Features
On Ambassador Amerley Ollennu Awua-Asamoa – A Special Woman
H. E. Mrs. Amerley Ollennu Awua-Asamoa
Today, I share something about H. E. Mrs. Amerley Ollennu Awua-Asamoa, former Ghana Ambassador to Denmark, with concurrent accreditation to the Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
As I wrote a few months ago, there are many personalities and institutions that have contributed to or ensured the smooth running of things for Ghanaian migrants in Finland.
The exploits of such people are laudable and should be acknowledged publicly. Many of them have used their knowledge and abilities to help improve the lives of members of the Ghanaian migrant community in Finland.
What I write here also reveals some of my own experiences with the former Ambassador at a time when I was the President of the Ghana Union Finland (GUF) from March 2018 to March 2020.
Ambassador Awua-Asamoa presented her official credentials to the Finnish government in April 2018, and her role has had a great impact for the Ghana Union Finland and the entire Ghanaian migrant community in Finland.
During her time, the Ambassador led the Embassy to conduct the first-ever mobile consular services exercise in Helsinki in October 2018. Many people admired the professional, excellent and very helpful service rendered by the efficient Embassy staff.
For the former Ambassador, some of her top priorities included improving customer services at the Embassy. Many people attest to the fact that the complaints about consular services greatly reduced; they also extol the former Ambassador’s friendliness, good works and the opportunities for trade and investment towards Ghana as their home country.
Satisfaction indeed increased and fostered closer interactions between the Ghana Embassy in Copenhagen and the Ghanaian community in Finland. (In 2018, the Ghana Embassy in Oslo was established and it assumed accreditation to Finland in 2020).
Ghana-Finnish Relations and Diaspora Issues
The former Ambassador always emphasized Ghana’s effort for rapid industrialization and economic growth and development in a sustainable manner especially for future generations. To her, the Ghana Government’s flagship policies such as the ‘One-District-One-Factory’ and ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ are highly important for foreign direct investments.
Ambassador Amerley Awua-Asamoa paid working visits to Finland many times, more than any of her predecessors. She reinforced the relations with Finland, building on efforts by her predecessors. She always stressed the deepening relations between Ghana and Finland.
She visited many educational institutions and places of higher learning in Finland and engaged in countless dialogues with Finnish institutions for possible cooperation. To her, the government’s policy of diaspora engagement was a good way to utilize the needed investment to drive the industrialisation agenda.
Engagements with the Ghanaian migrants
The former Ambassador kept what she refers to as an open-door policy in her engagements with Ghanaian migrants in Finland. She visited churches dominated by Ghanaians to first introduce herself, and in her subsequent visits she engaged Ghanaians in Finland to acquaint herself and get first-hand information about their concerns.
She used such an open-door policy, as she once explained to me in an interview, as “a communication strategy normally adopted to win the trust of people, especially those that need one’s services, by opening your door widely to listen to complaints and advice without being selective”.
The Ambassador sees this as very effective when implemented well since it brings great satisfaction once people’s concerns are addressed in a transparent manner. “They feel respected and try to support your efforts, and this is what I believe in and my style of management”, she revealed.
There was good cooperation with the Honorary Consul of Ghana in Finland at that time, Ms. Ulla Alanko, as well as the Ghana Union Finland and indeed the entire Ghanaian community in Finland. In both 2018 and 2019, the Ambassador attended Ghana’s Independence Day anniversary celebration in Helsinki.
The Ambassador always expressed gratitude to the Ghanaian community, which she reiterated in her message at a farewell meeting (held virtually due to Covid-19) with the Ghana Union in late 2020 when her work at the Embassy ended.
Her rich experience and affability
Mrs Amerley Awua-Asamoa has a very rich experience. She was once the Executive Director of the Association of African Women in Development (AAWID), a Ghanaian local non-governmental organisation operating at the grassroots level for the socio-economic empowerment of the marginalised.
She earlier worked with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as a Human Resource Management practitioner where she established a well-deserved reputation for her ability to rise through the ranks in a male-dominated environment to become the first female manager in the company.
In addition, she was very vocal in championing for gender mainstreaming and the development and implementation of HIV workplace policy in ECG.
H.E. Amerley Awua-Asamoa endeared herself to many Ghanaian migrants in Finland with her affable personality. Many people referred to her as “H. E” or “Maa” as a mother to the entire community.
In a nutshell, the work of the former Ambassador and the Embassy in attending to people’s needs is cherished by many in the Ghanaian community in Finland. This and her friendliness make her a special woman in the view of many people. Thank you!
PS: Last Monday was the birthday of the Editor, Mr. Emmanuel Amponsah. It also ushered him into his retirement, and I use this opportunity to express my gratitude to him. I appreciatively acknowledge his support to me and the cordial working relationship with him.
GHANA MATTERS column appears fortnightly. Written in simple, layman’s terms, it concentrates on matters about Ghana and beyond. It focuses on everyday life issues relating to the social, cultural, economic, religious, political, health, sports, youth, gender, etc. It strives to remind us all that Ghana comes first. The column also takes a candid look at the meanings and repercussions of our actions, especially those things we take for granted or even ignore. There are key Ghanaian values we should uphold rather than disregard with impunity. We should not overlook the obvious. We need to search for the hidden or deeply embedded values and try to project them.
By Perpetual Crentsil
Email: perpetualcrentsil@yahoo.com
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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