Dispatches from Ghana III: You Are Welcome
This sign greeted me in 2014. The new sign is better, but I didn't take its picture. You are welcome. The words greet me as, following a short walk from the plane, I enter the airport in Accra. They are implied in the friendly, helpful politeness of the many layers of customs and immigration officials who ask me to produce proof of vaccination against yellow fever, study and stamp my passport, glance over my immigration card. They are spoken by the bartender at the restaurant across the street that is the meeting point for our group. They are spoken again and again by our guide, interpreter, cultural ambassador, and surrogate father figure, Kofi Gbolonyo, as well as by the chief of each tribal unit we are presented to so we may have permission to stay in Dzodze, to work with school groups and village bands. It is spoken, too, by the professors and administrators who greet us in Accra at the University of Ghana, where we perform our final concert/workshop...