Tamale

The African Kiss festival is a long tradition in Freiburg. It is well known that the event benefits both the enjoyment of the visitors and a project in Ghana. Julia Littmann was able to take advantage of the Goethe-Institut exchange programme with the Daily Graphic in Ghana to take a look at the AIM project on location – and received overwhelming response for the project from the population.

What should the people of Freiburg know about the AIM supporter project in Africa? AIM stands for African Information Movement and for a project that originated on the southern coast of Ghana with strong links to Freiburg, 6 flying hours and a median culture shock away.

The staff and the village elders, project workers and villagers look at one another in bafflement this afternoon in Komenda. After all Papa Kodwo Mbir, a socially stirring historian, author and agitator with sparkling recalcitrant eyes and greyed hair, who comes from the humble fishing village of Komenda and still lives here, is speaking:

“Well, first of all it is amazing that proper journalists of yours should finally come here to see for yourselves what AIM is achieving here.” The social and educational work that the staff of AIM has been committed to for the past three years in Komenda has done more than just bring a dozen young people here from Germany for voluntary services. The idea of the local people and the intention of the long-term guests (interns and young people doing their civil service stay at least one year) is just as simple as it is convincing: to develop quality of life and prospects in Komenda, a town that is not very appealing to young people. A youth club, music, theatre and film projects are just as much a part of the programmes that have been developed over the course of time as the volleyball team and the soccer tournaments where the SC jerseys serve their purpose.

Local helpers in Freiburg promote AIM so that the Sport Club long ago joined the ranks to contribute donations in kind for the success of the congenial project. Town council member William Batch describes his home town of Komenda not only as congenial, but as downright privileged. The 54-year old has watched countless helpers from organizations in many countries in action in Ghana and these ones here, he states clearly and deliberately, are different: “They mingle with us, they are with the locals.” Meaning that they don’t live in fenced-off complexes, but in the middle of town where comfort is not what they are used to. The uncommon cooperation is also perceptible in a decisive trivial fact: the people who work here speak Fante – the chief language of the region. Whether we encounter Jana Peters, who organizes the work in the three youth centres, or musician Milena Minuth, who supervises the band project – we find no traces of wariness or helper syndrome. And this goes down well with those for whom the project was initially launched. The young people in Komenda not only participate in the projects, they also take up responsibility for them.

Francis Aidoo, for instance: the 20-year old runs the youth club and is dedicated tooth and nail to the film projects. It’s no wonder for it is here that he got the idea that he’d like to do “something in the direction of art films.” AIM is a great asset for Marian Baiden-Annan, principal of the junior high school: “It is basically a stroke of luck for all of us, but the computers in particular are an enormous supplement to the school’s meagre possibilities.”

The projects offered by AIM are modest, says the village elder, and the results are such a perceptible improvement for the young people that there is always a willingness to support anything that AIM proposes. Jörn Preuss, with the most modest of earnings, has been in Komenda longer than any of them and is the local project leader of AIM. Along with the dozens of active staff and the five volunteers from Germany he is especially pleased about the latest accomplishment: the opening of the Cyber Café puts them all into rapture. Lilly Lovelace Kudjoe, too, a 22-year old who is taking advantage of her chance to learn and be empowered, quite in keeping with the sentiments of Gernot Erler, member of the Bundestag from Freiburg and the patron of AIM: “I support AIM because the idea of giving young people in rural Ghana access to computers and therefore to open up future opportunities for them is very substantial and very good.”