Ghana going for gold!

I've spent the past ten days complaining about how I'm not feeling any of the fun, football-loving spirit we felt two years ago when Ghana hosted the African Cup of Nations (for those of you not in Africa, the African Nations Cup is on at the moment in Angola). After catching the last few minutes of the Ghana game against Angola, I finally felt some excitement. And today, after our 1-0 win against the green giant, Nigeria, the whole country is excited, there's jubilation in offices, rejoicing in the streets of Accra and even from my sitting room I hear the cars honking all the way down the road.



(Pictures from the Ohene Djan Stadium, Accra, during CAN2008)

On facebook, it's fun to read the comments from both before and after the game of predictions and cocky retaliations by Ghanaians. To think of it, the Nigerians have been ever so quiet since we booted them out of the final...There's nothing like the rivlary between neighbouring countries, and in our case I'm happy to always show big brother Naija that despite them being about 100 million more in population than us, we will continue to beat them when they least expect it. I'll repeat the funny old-school saying that I was taught after our win against Nigeria two years ago:

God is not a Lagosian!

Green, green envy

Every day I'm hit by a sting of jealousy. This usually happens after watching CNN for a while. First there's joy over hearing my new favourite advertisement: "Talking, talking, we've got people talking" they sing in the ad, which displays the wonders of Glo. I find the whole ad so beautiful. Apart from an extremely catchy tune (or am I the only one who likes it??), the ad manages to capture the beautiful West African life perfectly. The fisherman, out at sea at sunset whilst on his mobile phone? Classic!

Apart from that ad, other Nigerian ads featured include those for the banks, ETB, UBA and Zenith. I feel a bit of pride as I see that their ads are of no different standard to the western ones, but can't help but feel jealous. When will Ghana get there? Are we even close? As it is now, I have to force myself to watch Ghanaian channels a few times a week to catch up on local news, as the content and ads are dreadfully boring with poor acting/presenting, visual and audio quality. Why are we so far behind our giant green neighbour?

Virgo passed on some wisdom to me which may partly (or fully) explain the situation. Although Nigeria has had several coup d'etats, when these occur, businesses and business men have generally not been attacked, instead they've been allowed to continuously grow and develop. In Ghana however, each coup d'etats has led to businesses being persecuted and businessmen fleeing the country. As a result, we've never had the opportunity of developing a business culture in Ghana over the years.

There are not many businesses that are more than a decade or two old and as such the entrepreneurial mind is still unique. It further explains why, despite our similar colonnial background, Nigerians value businesses more whereas Ghanaians (at least my parents' generation) have always put higher value on the civil servant lifestyle. How many of us have not been told to "go and get a good education" (that means, doctor, lawyer or accountant) and find a good job and stay there. Not many are advised to set up their own business as it's too risky, and looking at our previous history, I guess they're right, it was too risky. Hopefully those days of coups are finally behind us.

I just hope 'our' generation takes the opportunity to learn the good things from the naijas so that we too can establish our businesses and be advertising on international television, as my jealousy is reaching boiling point!

(Interestingly as I was looking for links to the ad, I came across a blogpost from my fellow ghanablogger, David Ajao. It's good to know I'm only three years behind you on the topic, David!)

Now I can't leave without today's Weakest Link moment:
OK, I may be obsessed but sometimes I can't help but wonder whether it is simply nerves or stupidity that makes players give their answers. Here's some examples:

Which D is the correct medical term for indigestion?
Diarrhoea.

Which vertebrae has a name that actually means hundred feet?
Giraffe.

In the sentence "Joe washes his car", which word is the verb?
I don't know.

Oh, chale!

The green land next door

I was searching for an English link to a Swedish article that I wanted to share, and instead I found this, Nigerian prostitutes working the streets of Gothenburg. As most Ghanaians already know, judging from the well known quote, and as we were reminded during the Ghana-Nigeria game at CAN 2008: "God is not a Lagosian".

But when, oh when, will we hear something positive about Nigerians for a change? Come naijas, we know that surely you must be doing good things too. Come out and speak, don't let the 419:ers overshadow your achievements.