Ghana Days 24-26

So I took Friday off to help Katey acclimatize and show her around a bit. Her plane was apparently only a third full, and the arrival gate definitely showed that. When I arrived there was definitely a throng of people outside, but this morning the airport seemed very leisurely and rather sparsely populated. Definitely a less flustering visit.

Katey was pretty culture-shocked, having never been in Africa before, but she handled it and the jetlag remarkably, I thought. If I showed up somewhere at 9am I think I’d probably sleep all day, but we went out into the city and walked around a fair amount. I think she was nonplussed by the commute time (which was actually shorter when we went since it was around noon), and she was definitely nonplussed by the constant sweatiness when you’re out and about, but so am I, so it’s alright. We went downtown and hung out at the internet café for an hour, and then I went to the Electoral Commission to drop off a request for parliamentary election results. Barak and a PhD student from UCSD are writing a paper of some sort on ethnic voting in elections, and the results aren’t online yet. Apparently burning a CD with them is extremely time-consuming though (those excel files can be tricky…), so we couldn’t wait for it and I have to come back on Wednesday.

When we left we just wandered around a bit, because Katey likes to walk and she wanted to see some sites, but she was pretty tired and we gave up and came home. Altogether a fairly fun day, and we get along pretty well (at least while she’s jetlagged, I suppose I shouldn’t make judgments yet ).

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Saturday morning I went to the school nearby to tutor. I figured I was on Ghana time so I left late, but it turns out they actually start on time, so my teaching was limited. Looks like I’ll be doing 9-12 for the rest of my Saturdays if I think I’m accomplishing anything, although it’s hard to tell if I’m an effective teacher. I was teaching math, which is sort of tough to explain to begin with (we were converting fractions to decimals and percents, so not terrible, but 1.0 = 100% was tough to grasp for some folks), but I’m pretty sure my American accent was difficult to understand. It’s funny to be on that end of things, since I’ve definitely complained before (or commiserated with people who complained) about professors with bad accents. I’m working on speaking slowly though, so hopefully I’m not too unintelligible.

While I was waiting for my class to get back from break, I chatted with the headmaster, Bennett, for a bit. He’s an engineer, but he couldn’t find a job when he graduated so he’s taken on the school. He says he plans to go back to school for IT once he’s gotten the school’s ducks in a row, so to speak (my phrase, not his) and he’s sure he can pass it off and have it run well. He seemed fairly knowledgeable about things in general, so he was interesting to talk to.

Bennett seemed to think that there is in fact an ethnic (or perhaps regional is a better way to describe it) component to party affiliation, despite Barak’s research to the contrary. This is pretty interesting, since it shows that ethnicity/ regionalism is still present, even if it does not predominate in fact. He thinks the NPP is popular among Twi speakers, while Ewe and the northern regions support NDC. He says they tend to be disappointed in their elected leaders, though, because they don’t allocate benefits according to this split. So there’s an unfulfilled expectation of ethnic favoritism, which is interesting – and Bennett seemed to think that ethnic appeals were a factor in the campaign, so people have a reason to expect such favoritism. However, he said he only listened to radio interviews and never went to rallies, so he’s not a stellar witness.

He had an interesting take on democracy as a system. He thinks that Ghana has a problem importing western democracy wholesale, which is certainly a viable argument. I’m not sure what I think of his suggestions to tailor it though. He thinks that it’s problematic to have an essentially two-party system, and that to solve this (to beat Duverger’s Law, for those of you who have taken Barak’ Institutions class), the country needs to place term limits on parties. So if NPP has been in power two terms, they can’t run a presidential candidate (or something) for 8 more years. That way other parties have a way to get their voice in. Bennett’s a CPP supporter, but ironically he voted NDC to avoid throwing his vote away. Perpetuating the two-party system he hates : )

He also expressed displeasure at the constantly changing national education policy. Every new administration has overhauled the former administration’s plan, so he thinks there should be one plan that elected officials have to follow regardless of their party. Very interesting idea. Not terribly practical, but he didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of ending up with bad policy.

All in all, he was a smart guy to talk to and I got some interesting viewpoints.

On the way home I had yet another interesting conversation. I got into a cab that was dropping one guy a bit down the road from where I picked it, so I had a very short conversation with the other passenger that mostly consisted of his asking for my number and my saying no sorry. After he got out the cab driver told me how happy he was I had said no – not because of anything specific the guy had said, but because he was Nigerian.

I don’t recall if I’ve written about this yet, but the Nigerians here are the most maligned of any group in the country. If there is ethnic hatred, it’s all channeled towards the poor Nigerian immigrants. They’re the trouble-makers of the country. So the cab driver told me on the way to taking me home (which he offered to do at a very reduced rate since he was so well pleased with me) about how Nigerians come to the country and they do not work, but rather have loud parties and steal things. Apparently 20 years ago, before the big Nigerian diaspora I’m assuming, you could leave your house unlocked without fear, but now even locked houses are targets for Nigerian thieves. I told him it was hard for me to believe – was the entire country’s worth of people really terrible? And he said yes, yes they were. So I mostly left it at that. Grandma as well has talked about how rowdy Nigerians are and how the hotel she worked at for a while wouldn’t let to Nigerians, because they trashed rooms and did not pay rent. Apparently they are often recognizable on the streets because they speak loudly and make a ruckus. Very interesting ethnic profiling, especially considering how extremely un-homogeneous Nigeria is. If I have to make a completely wild, mostly uneducated guess, I would say that the folks who come from Lagos are probably the ones who get noticed more. Lagos is the largest city in Africa (one of the largest in the world), and there’s lots of poverty and from what I’ve heard it’s a pretty rambunctious urban environment. I can see that sort of setting producing people who tend to be louder and rowdier, compared to Accra-dwellers who tend to be pretty laid back. That’s a totally wild extrapolation though. It would be an interesting study to do.

The rest of my Saturday was super laid back. I broke down and bought a pair of shoes (my super glue shoes didn’t really come out of the last round of glue very well), but since they’re channeled through Goodwill (with the sticker still on one shoe) they only cost me $2 (3 cedis). I think I can probably absorb that cost ok. Anyone interested in how secondhand goods and textiles get to Africa, btw, should check out Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, which is a really light read and very interesting. The last third-ish is the part that deals with the secondhand trade, but the rest is about cotton farming and textile production and is pretty interesting.

Beyond that I’ve just been reading, napping, and rationing my movie collection, and that’s the plan for Sunday as well.

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The plan for Sunday worked out as planned, although I additionally had the pleasure of washing my underwear and socks and hauling water. I’ve got more clothes (since some are rewearable) than underwear, so to save on laundering costs I’m trying to do those myself. But I felt bad about using lots of water, so I decided to replenish what I took, and then I decided to just fill up all the buckets in the bathroom, because I had nothing better to do and Emma, who usually does it, has 2 sick children and is possibly sick herself. So that was a good 8 trips back and forth from the reservoir with two big buckets per hand each. I did find yet another good use for socks though – in addition to being handy towels and dust cloths, they make good handles for the buckets (which have sort of thin, wirey handles that hurt the first time I picked them up). I know Douglas Adams says never leave home without a towel, but a healthy supply of socks seems to be even better.

I started Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses Saturday night. So far I’m very impressed, he’s got an excellent writing style and can really paint a picture for the reader. I hope nobody succeeds in carrying out Khomeni’s fatwa calling for his death : /