marina_bonomi | Good Books About Ghana?

I'm in need of some help with reference, please.

Many of you know that I work with our Foreign Residents Office as cultural mediator for China, being multi-lingual I used to cover for my Ugandan collegue when she went home for a couple of months during the summer. Sadly, as some of you know, she died in a car accident this July.

Work-wise we are in deep water. In Verona proper and around the city there are two other experienced African mediators, both of them already have their hands full and cannot guarantee any steady presence on our territory (37 municipalities from the Garda lake to the mountains, to the rice-and-tobacco-growing plain), moreover red tape and fund-cutting make almost impossible to bring in someone new, at least for a few months.

This is to say that today I've been asked officially to cover for Silvia , at the best of my abilities. The African collegues in Verona will be the back-up for the very complex cases and those in which the people involved doesn't speak English.

Now, many of our 'regulars' already know me, and I haven't had any trouble, up to now, my English is definitely good enough, I use the same professional techniques I use normally when mediating for my folk and I'm experienced enough to recognize when a situation is too complex and I need to step back and let someone else take over.

...But I really hate the feeling that I'm just interpreting because I don't know enough to do proper cultural mediation, and any case involving African immigrants drains me because I feel I don't know enough to 'read' their signals in the correct way (part of it is possibly just me, since they seem happy enough to have me around, but I hate the sensation nonetheless).

Can anyone suggest good books on Ghana to me? The majority of our English-speaking African immigrants are Akan Ghanaians.

Do not misunderstand me, please, I know perfectly well that no amount of book research will turn me into a 'serious' mediator for Ghana. to do that I should move there, live there, learn Twi (the language most of our residents speak) and so on, but that is impossible for me and I must do the most I can with the resources I have. At the moment that means learn as much as possible so that at least I can manage to avoid ignorance-induced blunders.

Thanks for any help.