 Media Credit: Bill McCarthy Ghanaian drummers, like these shopkeepers from Powerful Drums in Accra, are world renowned. [Click to enlarge]
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Ghanaian musician Francis Kofi Akotuah was recently denied a Canadian visa, delaying his cultural workshop tour with drummer Larry Graves for at least a week.
Akotuah, a professor at the University of Ghana, was planning to stay in Canada for about a month. During that time he would have taught at several workshops, including one at McGill, and would have performed in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal.
Larry Graves, drummer for the band Mr. Something Something, had received $3,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts to finance the project with Akotuah. Although Graves remains confident that the trip will not be cancelled altogether, the program will be delayed at least a week. In order to expedite the process, Graves has been working around the clock with Citizenship and Immigration Canada to sort everything out.
"We've lost three weeks of time to get the paperwork. He's flying in on Tuesday, we're dealing with the holiday Monday, and I've got basically 48 hours to put these papers together which usually take a week or more to put through," Graves said.
According to Graves, the CIC is not convinced Akotuah will leave voluntarily at the end of his stay. When asked to comment on Akotuah's case, Madona Mokbel, a CIC Media Relations representative, refused.
"Due to privacy legislation, it would be inappropriate to comment on any individual or specific case without the authorization of the individual," Mokbel said. "Canada's immigration legislation serves to protect the health, safety, and security of Canadians."
Akotuah is 33-years old, has a wife and two children, and a job at the University of Ghana.
"Francis knows that down the road there will be more opportunities for him in Canada if his trip goes well," Graves said. "If he botches the program and doesn't return to Ghana then he'll reduce his opportunities in the future … There's no valid reason to think that he wouldn't go back."
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