Obama's Inauguration

The EAP office took us to the W.E.B. DuBois Center today to watch Obama’s inauguration speech live. It was a really cool event- all the U.S. citizens visiting/living in Ghana were there, excited to see America’s first non-full-white president.

Here are some pictures from the event.


The schedule of the event.


Everyone getting ready to watch the event.


Local artists create and sell Obama paraphernalia.


Standing ovation after Obama’s inaugural speech!


After the event, we were all dropped back onto campus. However, as Megan and I were getting ready for bed, we get a call from one of our student leaders asking us to be guests on a student talk radio show. Not sure what to expect, we head down to the radio station, where we are immediately ushered into a recording room and introduced to our listeners. The hour long talk show asked us about our opinions of U.S. democracy, about Obama being elected, and about what this election meant for Ghana and the rest of Africa.

Megan and I are both pretty liberal, so the host was really surprised to hear us being so vocal about our dissatisfaction with Bush, with his policies, and the actions he took during his term. As we described our experiences with democracy and our lifestyles in the US, it felt kinda nice to dispel a lot of ideas our peers at the discussion table had about America and Americans.

Hopefully, this will improve relations between exchange students and Americans in the future, and dispel some stereotypes that have been created.