The first ever organized Open Grill Fest in the Heerdter Freizeitpark in Düsseldorf was a major success. The party was live yesterday. People attended in numbers, the weather was nice, the music was good and the atmosphere just amazing. Positive vibes with many children bouncing to afrobeats and challenging their dancing skills in a cypher. Since the event was organized quite “last minute” the advert about it was minor, as the amount of Ghanaians living in Düsseldorf and cities around, could have filled the place twice or triple times more. But so far so good, as this had taken place the first time ever, the results are encouraging for the organisers to make this happen on a regular basis. Ghanaians love dress codes for no reason I can give, but it was good to see the majority reppin´ the white on jeans look.
It is always good to have the community together, having good times. Events like this can be seen as an opportunity in the future, to raise awareness on certain problems that affect the African diaspora in Germany – which in that sense can be targeting the Ghanaian community first. Instead of making the big fuss about development policy issues and the wellbeing in all senses, Ghanaians love to party and party hard, too much at times. I am not judging or condemning it, as I am a typical Ghanaian who loves “enije” (good/fun times) too, but there is so much more potential, which can be used to pave the way for the second generation.
One minor example out of many – it is a struggle to find participant, who are actually in need of learning the German language, in order to manage their life without depending on the help of others, but wherever there is a community based party – all problems are put aside and celebrated “small, small”. Number wise in 2009, there are about 40.000 Ghanaians documented, for living in Germany, which builds the largest migration group of Subsaharan-Africans, followed by Nigerians and Cameroonians. Now in year 2015, we are surely more people to make that last availabe statistic irrelevant. So, with more people “on board” now, I think it is highly about time to put us on the map properly with bigger and greater achievements in our personal developments or as a collective – just for example; instead of going down at all parties advertised.
anecdotic anita 