Sicknesses of the Heart and Mind

 A NYT piece on the Affordable Care Act indicates that people who have gained health care coverage are experiencing improved mental health because they no longer worry about how to access health care. One interviewee, who now has consistent care to manage diabetes stated that, “The heavy thing that was pressing on me is gone.”  I focus my research energies on the heavy things that press on people here in the Upper West Ghana. It turns out I’m not immune from my own heavy things either as I continue to cope with being a stranger becoming no less strange in a strange land.  

Medical anthropologists approach health in a holistic way. I study how emotional strife originates, navigates into the mind, and settles in the body. I investigate how illness, as medical anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock (1987) assert, is a form of communication by which nature, culture and society speak simultaneously. Such an approach looks for how proximate biological symptoms have ultimate factors of causality that are social. 

Here in the Upper West region of Ghana, where farming is becoming an increasingly challenging livelihood, and access to other viable income earning opportunities are constrained, emotional strife is not difficult to uncover. No matter where you are in the world, managing a household on marginal incomes is stressful.  It involves daily decisions about how to meet immediate needs like food and health care while not neglecting future needs.  A common scenario in this region is the struggle to farm to feed children while also ensuring that their increasingly expensive school fees are paid.  The higher the educational attainment, the more likely they are to obtain a salaried job and the more likely they are to be able to take care of ageing parents constrained to farming.

People operating under these circumstances talk about “thinking too much”, a local idiom that describes a brain overwhelmed with the need to solve various economic problems. People who identify as doing too much thinking talk about how the activities of the brain result in poor sleep, body pains and dizziness.  Some people identify these symptoms as congregating in an illness locally known as worry sickness.   Thinking too much can also, and quite deleteriously, travel to the heart.  When worry settles in the heart, a more debilitating illness, which translates as heart sickness, can result.  This illness of the heart somewhat resembles hypertension and somewhat resembles severe anxiety disorders. Regardless of its clinical categorization, it greatly limits the amount of work that people can perform, thus reducing their income and feeding back into a cycle of thinking too much.

Not surprisingly, prevention of the onset of worry sickness and heart sickness is companionship.  Both men and women identify socialization as the primary way to put too much thinking at bay. Both men and women actively seek out their peers to discuss their worries and ways to mitigate them. 

It’s also not surprising that the most well-adjusted sounding anthropologists are those who have moved to their field site with a significant other or a family unit. 

Fieldwork is not hard because I don’t have indoor plumbing. Fieldwork is mother trucking hard because it is always emotionally overwhelming.  Without someone who is also simultaneously experiencing and understanding that emotional hurricane, it’s hard to keep these heavy things from pressing too hard on me.

I think I just took 5 days of Ciprofloxacin to cure homesickness.  When I get homesick, my heart feels like it’s sinking into my lower abdomen and I embody the “heavy heart” idiom common in the US.  And I’m beginning to suspect that this weighty melancholy instigates other physical symptoms.  Since starting fieldwork I’ve had phases where I become intensely nauseous. It’s a sickness that is not comparable to the “well I shouldn’t have eaten that” illnesses I have previously experienced here.  I think these phases of nausea have psychological rather than organic origins.  I think these phases are a way that my body is rebelling against my social circumstances.  The waves of nausea may be my body’s way of saying “Why the hell are you even here???”

If only emotional ailments could be treated with something like Gripe Water

Cipro won’t cure my heart sickness. So to keep my social protest stomach at bay, I’m trying to play with as many roaming puppies and babies as possible without looking too loony. I keep working my way through the WTF canon and am cultivating quite a fictional friendship with Marc Maron.  I’m also packing in as many evenings with my adoptive family as possible.  Even though we can’t share laughs over references to Arrested Development, we can drink beer together and share laughs over the universal funniness of flatulence. Sinking comfortably into the backdrop of a busy, loud and welcoming house (farty or not) is a pretty good social medicine for keeping those heavy things from always pressing too hard on me. 

Somebody Still Loves You Barack Obama

When my nationality is inquired about,  usually within seconds of my response, "Obama!!" is gleefully shouted.  For a country that loves to hate its own politicians, it is pretty infatuated with my own president.  This love emerges without consideration of who Barack Obama is as president. 

It's kind of refreshing to be away from the disillusioned disappointment of Obama's supporters and vitriolic hatred of his haters. Here Obama is more of an ethereal figure--a man who doesn't have to stand for what he does,  but is admired simply for his eloquent movement  into a realm of power and prestige.  

Here he joins the ranks of rappers with admirable haircuts. 

And his message of hope and change is not used to amplify grand policies such as national health care, but rather it is all that is needed (alongside a toothbrush) to encourage healthy teeth and gums. 

Here, he even has his own cheer leading squad. 

 And boys deck out in the "Obama Tuxedo"

Where a jersey is best accompanied by embroidered jeans

So, regardless that back in the USA where Obama is greying crazily fast and looking dour and mournful as he tries to salvage the pre-presidential legacy that gave him the opportunity to gain a presidential legacy, here he is a man that is likeable enough that he sells cheap, yet comforting biscuits called Obama Biscuits.   It's a lot easier to digest this Obama. 

Searching for Saalong

At the risk of sounding like a line Meryl Streep probably delivered in Out of Africa, “Thank God the rains are coming.” I am thankful for the rains because the temperature drops and the dust is contained.  The world looks and smells refreshed and I can sleep without sweating and thereby come a little bit closer to looking and smelling refreshed.  The rains are also bringing out critters.  The other night I woke up to the sound of 2 furry spiders galloping across my room.  In the ongoing tournament for MVFP (most valuable fieldwork possessions), in the current bracket, furry spiders initiate the triumph of mosquito net over Kindle.

There’s obviously a lot of relevance to the start of the rains to my research on food and farming as well. Though farming is still about a month or two away, the rains are bringing new green growth in the wild.  Tiny shoots are springing up out of the still very dry earth.  Some of these tiny new green things are edible.   Last Saturday I was invited to accompany some teenage girl on one of their recent foraging expeditions for such a green edible called saalong.  

I’m hyper self conscious when it comes to foraging for things because as a child I failed in every single morel mushroom outing I ever had.  During the springtime morel season, I’d board the school bus and my bus driver would boastfully hold up the giant bread bag of morels he had gathered in the morning.  Those dumb mushrooms evaded me in every angry march through the woods. 

I got a little flustered, therefore, to see that saalong is not even close to looking substantial in girth.  It’s teeny and grows as close to the ground as it possibly can.  If I couldn’t find a mushroom how was I going to find this tiny plant, a tiny plant that I suspect might actually be classified as an herb? Well it took about 5 tries, but I did eventually and correctly identify saalong.  Much to the amusement of my young female friends, I threw my arms up in the air in celebration, feeling vindicated for every little elfin mushroom that has ever escaped me.  I never determined any kind of pattern for where saalong might be found and noticed that the girls were very careful to pluck only the leafy growth so as to leave the roots intact. We paraded around the bush for about 3 hours.  By the end of the expedition I’d say that each girl had about 1 cup of saalong to take back home, an amount substantial enough to do what it is valued for—making soup slippery.

Saalong that I found

How close to the ground you have to be to pick saalong

About 90 minutes in to collecting saalong, this was the amount procured.  I got great delight that one of my companions was collecting her saalong in an old bread bag-it was this that made me remember all of my bitter and happy morel mushroom memories.

Saalong is helping to drive home the point that food security is not just about having food, but having food that is prepared in a way that is most appreciated and enjoyed.  Commonly used products from the savanna forest (including leaves, seeds, and fruits) contribute to how food tastes and, perhaps even more importantly, how it feels.  Yes, how it feels.  There is a very strong preference for foods that are “slippery.”  Slippery is the less caustic way to describe the sliminess I often ascribe to okra. Though I’ve yet to dig deeper into the matter, I’m guessing that a slippery texture is important for soups because slippery soup covers the staple porridge quite well.  Slippery soup really isn’t my cup of tea, but it is the cup of tea for people here.  If they didn’t value this aspect of their food culture, no one would spend 3 hours searching for it under the glare of the savanna sun.

Even though I’ve never been able to supply my own morel needs, I’ve eaten my fair share of them and appreciate their fleeting buttery presence. Perhaps one of my earliest food memories is sitting in a tavern eating deep fried morels and knowing that because they came from the woods and not from the grocery store, they were afforded a degree of admiration for the time (and obviously talent) they took to find. So even though saalong and it's slipperiness isn’t my cup of tea, I understand why it’s important and not to be neglected in talking about food security in the Upper West and why it and other foraged for foods need to get on the radar of the designers and planners of food and nutrition interventions. 

Attempting to capture the slipperiness of the saalong as it is used in soup.

Making Sense of Mangos

Fruiting trees are pretty rampant in the savanna.  However, compared to the fruit producing forests of the south, where pineapple farms are aplenty, the fruits of the north serve different purposes.  Some fruits are valued for their flavor and some for their seeds, but few for their flesh. 

Fruit stand in Accra

Pineapple farm in the outskirts of Accra

As a lover of fleshy fruit, I’m having some difficulties adjusting to the fruits at my disposal.  February was dominated by cashew fruit. Cashews produce a beautiful fruit that is also quite tasty.  However, cashew fruit did not a fruit hankering quench.  Mangos, however, hit the mark.  Mango trees, though not indigenous, have been around a long time and are a very common tree. They provide great shade and great fruit.  And they just came into season.

Cashew fruit sitting on top of the cashew nut

Chiraa-a fruit I can only describe as being kind of like a pomegranate if a pomegranate only had 1 big seed inside that was not very juicy. 

Mangos are the reward for enduring the hot and dry season.  I like to think that every day the temperature climbs past 105 is a day that makes mangos extra sweet. Not surprisingly, mangos are valued as a food source. In my most recent round of surveying households on their food security status, it’s apparent that many households are already running out of their stored food from October’s harvest.  Many are employing meal cutting strategies to make the food last a bit longer before they are dependent upon purchasing food.  As such, mangos are valuable hunger quenchers and vitamin boosters. 

Surprisingly, I'm also learning a lot about social relations and dynamics with the mango boom. Ownership of mango trees is difficult to parse out.  The very large trees around the borehole seem to provide communal mangos.  After school, these mango trees become battlegrounds.  Previously I would have described mangos as something that one foraged for.  Now I’m convinced that mangos are indeed prey that require sleuth and strategy similar to hunting.  Long sticks are employed as weapons to knock them out of the trees.  Children also climb into trees to get the finest pickings.  

Mangos fit much better in bike baskets than watermelons

Two weeks ago a young boy fell out of a mango tree and pretty severely injured (probably broke) his arm.   In visiting with the boy and his parents I learned that they were not going to take him to the local hospital even though they had health insurance to cover the hospital fees. Instead they were going to rely on local medical practices to for bone setting and healing.  In inquiring a bit more about this decision making process, I learned that the local hospital is not able to take care of broken bones. Rather, they refer patients to distant hospitals that require expensive transportation fees that are above and beyond what people in this community can afford.  Even with relying on more affordable care options, these parents were pretty stressed with the situation as even localized care requires fees or in kind that can be pressing for households with minimal income. 

Smaller trees, where the fruit dangle not meters above your head but tantilizingly in front of your face, are claimed as owned. These trees are often adorned with items such as a turtle shell or ram horn to make potential thieves think twice about crossing the spiritual forces guarding the fruit. Just as mangos are good food sources, they're also good money sources.  When you don't have a surplus maize crop to sell, a surplus mango crop can provide an income boost. 

Mango trees growing inside courtyards makes ownership easy to decipher

Last week a young girl of about 10 was out in the bush collecting mangos.  When she saw someone approaching her, she assumed it was the owner and went into panic mode.  She dropped her toddler sister in fear and ran off.  In a country where spirits are protecting against thievery and where and theft is punished with vigilante justice, panic mode is the only mode for being caught in the act. Unfortunately, when she got home she wasn't able to relay where she had left her sister, thus initiating the localized form of the Amber Alert. All men in the community came together to form organized search parties to cover the expanse of the bush.  Luckily the child was found. When she was returned to her parents, everyone in the community went to the family's house to receive her.  I guess sometimes it does take a village. 

I value being witness to such effects of mango season because I'm reminded of how social undercurrents reverberate to both create and solve problems. Mango season is important for its nutritive contributions, but  negotiating the risks involved in accessing those mangos requires understanding more about social relations and social dynamics. This is, ultimately, the lesson that the world of philanthropic development continues to learn.  Just because a mango tree exists does not mean everyone will have equal access to mangos. Just because health insurance is activated and a local hospital exists does not mean that the provision of basic service will be available.   And that is why nearly every anthropologist's conclusion is "but it's more complicated than that."  

Spreading the Gospel

My research assistant, who provides me with hourly commentary on Chelsea (his English Premier League football team), recently pointed to my Kindle and asked if it was a calculator.  I said no, it was like my Chelsea. Because I received a solid education in a predominant language and books have been an accessible part of my life from the very beginning, reading has been enabled to become my Chelsea.  The formula is a bit different in Ghana. 

It’s not uncommon to hear Ghanaian leaders bemoan their oral tradition. This seems a bit archaic of a complaint. I don’t think this communicative form should be bemoaned.  Sometimes it seems that anybody in this country, if handed a microphone, could confidently and eloquently articulate whatever message needs to be delivered.  When I think about how much my peers and I can struggle to orally communicate our research findings, I envy this Ghanaian skill.  

Ananse, the trickster spider figure who is featured in so many Akan oral traditions, is recycled into 21st Century means of communication-comics and video games. 

What leaders should really be critiquing are the discrepancies in education that lead to illiteracy and the lack of public and private funding for facilities and resources that enhance strong literacy skills. 

(Brief PSA on the topic of books and book accessibility: Folks in the Scenic Regional Library service area-don't forget to support your local libraries!  Vote for the tax levy!)

Though many, many languages are spoken in Ghana, they are not prioritized in the reading and writing exercises at school. English is the predominant language used in the curriculum. In order to become a really proficient reader and writer in English, finishing high school is the strongest advantage. This, unfortunately, is not as common as one would hope.  When compounded by the fact that libraries are few and far between and imported books are often priced beyond the means of the average Ghanaian, the possibility to have a literately engaged society across all economic strata is challenged. 

Anthropologists get their kicks exploring diversity.  Therefore, it’s a bit disheartening to see that so many of the books that are most visible to my eye are those that portend to hold secrets vital to securing something you want or think you want. The demand for these books is obvious and I don’t disrespect that. I readily admit that my Kindle holds more than 1 book that qualifies as self-help, but only books that  teach me Buddhist philosophies and those recommended to me by my guru Marc Maron.  I do, after all, operate within my own socially constructed parameters of acceptability.  (Can the hipster gatekeepers let me know if it’s cool to read How to Win Friends and Influence People? Cause street hawkers keep tempting me with it and I kinda think it might have some clues for how to finish these final steps to PhDom.)

I just wish that for every bookshop called 100% Jesus (an actual bookshop in Accra) there was a bookshop called 100% Ghanaian Authors Who Do Not Exclusively Write About Jesus.  But I’d settle for a 50% Jesus bookshop. 

I've never actually seen a copy of Taiye Selasi's debut novel for sale in Accra even though she came to do a book launch. I'm guessing that the many Ghanains who've read it did so via ebook.

Who knew that Steve Harvey wrote books when he wasn't hosting the Feud? 

Perhaps because I’ve been a bit zealously occupied with the Ghanaian interest in what Steve Harvey and Joyce Meyer have to say, I’ve overlooked a very intriguing trend in mass market fiction. In checking in with my friend Esther, a Dr. of African Literature, I’ve learned that a local mass market fiction industry does exist. These books, written by Ghanaian authors and published by small scale Ghanaian publishers, involve stories that are attractive because, as Esther puts it, they “create associations with readers' experiences of all kinds of familiar, and often hot, cultural material.” These stories are not only culturally accessible but also financially, ensuring that even young adults with pocket change can partake. 

One of the most popular mass market fiction books.  It's estimated that such books can sell between 30,000 and 50,000 copies per week!

Literacy, of course, is not just important for the ability to seek familiarity in a world of fiction, but also for collecting and dispersing the grounded world of reality. I tell people that I do research on food insecurity because I want to know how economic realities influence health and well being. I want to write that story better than the people who are already telling (or assuming) that story. Within the agricultural development paradigm that I work*, the most influential voices directing the story of how to understand and solve food insecurity remain those with a lot of money and a lot of power, be they celebrity, economist, or celebrity economist. 

Perhaps the most widely leveraged story coming out of this continent now is the story of the historical and contemporary existence of homosexuality in Africa as written and told by Africans.  Local audiences need to hear these local voices on the matter because, quite frankly, they’re pretty fed up with all the outside voices that state how gay rights should be discussed and instituted.  I was once called a neoliberal by someone because I said same sex marriage should be legal in Ghana.  After some pondering and wound licking, I kinda saw his metaphor.  A local NGO leader, having recently read Chimamanda Adichie’s piece online, announced that a discussion of gay rights would be on the agenda of his next staff meeting.  The production and uptake of such internally composed assessments of reality makes my social scientist heart leap. 

Wall poetry at a street art festival in Accra

. 

Even school kids get involved in spreading their thoughts on romance
 (What is secondarily important to this photo is the amount of dirt that has been allowed to accumulate on a vehicle.  In a country where tires are meticulously washed on a daily basis, this level of filth is unheard of)

To keep my heart uplifted, and to feel like there’s at least something ethically sound that I can do for people who are allowing me to invade their lives, I’m going to start spreading the gospel of reading and writing. As an anthropologist, I’m convinced that the more stories we hear and read, whether fictive or true, the better equipped we are to understand how our own individual human experience is similar or different from others and, hopefully, the more likely we are to think critically and compassionately. Last week I gave a novel that takes place in Montana during WWI to a young woman of about 15. Despite the young adult formant, I found so much to relate to in the novel. Despite the geographical and historical setting, I bet she will too.  

In my most recent trip to Accra I made sure to stock up on children’s books so I can read with the kids where I live. Before they receive the football that they request on a daily basis (requests delivered through masterful soliloquies since I really don’t understand the nuances of their request), they will sit for story hour. Maybe in return, I’ll have them train me in how to comfortably hold and speak into a microphone so as to extemporaneously deliver a message--or at least request a football from the next white lady who comes around.

*I recently wrote about the lack of small scale farmer voices in the development of agricultural policies and practice for the blog convened by Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa.  This topic also was recently very well covered by a Ghanaian journalist with The Guardian.

Ghana+Missouri=Soul Sisters: A Mini, Multi Sited Ethnography on Banquet Culture

Sometimes my favorite moments in Ghana are the moments when it’s difficult to tell if I’m in Ghana or in Missouri.  Sometimes it feels like the two very distant contexts deserve recognition that can’t be captured in a signboard declaring them sisters of some international or geographical order.  Sometimes I think the two contexts are sisters of the soul. On Friday night I went to a banquet to celebrate the departure of two long term volunteers who worked with an NGO I mingle with.  For the most part, it was an evening ever reminiscent of any banquet I’ve ever been to in my hometown.  

Did country music play?

Of course it did.  Ghanaians LOVE country music. And they play the old stuff, not the new stuff. Kenny Rogers, not Kenny Chesney. I often feel like writing Kenny Rogers a letter letting him know he could make some good money (probably enough for at least one more face lift) if he’d do a tour in Ghana. We heard some Kenny, some Dolly and one of my favorites, Amanda (Waylon’s version).

Did we pray before we ate?

We did even better. We prayed before and after our meal. Having been raised a non-religious person, the pre-meal prayer at public events that was quite common in my upbringing always left me vaguely uncomfortable.  But thank goodness I was exposed to such vague discomfort early in my formative years.  It’s prepared me for pre-and post-everything prayer in Ghana.  On a recent bus ride my seat companion, in the midst of a rather interesting discussion about hydroelectricity in Ghana, grabbed my hand as the bus lurched forward to begin the journey.  “Oh right, I thought.  It’s time to pray.”

Did we eat meat and weird, fat soused salads?

Indeed! Just like at home, no banquet is complete without a meal that involves meat and salad concoctions (recipes found in any small town church cookbook) that eliminate any of the nutritive value of the vegetables by making some form of oil the prime ingredient.  In Missouri this is likely to be an oil/sugar combo (often in the form of Miracle Whip or the generic derivative).  In Ghana this is a British ingredient called Salad Cream, a product of Heinz UK that is maybe even more nutrient repelling than Miracle Whip.

Grilled guinea fowl and a cabbage and carrot salad doused in Salad Cream as well as a lettuce salad doused in Salad Cream AND Heinz baked beans. 

Did we play Bingo?

Did we ever.  We played for a table full of prizes.  I bought 5 cards, and in purchasing my 5 cards, the seller cautioned me that it might be difficult to keep track of them during the game.  I replied, with no false modesty, that I come from the land of Bingo.  Before I left for Ghana I even purchased a Bingo dauber manufactured in Cleveland (surely the Bingo mecca) at the weekly VFW sponsored Bingo evening in my hometown.  I handled my cards just fine.  My Ghanaian counterparts, new to Bingo, caught on just fine as well.  The Bingo lingo was even humorously woven into the later events of the evening.  During the money collection phase of the evening (a box was passed to collect money for scholarships for girls), the collectors reminded us that the best kind of charity begins at home.  Upon hearing this, a man from the crowd yelled out “Bingo!”  I can so totally picture that exact same thing happening in the cafeteria of my high school.  In fact, it might just have.

There were moments that were very specifically Ghanaian.  For example, never have we ever danced the Azonto at a banquet in Hermann, Missouri (though I really, really wish we would).  Never, ever do we dance at banquets in Hermann, Missouri.  In Hermann, Missouri dancing is an activity best left to young people at school sponsored dances.

Dancing Azonto.  This is an ongoing dance phenomenon originating in Ghana.  It's pretty fun.  Though I still can't proficiently dance Azonto. 

And what could I say was missing from the event?  Mostly a Jello (gelatin or pudding) inspired dessert.  

Celebrating 57 Years of Independence (Or Some Form Thereof)

Yesterday, on March 6^th, Ghana celebrated 57 years of independence. Ghana gained independence in 1957 under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.  Ghana was the first African nation to remove the colonial powers (in this case, the British) and retains a lot of credibility for this accomplishment. In the 57 years that have occurred since, Ghana has had, until relatively recently, a very fragile and somewhat compromised democracy.  Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966 and between 1966 and 2001 there were 2 more coups and one president who remained in power for 20 years.  In 2001, this president, Jerry John Rawlings stepped down after John Kufour (a member of the opposing party) was elected president.  This marks the birth of Ghana’s more effective democracy.

Fort Usher in Jamestown (Accra's oldest section) went from being a slave holding prison to a colonial prison.  Now it stands largely untouched and serves as a powerful visual reminder of history not so long ago. 

Ghanaians are proud of their history and proud to be the beacon of “African” democracy that the rest of the world has appointed it.  However, they tend to be hypercritical of their failure to figure out democracy to the extent that they think that the rest of the world has it figured out.  It’s frustrating to have so many conversations allude to democratic imperfection in Ghana and democratic perfection in the United States.  I’ve had to convince people that in the US we too have dirty politics, a ruling class, and nepotism.  I’ve explained how my country just repealed a major voting rights act and scoffs at campaign finance reform. I relay how when Senators finish in the Senate, they roll back in as a lobbyist, ensuring that they are still effectively a law maker, just a much better paid law maker.  And though we are never threatened with having our politics labeled as “tribal,” who are we kidding with our red and blue maps??

On any given day in Ghana, Ghanaians are decked out in the colors of their own flag.......it was a bit surprising to see red, white and blue on the actual Ghanaian Independence Day. 

The Ghanaian flags at Jubilee Park in Wa where the Independence Day festivities were held. 

It’s scary that they keep looking to us as a role model, especially when Ghana has actually accomplished some things that we have yet to accomplish.  Ghana figured out a decent enough version of national health insurance in its democratic infancy. The Ghanaian National Health Insurance Scheme just celebrated 10 years of service.  We put together a majorly patch worked version in our geriatric years.  Ghana also did a better job at resolving a contested presidential election.

Not only does Ghana have national health insurance, but a call center to handle questions and concerns.  Maybe they should be contractors for the US?

In September, the Ghanaian Supreme Court overruled a petition from the losing party claiming that 2 million of the votes that elected John Mahama president were fraudulent.  During the Supreme Court deliberations the country was abuzz with declarations of the need to maintain peace through the judicial process.  Banners displaying such messages as “Our Peace is Profound” were draped from buildings.  Commercials pleading for people to remain peaceful no matter what the Supreme Court ruling were on repeat play on TV. I found this public messaging to be kind of annoying and sometimes amusing.  In expressing my befuddlement to someone, I was politely reprimanded for forgetting the turbulent decades that followed independence. I think I was also undervalueing the value of peace in Africa.  In an otherwise "violent and volatile" climate, if a country can handle elections peacefully, it is accredited by the rest of the world and open for commerce. Of course everything went peacefully upon the ruling and Ghana was able to maintain its title of a peaceful African democracy.

Nana Akufo-Addo, unsuccessful presidential candidate and unsuccessful petitioner of the Supreme Court

Yet the discontentment that abounds for how elected leaders lead is perhaps the most unifying topic of conversation in the country.  No one is pleased with government here.  So while independence is something unique and important to celebrate, the state of democracy that is in place is something that warrants more discussion and action.  Furthermore, questioning just how independent Ghana remains is also up for discussion. It is pretty profound that USAID chose Independence Day as the day to reveal its second phase of a multi-billion dollar project incentivizing private enterprise (often foreign) and higher reliance on improved (aka externally derived and expensive) technologies as a means to achieve food security in Ghana.  Powerful international authorities no longer wear pith helmets, but they still wield a lot of power for directing policy and practice.

To be independent is a real thing, but how that independence is defined and enacted is a much more complicated matter.  

An exhibit at the National Museum in Accra highlights what kids think the next 50 years of Independence should hold