Study in Uppsala: Views from a Ghanaian

My friend Michael Boampong who I wrote about here and who blogs here, this year went to my Alma Mater, Uppsala University to do his masters in  Development Studies.

The university newspaper, Ergo, had a chat with him (in Swedish) (but see the Google Translate page in pretty decent English) and he had some interesting insights.

On comparing education between Ghana and Sweden:

– If you compare Ghana and Uppsala, you should think outside the box here, while in Ghana is more about memorizing things. I’m very happy with my studies now, but did not think I had enough knowledge about the political background to be able to take me to the teaching of beginning. I would have liked to have had an introductory course in political background before the first course started.

On Uppsala:

– Uppsala was my first choice, I had it recommended by a friend from Ghana who reads this.  It is a well-known university abroad. I think it’s very good to invite prominent speakers from outside and that you have access to literature and new publications.

On the much debated issue of fees for foreign students (yes, higher education has until now been FREE OF CHARGE), from next semester a reality:

– I come from a developing country and had been poorly paid when I worked in Ghana, simply put not the life-situation that is required.  But I must say that my experience from Ghana enriches discussions on the course – this can be missed when introducing tuition fees and not having an extensive system of grants for students from developing countries.

Read the article in full here.

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Mental Health – Ghana’s Next Crisis?

Photo: Nyani Quarmyne

After water and traffic, will mental health be Ghana’s next big challenge?

According to photographer and fellow blogger Nyani Quarmyne, 2,4 million Ghanaians are estimated to sometime in their life be in need of psychiatric help. With not more than a handful psychiatrists and around 2000 hospital beds, it is clear that most Ghanaians in need will be left without any help.

On Tuesday, I went to see Nyani’s beautiful, hopeful but also deeply disturbing photos, depicting the mental health crisis in Ghana. There were women who had been locked up by their men, men who were starring blankly in front of them, elderly with their mentally ill grown children with no help, but also the man at a health facility that was rearing chicken and the man who had secured a job with Zoomlion after years of mental illness.

The pictures that got to me the most was probably the ones with men fastened to tree trunks (like the one above), one outdoors, seated on a stone, one naked in a dark clay house. Imagine, having your family put your foot through a big chunk of wood and then closing the whole with an ironrod so that you could not escape…keeping you in a dark room…there you are, like an animal…so hopeless somehow…

Then there was the picture of the records keeper at a psychiatric hospital in Accra. In a blue nurse’s dress, between thousands and thousands of  files, she has her desk. The filing system looks ancient and clearly is overflowing the space. Yet, she comes to work every day. I was thinking about human defiance…

Fellow blogger AntiRhythm was also there and voiced his critique this way:

“Families cannot afford about 25 Cedis (about 13 Dollars) a month to pay for the drugs that would create the right chemical balance which would make us call these unfortunates normal.

So they are shackled and manacled to prevent aggression or injury to themselves or embarrassment to their families.

When I saw it, I asked blogger Fiona: What country is this? I knew the answer; I feared the answer; I feared facing up to more evidence about the different layers of existence in this country.”

The NGO that partly sponsored this photoproject, BasicNeeds Ghana, has extensive programs that target thousands of people with mental illness or epilepsy, predominantely in Northern Ghana, but also in Greater Accra. They also have a knowledge project with several worthwhile publications available online, and now also a glossy book with Nyani’s photos – “Ghana, a Picture of Mental Health”.

I wish Ghanaians would have a glance through, we need to know what is happening to the weakest in society right now…

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Meeting a Blogger in Accra: Jemila Abdulai

Today, I ran into Jemila Abdulai, a fellow GhanaBlogger who blogs on the blog Circumspecte.

Now, to all of you that might sound regular, even mundane. Why are you telling us this? Meeting a blogger from your own blogging group, c’mon! Well, just hear me out! We have never met before! Jemila has been living in the states and following our meetings and emails from afar, but just moved back to Ghana.

I liked how the whole meeting happened. I was walking back to work after lunch and a student of mine comes towards me with a woman I have not met before. I say hi to my student (turned out she is Jemila’s sister!) and Jemila says:

– Hi, I’m Jemila!

And it was suddenly so obvious.

I wonder if Internet critics (“our kids only sit in front of screens these days”) would change their mind if a stranger on the street turned into a friend, just because of blogging?

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Magnum Ghana Cocoa – Ice Cream for the Europe Market

After having had my blog hacked into last week, my blogging time was eaten up (a suitable expression for this post!) by changing passwords etc. While I am on this topic, if you haven’t changed your blog’s password – or email password for that matter –  this year, do it today!

Anyways, now I am back with a snack!

In Europe, they are at this time celebrating the yearly return of the sun and good weather. And what always comes with nice and temperate times…?

Yes: Ice Cream. This year, the celebrated Magnum kind of ice-cream-on-a-stick has created a Ghanaian version with Ghanaian chocolate! This follows the trend of chocolate as a more refined sweet. These days, people are specific when they want chocolate – they might want a certain brand (Valrhona is supposed to be one of the best), a certain cocoa percentage (70% cocoa melts in your mouth, 80% and above can taste bitter, although preferred by some) and maybe even a specific country of origin for the bean (say Ghana or Ecuador).

Magnum UK describes the Ghana ice cream in this fashion:

“For chocolate connoisseurs.Bite into its cracking milk chocolate made with specially selected cocoa beans from Ghana.”

The phrase “specially selected”, makes me smile but still it is good news and possibly even nation branding that Ghana is mentioned together with “connoisseurs”, however still the question is: When will we in Ghana also take part of that value added?

The ice cream is also available in Sweden where they add the information that the rest of the ice cream has a hazelnut flavor. So when I go there next month, I plan to have a bite!

Anyone tasted it yet?

Pic: Borrowed from Ida.

 

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Kajsa HA Listed as a Top Blog with Go Overseas!

My blog has been listed as a top blog by Go Overseas!, a site that promotes teaching, studying and volunteering abroad.

So why is this good news?

  1. I feel good to be present in an environment that promotes learning.
  2. I like that the blogs they promote – actually, “love” is the word they use – are individually reviewed.
  3. Through a very nice email conversation with them, only after I discovered I was getting traffic from their site, not from any pressure to link back to them, I feel I have really earned my badge (see badge to the right).
  4. Also, I judge the quality of the listing by being in such good company.

On the Go Overseas! 10 top blogs from Ghana, GhanaBlogging members Holli and G-lish lead the list, I come in on 7th place. For top blogs from Africa, productive collaborative blog Africa is a Country leads the pack and I discovered some new interesting blogs from other continents from this listing!

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Sexual Harassment Policy – Can It Stop Sexual Assaults at Uni of Ghana?

Last week, the end of the week news focused on an event that occurred on the University of Ghana Campus. An alleged female thief was captured, undressed and sexually molested by students who also filmed the process. Fellow bloggers such as  Trotro Drama, Daixy, and CriticalPoint were leading the debate on blogs and on Twitter.

Just as these bloggers, the most publicized views of this event – online, on radio, TV and in print media were that this was unacceptable and maybe a sign of a malicious culture of sexualized violence and mob justice.

However, as clearly as this molestation was a grave criminal offense and should be handled by the police, nowhere I heard any reference to the newly instated Sexual Harassment policy on campus which is supposed to regulate and prohibit the “smaller” instances of uninvited sexual advances. Today, University World News runs a feature article I wrote on the UG sexual harassment policy, if you are interested to know more about this  progressive piece regulation. Also see the excerpt below. Clearly, it needs to be publicized more!

“It will take hard work to implement the policy,” she (prof. Tsikata, head of CEGENSA, the body that developed the policy) said. “It will take time to institute confidence in the process, faith in the system. There is a reluctance to come forward, rather than a problem of frivolous cases”.

In the policy document, sexual harassment is defined as “unwelcomed sexual advances, or unwelcome requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct or behaviour of a sexual nature”.

Illustrations of this definition can be persistent propositions for dates, sexual jokes, passing on pornographic material, comments about someone’s body etc. The policy is applicable to all members of the university community.

Read the whole article here. Find the policy in full on University of Ghana’s website here (not available yet). UPDATE: Pdf download of the policy.

The implementation of this policy means that many things (mainly) women in Ghana see as “daily hurdles” can now be reported, at least if they happen on the University of Ghana campus. In my opinion, it is a start on a very long and winding road.

What do you think?

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How is the unrest in Ivory Coast affecting Ghana?

In short: It seems very little.

However, longterm the conflict in Ivory Coast will of course have an effect on Ghana. When our neighboring country, instead of being a business and political partner, is at war or dealing with the aftermaths of war the conflict will be felt here. Currently, Ghana has not really taken a stand in the Cote d’Ivore situation, refugees are crossing the boarder and I have heard that cocoa beans do the same…

Holly writes about the Ivory Coast issue focusing on Gbabgo’s interests in Ghana and on the surreal feeling of being close to a big chaos.

“It’s days like this when the distant din of news – of CNN and BBC and Al Jazeera reporters ‘on the ground’, reporting disasters and developments around the world, come just that once step too close to home. “

Myjoyonline reports about two Ivorian women taking the conflict over the Ghanaian boarder to the western town of Takoradi.

“The two females who were quarrelling in fluent French wore opposite white T-Shirts with portraits of their political idols, embattled Laurent Gbagbo and internationally recognized winner of last November
disputed polls Alhassan Quattara embossed in them.”

Interestingly, the altercation reached a fever pitch when the one wearing Gbagbo’s T-Shirt pushed her opponent and a scuffle ensued between them but they were quickly separated by the onlookers who were visible enjoying the squabble even though some of them who did not understand the French kept on shouting repeatedly “Gbagbo and Quattara in Ghana Part 2”

But this isn’t a sequel to a popular movie, it is reality and people are killed as I write this – if not from bullets so from a failed state where social amenities including health care, food and water cannot be accessed anymore.

What would a responsible neighborly response be at this late hour?

Photo of Abidjan borrowed from Myweku.com

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Links of this week: On Learning

Constantly overwhelmed by impressions, links, articles, books and “interesting stuff”, I have tried to organize myself in many ways.

I tried keeping my web influences or links all open at once in different “tabs” in Firefox (“why is my Internet so slow? Oh, no it crashed again!”, I tried Delicious (“Log in again? Oh, what was my password, now?  If I save this link, will the whole world be able to see it?”), I tried Google Reader (“Today: 450 unread interesting blog posts”) and frankly none of these methods really worked for me.

Maybe I should just imitate pro-bloggers I admire (now talking about Ethan Zuckerman and Chris Blattman) and post a list of links when the links get to many. Then I have a record of stuff for myself, and I have shared the links I liked with you.

Lets try: THIS WEEK’s LINKS (focus on learning)

Intelligent Life – the Economist spin off magazine I always buy when I travel is very much present online. This issue has an poignant piece on digital Africa.

“I asked my Somali companion what the boys were up to. He wound down the window and summoned his gunmen to go and ask. The answer came back. “They’re updating their Facebook profiles.”

Migration researcher Hein de Haas started his own blog recently. He has written very well on the migration and development discourse and I believe he came to Accra for a conference a few years back. Anyways, I believe it will be interesting  to follow his more contemporary day-by-day thoughts.

“The idea is that up to 1.5 million African migrants are waiting in Libya for the first occasion to migrate to Europe. This idea is based on a number of common misunderstandings about North African and Libyan migration.
The most fundamental and persistent misunderstanding is that Libya is a so-called “transit country” – or the assumption that most or all migrants in Libya would be “on their way” to Europe. This totally ignores the basic fact that over the past 40 years, Libya has been as destination country in its own right.”

The Illustrated Professor. A fun and thoughtful blog. Visual rocks. This post from last week that I really liked was called The Learning Embrace.

embrace

“I must remember that learning doesn’t necessarily follow from teaching.  Or from schools.  Or that teachers and schools even control all the learning young people embrace.   Learning is owned by humanity not by schools or by states.   Learning happens when a person decides to learn.   It even happens when a person isn’t aware it’s happening.   Nevertheless, I am responsible for my students’ learning–again, learning over which I don’t always have control.   How can I promote the kind of “learning embrace” that has the best chance of success?”

Ok, that worked pretty well for me. I also added all of these to my links to the right.

How was it for you?

PS. Also came across Open Study. Not really sure what it is, but it looks like an online study group tool. Isn’t that neat? Wow, there really are a lot of cool things out there…I am overwhelmed again…

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