If It's Your First Time in Paris, You Gotta See the Eiffel Tower

So far in Ghana, I have felt sometimes like a student and sometimes like a tourist, but not yet a real visitor.  It is difficult not to feel touristy when you're traipsing around Accra with 11 other Americans.  Today, we saw one of the most important sites in Accra, Kwame Nkrumah's Memorial and Mausoleum.  Nkrumah was the first president of Ghana and was instrumental in gaining independence from the British.

Here it is:

It was designed by a Ghanaian architect, and it's made of Italian marble. Our guide told us that the shape symbolizes the trunk of a tree because many Ghanaians feel that Nkrumah laid the foundations for a strong Ghana.  "He was the trunk; we are the branches," our guide said.

 This statue of Nkrumah in front of the mausoleum is erected on the very spot where Nkrumah declared Ghana's independence on March 6, 1957.  He chose this spot because, under the British, this was the polo grounds, where only whites were allowed.

 This is part of the original statue that Nkrumah put in front of the presidential residence when he was president.  It was vandalized in the 1966 coup that swept him from power.  The CIA was involved in deposing him, of course.

 And this is the head of the original statue.  A Ghanaian woman found the head soon after the coup.  She kept it in her house for 46 years, and it finally came into government hands 3 years ago.

 Here he is.  The 1966 coup forced Nkrumah into exile in Guinea, where he became a co-president.  He was in Romania being treated for cancer when he died.  He was first buried in Guinea, then moved to his hometown in the Western Region of Ghana, then finally brought here.

 My favorite part--Nkrumah's bullet-proof cadillac.  "Not even this could protect him from the CIA," said our guide.  Indeed.