First Stop -- Ghana

Germans are remarkably efficient. While at the airport in Frankfurt, en route to Ghana, there was an unnamed “security threat.” A whole wing of the airport was cordoned off by immaculately dressed, tall white police officers. Security tape was erected, the area thoroughly secured and parsed, and within minutes it was back to business as usual.

I arrived in Accra the next day. The contrast was stark. The time it took me to email an attachment – three hours – felt impossibly slow. The glacial speed this country can move at tests the nerves of anyone who is accustomed to immediacy. Just as the wait at the photocopy centre was about to get the better of my nerves, the women assisting me dawned a heart-warming grin, illuminating the room and quelling any frustration that had been fomenting.

Ghanaians are a peaceful people. Over the last two decades they have lived in a relatively stable democracy. Without fail, every Ghanaian I met was overwhelmingly kind. It sounds trite to make sweeping generalisations about the disposition of an entire country, but I really have no reason to think otherwise. Relations amongst Africans and the outside world, however, have been perpetually strained during the colonial and post-colonial era. The Ghanaian sensibility though, which emanates with every glistening smile, has, I think, helped this nation to cope with its plight. One of our professors, Kwame Frimpong, brought the shambok to our first class. This is a long wooden staff, used traditionally for corporal punishment. While corporal punishment has been officially outlawed in Ghana, the practice still exists in rural areas where Common Law holds less sway, and justice is often meted out according to traditional practices. The complexities of the tension between Customary Practice and Common Law was the first topic of study in Comparative Constitutional Law. Rather than introduce the human rights dilemmas arising from corporal punishment through stilted scholarship, Professor Frimpong, in his inimical way, used humour, and jokingly threatened us with the shambok if we didn’t behave. His intention was not to make light of a serious matter, but rather, to tease out the complexities of the ethical issues arising from corporal punishment.

Religion too, plays an important role in Ghanaian society. The devout fervency in which Ghanaians practice Christianity is marveling. Given Christianity’s dubious historical roots in Africa, I find it fascinating that it didn’t crumble under the fall of colonialism. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, Georgina Wood, to commemorate the beginning of her third year on the bench, invited our class to a church service. Her Ladyship, as I later learned was the correct way to address her, cordially extended a number of invitations to our class to meet her, and some of the other justices on the Supreme Court. The service was used primarily as a means for Her Ladyship to thank God for her extraordinary accomplishments (many scholars attribute her work in reforming the Supreme Court as playing an integral role in the county’s prosperity). During the service we witnessed the central role music and dance play in Ghanaian religious practice. Like glistening smiles and playful humour, the infectious movement caused by music engenders hope. It is this hope, and the understanding that all people deserve the chance to have something to reasonably hope for, that informs her court, and allows for the moral crossroads of law and religion to positively affect justice.

Music and dance are also fundamental to the traditional cultural and spiritual practices of Ghanaians. We visited a small village in the Eastern region of Ghana called Akropong. Here we had the honour of meeting another Chief Justice, Nana, the Chief of Akropong. As we congregated at the palace in Akropong, the talking drum led a six-piece percussion ensemble in culling the needed quorum for our introduction to Nana and the village elders. Nana, which means both chief and grandchild, plays the multifaceted role of spiritual leader, political advisor, and legal arbiter. Ghana’s legal system incorporates traditional Customary Law, which has been the practice of villagers for centuries, into Common Law. Both systems inform each other. Championing human rights for instance, is not part of the Customary conception of justice, and my fellow Ghanaian students were perplexed by the occidental obsession with defending the rights of the convicted. The rights of all people matter deeply though, both philosophically and practically, and nowhere is this better exemplified than the Castles in Cape Coast.

Cape Coast is located in the Central Region of Ghana, hovering the Gulf of Guinea. The Castles are to African Americans, what the concentrations Camps of Eastern Europe are to Jews. They represent humanity at its worst. What we are capable of when human rights are derailed to the point where we equivocate about whom we should grant them to. The Castles were the starting point for the vast majority of Africans brought to North and South America, to work as slaves. Millions died on their journey across the Atlantic, and those who did survive became the first generation of what is the single greatest socio-economic scourge in the United States. The Castles now represent a symbol of hope though. People can now return through the gate of no return, and honour those who never had this privilege.

The next stop is Nepal, whose vast landscape and unknown political future makes it a destination of intrigue the world over. I hope to have much to report over the next ten weeks during my Leitner internship.