Chakun, Ghana had the highest rate of Guinea worm cases in its district before it got a new borehole. The villagers are now notably stronger and healthier that they have access to clean water.

People fetching water from a dirty pond in Kpalang village, Ghana. The pond is the only source of water for this remote farming village of 600 people.

Auckhinleck Adow
Associate director, World Vision in Ghana

There was palpable excitement here in Ghana as President Obama visited this past weekend. He highlighted our nation’s progress, most recently our peaceful, democratic election. Accra is still abuzz and my colleagues and neighbors are talking about it constantly.

Born and raised in Ghana, I remember the awe I felt as a child when Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1961. Now, my 13-year-old daughter had the chance to see the first African-American president visit her nation, and her excitement makes me proud of the progress our country has made. For example, Ghana is the only sub-Saharan African country on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting hunger in half by 2015.

As I reflect this week on the visit, I wonder what windows of opportunity it offers for the nearly half of Ghanaians surviving on less than US $1 a day. And amidst President Obama’s focus on Ghana’s democratic progress and good governance, it could easily be forgotten that there are still so many Ghanaians struggling to survive.

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Editor’s Note: President Obama made his first visit to Sub Saharan Africa as President this past weekend. He and his family visited Ghana where the president gave a wide-ranging address to the parliament of Ghana, a western African nation seen as a model of democracy and growth for the rest of the continent. Obama’s visit prompted AC360° contributor Chris Guillebeau, to reflect on his four years working in the region.

Boats along the shore of Ghana's coast.

Chris Guillebeau
AC360° Contributor

West Africa is the kind of place that is largely unknown to most people who haven’t made a deliberate effort to study it. Travel writers struggle to describe the region without the clichéd contrasts: hope, despair, joy, sorrow. That’s what you get when you combine a poverty-stricken area with some of the world’s happiest people.

Many people ask how they can get started in international development work. My answer: carry boxes.

Depressed after 9/11, I surfed the internet looking for volunteer jobs as far away from America as possible. I found one in a medical charity that needed a warehouse manager, which turned out to be a euphemism for box-carrier. Technically I managed a slew of donated goods for refugee camps and nurses, but mostly I shuffled boxes back and forth in a Land Rover every day.

No matter. It was the best job ever. I went to West Africa in 2002 with a two-year volunteer commitment. Before the end of the first year, I ended up running more than the warehouse. The organization needed a Programs Director to oversee the field work and coordinate relationships with host governments throughout the region. “Pick me,” I said, and for some reason they did.

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Program Note: President Obama makes his first official trip to Ghana today. He is the first African-American President to visit the African continent. Anderson sits down with President in Ghana to talk about the significance of his trip and the President’s own African history. Tune in tonight for more from Anderson next week for the interview. AC360°, 10 p.m. ET.

Charlie Moore
AC360° Senior Broadcast Producer

These pictures were taken at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, which was used in the trans-Atlantic slave as the final departure point for slaves bound for the western hemisphere. Thousands of slaves were held in the dungeons of the castle before being transferred to boats. More on the slave trade next week during our special, “President Obama’s African Journey.”

The courtyard of the Cape Coast Castle.

The “door of no return.” Slaves would exit this door and board ships bound for the western hemisphere.

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David Puente
AC360° Producer

A former nude model will be among some of the most powerful women in the world at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy this week.

L’Aquila is the town devastated by the earthquake in April and it is also where first ladies like Michelle Obama are joining their husbands for the annual G8 summit. But an ex-glamour and lingerie model is accompanying the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, 72, to the summit.

Mara Carfagna, 33, was his choice for minister of equal opportunities, last year. Since then she’s been named one of the world’s hottest politicians by the men’s magazine Maxim. Carfagna, not Berlusconi’s wife — who has filed for divorce — will escort Michelle Obama, Sarah Brown and the other first spouses on a tour of Rome.

Rumors about Prime Minister Berlusconi’s sex life have been the talk of the Italian media for the last several months. It’s been reported that he told Carfagna that, “If I was not already married, I would run off with you immediately.”

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Kassim Bakari said he thought he would never see his wife or daughter again after learning of the crash.

Michael Schulder
CNN Senior Executive Producer

It wasn’t the Hudson River. It wasn’t a soft landing. It wasn’t a happy ending. When the Yemenia Airlines Airbus went down in the rough seas of the Indian Ocean, 152 people perished. Everyone on board. Everyone except a 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari. The way her father describes her, Bahia did not fit the profile of a survivor. She could “barely swim” her father told the Associated Press. She was, he said, a fragile, timid girl.

Bahia was on the plane with her mother, flying from their home in Paris, to Yemen, then on to the Comoros Islands off the southeast coast of Africa to visit Bahia’s grandma. Their flight was approaching the Comoros when it disappeared from the radar. With the wind blowing at nearly 40 miles an hour, the plane went down in the choppy seas of the Indian Ocean. Bahia’s father, back in Paris, recounted for the AP what his daughter told him over the phone. “Papa, we saw the plane going down in the water. I was in the water. I could hear people talking, but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see a thing. On top of that, daddy, I can’t swim well and I held onto something, but I don’t really know what.”

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Ousted Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya appears Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly.

Joy Olson
Executive Director, Washington Office on Latin America

Make no mistake, the sudden and clandestine removal of a president, while still in his pajamas, by the military is certainly a coup. Yes, military coups can still happen in Central America and there are lessons to be drawn from the recent coup d’etat in Honduras.

Neighboring countries and the U.S. continue to craft their responses to the ousting of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. It is clear, however, that the best way to deal with Central America’s first coup since 1993 is through multilateral engagement via the Organization of American States (OAS).

While some seek to stoke regional tensions by interpreting the situation in Honduras as related to Venezuela, multi-lateral dialogue offers a less polarizing solution to Honduras’ latest political turmoil. Restoring democracy in Honduras with OAS involvement offers a unique opportunity to strengthen relations throughout the hemisphere, forge consensus, and reinvigorate a regional body that is crucial in safeguarding human rights and democracy.

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Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell visited Syria two weeks ago, where he said he had 'serious and productive discussions' with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Elise Labott
State Department Producer

President Obama has decided to send a US ambassador back to Syria, a dramatic sign of reconciliation between the two countries, senior administration officials tell CNN. The announcement is expected to be made this week.

“It’s in our interests to have an ambassador in Syria,” a senior administration official told CNN Tuesday night. “We have been having more and more discussions and we need to have someone there to engage.”

The official said that the decision was “not in any way” related to the election crisis in Iran, although the Obama administration has maintained engaging the Syrian regime could weaken Syria’s strategic alliance with Iran.

Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha said his country had not formally been notified of the decision, but told CNN “if this is true it reflects the genuine desire by the United States of America to correct the past efforts of the Bush administration and engage Syria.”

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Demonstrators are sprayed with a water hose Saturday by Iranian security forces.

Protesters try to protect themselves from tear gas fired by police Saturday in Tehran.

Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com

Watching the events in Tehran unfold over the past week has conjured up tragic memories of what took place in Tiananmen Square more than 20 years ago.

In 1989, China’s largest pro-democracy protests in history ended when military tanks rolled onto Tiananmen Square (translated literally as ‘Gate of Heavenly Peace’) and armed Chinese troops opened fire on crowds of more 1 million people.

The tragedy sadly resulted in the deaths of between 180 to 500 people, according to a 1989 U.S. State Department briefing on the matter.

Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events.

That sounds eerily familiar to what we are seeing transpire on the streets of Tehran, Iran today.

In the aftermath of the hotly-contested presidential election between hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, we have seen hundreds of thousands of average Iranians take to the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and other Iranian cities. Iranians are demanding their votes to be accurately counted — and certified. It is the closest thing that Iran has seen to a ‘velvet revolution’ in recent historical memory.

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