As many of you know we got an invite to a semi-exclusive event with Obama. He was in Ghana for about twenty-four hours and in that time managed to stir up a mighty typhoon of a Obama frenzy. Everyone seemed to be talking about Obama, songs were written about Obama and played over and over on the radio (one chorus goes Barack Barack, Barack Obama - and that is pretty much the entire song. I think he must have thought Ghana a little crazy as they played this song wherever he went and everyone around him was wearing traditional looking african dresses made out of fabric with Obama's face all over it. We even enjoyed Obama cookies, the packages of which had the american flag and Obama on them (However, in my opinion, they did not taste quite Obamaee enough).

It was actually quite a big deal in for Ghana that he chose Ghana as the one country that he visited in Africa after Eqypt. It is a testament to Ghana's prosperity, peacefulness, and the growing strength of their democracy that he made this visit. He gave two speeches, one we saw at the airport and the other was at the parliament building. His speech to parliament was long and interesting and can be found on the internet. The speech we saw was much shorter but was meant for a specific audience of american development and embassy workers in Ghana. Obama thanked us Peace Corps volunteers a couple of times in his speech, which was very cool. He also visited the cape coast slave castle for a couple hours --- I guess Anderson Cooper did a special on this visit to the castle and also some expose on modern day slavery, I have yet to be able to check it out, but I imagine you all can find it on the internet.

So the event we went to was at the airport with air force one as the backdrop. Barack and the fam entered dramatically on big military helicopters. He was greeted by traditional music and dancing and then Ghana's president introduced Obama. He then gave a short speech praising Ghana for their commitment to democracy, talking about Peace Corps long history in Ghana and how he wants to continue the partnership etc. We were very close to him (about 30 feet away) where he spoke and then we were within a couple of feet when he shook hands with the crowd. Unfortunately we were a couple people back from the front and didn't get to shake his or michelle's hands. Some of our friends shook their hands and were thanked personally for their service.

The whole event was very cool, but super tiring. We travelled 14 hours to get down there and then of course needed to stay up most of the night reuniting with friends. The day of the event most of the major streets were shut down so we had to walk and walk and walk to get around. Then we had to wait for hours at the airport waiting for him to show up. But it was totally worth it.

Then K and I spent a night at a beach near Accra, you know since we were down there and all.