Saturday, November 10, 2007

Hate for no reason

Yesterday morning at the radio school, the class clown, who is normally just silly, was making some very unfunny remarks about how white people are only in Ghana to keep Africans down and kill them and then he said, "But I'll kill you first. I'm going to shoot you after class today." There were three white people in the class and none of us knew what to do so I just said, "So you think Ghana should be a military government?" to break the suddenly tense silence. I knew they would agree because there are a lot of pro-militarists here.

Clown said, "Oh yeah, definitely. Military is the best. way." The only Muslim in the class sat behind Clown and said "Yes. Definitely yes. No question," with no trace of a smile at all. He was looking right into my eyes. I am used to the pro-militarism attitude from Eddie but this went even farther as he then got into a long and passionate discussion with the clown about why he is a believer in Osama bin Laden, the greatest man alive. I didn't want to listen to this for obvious reasons but had to because they were so near. I knew he hated me then, just because I am from the US, the country which supposedly keeps both of "his" people-- Africans and Muslims -- impoverished and powerless. He said he loves bin Laden because he fought back against this imperialism. I had nothing to say because I was so shocked over the statement of faithfulness to al-Qaeda.

Only other significant news of late is that I have a column in a local newspaper (did I already say this?) in addition to working at the radio station. And that there was a FISTFIGHT between two of the DJs in the lobby yesterday after I left!!! I don't know what it was over but no one has been fired as the CEO just seemed to think it was kind of funny and not a big problem.

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