Saturday, May 30, 2009

Ghana Day 4


Not much to report since last time. It’s probably going to be a pretty boring weekend filled with reading and such things. I don’t have any real work to do (except a little bit for the paper I’m writing with Barak) until I start on Monday, at which point I hope I’m given interesting things to do and think about. I went wandering around the neighborhood yesterday for a few hours (and found an internet cafĂ©, which was excellent). I was planning on going to the beach today, but it finally decided to rain last night and is continuing to drizzle as I write this. It rained hard enough to wake me up, and Matt will tell you how impressive that is. So it’s fairly muddy around, and the beach is possibly not the best idea in the rain. Hopefully the sun will come out later. In terms of other entertainment, I’m going to wait to explore the city until I have (hopefully) made a few friends who know what’s around to do. My entertainment budget is pretty close to nonexistent. I need to wait and see how much I’m likely to spend on taxi and tro tro (large vehicles where lots of people pile in) fare every day before I can assess how much extra I will have for that sort of thing. I hate to give up on being a tourist, but I really am here more for the work experience, so that has to come first.

I think that in Ghana English is not quite as widely spoken as French was in Cameroon. I have had some trouble talking with a few people, which is rather disappointing. Also, Ewe (pronounced ay-vay, sort of) is what is normally spoken in the house here, so hanging around with the family is not terribly enthralling. This differs from my Cameroon family, who only rarely spoke anything but French at home. It is possible of course that they were a fluke, or else avoided speaking anything but French in front of me out of courtesy, so it’s hard to make a generalization.

The kids are all fascinated by the solitaire games on my computer. Around 7 of them (one is small and got covered up in the picture) piled into my room on the currently spare bed last night to draw a house in paint and play spider solitaire. It was pretty cute.

Friday, May 29, 2009





Pictures of the folks: Gifty, me, and Prince at Independence Square; Charles, me, and Prince at the stadium, Grandma preparing okra, and me getting drumming lessons.

Ghana Day 3

Interesting political observations blog:

Corruption seems to be the major scourge of the country now. Grandma (my host) told me some of her political views while I was waiting for orientation to begin (characteristically around an hour and a half late). She was a supporter of Rawlings, even though he was a dictator, because he was a clean, no-nonsense sort of dictator. His cousin had someone shot for a minor offense, and the judge let him off the hook because of his connection. Rawlings told the judge to look into the case again and make sure he got it right, and the retrial ended with the president’s cousin going before the firing squad. So the moral of that story I guess is that he was either against nepotism or else didn’t like that particular cousin very much.

Grandma’s brother in law told her about a recent occurrence that is supposedly fairly typical. His father is a pensioner and recently had a stroke. The director and some other folks at the pension bureau brought him in to sign for a pretty sizable pension and then took the money themselves – taking advantage of his forgetfulness brought on by the stroke.

While I was waiting in the car in the center of Accra for one of the program directors to tip the guard at the stadium and buy some street food, I had the opportunity to watch one street that came up from several ministry buildings, including the Department of Labour and the IRS. I saw several cars coming out that were very new, including at least one shiny new Mercedes Benz. One of the biggest anticorruption pushes right now by the government is to get the previous administration’s bureaucrats to return all of the state-owned cars that are available for government use. This might have been a recovered car or a personal car, but in any case it is unlikely the government has so much money that it should be providing Benzes as state cars.

There is a popular radio personality here who remains anonymous and has a 30 minute segment every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 5:30pm. I cannot recall his pseudonym, but I was told it translates roughly into “the gossip.” He seems to have some pretty high level informants and has broken several stories (for example former ministers fleeing the country because they were afraid the new administration would prosecute their corrupt acts). He is very popular and hard-hitting, but obviously the media situation in Ghana is not yet free enough for such a figure to think he would be safe if he disclosed his identity. I’ve been told that the Daily Graphic, the widest-selling paper, tends to support the government line and is state-owned (to be confirmed later I hope), but the Guide, where I will work and which is supposedly the 2nd largest paper), attacks both of the major parties. Sometimes, however, they still succumb to state pressure in what they print. (I hear this from the organization’s director Prince, who used to work at the Statesman as a graphic designer and currently does IT work for three papers, not including the Guide.)

Touristy blog:

Orientation was pretty fun and very touristy, and included lots of picture taking. Prince, Gifty, the driver Charles, and I all went to Independence Square, which is the large central gathering place (where Obama is likely to speak when he comes in July), the national stadium, and the Centre for National Culture.

Independence Square is a big open space by the ocean, and the most interesting parts about it (I thought) were 1) the prominent statue of General Kokota, a previous military dictator, and 2) the fact that no pictures were allowed of the eastern part of the stadium, since the president’s former (not current) residence was in that direction (it’s a castle from colonial times, and would be really cool to look at, but unfortunately you cannot approach it).

The stadium was pretty cool, with the bleachers in red and yellow and the grass in green to round out the national colors. We saw the national ping pong (table tennis) team practicing, and Prince decided he wanted to try. He claims he played in school, but you would never guess it – he returned two serves total in the boundaries. I got some good video of it. He’s definitely a better director than table tennis athlete.

At the Centre for National Culture, which is a pretty cool artisan market, Prince had a friend of his who makes drums give me a drumming lesson. First they played me a welcome drum song, although apparently it was quiet because of a (possible Muslim?) festival going on for which quiet is usually observed. I thought they were plenty loud myself; I don’t know what full blast would have been. I got a short video of that as well. The lesson was not as good, since I was drumming as well – I’m a worse drummer than I am a singer, and that’s saying a lot. Everyone seemed rather disappointed that I would not be making any purchases that day, but unfortunately I don’t really have any disposable income and if I can buy anything, it will be right before I leave.

Speaking of money, it turns out the older $100 bills are not valid currency in Ghana. This poses a bit of a dilemma for me, since $350 of my money is in fact in old bills. I’m going to need to make some arrangements to get some transferred to me somehow, but this will be upsettingly expensive. Apparently no volunteer has ever run into this problem before me, so Prince was as surprised as I was.

We had lunch at the sort of family-owned restaurant that isn’t really a restaurant as much as it is some chairs set up in a family’s courtyard. We had kenkey, which is a steamed mash of fermented maize (not much taste to it, but better than the fufu I had in Cameroon). It traditionally goes with fish, but I had it with the two pepper sauces and an egg. I have to say that I’m not sure African food is really up my alley (since I can’t eat most of it), but dinner was better and I’m sure I’ll find enough to keep me happy while I’m here. There are a few dishes that I had in Cameroon that I loved, and at least one (peanut sauce) is served here as well.

I discovered that I will be sharing my room starting next Tuesday with a girl from the States, and her sister and possibly brother will be down the hall. They are going to be volunteering at an orphanage nearby.

Ghana Day 1 (delayed post)

So I’ve been in Ghana now for four hours, and I haven’t stopped sweating since I stepped off the plane. Besides the mugginess (I was told it rarely got above 30 degrees, which isn’t terribly reassuring), everyone has been super friendly starting from even before I got anywhere near the continent. I met a Ghanaian man who lives practically next door to me (Alexandria, VA) on the flight from DC to Heathrow. He stole my window seat, but besides that was very nice and we sat together waiting for the flight to Accra and chatted. He expressed optimism about the future of his country, which seems to be a general feeling in Ghana.

Quick Ghanaian recent history lesson: Ghana became the first African country to be independent from colonial Europe in 1957, but democratic experiments were repeatedly interrupted by coups. The military dictator, John Rawlings (who was pretty benevolent as dictators go), won the first two presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 after he decided a transition to democracy would be a good idea, and then he stepped down after his term limit. His party won the 2000 election, but lost the 2004 elections. In December 2008, his party made a comeback because Ghanaians didn’t like how the new folks were running things. Ghana is rare in that its parties have a fairly ideological bent, rather than being simply manifestations of whatever obvious societal cleavages exist. While the new president, John Atta Mills, was Rawlings’ vice president and hand-picked successor for the presidency, everyone tends to see him as a fresh start for the country. Rawlings certainly implemented some good policies, but his administration was far from spotless. It’s pretty interesting that so many see him as detached from previous corruption and mismanagement. More on that once I learn more though. (This is certainly not a Ghana- or Africa- specific lesson mind you – lots of people have very short memory spans).

So on the second leg of the flight I met another man who was very nice, although not Ghanaian. He has a family-owned business in Accra and West Africa and general, but the family is Greek. Besides offering me his card to call him in case I got in trouble (since I showed up in the country not really knowing where I was going besides that I was supposed to be picked up at the airport), he offered me some interesting insights on foreign direct investment in the country. His business requires skilled management, which he imports from Korea, and then the work crew is largely African. Not an isolated trend by any means. I asked him what he thought about corruption in the country as a business owner; while saying it couldn’t compare to the United States or similar, he did think it was pretty tolerable here. Besides which, he said, corruption isn’t really the problem; he doesn’t give money for nothing, he offers payment for expedited service – “and that’s not really corruption.” It’s interesting how the concept of corruption can be twisted to fit a number of definitions.

I was picked up without incident at the airport by Prince and Gifty, the people who run National Volunteers of Ghana (Navog). They are both wonderfully nice and welcoming. I am staying in the Nungua Estates area in a decent sized compound that houses numerous people, all of whom I don’t think I have met yet. The matriarch is Patience, but everyone calls her Grandma (she is Prince’s aunt). Her husband is Mike. The children and grandchildren I am not straight on and will provide a family tree for later, but her son Tony lives in the same building in the compound as I do with his wife and two children, along with a Scot named Steven who will only be around for another week before he leaves. Steven’s been here helping to coach one of the local football teams, so he’s occasionally a local hero (and sometimes the local punching bag, when the team loses). Seems like a very nice chap though. Contrary to the businessman on the plane, Steven tells me corruption is ubiquitous and is rather appalled by it.

Orientation happens tomorrow (Thursday), and I’ll be learning all about Accra, changing money, getting a phone, seeing sites, and all that jazz. I don’t start work at the Daily Guide until Monday, so I have plenty of time to acclimatize myself, see some sites, maybe do a little of the reading I wanted to get done before I got here. In any case, I’ll probably have time for a few more entries and maybe some pictures pretty soon.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Boring first post

Hi there! This is the start of the Ghana edition of my blog. I am not actually in Ghana yet, so I have nothing at all interesting to report. I'll be leaving on Tuesday (May 26) and arriving there Wednesday (May 27), so you might get a blog that is worth reading sometime before the end of the month. Until then, I'll be catching up on my reading : )