Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: Obama to Ghana

Monday, July 6, 2009

Obama to Ghana

U.S. President Barack Obama makes his first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa as president this week. He is going to Ghana after stops in Russia and Italy. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns reports from Accra that Ghana is getting ready for the visit with a fresh coat of white paint on the curbs along his route and a series of billboards - some welcoming the president and first lady, others showing the president with Ghanian leader John Atta-Mills under the words: Partnership for Change.

At Accra's main fire station, rescue workers say the decision by America's first black president to make this country his first stop in Sub-Saharan Africa reflects Ghana's political maturity.

"We are the first country to show maturity in elections because all other countries, after or before elections, there are fights and all this misunderstanding," said one rescue worker. "But we comport ourselves and go accordingly on the electoral procedure."

A colleague says Mr. Obama's visit will help focus attention on Ghana's stability.

"It is good that President Obama is coming to Ghana so that some African countries can say, 'Yes," he said. "A black American is the president.' And moreover, what we need from him is, he will bring more investors. More investors so our youths will get jobs to do, and our country will become a first-class country like theirs."

President Obama has already been good for business at the Accra Mall. The Kiki clothing store offers a variety of colorful Obama t-shirts. Owner Kiki Ademola started selling Obama products before he was even elected president. His visit has boosted demand.

"He really appeals to so many people," said Kiki Ademola. "And we can see that in the different customers that come to buy our Obama t-shirts. We have a wide range of customers from literally all over the world."

Shoppers at Accra Mall hope President Obama's visit will help cement Ghana's position in West Africa as a steady, free-market democracy.

"We have been an example for other African countries," said the shopper. "And he believes that when he comes here, other people will look up to Ghana and also take up democracy."

President Obama says he is coming to Ghana to highlight the results achieved by stable countries that are governed well, where leadership is accountable to the people and institutions are stronger than any one person.

There has been some media speculation that President Obama will press Ghanaian officials to give the U.S. Africa Command a base. But a spokesman for AFRICOM, Vince Crawley, has denied these rumors.

"We absolutely are not seeking bases in Africa right now," Crawley stated. "We have one base in Djibouti which the United States has had for a number of years. And I have seen the same press reports coming out of Ghana. And the purpose of the Obama trip is to engage with sub-Saharan Africa with a very reliable partner nation, but ... Africa Command has no interest in seeking bases in that region at this time."

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Monday, July 6, 2009

Obama to Ghana

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