Fair Trade and the Fair

This one has been a little late in the making, but a rainstorm last night cut our internet connection...

So Monday night was the first night of a week-long Food Fair at the basketball courts on campus. All kinds of vendors set up around them, selling food, fruit, ice cream, shoes and even Ghanaian designer clothing (which, since it's made in Ghana, is worth a second look). However, the big attraction for me was the main event for the evening:

The big show was a forum for the Ghanaian Peasant Farmers' Association, the main farmers' union in the country. Leaders have been travelling around Ghana, talking to peasants in giant forums (apparently an uncommon event here, so attendance was huge in the villages) to hear their grievances about how unfair world trade rules and practices have been hurting them. The leaders were on the "Road to Hong Kong", which means they came to Accra with all of these farmers' proposals for how to make their lives easier. Their goal is to speak with the Ghanaian Minister for Trade, who will be at the next World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong this December. Hopefully he will listen to them and with other Ministers of Trade for impoverished nations, try to change the rules for trading to help them.

The speakers were great and I'm definitely learning so much more from hanging out with them than sitting in class (Joe introduced me to them and we had some chats). Unfortunately, there was no advertising for it whatsoever, so attendance was sparse (most of us found out from Joe, who had told us earlier in the day about it). On the upside, it was very informative and when I closed my eyes and breathed in, it smelled like the Markham Fair back home... popcorn and hot dogs! No livestock, though...

The next day was the big rally in Holy Gardens near Nkrumah Circle (the main traffic circle in town). I waited around for a long time until it started (as mentioned), but when it did, there was a brass band on a flatbed truck, dozens of cyclists and two busloads of pumped-up students that arrived and filled up the park. I'd say there was between 300-400 people there and while it wasn't a big rally in numbers, the media came out in full force to cover the event. So we can be sure that the Minister for Trade DEFINITELY knows that they're here. On the way home with Benji (a really cool guy from Arkansas who is all about the fair trade) and the students on the bus, we talked, chanted and let on only other students on the way back to Legon. It was quite the party.

Anyways, if the ideas of fair trade aren't yet clear to you, I'll try to articulate them more clearly in the coming months as they become relevant. If you want to learn more about it, Oxfam UK has a good introduction to fair trading. And always great is Fairtrade Carleton's super-fantastic website.