Ghanaians at Home and the Diaspora Celebrate Independence
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Accra/Washington, DC - 6th March, 1957. You had to be there. The atmosphere was electric! After decades of toil under British colonial rule, Kwame Nkrumah proudly proclaimed that “Ghana, my beloved country, is free, forever!” The roar of the crowd was deafening that night.
Amma Acheampong was a woman in her 30’s the night that speech was made. The seventy-eight year old matriarch reminisces on those times.
“Quite honestly, I wish the British would come back,” she said from her traditional home in Kojokrom. “In those days, you could buy kenkey for 3 Pesewas. These days, we struggle to buy common ice-water.”
3000 miles away in Washington, DC, her grand daughter, Adwoa, receives an email wishing her a happy independence day.
“Oh, is today Independence Day?” she asks the sender of the email. “Me kwraa, I thought it was 8th March. Bey there’s an independence jam on the 8th.”
Nkrumah would probably be rolling in his grave to hear that his hard work has been reduced to “jams” and pining for re-colonization because people cannot afford ice-water. But Kwame, if you’re watching from your presidential heaven, you should not be surprised.
Every election cycle, your succeeding ministers give the same speeches about using funds and donations from abroad to build roads, bridges and schools. But they use it on lavish vacations and tacky Burberry suits. Oh! And Kwame, if you wanted half-caste kids, at least you had the decency to marry Madam Fathia and produce lighter offspring. This J.A. Kuffuor used Ghana’s money to travel to London and impregnate an Iranian woman…with twins! Do you know how long the country will be paying for the schooling and lifestyle of these kids? And in the future, they will come from abrochi and open ice-cream shops like “Frankie’s” take all our Cedis and shoot us levels. Chhhhheeewwww.
Happy Independence day oh! Lets hope in the next 50 years or so, we can still afford to pound some small fufu to celebrate. If by then the Chinese people who are coming to rule us don’t force us to eat noodles and fried rice instead.
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