Globalization. It’s a big concept that means a lot of things to different people. As technology, inventions and innovations have made travel and transport easier over the years, it’s only logical that bits and pieces from countries and cultures would scatter like seeds on the wind across the globe. And while the majority of the people in my community will likely never go far beyond West Africa, they are rather well versed in the world, through commodities and ephemera. Here are some of the things that make Winneba a global town.
Imported Food Items
There are a variety of imported goods available around Winneba. From food stuffs like olive oil to processed Laughing Cow cheese. While you can’t find everything you might find at a supermarket, you can find a lot of things and their origins may be surprising.
Vehicles and Getting Around
There is only one Ghanaian car company, and it’s still new and doesn’t have a significant market share. That means that nearly all of the cars on the road have been imported from other countries.
Clothes and Fashion
At the market, there are piles of clothes, imported in bags that were sold by the pound from donated clothes from high-income countries. These piles of clothes are often referred to as obruni piles or “white man” piles.
And while buying these cast off clothes is extremely common, it’s also common to have clothes made from what is called “African” print. However, the history of these prints is one of early globalization. Dutch traders sailed around Africa to Indonesia, where they picked up the batiking process and brought it to West Africa, where local symbols and designs were incorporated.
The Dutch saw an opportunity for expanding an industry and started manufacturing these West African style prints using an Indonesian process in the Netherlands, which they still do today. One of the big scandals now is that the prints from these high-end fabric companies are being plagiarized by Chinese knock-off companies, bringing the globalization even further.
Remnants of Colonialism
There are marks of globalization throughout the town, left over from the colonial times. What is currently the prison used to be a slave trading fort. A building that is currently known among locals and 1920 was formerly a building for the African and Eastern Trading Company. The African and Eastern Trading Corporation served as the semi-official representative for British trading interests, particularly the Ashanti gold fields in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). After mergers and amalgamation, what was once the African and Eastern Trading Corporation is now Unilever.
While on the surface, it may not seem like the people of Winneba, who grow up here, go to school here and make a living here are a part of the global citizenry, the truth is that their lives have been and continue to be impacted by globalization.
This post is part of Blogging Abroad’s 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week one: Global Citizenship.