa. She is “educated,” meaning that she goes to school unlike some of her siblings (hence the English). And she had no idea who Obama was – in fact, I’m not sure she even understood the concept of the President of America. Most other West Africans, however, seem to have quite a balanced opinion of Obama. They think he’s generally good, he’s probably made a few mistakes, and that Americans are expecting far too much far too quickly from him given how royally Bush screwed things over. They don’t have too much of the attitude I was surprised by in Jamaica last year, where Obama is viewed in the same category of historical figure as Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X – he’s not a savior or even really viewed as a representative of the black race -- he’s just a good guy who’s got a really tough job. Not sure how much the difference is because it’s now a year later and we’ve all lowered our expectations for Obama, and how much the attitudes differed all along. However, I did come across the pictured "Obama biscuits" this morning and couldn't resist buying them :-)
• Speaking of Bob Marley, he and reggae are remarkably popular here, I think for reasons closely related to the strong underlying sentiments of pan-Africanism and that all black people need to stick together the whole world round. There is a small slice of men in Ghana, the Gambia, and Senegal each who are visibly Rastafarian. Note: Rafiq and Faiza asked me at one point why all the white women in Africa who are traveling with/sleeping with/dating black men are with the black men with dreadlocks, and I had no good answer – but from observation it’s undoubtedly true!
  
• Nigeria is clearly the cultural Mecca of Anglophone West Africa – Nigerian productions make up probably 70% of all West-African generated music, film, and TV I encountered, even though I didn’t go to Nigeria or any of its border states!
• Australia has a very low profile (though I'm told that some of Ghana's gold mines are run by Australian companies) and Australians are very rare here (which in my traveling experience is unusual – they are all over Latin America, Europe, and of course Asia!)
• In Ghana, several times I was shown massive construction projects (usually sports stadiums) that were introduced with the sentence “The Chinese built this,” accompanied by a warranted awe for Chinese efficiency. Otherwise there wasn’t too much obvious Chinese influence, but neither was there too much obvious American influence outside of TV. My hosts in Ghana seem to think that America is more influential on Ghana’s politics, however.
• In the Gambia, I asked the same set of questions about China and was surprised to learn that China and the Gambia have highly strained diplomatic relations because Jammeh, the Gambian President, is one of the most vocal supporters of Taiwan on the international stage (eg at the UN). Taiwan, in return, provides a lot of aid to Gambia, including things like scholarships to go study at Taiwanese universities. But it was an important reminder of how being the head of state for a very small, poor country can still carry with it much more power in some ways than being, say, a governor of a very large, rich state in the US.

Back "home" in Accra!

As I told Uncle Negro and Sarah, when I got off the plane yesterday in Accra I felt like I was coming home! Of course Faiza and Kalila aren't here, but I'll see them soon enough in Indiana.

My last few days in the Gambia were packed with excitement, including a few more kora lessons, a fascinating school theater performance that Ibraheem was judging, and the opening ceremony of a national youth conference that Ibraheem was running, complete with the Vice President of the Gambia.

The first photo is of one of the acts in the school theater performance -- a traditional Indian dance, performed by a couple of students of Indian descent and a couple native Gambians. I hope I have time to write a whole blog post on the entire event, as it certainly deserves it, but this act in particular stuck out in my mind. The girl on the left in the picture was the leader of the group, and while the other dancers sometimes stumbled through the choreography, she had a look of intense focus the whole time (and it was long -- like maybe 4-5 min). The audience of middle and high school students, who you can see a few of at the bottom the picture, were going absolutely wild the whole time, screaming and dancing and clapping along. And I just had this sense that for this young girl, living in a country and going to a school where she's in a tiny minority ethnically and culturally (and probably religiously, though she could be Muslim), this was a pivotal moment in her adolescent years, the kind of moment of feeling accepted and even celebrated that problably doesn't come along very often. I felt a real sense of vicarious pride and joy in her accomplishment!

The second picture is from the opening ceremonies of the youth conference -- part of a procession of youth groups, musicians, traditional dancers, and more passing by a dais with several ministers and the Vice President. The brown hairy guy dancers you can see in this picture are monsters who carry machetes, and they're acting out some sort of attack scene. It's supposed to be very bad luck if they touch you with their machetes, and Sirah tells me that Rugi used to be very frightened of them as a child.