Last post!
For anyone still checking back in to the blog to make sure I am alive, this is a confirmation that I am in fact still alive and well. I think whatever sickness I had before has passed (although I had a sudden rash on my legs for a couple hours starting when I got back into my apartment... really weird).
The trip home was mostly uneventful, although I spent more money in the airports than I did in my last week in Ghana. I felt a little bad, but oh well. It was worth it to buy UK Starbursts -- which unlike American Starbusts, have no gelatin in them. Fantastic discovery. Also I bought crispy M&Ms.
Give me a call if you'd like -- I'll pick it up in the same timezone and without ridiculous fees!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Ghana Day 57
This is the last post from the continent of Africa of the Ghana Edition of Lindsay’s Adventures! It’s not a terribly exciting one, though – Wednesday I felt very ill all day and mostly just suffered through work. I almost went to an interesting program, but then I didn’t (out of fear of leaving the proximity of a nice bathroom), so it doesn’t make a very good story. I finished The Firm though, and I’m almost done with the Martian Chronicles, so I suppose it was productive intellectually. I also got through looking at the January and February newspapers.
Right when I was about to give up on getting my interview with the editor, because he was out until 3:30pm, he showed up and told me to wait for him. I got my interview around 4:30, and it was very interesting and probably worth waiting around for 7 hours for while feverish and belly-achey, although mostly because my alternative wasn’t all that better.
At night I packed and fell asleep by 8pm, and this morning I’m back at work for just a few hours to say goodbye and check in for my flight online. Although of course as I’m writing this the internet is not working (the power was out when I got here too, which is uncharacteristic). I’m a little sad to be going, but mostly I’ll be happy to be on American soil tomorrow at 1:40pm. Looking forward to seeing or talking to you all soon from a reasonable area code!
Right when I was about to give up on getting my interview with the editor, because he was out until 3:30pm, he showed up and told me to wait for him. I got my interview around 4:30, and it was very interesting and probably worth waiting around for 7 hours for while feverish and belly-achey, although mostly because my alternative wasn’t all that better.
At night I packed and fell asleep by 8pm, and this morning I’m back at work for just a few hours to say goodbye and check in for my flight online. Although of course as I’m writing this the internet is not working (the power was out when I got here too, which is uncharacteristic). I’m a little sad to be going, but mostly I’ll be happy to be on American soil tomorrow at 1:40pm. Looking forward to seeing or talking to you all soon from a reasonable area code!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Ghana Day 56
A couple anecdotes I forgot to share earlier:
Sunday I was walking down my street, which is a residential-type street (paved, no sidewalks, trimmed on either side by a deep gutter, about the width of 3 cars), when a huge monster truck hauling something or other came down the road. I stepped to the side to let it pass, but the driver stopped next to me and shouted down from 15 feet up, “I love you!” I told him thank you, that’s nice, I’m going somewhere now, bye” and started walking again. This big truck followed me down the road at about 3 miles an hour for about 20 or 30 feet so the driver could repeat his wooing. It was very surreal.
Monday evening, the time it’s normally hard to get a tro-tro, I joined a small pack of people who ran after a van to get in. I was too late to get in (it packed up fast), but then immediately after another van drove by (not really slowing down) and the mate shouted Nungua out the side. I think they like watching people run, the mates definitely seem to get a kick out of it. Anyway, since it didn’t slow down most of the people in my diminished pack gave it up, but a group of young men all ran, and I followed. I was the only girl to make it to them when they finally stopped (although I was last to arrive), and definitely the only one in 2 inch (chunky) heels. They were all very amused by me.
Tuesday at work I was not planning to have any exciting adventures, since there were very few assignments in the morning and they were all double booked. But as I was going for old newspapers, the news editor called me over and said, I know how excited you are for your inside spread today, how would you like to make the front page tomorrow? So of course I said that would be lovely, and he assigned me to get comments on the major story of the day from bigwig governance experts. Fortunately I was not assigned it alone—I got to go out with two other reporters. The only phone that makes calls outside the office is broken (I have no idea, don’t ask), so we went to track people down by car. I got left at a training conference on ethics and code of conduct for a handful of MPs to hunt down the head of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, a Mrs. Anna Bossman, who was making a presentation there. We lucked out and the Executive Secretary of the Transparency branch here (the Ghana Integrity Initiative) was also there. Mrs. Bossman had not seen the report yet (since it just came out), but the GII guy was happy to make a statement, and that was one of 3 interviews we got. Sure enough, the article and my name made the front page today, and my copy is actually kept in several parts. Very exciting.
The story itself is somewhat interesting. The outgoing administration had established a committee to determine what the end of service benefits would be for a particular class of civil servant that is politically appointed. They came up with a pretty exorbitant package (two houses for the prez plus 6 new cars every few years), and there was a pretty big outcry over it in January. The new admin set up a committee to review that committee, and just came out with their report. They said that the first guys had put out two “final reports”, the second of which after they would be pretty sure they weren’t winning the election. Also, parliamentary approval was sort of shady, rushed, and they didn’t specify which report they were approving. So that’s what we were looking for comments on.
After getting our interviews and writing our story, I had to go confirm my flight at British Airways. I was ecstatic to discover that the Graphic driver and car were free and able to take me over, so it was a pretty painless endeavor. Good thing, too, because the BA office moved and I had still been thinking it was at the first location, because they haven’t taken down their signs yet. So my flight is confirmed and I’m definitely leaving, barring another Congo situation.
In the evening I hung out with the neighbors and Sabrina for about an hour, which I was impressed with because it meant I stayed awake past 8:30. Tony’s very excited about his picture credit in the paper.
The only bad point in the day was that I ate something that disagreed with me and had to wake up at 2am to use the bathroom. Even through two immodium this morning, I’m still having some trouble, so I’ll probably be taking some heavy duty antibiotics before I get on the plane tomorrow night. Wonderful way to celebrate my last couple days : P
Sunday I was walking down my street, which is a residential-type street (paved, no sidewalks, trimmed on either side by a deep gutter, about the width of 3 cars), when a huge monster truck hauling something or other came down the road. I stepped to the side to let it pass, but the driver stopped next to me and shouted down from 15 feet up, “I love you!” I told him thank you, that’s nice, I’m going somewhere now, bye” and started walking again. This big truck followed me down the road at about 3 miles an hour for about 20 or 30 feet so the driver could repeat his wooing. It was very surreal.
Monday evening, the time it’s normally hard to get a tro-tro, I joined a small pack of people who ran after a van to get in. I was too late to get in (it packed up fast), but then immediately after another van drove by (not really slowing down) and the mate shouted Nungua out the side. I think they like watching people run, the mates definitely seem to get a kick out of it. Anyway, since it didn’t slow down most of the people in my diminished pack gave it up, but a group of young men all ran, and I followed. I was the only girl to make it to them when they finally stopped (although I was last to arrive), and definitely the only one in 2 inch (chunky) heels. They were all very amused by me.
Tuesday at work I was not planning to have any exciting adventures, since there were very few assignments in the morning and they were all double booked. But as I was going for old newspapers, the news editor called me over and said, I know how excited you are for your inside spread today, how would you like to make the front page tomorrow? So of course I said that would be lovely, and he assigned me to get comments on the major story of the day from bigwig governance experts. Fortunately I was not assigned it alone—I got to go out with two other reporters. The only phone that makes calls outside the office is broken (I have no idea, don’t ask), so we went to track people down by car. I got left at a training conference on ethics and code of conduct for a handful of MPs to hunt down the head of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, a Mrs. Anna Bossman, who was making a presentation there. We lucked out and the Executive Secretary of the Transparency branch here (the Ghana Integrity Initiative) was also there. Mrs. Bossman had not seen the report yet (since it just came out), but the GII guy was happy to make a statement, and that was one of 3 interviews we got. Sure enough, the article and my name made the front page today, and my copy is actually kept in several parts. Very exciting.
The story itself is somewhat interesting. The outgoing administration had established a committee to determine what the end of service benefits would be for a particular class of civil servant that is politically appointed. They came up with a pretty exorbitant package (two houses for the prez plus 6 new cars every few years), and there was a pretty big outcry over it in January. The new admin set up a committee to review that committee, and just came out with their report. They said that the first guys had put out two “final reports”, the second of which after they would be pretty sure they weren’t winning the election. Also, parliamentary approval was sort of shady, rushed, and they didn’t specify which report they were approving. So that’s what we were looking for comments on.
After getting our interviews and writing our story, I had to go confirm my flight at British Airways. I was ecstatic to discover that the Graphic driver and car were free and able to take me over, so it was a pretty painless endeavor. Good thing, too, because the BA office moved and I had still been thinking it was at the first location, because they haven’t taken down their signs yet. So my flight is confirmed and I’m definitely leaving, barring another Congo situation.
In the evening I hung out with the neighbors and Sabrina for about an hour, which I was impressed with because it meant I stayed awake past 8:30. Tony’s very excited about his picture credit in the paper.
The only bad point in the day was that I ate something that disagreed with me and had to wake up at 2am to use the bathroom. Even through two immodium this morning, I’m still having some trouble, so I’ll probably be taking some heavy duty antibiotics before I get on the plane tomorrow night. Wonderful way to celebrate my last couple days : P
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Agbogbloshie stories
http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2806 (my story)
http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2808 (my picture, edited London Times story)
http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2808 (my picture, edited London Times story)
Ghana Day 55
Monday morning I went to the EPA to talk to a guy about what they’re up to with the e-waste situation, and I got some mostly good info. They’ve got a strategy that has not been approved yet. From what the guy said, the issue has been on the table even before the Greenpeace report a year ago, and I feel like more than a year is sufficient even for a bureaucracy to approve a plan of some sort. But he seemed nice and shared most of what he knew with me, although he did not email me the power point he told he’d share with me, so in general not the most helpful of people. He also told me he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be talking to me, which is mostly his problem (his boss said answer all the questions, but he wasn’t sure he was supposed to answer directly to me or send them back to the boss). So he asked me to let him see the story before it went to print – which honestly I don’t think I have a too-big problem with, because letting him see it and letting him change it are different things, and if I got a name or fact wrong I’m happy to correct it if it seems like I actually got it wrong. That might just be my natural affinity for bureaucrats though. Anyway, I made sure to run the idea by my editor first, and he said no absolutely not, so it’s mostly a lesson for the EPA guy not to trust the press.
The story got rushed to print for Tuesday because I got scooped by the London Times, which printed this story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6718658.ece. So that story got altered a bit and coupled with mine, and made the centerfold of the paper Tuesday morning (this is very exciting, because along with the front and back pages, the centerfold is the only page in color, and it got a tag on the cover saying where to turn for the story). I’m terribly excited about it and bought an extra copy to bring home. (It would have been several extra copies, but my money’s pretty tight in the last three days. If I get specific requests by the time I leave work, I’ll consider buying a couple more, but the story should be online for interested parties to print out a copy.) I’ve got the byline and half credit on the pictures – my neighbor Tony did the actual snapping, so I can’t take credit for framing, but I told him what and where to take and picked out the good ones, so I felt ok taking half credit.
I feel sort of bad about the headline though – I don’t get to write the headline (in fact I don’t get final say over any of the copy, so some of the words are not my own), and the headline is “EPA appears helpless” (connected to the previous story’s headline, “UK linked to e-waste dump in Ghana”). I don’t know if “helpless” is the word I would have used – more glacially slow.
That took up most of my day and was exciting enough so that I didn’t feel the need to do anything else blogworthy : ) Fell asleep by around 8pm and only half woke up when Matt called. I hope he and his grandparents and brother are having a lovely time with my kitties and apartment, which I look forward to seeing soon.
The story got rushed to print for Tuesday because I got scooped by the London Times, which printed this story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6718658.ece. So that story got altered a bit and coupled with mine, and made the centerfold of the paper Tuesday morning (this is very exciting, because along with the front and back pages, the centerfold is the only page in color, and it got a tag on the cover saying where to turn for the story). I’m terribly excited about it and bought an extra copy to bring home. (It would have been several extra copies, but my money’s pretty tight in the last three days. If I get specific requests by the time I leave work, I’ll consider buying a couple more, but the story should be online for interested parties to print out a copy.) I’ve got the byline and half credit on the pictures – my neighbor Tony did the actual snapping, so I can’t take credit for framing, but I told him what and where to take and picked out the good ones, so I felt ok taking half credit.
I feel sort of bad about the headline though – I don’t get to write the headline (in fact I don’t get final say over any of the copy, so some of the words are not my own), and the headline is “EPA appears helpless” (connected to the previous story’s headline, “UK linked to e-waste dump in Ghana”). I don’t know if “helpless” is the word I would have used – more glacially slow.
That took up most of my day and was exciting enough so that I didn’t feel the need to do anything else blogworthy : ) Fell asleep by around 8pm and only half woke up when Matt called. I hope he and his grandparents and brother are having a lovely time with my kitties and apartment, which I look forward to seeing soon.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Ghana Days 52-54
I was pretty annoyed Friday when the third article in a row that I had drafted so that I could contribute to the writing process was (I’m pretty sure) completely ignored. Kofi, who I’d gone with to the Obama seminar, had said we would write the article in the morning, but then I found him around 10:30 on the other side of the room already half finished with it without saying anything to me. (I had foregone a potentially interesting assignment so that I could draft the article and had it finished by that point.) So I gave him my jump drive and opened up my draft and told him he could use anything he thought was helpful and left him alone. It’s frustrating, but at the same time, if I were a journalist I’m sure I wouldn’t want to deal with interns sitting with me while I wrote my story. So I sympathize with him, but I’m still annoyed.
I went out on what was a separate potentially interesting assignment around noon. The assignment sheet said “CPA to have talk on India-Ghana relations at Indian High Commission” or something like that, and I’m very interested in the connections between the BRIC countries and the less developed world. (BRIC= Brazil, Russia, India, China, the 4 non-western big economic powers that are still developing themselves.) I know the Chinese have put some money into Ghana in various construction projects (the National Theatre is the one I can pull off the top of my head), but I hadn’t heard much about India, which also gives aid more generally to Africa at a smaller scale than China. So I thought I’d be learning a bit about that.
Well in reality, I don’t have a great story to tell about it. It turns out the CPA is a very small local NGO with some sort of tie or other to India (I was unclear what it was), and who had failed to make an appointment with the High Commissioner (that’s the ambassador for Commonwealth countries – the High Commission is the embassy). They were presenting some sort of documents to him I think, and had just phoned ahead to say that, and the High Commissioner had assumed they could just present them to his secretary. So they failed really in that respect, although I suppose seeing the Indian High Commission was sort of interesting. It was a nice building, by Ghanaian standards, although unsurprisingly couldn’t hold a candle to the US embassy, which would fit in in DC.
After that I went and met Albert, who works with the NGO that brought me here. (While waiting for him at the internet cafe, a radio journalist interviewed me about what I knew about Nelson Mandela and how I’d be commemorating his birthday. Presumably it aired on the news at 6, but I didn’t have a radio to listen to it on .) We went to pick up the surveys he had dropped off for me earlier (when he went earlier the editor of one of the papers had insisted I come myself, because the questions are of a somewhat sensitive nature I presume). So I learned how to get to the row of newspaper offices in Cantonments neighborhood, which is a really interesting setup. There are 3 papers (I think they were the Cryer, the Daily Dispatch, and the Crusading Guide) that are managed totally separately but have their offices all in a row. I’m very interested to know why, but didn’t ask while I was there. My guess is that they all share a printing press, or their printer is nearby. In any case, I’ll have a chance to ask, because no one had surveys ready for me. Two of the offices were practically deserted, and one, the Dispatch whose editor had asked to see me, did have them filled out. These were all very small papers it looked like, with 6 or 7 reporters each maybe and 3 or 4 desks/computers. Very interesting after working at the two largest papers.
The editor at the Dispatch seems like a cool guy to know though. He seemed very nice and gave me a signed copy of his book, which was about the lead-up to the election. Apparently he’s accurately predicted the results of the last few elections (percentage-wise) and he’s been a reporter for BBC and AFP (Agence France Presse), a fellow at the Ford Foundation (where he learned a bit of election polling), and has won a few awards. (I learned all this from the front page of his book, he didn’t give me his life story when I came to see him.) So definitely a good contact to have, I’m thinking.
Following that I just came home, where I met the new volunteer (James from the UK). He’s interning at the hospital and seems like a pretty cool guy. More importantly, he’s a vegetarian (and apparently chose Ghana because of how easy it is here to be a vegetarian, which I think I just got lucky at). So we might go try one of the veg restaurants sometime before I leave, which is exciting. Not that I’ll have any (exchanged) money left to do that of course.
Saturday I went with the two Austrians and the new Brit to the art centre, where I got gifts for my bridesmaids (and bookends for myself). I probably could have gotten a better price on some of it, but since it’s so much cheaper than in the states anyway, I’m ok with overpaying. However I’ve now got about $30 to live on in my last 4 days, so I’m going to need to be frugal. Very sad.
After the art centre I met up with Felix, who is the designer I met on the tro-tro. We had lunch and went to the Accra shopping mall, which is very similar to an American shopping mall except probably a bit (although not a whole lot) cheaper. It also had a grocery store in it, which for here is very chic, but I’m pretty sure I was less enthusiastic than Felix wanted me to be about it. He’s a very interesting guy. In addition to being a designer and entrepreneur (he told me about 5 different projects he wants to start, and he’s on the ground floor of a 3-month old business right now), he’s also one of the big coordinators/ directors for the Miss Ghana pageant (the one that goes on to Miss World). In fact, at the mall he excused himself to go chasing after a very beautiful Ghanaian lady so he could recruit her. I hope she wins, so I can say I had a hand in getting Miss Ghana her crown (by making Felix be there at a particular time). That would be cool.
Sunday was also a pretty jam-packed day. In the morning I went with Tony (my neighbor who is just recently from Nigeria) to Agbogbloshie market to check up on this “we don’t do that any more” story. Good thing we did. It was Sunday, so there weren’t too many people around or working (and also, according to one person we talked to, fewer computers being worked on). But there was definitely a lot going on that should not have been. We saw huge piles of computer rubbish (in addition to every other kind of rubbish you can imagine). Children weren’t terribly actively involved in the scrap harvesting that I saw (except one boy of around 8 or 10 years who was working at something with a screwdriver). They were, however, fairly prevalent. One little girl was urinating on the side of the path, although I don’t think it would be easy to make the path any dirtier or less sanitary than it was. There’s a small river running through the middle of the market next to this place, and for most of the way it’s totally choked in garbage. The water runs past and flows out to the ocean. In addition to just breaking computers open, there was definitely some significant rubber-burning going on. We got some pictures of the guys who were tending the fires they had set to cables – burning off the rubber so they could get the copper.
What will come out of this trip, beyond scarring myself and Tony and probably cutting a few days off of our lives, are hopefully twofold. I’ve definitely got a story to write now, so it will be published in the Graphic and perhaps give legislators and others a kick in the pants so they know people are still paying attention to the issue. The other thing is that the woman I’ve talked to from Greenpeace is working on a campaign against Dell, to try to get them to be better at taking back their own products, and for her we looked specifically for Dell labels on the computers we saw. Because most of it was in scraps, we did not get a whole lot, but we’ve got a monitor case, a keyboard, and two motherboards (which we were told were working and could be purchased for $10) that still have very prominent and clear Dell symbols on them. So these pictures will be useful in pressuring the company, I hope.
The second part of my day was more uplifting; we went to see a football match in the big national stadium. It’s the final match of the season for the top regional league. It’s not a bracket though, so it wasn’t the top two teams, which is a bit sad. The local team, the Accra Hearts of Oak, were top-rated, however, and in fact won the game. It was a very excited atmosphere, and the seats were close to packed. They finished (I think – we snuck out ten minutes early because otherwise we would not have ever gotten home) with a 2-0 score, but the first point was scored in the first 30 seconds. It was pretty ridiculous. Fun time, though, and the pictures are more fun to look at than the other ones I took today.
I went out on what was a separate potentially interesting assignment around noon. The assignment sheet said “CPA to have talk on India-Ghana relations at Indian High Commission” or something like that, and I’m very interested in the connections between the BRIC countries and the less developed world. (BRIC= Brazil, Russia, India, China, the 4 non-western big economic powers that are still developing themselves.) I know the Chinese have put some money into Ghana in various construction projects (the National Theatre is the one I can pull off the top of my head), but I hadn’t heard much about India, which also gives aid more generally to Africa at a smaller scale than China. So I thought I’d be learning a bit about that.
Well in reality, I don’t have a great story to tell about it. It turns out the CPA is a very small local NGO with some sort of tie or other to India (I was unclear what it was), and who had failed to make an appointment with the High Commissioner (that’s the ambassador for Commonwealth countries – the High Commission is the embassy). They were presenting some sort of documents to him I think, and had just phoned ahead to say that, and the High Commissioner had assumed they could just present them to his secretary. So they failed really in that respect, although I suppose seeing the Indian High Commission was sort of interesting. It was a nice building, by Ghanaian standards, although unsurprisingly couldn’t hold a candle to the US embassy, which would fit in in DC.
After that I went and met Albert, who works with the NGO that brought me here. (While waiting for him at the internet cafe, a radio journalist interviewed me about what I knew about Nelson Mandela and how I’d be commemorating his birthday. Presumably it aired on the news at 6, but I didn’t have a radio to listen to it on .) We went to pick up the surveys he had dropped off for me earlier (when he went earlier the editor of one of the papers had insisted I come myself, because the questions are of a somewhat sensitive nature I presume). So I learned how to get to the row of newspaper offices in Cantonments neighborhood, which is a really interesting setup. There are 3 papers (I think they were the Cryer, the Daily Dispatch, and the Crusading Guide) that are managed totally separately but have their offices all in a row. I’m very interested to know why, but didn’t ask while I was there. My guess is that they all share a printing press, or their printer is nearby. In any case, I’ll have a chance to ask, because no one had surveys ready for me. Two of the offices were practically deserted, and one, the Dispatch whose editor had asked to see me, did have them filled out. These were all very small papers it looked like, with 6 or 7 reporters each maybe and 3 or 4 desks/computers. Very interesting after working at the two largest papers.
The editor at the Dispatch seems like a cool guy to know though. He seemed very nice and gave me a signed copy of his book, which was about the lead-up to the election. Apparently he’s accurately predicted the results of the last few elections (percentage-wise) and he’s been a reporter for BBC and AFP (Agence France Presse), a fellow at the Ford Foundation (where he learned a bit of election polling), and has won a few awards. (I learned all this from the front page of his book, he didn’t give me his life story when I came to see him.) So definitely a good contact to have, I’m thinking.
Following that I just came home, where I met the new volunteer (James from the UK). He’s interning at the hospital and seems like a pretty cool guy. More importantly, he’s a vegetarian (and apparently chose Ghana because of how easy it is here to be a vegetarian, which I think I just got lucky at). So we might go try one of the veg restaurants sometime before I leave, which is exciting. Not that I’ll have any (exchanged) money left to do that of course.
Saturday I went with the two Austrians and the new Brit to the art centre, where I got gifts for my bridesmaids (and bookends for myself). I probably could have gotten a better price on some of it, but since it’s so much cheaper than in the states anyway, I’m ok with overpaying. However I’ve now got about $30 to live on in my last 4 days, so I’m going to need to be frugal. Very sad.
After the art centre I met up with Felix, who is the designer I met on the tro-tro. We had lunch and went to the Accra shopping mall, which is very similar to an American shopping mall except probably a bit (although not a whole lot) cheaper. It also had a grocery store in it, which for here is very chic, but I’m pretty sure I was less enthusiastic than Felix wanted me to be about it. He’s a very interesting guy. In addition to being a designer and entrepreneur (he told me about 5 different projects he wants to start, and he’s on the ground floor of a 3-month old business right now), he’s also one of the big coordinators/ directors for the Miss Ghana pageant (the one that goes on to Miss World). In fact, at the mall he excused himself to go chasing after a very beautiful Ghanaian lady so he could recruit her. I hope she wins, so I can say I had a hand in getting Miss Ghana her crown (by making Felix be there at a particular time). That would be cool.
Sunday was also a pretty jam-packed day. In the morning I went with Tony (my neighbor who is just recently from Nigeria) to Agbogbloshie market to check up on this “we don’t do that any more” story. Good thing we did. It was Sunday, so there weren’t too many people around or working (and also, according to one person we talked to, fewer computers being worked on). But there was definitely a lot going on that should not have been. We saw huge piles of computer rubbish (in addition to every other kind of rubbish you can imagine). Children weren’t terribly actively involved in the scrap harvesting that I saw (except one boy of around 8 or 10 years who was working at something with a screwdriver). They were, however, fairly prevalent. One little girl was urinating on the side of the path, although I don’t think it would be easy to make the path any dirtier or less sanitary than it was. There’s a small river running through the middle of the market next to this place, and for most of the way it’s totally choked in garbage. The water runs past and flows out to the ocean. In addition to just breaking computers open, there was definitely some significant rubber-burning going on. We got some pictures of the guys who were tending the fires they had set to cables – burning off the rubber so they could get the copper.
What will come out of this trip, beyond scarring myself and Tony and probably cutting a few days off of our lives, are hopefully twofold. I’ve definitely got a story to write now, so it will be published in the Graphic and perhaps give legislators and others a kick in the pants so they know people are still paying attention to the issue. The other thing is that the woman I’ve talked to from Greenpeace is working on a campaign against Dell, to try to get them to be better at taking back their own products, and for her we looked specifically for Dell labels on the computers we saw. Because most of it was in scraps, we did not get a whole lot, but we’ve got a monitor case, a keyboard, and two motherboards (which we were told were working and could be purchased for $10) that still have very prominent and clear Dell symbols on them. So these pictures will be useful in pressuring the company, I hope.
The second part of my day was more uplifting; we went to see a football match in the big national stadium. It’s the final match of the season for the top regional league. It’s not a bracket though, so it wasn’t the top two teams, which is a bit sad. The local team, the Accra Hearts of Oak, were top-rated, however, and in fact won the game. It was a very excited atmosphere, and the seats were close to packed. They finished (I think – we snuck out ten minutes early because otherwise we would not have ever gotten home) with a 2-0 score, but the first point was scored in the first 30 seconds. It was pretty ridiculous. Fun time, though, and the pictures are more fun to look at than the other ones I took today.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Ghana Day 51
My day was not quite as I had predicted. I decided in the morning to go to both of the programs and only be a reporter at one of them, so I set off for the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) and its domestic election observer report launch at 9am (it started at 10am). I finally got there at 11 after some really terrible direction-giving by lots of people along the road and the secretary of the place who I talked to on the phone. At one point I was told to go to 2nd avenue (and was evidently directed to the wrong 2nd avenue, since every neighborhood of course decides numbering its streets is the best idea), and I got let off at a bus stop halfway between two roads along the motorway. I asked the girl who was selling phone credit which one was 2nd avenue, and she told me “this is second avenue!” like I was an idiot. All of my explaining/ clarifying really just led me to the conclusion that the bus stop was called second avenue but there was not actually a street by that name, and least not recognizably by the people there.
I really miss well-labeled streets and gps.
So I didn’t end up getting much out of the talk, since when I got there it was ten minutes away from Q&A. But now I have seen the CDD, which is good, because they’re the sort of place I’m likely to want to know about. Also, I think I could maybe sort of find my way to it now. I also have the report they released, which I’ll read over in a bit, because the reporter who actually covered the story didn’t really want it.
The second event of the day was at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), which is I believe a graduate school of the type I would enjoy attending. The talk was by a Prof. Frimpong (possibly spelled with an e and not an i) who is the dean of the School of Governance, Leadership, and Public Management. He was a very engaging speaker, and his lecture was about Obama’s speech and its implications for governance in Africa. He started off with a pretty amusing story that described Obama’s rise to office in biblical terms with Obama as Jesus (although occasionally Moses). He was trying to make a point that the perception of Obama is as a divine being is rather funny and that it really took hard work to get where he was. I was hoping he’d go a little further to debunk the jesus image, but there was definitely nothing even remotely critical of Obama (or even more humanizing than discussing his lineage). I’m not sure anyone here wants to hear anything negative about him.
I thought one of the more interesting things to come out of his talk was his application of Obama’s policy of democratic commitment to regional institutions like the AU, which he said were useless as they stand because they are ruled by dictators. He advocated throwing out any leaders who weren’t constitutionally elected. Not terribly realistic, but I asked him what his practical solution was and he said the democratic countries should form their own club, so to speak.
My evening has been much less exciting than I had hoped; the theatrical performance was canceled for rain (which hasn’t occurred all week – I guess it’s just-in-case cancellation). I’m pretty bummed about that, but I suppose I did get to see one play while I was here and that’s mostly good enough.
I really miss well-labeled streets and gps.
So I didn’t end up getting much out of the talk, since when I got there it was ten minutes away from Q&A. But now I have seen the CDD, which is good, because they’re the sort of place I’m likely to want to know about. Also, I think I could maybe sort of find my way to it now. I also have the report they released, which I’ll read over in a bit, because the reporter who actually covered the story didn’t really want it.
The second event of the day was at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), which is I believe a graduate school of the type I would enjoy attending. The talk was by a Prof. Frimpong (possibly spelled with an e and not an i) who is the dean of the School of Governance, Leadership, and Public Management. He was a very engaging speaker, and his lecture was about Obama’s speech and its implications for governance in Africa. He started off with a pretty amusing story that described Obama’s rise to office in biblical terms with Obama as Jesus (although occasionally Moses). He was trying to make a point that the perception of Obama is as a divine being is rather funny and that it really took hard work to get where he was. I was hoping he’d go a little further to debunk the jesus image, but there was definitely nothing even remotely critical of Obama (or even more humanizing than discussing his lineage). I’m not sure anyone here wants to hear anything negative about him.
I thought one of the more interesting things to come out of his talk was his application of Obama’s policy of democratic commitment to regional institutions like the AU, which he said were useless as they stand because they are ruled by dictators. He advocated throwing out any leaders who weren’t constitutionally elected. Not terribly realistic, but I asked him what his practical solution was and he said the democratic countries should form their own club, so to speak.
My evening has been much less exciting than I had hoped; the theatrical performance was canceled for rain (which hasn’t occurred all week – I guess it’s just-in-case cancellation). I’m pretty bummed about that, but I suppose I did get to see one play while I was here and that’s mostly good enough.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Ghana Day 50
This morning I got stuck in the mud in the tro-tro for the first time, which is crazy because it hasn’t rained in a few days that I’ve noticed. We got unstuck pretty easily, though – thank goodness it was just stuck and not broken down.
My day wasn’t terribly eventful. My story from yesterday (the one that I didn’t write any of but still got my name on) made the front page. It’s cool to see my name there, but I feel pretty bad about having my name on things I didn’t write. Oh well, if that’s the least integritable thing I do in my life I’ll be happy.
I spent most of my work day hanging out. I worked on the latest iteration of my article with Barak (prof), who I think might have been in flight today so might not have much input on it for a bit. I also went through the papers for March, which was pretty uneventful. I’m looking now for some pretty specific storylines, and I didn’t find them in March. That in and of itself is somewhat telling. There were several car seizures in the month, but the Graphic decided they weren’t newsworthy. I’m a little surprised it didn’t make a single mention, since so many people were talking about it, although I think the Guide hyped it way too much. (I don’t recall how much I’ve discussed this – people from the previous administration took about 50 state vehicles, but it’s possible that some or many of them had purchased the cars under a policy wherein 4 or more –year-old cars can be bought off the state for about a quarter of the price, so some of the seizures were not strictly appropriate.)
I was hoping to go to a program in the afternoon, but the intern I went to lunch with mentioned she was covering it so I bowed out gracefully. (3 reporters from the same paper is a little overkill, and a regular reporter was assigned to it.) For tomorrow though I have an interesting day. There’s a talk in the afternoon about the implications of Obama’s speech on governance in Africa at the School of Governance. I was actually really torn, because there’s also an event where the ’08 domestic elections observers will be giving a talk, but I’m not sure I can make both and the assistant editor suggested I go to the afternoon one. In the evening I’ll be going to the theatre again with the news editor, so I’m very excited about that.
Short post today, but it is exciting that I’m marking my 50th day anniversary in the country. Only 7 more to go!
My day wasn’t terribly eventful. My story from yesterday (the one that I didn’t write any of but still got my name on) made the front page. It’s cool to see my name there, but I feel pretty bad about having my name on things I didn’t write. Oh well, if that’s the least integritable thing I do in my life I’ll be happy.
I spent most of my work day hanging out. I worked on the latest iteration of my article with Barak (prof), who I think might have been in flight today so might not have much input on it for a bit. I also went through the papers for March, which was pretty uneventful. I’m looking now for some pretty specific storylines, and I didn’t find them in March. That in and of itself is somewhat telling. There were several car seizures in the month, but the Graphic decided they weren’t newsworthy. I’m a little surprised it didn’t make a single mention, since so many people were talking about it, although I think the Guide hyped it way too much. (I don’t recall how much I’ve discussed this – people from the previous administration took about 50 state vehicles, but it’s possible that some or many of them had purchased the cars under a policy wherein 4 or more –year-old cars can be bought off the state for about a quarter of the price, so some of the seizures were not strictly appropriate.)
I was hoping to go to a program in the afternoon, but the intern I went to lunch with mentioned she was covering it so I bowed out gracefully. (3 reporters from the same paper is a little overkill, and a regular reporter was assigned to it.) For tomorrow though I have an interesting day. There’s a talk in the afternoon about the implications of Obama’s speech on governance in Africa at the School of Governance. I was actually really torn, because there’s also an event where the ’08 domestic elections observers will be giving a talk, but I’m not sure I can make both and the assistant editor suggested I go to the afternoon one. In the evening I’ll be going to the theatre again with the news editor, so I’m very excited about that.
Short post today, but it is exciting that I’m marking my 50th day anniversary in the country. Only 7 more to go!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Ghana Days 48 and 49
Yup, I’m still alive!
Monday morning I had an appointment with a guy at the EPA to talk about e-waste, so I got there and found the place and it was pretty awesome. And then I asked my first question – what is your name – and the guy was like, oh, are you going to write this? Is this for a story? I can only talk to you if I have a letter.
So when I called and said, “I’m writing a followup on this report and want to talk to you about what you’ve done so far” apparently that did not sink in. I have no idea what he thought a reporter from Graphic would be doing there if not writing a story. So I got the name of the person to address the letter to and went back and fairly painlessly got the letter printed out after I drafted it. Then I asked if I could get a car over, since it was five cedis round trip, and was told, oh yeah when he gets back. So every hour or so I made a pest of myself and got told that the driver wasn’t back yet, and finally around 4:30 I gave up and paid for the taxi there and back. So I spent about $7 that day essentially to mail a letter.
In the evening, however, there was an event that made up for the crappy day. I went to a talk hosted by the Institute for Local Government Studies. The organization is doing leadership training for local government officials, starting with members of the group and people who will be doing the training. To kick it off they had a reception and panel with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Government and Rural Development MPs (past and present), and the panel included the minister of that area, the committee chair, the director of ILGS and another group that does leadership training, and keynoted by Paul Boateng. Paul was an amazing speaker; he is a former U.K. High Commissioner to South Africa and was also the first black cabinet member in the U.K.
They were all very good speakers and talked about how local governments here are performing poorly not necessarily because there’s a resource deficiency, although there certainly is, but because people can’t share their views in civilized ways and end up fighting with one another. He told a long and complicated parable about a person who shares his bed with a bedbug, and in the morning he wakes up and finds his blood on the sheet, but when he asks the bedbug where the blood came from the bedbug blames the mosquito. But then when the person gets a mosquito net and burns citronella and sprays and all that, and the next morning there is blood on the sheet again, then the person must know where the blood has been coming from. Then he said something in Twi that brought down the house laughing, but I have no idea what it was. In any case, it’s an interesting little story. Regardless, he was a very good speaker and very moving and stole Tip O’Neill’s “all politics is local” line and made me want to do more with local government. This was I think the most interesting event I’ve been to since I got here, and I’m very glad I conned my way into going (and not just because I got free devilled eggs and peanuts at the reception). For those of you who don’t know, I wrote a 100-page honors thesis for my poli sci BA on decentralization in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, so local government is pretty exciting for me.
Beyond just what was discussed on the panel, I got an overview of how the local government system here works from Caroline, the reporter I attached myself to for the evening. Local governments have elected and non-elected elements; there’s an assembly (mostly elected but partly appointed, although she didn’t know the percentage) and the civil service led by the District Executive Officer (or some title like that). This last person is appointed by the president, but must be approved by the assembly, which usually happens but not always. So the local governments are somewhat accountable to the people, but they’re really more upwardly looking for their direction than anything else. Apparently every administration since democratization has campaigned saying they would make the local executive an elected position, but has conveniently forgotten after the election.
Apparently the local governments here don’t work all that well. There was a basic survey done in the past year to see how well they worked, and most of them failed. Not a single one in the Greater Accra region passed. Oops.
So I got home super late from that. I left Accra at 9pm so got home around ten… it was sort of spooky walking down the street because I could hear my heels echoing around. Everyone was asleep by then. I passed out pretty fast after finding food and showering (since I wake up around 5, 11 is really late for me). That’s why you got no post Tuesday morning.
On that morning in question, I got in early so I could write a story on the evening’s event. Then I took a cab to a meet-the-press function with the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice officials… or so I thought. I got in a cab after asking if the driver knew where the ministry of information was (because I had no idea). He said yes and drove me to the middle of a street full of ministries and said, here you are! It soon became clear he had no idea where I needed to go, and we ended up asking about 5 people and driving in a couple circles for over an hour before someone finally showed us the right spot. I felt bad for the guy, but really, you shouldn’t pick up foreigners who say they don’t know where they’re going if you don’t either.
So I got in about 45 minutes after the press conference started, but fortunately important things like that aren’t just left to interns and the reporter who was supposed to be there anyway was there on time (he didn’t go to the office before the assignment or else I would have gone with him).
The event was interesting but was definitely an information overload. She gave an overview of every agency within the ministry and what they’re up to and it was pretty hard to follow. One interesting thing to come out of it though was that the government apparently owes about a billion dollars to various entities who have sued it and won. Also there were lots of things that almost go without saying about a shortage of resources, not enough lawyers with enough experience, and so on. Apparently lawyers are four to a room, which makes client privilege difficult I’m assuming. There was also considerable discussion about anti-piracy efforts, which surprised me because I figured they would be frying different, possibly larger fish. Apparently they’ve arrested several dozen people in Accra selling bootlegs though. Hasn’t really discouraged people from what I’ve seen walking around, but that’s alright.
When we got back he let me have the paper report of what the AG said and told me to start writing about the things in it from a certain point forward. So I did that for a while, and then he came and told me he was done with the article and I realized I had been given busy work. (I think Caroline also just wrote her own story rather than using what I had written, but I’m not sure yet since I haven’t seen the final article there.)
So while I went to a couple fairly interesting events in the past couple days, I utterly failed to be useful as a reporter. Oh well. I’m not really in training to be a journalist; if I were I might be a little more upset, but as it is I’m just enjoying getting access to cool things and learning how to navigate the city (or sometimes not).
I left work a bit early to make up for Monday’s working late, and because the two British girls are leaving tonight. I got home to see them off, and until now I’ve staved off sleep long enough to write this entry, which I’m fairly proud of. Tomorrow’s activities are still mysterious, but hopefully I’ll get lots of sleep tonight and get there early so I can sneak into something else cool.
Monday morning I had an appointment with a guy at the EPA to talk about e-waste, so I got there and found the place and it was pretty awesome. And then I asked my first question – what is your name – and the guy was like, oh, are you going to write this? Is this for a story? I can only talk to you if I have a letter.
So when I called and said, “I’m writing a followup on this report and want to talk to you about what you’ve done so far” apparently that did not sink in. I have no idea what he thought a reporter from Graphic would be doing there if not writing a story. So I got the name of the person to address the letter to and went back and fairly painlessly got the letter printed out after I drafted it. Then I asked if I could get a car over, since it was five cedis round trip, and was told, oh yeah when he gets back. So every hour or so I made a pest of myself and got told that the driver wasn’t back yet, and finally around 4:30 I gave up and paid for the taxi there and back. So I spent about $7 that day essentially to mail a letter.
In the evening, however, there was an event that made up for the crappy day. I went to a talk hosted by the Institute for Local Government Studies. The organization is doing leadership training for local government officials, starting with members of the group and people who will be doing the training. To kick it off they had a reception and panel with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Government and Rural Development MPs (past and present), and the panel included the minister of that area, the committee chair, the director of ILGS and another group that does leadership training, and keynoted by Paul Boateng. Paul was an amazing speaker; he is a former U.K. High Commissioner to South Africa and was also the first black cabinet member in the U.K.
They were all very good speakers and talked about how local governments here are performing poorly not necessarily because there’s a resource deficiency, although there certainly is, but because people can’t share their views in civilized ways and end up fighting with one another. He told a long and complicated parable about a person who shares his bed with a bedbug, and in the morning he wakes up and finds his blood on the sheet, but when he asks the bedbug where the blood came from the bedbug blames the mosquito. But then when the person gets a mosquito net and burns citronella and sprays and all that, and the next morning there is blood on the sheet again, then the person must know where the blood has been coming from. Then he said something in Twi that brought down the house laughing, but I have no idea what it was. In any case, it’s an interesting little story. Regardless, he was a very good speaker and very moving and stole Tip O’Neill’s “all politics is local” line and made me want to do more with local government. This was I think the most interesting event I’ve been to since I got here, and I’m very glad I conned my way into going (and not just because I got free devilled eggs and peanuts at the reception). For those of you who don’t know, I wrote a 100-page honors thesis for my poli sci BA on decentralization in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, so local government is pretty exciting for me.
Beyond just what was discussed on the panel, I got an overview of how the local government system here works from Caroline, the reporter I attached myself to for the evening. Local governments have elected and non-elected elements; there’s an assembly (mostly elected but partly appointed, although she didn’t know the percentage) and the civil service led by the District Executive Officer (or some title like that). This last person is appointed by the president, but must be approved by the assembly, which usually happens but not always. So the local governments are somewhat accountable to the people, but they’re really more upwardly looking for their direction than anything else. Apparently every administration since democratization has campaigned saying they would make the local executive an elected position, but has conveniently forgotten after the election.
Apparently the local governments here don’t work all that well. There was a basic survey done in the past year to see how well they worked, and most of them failed. Not a single one in the Greater Accra region passed. Oops.
So I got home super late from that. I left Accra at 9pm so got home around ten… it was sort of spooky walking down the street because I could hear my heels echoing around. Everyone was asleep by then. I passed out pretty fast after finding food and showering (since I wake up around 5, 11 is really late for me). That’s why you got no post Tuesday morning.
On that morning in question, I got in early so I could write a story on the evening’s event. Then I took a cab to a meet-the-press function with the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice officials… or so I thought. I got in a cab after asking if the driver knew where the ministry of information was (because I had no idea). He said yes and drove me to the middle of a street full of ministries and said, here you are! It soon became clear he had no idea where I needed to go, and we ended up asking about 5 people and driving in a couple circles for over an hour before someone finally showed us the right spot. I felt bad for the guy, but really, you shouldn’t pick up foreigners who say they don’t know where they’re going if you don’t either.
So I got in about 45 minutes after the press conference started, but fortunately important things like that aren’t just left to interns and the reporter who was supposed to be there anyway was there on time (he didn’t go to the office before the assignment or else I would have gone with him).
The event was interesting but was definitely an information overload. She gave an overview of every agency within the ministry and what they’re up to and it was pretty hard to follow. One interesting thing to come out of it though was that the government apparently owes about a billion dollars to various entities who have sued it and won. Also there were lots of things that almost go without saying about a shortage of resources, not enough lawyers with enough experience, and so on. Apparently lawyers are four to a room, which makes client privilege difficult I’m assuming. There was also considerable discussion about anti-piracy efforts, which surprised me because I figured they would be frying different, possibly larger fish. Apparently they’ve arrested several dozen people in Accra selling bootlegs though. Hasn’t really discouraged people from what I’ve seen walking around, but that’s alright.
When we got back he let me have the paper report of what the AG said and told me to start writing about the things in it from a certain point forward. So I did that for a while, and then he came and told me he was done with the article and I realized I had been given busy work. (I think Caroline also just wrote her own story rather than using what I had written, but I’m not sure yet since I haven’t seen the final article there.)
So while I went to a couple fairly interesting events in the past couple days, I utterly failed to be useful as a reporter. Oh well. I’m not really in training to be a journalist; if I were I might be a little more upset, but as it is I’m just enjoying getting access to cool things and learning how to navigate the city (or sometimes not).
I left work a bit early to make up for Monday’s working late, and because the two British girls are leaving tonight. I got home to see them off, and until now I’ve staved off sleep long enough to write this entry, which I’m fairly proud of. Tomorrow’s activities are still mysterious, but hopefully I’ll get lots of sleep tonight and get there early so I can sneak into something else cool.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Katey's post on the Obama visit
As I say below, Katey had a much more exciting time with Obama's visit (despite the naysayers, mainly me). You can read her post here:
http://kateymargaret.blogspot.com/2009/07/alas-i-am-proud-to-be-american.html
I think the most interesting thing though is that the hospital Obama visited was newly painted and the driveway graveled with USAID money right before he got there. Oh yeah, and all the patients were discharged (well or not). The hospital is normally very crowded and not very sanitary, but Obama was able to come out of it and describe it in his speech as "a wonderful clinic and hospital that is focused particularly on maternal health" (because they kept some pregnant women around for him to meet).
http://kateymargaret.blogspot.com/2009/07/alas-i-am-proud-to-be-american.html
I think the most interesting thing though is that the hospital Obama visited was newly painted and the driveway graveled with USAID money right before he got there. Oh yeah, and all the patients were discharged (well or not). The hospital is normally very crowded and not very sanitary, but Obama was able to come out of it and describe it in his speech as "a wonderful clinic and hospital that is focused particularly on maternal health" (because they kept some pregnant women around for him to meet).
Pictures
Agbobloshie Market through the car window (before my camera battery died) - the sign demanding cleanliness and the pile of trash right around the corner from it. The coffins are cool, the fish is a small one and the camera a large. There were also trucks, lions, cows, a crab, a pineapple, a cocoa bean, and various other items. Finally, a still shot from the dance we went to Sunday.
Ghana Days 45-47
Friday was something of a boring day. My only productive activity that was work-related was making an appointment with someone at the EPA for Monday morning and then coming up with questions to ask him. The paper was all-Obama all the time again, and I’m sure tomorrow’s will be as well, so I think the pressure for getting actual news is somewhat alleviated for a while. On the up-side, it’s possible that the Graphic has improved its internet system. Wireless internet showed up for the first time, albeit only for ten minutes that I was aware of. I got a couple more people to fill out my survey, and chatted with Letitia, who is a National Service Personnel with 2 months left in her journalism stint. She’s very sweet, but she’s decided not to pursue journalism, which is her original degree (she’s going to go back to school to get a degree in HR or something).
Saturday was more interesting because Obama was in town. I watched him land on Friday night, and then Saturday morning hung around with all the children who eagerly awaited Obama (Grandma and Mike were at a wedding, and the other obrunis in the compound weren’t nearly as excited as they should have been about the speech, so it was me and the kiddies). We did not have a set time for anything to start, so starting from 10am I just hung out in the living room while the half dozen children marched in time to the soldiers performing on tv or danced to the Obama music videos or got in pillow fights or combed doll hair. (During the pillow fight, 2-year-old Aku who is extremely cute and makes me less annoyed with the idea of children wanted in on the fun, so she got a pillow and repeatedly hit the ground with it. It was pretty adorable. When she slobbered on the doll comb and then tried to comb my hair with it, though, it was less endearing.) Probably needless to say, for the actual speech I decided to find a different, less noisy tv.
The speech was good and you can probably find it or a summary in a lot of places, but here are the main points. Obama first and foremost said that African development is up to Africans, and while the western world should be partners, they can no longer be held to blame and expected to fix things. This has mostly been the message for a while, but I think this might be one of the most direct ways it has been said, and Obama is one of the few leaders who can say it with complete credibility and not look like a jerk. He also outlined the administration’s four priorities for Africa, which are democracy/ good governance, sustainable development (teach a man to fish sort of thing), health (he promised $63 billion for health initiatives, I think for Africa but he didn’t rally go into allocations), and conflict resolution. My big takeaway here is that the number one priority was “strong and sustainable democratic governments,” which alleviates any fear there might have been that Bush gave democracy-building a bad name and we were going to draw back from it a bit (thus putting me out of work before I even got a job…). So I’m pleased with his speech, but it’s not a huge policy shift from what I can tell and did not shatter any earths.
The guy (Matt) volunteering here at the hospital has a much better Obama story. Obama actually visited his clinic, and because he looked American I suppose was singled out for a handshake and a hi-how-are-you while the president was greeting the staff. He also got a ticket to the goodbye party that saw Obama off, and he got two extras as well. Sadly, he took Katey, who had (apparently not as foolishly as I had thought) gone to the hospital to see Obama wave his arm out of the window of his car, and also a British volunteer here who had been pretty psyched about the visit and is a bit closer to Matt than I am. I tried not to be too jealous.
(For those of you keeping track, the Saturday paper was also Obama-filled, although today Monday the paper is only half Obama, with 1/4 ads and 1/4 real news to supplement.)
After the speech I went and had a look at some coffins. Ghana is renowned for its use of creative coffins, and I pretended I was in the market so they would talk to me and let me take pictures at a shop in the neighborhood. They’re pretty cool, and if they weren’t coffin-sized I might have considered bringing one home. They’re only 100 cedis ($70) for a regular-sized, and the child-sized are 50 cedis ($35). It might sound morbid, but they are sort of cool.
After that I hung out with the other whiteys for a bit and went out to eat at a far too expensive restaurant on the beach, but I got fried rice with real vegetables in it, so I was happy enough.
Sunday I didn’t have any real plans, but Katey showed up mid-morning and wanted to know if I wanted to go an hour west of Accra to a beach and cultural show there, and since I had nothing better to do I went along. The beach was nicer and less trashy than the ones in Accra, and the dancing was cool. I got lots of video, but I don’t think I can upload it from here so you’ll have to believe me.
I’m sorry if my posts are getting a little shorter and less interesting! I’ve been putting them off too long and forgetting the cool parts : / I’ll try to be better in my last week and a half here.
Saturday was more interesting because Obama was in town. I watched him land on Friday night, and then Saturday morning hung around with all the children who eagerly awaited Obama (Grandma and Mike were at a wedding, and the other obrunis in the compound weren’t nearly as excited as they should have been about the speech, so it was me and the kiddies). We did not have a set time for anything to start, so starting from 10am I just hung out in the living room while the half dozen children marched in time to the soldiers performing on tv or danced to the Obama music videos or got in pillow fights or combed doll hair. (During the pillow fight, 2-year-old Aku who is extremely cute and makes me less annoyed with the idea of children wanted in on the fun, so she got a pillow and repeatedly hit the ground with it. It was pretty adorable. When she slobbered on the doll comb and then tried to comb my hair with it, though, it was less endearing.) Probably needless to say, for the actual speech I decided to find a different, less noisy tv.
The speech was good and you can probably find it or a summary in a lot of places, but here are the main points. Obama first and foremost said that African development is up to Africans, and while the western world should be partners, they can no longer be held to blame and expected to fix things. This has mostly been the message for a while, but I think this might be one of the most direct ways it has been said, and Obama is one of the few leaders who can say it with complete credibility and not look like a jerk. He also outlined the administration’s four priorities for Africa, which are democracy/ good governance, sustainable development (teach a man to fish sort of thing), health (he promised $63 billion for health initiatives, I think for Africa but he didn’t rally go into allocations), and conflict resolution. My big takeaway here is that the number one priority was “strong and sustainable democratic governments,” which alleviates any fear there might have been that Bush gave democracy-building a bad name and we were going to draw back from it a bit (thus putting me out of work before I even got a job…). So I’m pleased with his speech, but it’s not a huge policy shift from what I can tell and did not shatter any earths.
The guy (Matt) volunteering here at the hospital has a much better Obama story. Obama actually visited his clinic, and because he looked American I suppose was singled out for a handshake and a hi-how-are-you while the president was greeting the staff. He also got a ticket to the goodbye party that saw Obama off, and he got two extras as well. Sadly, he took Katey, who had (apparently not as foolishly as I had thought) gone to the hospital to see Obama wave his arm out of the window of his car, and also a British volunteer here who had been pretty psyched about the visit and is a bit closer to Matt than I am. I tried not to be too jealous.
(For those of you keeping track, the Saturday paper was also Obama-filled, although today Monday the paper is only half Obama, with 1/4 ads and 1/4 real news to supplement.)
After the speech I went and had a look at some coffins. Ghana is renowned for its use of creative coffins, and I pretended I was in the market so they would talk to me and let me take pictures at a shop in the neighborhood. They’re pretty cool, and if they weren’t coffin-sized I might have considered bringing one home. They’re only 100 cedis ($70) for a regular-sized, and the child-sized are 50 cedis ($35). It might sound morbid, but they are sort of cool.
After that I hung out with the other whiteys for a bit and went out to eat at a far too expensive restaurant on the beach, but I got fried rice with real vegetables in it, so I was happy enough.
Sunday I didn’t have any real plans, but Katey showed up mid-morning and wanted to know if I wanted to go an hour west of Accra to a beach and cultural show there, and since I had nothing better to do I went along. The beach was nicer and less trashy than the ones in Accra, and the dancing was cool. I got lots of video, but I don’t think I can upload it from here so you’ll have to believe me.
I’m sorry if my posts are getting a little shorter and less interesting! I’ve been putting them off too long and forgetting the cool parts : / I’ll try to be better in my last week and a half here.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Ghana Day 43
The big news Wednesday morning was that Obama will not in fact be speaking at Independence Square. Which is very sad. The excuse is that the rain here is so unpredictable that he would likely have to be moved inside anyway, and they don’t want to incur the expense of setting up two facilities. While I can appreciate this concern, Barack Obama could draw half the population of the country in a torrential downpour. As long as they put up a tent over him, I think people would be happy to stand outside. But now it’s indoors, at the Accra International Conference Center, which is probably about three or four times the size of my high school theatre. Granted, it was a big auditorium, but probably not enough to accommodate the 2 million residents of Accra. It’s going to be invitation-only, so just the important folks.
After learning the schedule, I called the embassy a couple times to make a last ditch effort to get a press pass, but as of Thursday night I’ve gotten no reply, which I think is probably a fair bet that it’s not happening. That’s just my hunch though. Also, the internet was out all morning, as well as all afternoon the previous day, so I ended up walking ten minutes down the road to an internet café to pay for time to send emails related to work and download the UN report on trafficking in West Africa, which was also for work (to write a summary story since it just came out Tuesday). I’m not saying the 40 cents broke the bank, I’m just saying it was annoying.
On the way back though I got to see a petrol line. Apparently there is a fuel shortage in Ghana at the moment because the oil refinery had to be shut down for emergency maintenance, and the government had not expected a gasoline shortage. They’d actually prepared for a diesel shortage, so all the big tankers outside the port were stocked with that. Unfortunately, the port is extremely backlogged. So they were trying to offload the diesel so they could go back and get gasoline, and as of Thursday night that’s what was happening.
When I got back I ran into Kofi, who was to take me to Agbogbloshie Market. He also offered to take me along to his first assignment for the afternoon as well, which was a press conference about the Obama visit at the Ministry of Information. So we went and I asked him all sorts of questions on the way. Kofi’s worked at Graphic for 5 years, and before that at GBC radio (the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, which is state-owned) for I think he said 7 years. Kofi’s got a small stutter, but apparently if he’s reading off a paper he can get the words out fine, which is pretty cool. He says he liked radio better than print, but the Graphic pays better (it’s more financially self-sufficient than GBC so gives better benefits and things).
The press conference was supposed to start at 1:30, so we (surprisingly) got there at 1:10ish and hung out a while. We soon were told that it would not start until 2. A sort of crazy guy came in trying to get everyone to come to his lecture the next day on Obama’s biography, and then afterwards he assaulted Kofi and I to complain about how when he showed up at Graphic to talk to the manager about a press conference he was holding, he didn’t get shown in right away. He claims he’s a very important professor who’s been studying in Italy. He and Kofi got in an argument over absolutely nothing for a while, during which it became increasingly obvious that the guy was probably not a real professor (or if he was should not be).
While we were waiting Kofi and some other reporter were discussing the accreditation process, which apparently involves many steps and was totally botched. It’s been taken out of the ministry’s hands and I think being one by the embassy. Apparently for Bush or Clinton’s visit they had to have two separate accreditations, one from each. In any case, they had around 600 applications and have said they’ll only be granting a quarter of that, so I’m definitely out of luck. Oh well.
So then we found out the press conference would the next day and we left.
We went over to Agbogbloshie market, which is right around the corner from where I work and in really terribly condition. We walked into the scraps area to start looking around, and we got directed to the deputy chairman of the scrap dealers league, who said he’d answer all of our questions (not in English of course, which was why I had my Kofi with me). The first obvious question was, do you still get computers? He said no, they did sometime in the past but don’t anymore. I asked a few more questions, but nothing terribly interesting or earth-shattering, since everything I had prepared had mostly stemmed from the idea that he would give an opposite answer.
So it turns out that Kofi has a good poker face, although why he would choose to maintain it I’m not sure about. Apparently before answering him they conferred in their own language (which he doesn’t know), and their answers were not so forthcoming. I had not seen them, but Kofi says he caught a glimpse of a couple electronics on the way in, so he did not believe them. I felt rather foolish; I’m not sure why, but I had not really even considered the possibility that they would try to hide their occupation. I suppose it makes sense, since that’s their livelihood. But a better way to approach it might have been to ask what kinds of scraps they take in, which Kofi pointed out to me later on. I wish he’d thought of that before we sat down to talk. Oh well. I’m still trying to get hold of an environmental activist who presumably knows the area pretty well, so I’ll probably just try to base the story on that and the legal framework and any changes in it.
Following the market excursion I went to a talk on US-Ghana relations. It was sort of interesting. Apparently MLK gave a speech marking Ghana’s independence, which is cool, and we got to listen to a recording of it that was mostly intelligible most of the time. The keynote speaker, apparently the former Communist Party presidential candidate, talked a lot about ending handouts (food donations) in favor of sustainable development aid (agric inputs and training) and things like that.
Then we went to a cultural event (drumming) that turned out not to be happening because of rain. It seems rain messes up a lot of arrangements. But they had pretty good food anyway, even if it brought the amount I’m spending up to a mostly unsustainable level. Afterwards we went to Tony’s for about 5 minutes (just me and Sabrina, who I conned into coming since I didn’t want to go alone and everyone else was a bum). We had initially told him to meet us at the drumming place, but since that busted he told us to come over afterwards. I was dead tired though, and I think it was pretty obvious, so they let us go without much fuss.
Day 44 bonus blog
I decided Wednesday night to be a bum on Thursday, because I was super tired and was only going to get 6 hours of sleep if I slept late. I also had to write an article based on a report the UN released, which doesn’t involve anything but a word processor and a pdf reader, both of which I had from my bed at home. So I slept late (6:30) and wrote my article and left around 11.
During the course of the morning I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize; it was a guy who I had given my number to and who had been calling 4 times a day (if not more) for about a week and a half that I was ignoring to the best of my ability. He switched numbers though. So when I picked it up and he said who he was I was like, oh, who are you trying to reach? And then I told him he’d gotten Sarah’s phone and I didn’t know a Lindsay. Then he asked me if I wanted to be his friend. I declined. I feel a bit like a bad person, but I’m hopeful I don’t get any more calls.
It only took about 45 minutes to get to work leaving at midday; I should do that more often. I only stayed at work about an hour to file my story, and then I left for the internet café because it has more reliable internet and I needed to finish working on the paper I’m writing with my prof (comes out in October btw).
When I left for home around 4:45 I had a rather interesting experience. I got a tro-tro pretty quickly, but then it immediately pulled over to the side of the road and I gathered from the woman next to me that the driver was being arrested by the police and we should get out. So I followed the people I exited with down the road a bit, and ran with them for a bit after a tro-tro that was only slowing down in our area rather than stopping (to avoid a mob I spose), and did not get on that one. A guy walking next to me struck up a conversation though, telling me I needed to go farther down to get a car. After chatting a while I discovered that he’s a fashion designer ladies garments), works at the only swap meet type place in the country that is run by Ghana’s only independent presidential candidate in 2008, and is important enough to be getting a ticket to Obama’s speech at the conference center on Saturday. Afterwards he’s going to a fashion show and he invited me, so I may be doing that. He seems very nice, and not terribly interested in me romantically, which is good.
I got home pretty fast and had a nice chat with Grandma and Grandpa. I bought some nuts on the side of the road that they explained to me. It turns out they aren’t nuts, they’re tiger nuts, which are actually the roots of grass, and they taste like coconut. Fascinating. I guess they also grow in California. Also I asked about Tony’s cling me so much and a couple questionable things he said (like I think you’re beautiful), but I was reassured that this sort of behavior is completely normal and does not indicate romantic interest at all. Apparently all of Grandma’s guests who see me tell her I’m beautiful, which is a bit of a self-esteem booster, I must say. Since they’re pretty smart people I’m going to believe them, especially since Tony’s never given me any sort of negative impression when I actually see him. Adapting to other people’s cultures is sooo weird and uncomfortable sometimes. I also got a lesson about marriage here, which is apparently conducted in two ceremonies (the engagement, which is the traditional marriage, and the blessing with is the church or formal/modern ceremony. It sounds super expensive).
Mostly the rest of the night was idle chatter with the three girls who will be leaving Monday and Tuesday and enjoying my empty room (my current roommate Sabrina has a cousin around and I think she slept over with her at her hotel).
Also of interest, the newspaper Thursday was a special Obama souvenir edition, that had nothing but articles about Obama and the sports section (except for 2 pages, 54-55, which is the “News Extra” where there was a brief mention that oh yes, there’s a fuel shortage in Accra). Friday’s paper was pretty much the same layout. I’m assuming the same will be true of Saturday. I might as well not be at work, since none of my stories will be making it in anytime soon : P
After learning the schedule, I called the embassy a couple times to make a last ditch effort to get a press pass, but as of Thursday night I’ve gotten no reply, which I think is probably a fair bet that it’s not happening. That’s just my hunch though. Also, the internet was out all morning, as well as all afternoon the previous day, so I ended up walking ten minutes down the road to an internet café to pay for time to send emails related to work and download the UN report on trafficking in West Africa, which was also for work (to write a summary story since it just came out Tuesday). I’m not saying the 40 cents broke the bank, I’m just saying it was annoying.
On the way back though I got to see a petrol line. Apparently there is a fuel shortage in Ghana at the moment because the oil refinery had to be shut down for emergency maintenance, and the government had not expected a gasoline shortage. They’d actually prepared for a diesel shortage, so all the big tankers outside the port were stocked with that. Unfortunately, the port is extremely backlogged. So they were trying to offload the diesel so they could go back and get gasoline, and as of Thursday night that’s what was happening.
When I got back I ran into Kofi, who was to take me to Agbogbloshie Market. He also offered to take me along to his first assignment for the afternoon as well, which was a press conference about the Obama visit at the Ministry of Information. So we went and I asked him all sorts of questions on the way. Kofi’s worked at Graphic for 5 years, and before that at GBC radio (the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, which is state-owned) for I think he said 7 years. Kofi’s got a small stutter, but apparently if he’s reading off a paper he can get the words out fine, which is pretty cool. He says he liked radio better than print, but the Graphic pays better (it’s more financially self-sufficient than GBC so gives better benefits and things).
The press conference was supposed to start at 1:30, so we (surprisingly) got there at 1:10ish and hung out a while. We soon were told that it would not start until 2. A sort of crazy guy came in trying to get everyone to come to his lecture the next day on Obama’s biography, and then afterwards he assaulted Kofi and I to complain about how when he showed up at Graphic to talk to the manager about a press conference he was holding, he didn’t get shown in right away. He claims he’s a very important professor who’s been studying in Italy. He and Kofi got in an argument over absolutely nothing for a while, during which it became increasingly obvious that the guy was probably not a real professor (or if he was should not be).
While we were waiting Kofi and some other reporter were discussing the accreditation process, which apparently involves many steps and was totally botched. It’s been taken out of the ministry’s hands and I think being one by the embassy. Apparently for Bush or Clinton’s visit they had to have two separate accreditations, one from each. In any case, they had around 600 applications and have said they’ll only be granting a quarter of that, so I’m definitely out of luck. Oh well.
So then we found out the press conference would the next day and we left.
We went over to Agbogbloshie market, which is right around the corner from where I work and in really terribly condition. We walked into the scraps area to start looking around, and we got directed to the deputy chairman of the scrap dealers league, who said he’d answer all of our questions (not in English of course, which was why I had my Kofi with me). The first obvious question was, do you still get computers? He said no, they did sometime in the past but don’t anymore. I asked a few more questions, but nothing terribly interesting or earth-shattering, since everything I had prepared had mostly stemmed from the idea that he would give an opposite answer.
So it turns out that Kofi has a good poker face, although why he would choose to maintain it I’m not sure about. Apparently before answering him they conferred in their own language (which he doesn’t know), and their answers were not so forthcoming. I had not seen them, but Kofi says he caught a glimpse of a couple electronics on the way in, so he did not believe them. I felt rather foolish; I’m not sure why, but I had not really even considered the possibility that they would try to hide their occupation. I suppose it makes sense, since that’s their livelihood. But a better way to approach it might have been to ask what kinds of scraps they take in, which Kofi pointed out to me later on. I wish he’d thought of that before we sat down to talk. Oh well. I’m still trying to get hold of an environmental activist who presumably knows the area pretty well, so I’ll probably just try to base the story on that and the legal framework and any changes in it.
Following the market excursion I went to a talk on US-Ghana relations. It was sort of interesting. Apparently MLK gave a speech marking Ghana’s independence, which is cool, and we got to listen to a recording of it that was mostly intelligible most of the time. The keynote speaker, apparently the former Communist Party presidential candidate, talked a lot about ending handouts (food donations) in favor of sustainable development aid (agric inputs and training) and things like that.
Then we went to a cultural event (drumming) that turned out not to be happening because of rain. It seems rain messes up a lot of arrangements. But they had pretty good food anyway, even if it brought the amount I’m spending up to a mostly unsustainable level. Afterwards we went to Tony’s for about 5 minutes (just me and Sabrina, who I conned into coming since I didn’t want to go alone and everyone else was a bum). We had initially told him to meet us at the drumming place, but since that busted he told us to come over afterwards. I was dead tired though, and I think it was pretty obvious, so they let us go without much fuss.
Day 44 bonus blog
I decided Wednesday night to be a bum on Thursday, because I was super tired and was only going to get 6 hours of sleep if I slept late. I also had to write an article based on a report the UN released, which doesn’t involve anything but a word processor and a pdf reader, both of which I had from my bed at home. So I slept late (6:30) and wrote my article and left around 11.
During the course of the morning I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize; it was a guy who I had given my number to and who had been calling 4 times a day (if not more) for about a week and a half that I was ignoring to the best of my ability. He switched numbers though. So when I picked it up and he said who he was I was like, oh, who are you trying to reach? And then I told him he’d gotten Sarah’s phone and I didn’t know a Lindsay. Then he asked me if I wanted to be his friend. I declined. I feel a bit like a bad person, but I’m hopeful I don’t get any more calls.
It only took about 45 minutes to get to work leaving at midday; I should do that more often. I only stayed at work about an hour to file my story, and then I left for the internet café because it has more reliable internet and I needed to finish working on the paper I’m writing with my prof (comes out in October btw).
When I left for home around 4:45 I had a rather interesting experience. I got a tro-tro pretty quickly, but then it immediately pulled over to the side of the road and I gathered from the woman next to me that the driver was being arrested by the police and we should get out. So I followed the people I exited with down the road a bit, and ran with them for a bit after a tro-tro that was only slowing down in our area rather than stopping (to avoid a mob I spose), and did not get on that one. A guy walking next to me struck up a conversation though, telling me I needed to go farther down to get a car. After chatting a while I discovered that he’s a fashion designer ladies garments), works at the only swap meet type place in the country that is run by Ghana’s only independent presidential candidate in 2008, and is important enough to be getting a ticket to Obama’s speech at the conference center on Saturday. Afterwards he’s going to a fashion show and he invited me, so I may be doing that. He seems very nice, and not terribly interested in me romantically, which is good.
I got home pretty fast and had a nice chat with Grandma and Grandpa. I bought some nuts on the side of the road that they explained to me. It turns out they aren’t nuts, they’re tiger nuts, which are actually the roots of grass, and they taste like coconut. Fascinating. I guess they also grow in California. Also I asked about Tony’s cling me so much and a couple questionable things he said (like I think you’re beautiful), but I was reassured that this sort of behavior is completely normal and does not indicate romantic interest at all. Apparently all of Grandma’s guests who see me tell her I’m beautiful, which is a bit of a self-esteem booster, I must say. Since they’re pretty smart people I’m going to believe them, especially since Tony’s never given me any sort of negative impression when I actually see him. Adapting to other people’s cultures is sooo weird and uncomfortable sometimes. I also got a lesson about marriage here, which is apparently conducted in two ceremonies (the engagement, which is the traditional marriage, and the blessing with is the church or formal/modern ceremony. It sounds super expensive).
Mostly the rest of the night was idle chatter with the three girls who will be leaving Monday and Tuesday and enjoying my empty room (my current roommate Sabrina has a cousin around and I think she slept over with her at her hotel).
Also of interest, the newspaper Thursday was a special Obama souvenir edition, that had nothing but articles about Obama and the sports section (except for 2 pages, 54-55, which is the “News Extra” where there was a brief mention that oh yes, there’s a fuel shortage in Accra). Friday’s paper was pretty much the same layout. I’m assuming the same will be true of Saturday. I might as well not be at work, since none of my stories will be making it in anytime soon : P
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Ghana Day 43
Ghana Day 43 is postponed until tomorrow, because I have not yet had time to write it. Sorry!
Management
Management
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Ghana Day 42
I started off my day by going to the embassy. The tro-tro went on an amazing back route I’d never been on before that only took an hour, so of course it was on the one day I’m going somewhere where earliness doesn’t lead to productivity. I got there an hour before the consular section opened. When I got in I asked about seeing someone about the Obama visit and a press pass and I got directed to consular affairs, so I waited around for an hour and 15 minutes only to be given a paper with the public affairs section’s contact information. Apparently they are appointment only, and when I decided I would try to make an appointment while I was there I was disappointed because apparently the entire section of people was out on a field trip. So that trip was a bit of a waste, although it was nice to be on American soil for an hour and to know where it was and how to get there.
I was stood up again for the presidency visit, which was pretty annoying. Since I got told that we would go around 10, and then at 10 that we would go after he filed his story, and then he disappeared after a bit without saying anything, I was unsure about my plans for the day and so did not attach myself to any assignments that got doled out in the morning. So most of my day was sitting around and handing out surveys about media freedom.
One interesting point of the day was the campaign stop. There’s a woman running for treasurer of the Ghana Journalists’ Association. She was promoting a group investment fund for retirement. One of the reporters voiced a complaint that the IGJ dues were auto-deducted from her salary, but so were the commercial union dues, since IGJ isn’t an official union yet. Made for some interesting watching, at least at my current standards of interesting. I got the woman’s name and email address, so I might follow up with her some day.
There was a new guy at work named Matt (too many Matts!) from Oregon here on a university project. The newsroom is now practically overflowing with obrunis (4 of us). I showed him how to get transport home, so hopefully he made it ok.
The trip home was exciting. I showed Matt how to get to Circle, and there was a throng of people there again. I was one of 5 or 6 people who ran really fast to follow a Nungua tro-tro that stopped a fair distance from the stop and then took off right away again to avoid getting mobbed. I was pretty proud of myself running in heels. The traffic was surprisingly light, and I was home by 6:30.
In the evening we went out for what I had been misled into thinking was live local music but turned out to be a bar that played local music on Tuesday nights, but in fact did not do it while we were there. I had Tony come as well though, and he’s a very nice guy. He brought his sister Cassandra and brother Adrian as well. They and their mother have a business; she and Tony are architects, Cassandra’s an interior designer, and Arian’s an accountant. They’ve been in Ghana only 7 months, before which they lived in Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) and before that in Lagos. They’ve got dual citizenship (also South African citizenship – they’re self-described nomads). Cassandra was super fun; I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard since I got here. She’s very exuberant about everything and has great stories. They’re all a little sad about the pace of life in Accra – apparently it’s a lot slower than in Lagos or Abuja. The explanation for that is that in a city of 350 million (or however many – Lagos is the largest city on the continent and I think 2nd in the world after Mexico City, but don’t quote me on that), if you slow down 50 people will be there to take your place. They’re used to working from 4am to 10pm, so they’re pretty bored here. This explains why Tony has been over-excited to get to know me and I think is really a saving grace – I’m much more comfortable befriending another outsider who hasn’t gotten to know many people yet than I am making friends with someone who wants to hang out with me because I’m white. In any case, I got an interesting perspective from them on why Ghanaians dislike Nigerians. Cassandra told me that yes, in fact, “all Nigerians” are criminally minded, but it’s because of the sink-or-swim mentality more than anything else, and Ghanaians are just jealous because they aren’t doing as well. Apparently Nigeria is much more developed (I think this probably means there’s a sizeable rich/middle class that have developed downtown, because there’s definitely also a larger poor class). I’ve been told not to walk around along in Lagos though, which is probably fair advice. They’re pretty astonished at the low crime rate here.
So it sounds like we’ll probably hang out a couple more times before I leave, which is cool. They’re good people.
Final anecdote: on the way into work Wednesday morning the door to the tro-tro wouldn’t open for 3 or 4 or so minutes, which was exciting. I thought maybe I’d get to spend the day in a 20-year-old van with 15 other people. Unfortunately for that plan, they got it open.
I was stood up again for the presidency visit, which was pretty annoying. Since I got told that we would go around 10, and then at 10 that we would go after he filed his story, and then he disappeared after a bit without saying anything, I was unsure about my plans for the day and so did not attach myself to any assignments that got doled out in the morning. So most of my day was sitting around and handing out surveys about media freedom.
One interesting point of the day was the campaign stop. There’s a woman running for treasurer of the Ghana Journalists’ Association. She was promoting a group investment fund for retirement. One of the reporters voiced a complaint that the IGJ dues were auto-deducted from her salary, but so were the commercial union dues, since IGJ isn’t an official union yet. Made for some interesting watching, at least at my current standards of interesting. I got the woman’s name and email address, so I might follow up with her some day.
There was a new guy at work named Matt (too many Matts!) from Oregon here on a university project. The newsroom is now practically overflowing with obrunis (4 of us). I showed him how to get transport home, so hopefully he made it ok.
The trip home was exciting. I showed Matt how to get to Circle, and there was a throng of people there again. I was one of 5 or 6 people who ran really fast to follow a Nungua tro-tro that stopped a fair distance from the stop and then took off right away again to avoid getting mobbed. I was pretty proud of myself running in heels. The traffic was surprisingly light, and I was home by 6:30.
In the evening we went out for what I had been misled into thinking was live local music but turned out to be a bar that played local music on Tuesday nights, but in fact did not do it while we were there. I had Tony come as well though, and he’s a very nice guy. He brought his sister Cassandra and brother Adrian as well. They and their mother have a business; she and Tony are architects, Cassandra’s an interior designer, and Arian’s an accountant. They’ve been in Ghana only 7 months, before which they lived in Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) and before that in Lagos. They’ve got dual citizenship (also South African citizenship – they’re self-described nomads). Cassandra was super fun; I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard since I got here. She’s very exuberant about everything and has great stories. They’re all a little sad about the pace of life in Accra – apparently it’s a lot slower than in Lagos or Abuja. The explanation for that is that in a city of 350 million (or however many – Lagos is the largest city on the continent and I think 2nd in the world after Mexico City, but don’t quote me on that), if you slow down 50 people will be there to take your place. They’re used to working from 4am to 10pm, so they’re pretty bored here. This explains why Tony has been over-excited to get to know me and I think is really a saving grace – I’m much more comfortable befriending another outsider who hasn’t gotten to know many people yet than I am making friends with someone who wants to hang out with me because I’m white. In any case, I got an interesting perspective from them on why Ghanaians dislike Nigerians. Cassandra told me that yes, in fact, “all Nigerians” are criminally minded, but it’s because of the sink-or-swim mentality more than anything else, and Ghanaians are just jealous because they aren’t doing as well. Apparently Nigeria is much more developed (I think this probably means there’s a sizeable rich/middle class that have developed downtown, because there’s definitely also a larger poor class). I’ve been told not to walk around along in Lagos though, which is probably fair advice. They’re pretty astonished at the low crime rate here.
So it sounds like we’ll probably hang out a couple more times before I leave, which is cool. They’re good people.
Final anecdote: on the way into work Wednesday morning the door to the tro-tro wouldn’t open for 3 or 4 or so minutes, which was exciting. I thought maybe I’d get to spend the day in a 20-year-old van with 15 other people. Unfortunately for that plan, they got it open.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Ghana Day 41
The rest of my Sunday was boring, as predicted. I decided not to try my luck with Tony, since I didn’t finish showering and eating until 8pm and that’s pretty much my bedtime. I’m going to have to one of these days though, because he texts me twice a day. I swear that’s not creepy here, so don’t be worried.
I got in to work all excited about going to the presidency, but it turns out Tim decided to go without me, and when I saw him at 10am he was like, hello. And I said, did you already go? And he said, yes I did. So I said, you said you would take me wit you, and he said, yes I did say that. But I am going to Tema now… I’m really not sure how those were related, but he said he would take me Tuesday. I won’t hold my breath.
The reporter I’ll be doing the Ogbogbloshie story with is finding out where exactly the “recycling” dump is, and said we would go before Obama gets here (Friday). On that note, I’m going in to the embassy tomorrow morning with my passport and my Graphic intern badge to see if anything can be wrangled. Again, not holding my breath, but it would be pretty cool.
So since my plans for the day mostly fell through, I spent all late morning and afternoon reading back-papers. I’ve taken notes now on May and June, although I wanted Jan-Apr as well. Apparently they haven’t been sent back from the binders yet, six months later (from the earliest one). I don’t think I saw December on the shelf either, now that I think about it. The Daily Guide has their papers and the Graphic’s bound within 2 months. They’ve also got much better internet, enough computers to go around, and better-working AC. While I’m definitely more impressed with the Graphic’s house style, the Guide definitely strikes me as better run. I think it probably has to do with being a state-run enterprise, but it’s still pretty bad.
I left work at close to 5 so I could see if there was actually a free bus to Nungua as I’d been told. It turns out they have 2 buses, and they alternate routes (although I think one might always go to Kaneshie, which is sort of nearby). This week the route was not in my favor. Unfortunately, my timing was therefore awful for getting home. I got to Circle (my midway point) ok, but the traffic there was atrocious. Circle is obviously a roundabout (it’s actually Nkrumah Circle), and for whatever reason no traffic in the roundabout was moving – at all. So the cars in every direction were backed up, and in the half hour I stood there only 2 or 3 cars decided to turn and go to Nungua (there’s always a problem getting a car there in rush hour, so it was particularly bad when no cars were going anywhere). These few were all far away from me when they stopped and got mobbed immediately. By the time I decided to just start walking and hope I could get to a junction where cars were at least moving, there were a couple hundred people waiting at the stop, and I’m sure a decent number of them wanted to go to the same place I did.
Well, there’s really nowhere to walk to from Circle that’s terribly productive, so I didn’t have a real plan for finding economic fare home. I decided to try my luck hailing a cab. Some fare context: normally I should pay .50c for a tro-tro seat, and if I take a taxi that picks other people up it’ 1.20. If I get a “dropping,” which is door to door service, a fair price (before the fuel hike) was 8c, so around ten is probably normal. When I finally got a taxi to stop, he told me 15c, and I said no. I told him I’d give him 10 and he could pick up other fares. He said no, but then after I got out and walked on I think he reconsidered the offer and decided to take it (he really was being pretty reasonable – the traffic was awful). So he tried to pick up more people at 2c a person, but the first two ladies he picked up refused to pay. He pulled over and told them to get out, but they wouldn’t because they still wanted to go to Nungua, they just wanted to pay the normal fare (1.50 because of rush hour). So we sat at the side of the road for 4 or 5 minutes before they finally got out. We picked up a couple other people who were willing and able to pay, and then sat in traffic for about an hour and 15 minutes. If we hadn’t driven on the burm the entire way and been really obnoxious, I’m sure it would have taken 3 or 4 hours. Most of the people we passed were at a standstill. Normally I don’t approve of such behavior, but honestly, I’m glad he did it. I got dinner while it was still hot.
I’m sorry half my post is about commuting; it just reflects the distribution of my time. I need to time my trips better from now on though; I can’t afford to pay 10c to come home many more times.
I got in to work all excited about going to the presidency, but it turns out Tim decided to go without me, and when I saw him at 10am he was like, hello. And I said, did you already go? And he said, yes I did. So I said, you said you would take me wit you, and he said, yes I did say that. But I am going to Tema now… I’m really not sure how those were related, but he said he would take me Tuesday. I won’t hold my breath.
The reporter I’ll be doing the Ogbogbloshie story with is finding out where exactly the “recycling” dump is, and said we would go before Obama gets here (Friday). On that note, I’m going in to the embassy tomorrow morning with my passport and my Graphic intern badge to see if anything can be wrangled. Again, not holding my breath, but it would be pretty cool.
So since my plans for the day mostly fell through, I spent all late morning and afternoon reading back-papers. I’ve taken notes now on May and June, although I wanted Jan-Apr as well. Apparently they haven’t been sent back from the binders yet, six months later (from the earliest one). I don’t think I saw December on the shelf either, now that I think about it. The Daily Guide has their papers and the Graphic’s bound within 2 months. They’ve also got much better internet, enough computers to go around, and better-working AC. While I’m definitely more impressed with the Graphic’s house style, the Guide definitely strikes me as better run. I think it probably has to do with being a state-run enterprise, but it’s still pretty bad.
I left work at close to 5 so I could see if there was actually a free bus to Nungua as I’d been told. It turns out they have 2 buses, and they alternate routes (although I think one might always go to Kaneshie, which is sort of nearby). This week the route was not in my favor. Unfortunately, my timing was therefore awful for getting home. I got to Circle (my midway point) ok, but the traffic there was atrocious. Circle is obviously a roundabout (it’s actually Nkrumah Circle), and for whatever reason no traffic in the roundabout was moving – at all. So the cars in every direction were backed up, and in the half hour I stood there only 2 or 3 cars decided to turn and go to Nungua (there’s always a problem getting a car there in rush hour, so it was particularly bad when no cars were going anywhere). These few were all far away from me when they stopped and got mobbed immediately. By the time I decided to just start walking and hope I could get to a junction where cars were at least moving, there were a couple hundred people waiting at the stop, and I’m sure a decent number of them wanted to go to the same place I did.
Well, there’s really nowhere to walk to from Circle that’s terribly productive, so I didn’t have a real plan for finding economic fare home. I decided to try my luck hailing a cab. Some fare context: normally I should pay .50c for a tro-tro seat, and if I take a taxi that picks other people up it’ 1.20. If I get a “dropping,” which is door to door service, a fair price (before the fuel hike) was 8c, so around ten is probably normal. When I finally got a taxi to stop, he told me 15c, and I said no. I told him I’d give him 10 and he could pick up other fares. He said no, but then after I got out and walked on I think he reconsidered the offer and decided to take it (he really was being pretty reasonable – the traffic was awful). So he tried to pick up more people at 2c a person, but the first two ladies he picked up refused to pay. He pulled over and told them to get out, but they wouldn’t because they still wanted to go to Nungua, they just wanted to pay the normal fare (1.50 because of rush hour). So we sat at the side of the road for 4 or 5 minutes before they finally got out. We picked up a couple other people who were willing and able to pay, and then sat in traffic for about an hour and 15 minutes. If we hadn’t driven on the burm the entire way and been really obnoxious, I’m sure it would have taken 3 or 4 hours. Most of the people we passed were at a standstill. Normally I don’t approve of such behavior, but honestly, I’m glad he did it. I got dinner while it was still hot.
I’m sorry half my post is about commuting; it just reflects the distribution of my time. I need to time my trips better from now on though; I can’t afford to pay 10c to come home many more times.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Some pictures
Here are some interesting pictures from the weekend: a shot of the River Volta from the resort, some pretty awesome child traditional dancers, impressive acrobats, a random peacock that is definitely not native to the area, and a scene from the Devil in the Mirror (where I got yelled at by the usher for filming during the show).
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Ghana Days 38-40
Friday I went into work and filed my story on the orphanage, which was exciting because it’s the only story I’ve done so far that is both initiated and completed by me. After that I hung around for a while reading internets and mostly being a leech, although leeching was highly complicated by the fact that the internet only worked once every 15 minutes or so.
Thursday night I saw a billboard advertising a play, and coming in to work in the morning I heard a radio ad for the same play, so I decided to see if I could wiggle into a reviewing assignment and get a free ticket. I asked the news editor, but he said the show Friday night was invitation-only and the invites had all been passed out already. (For reasons I will get to shortly, I could not make the Saturday show.) So I was sort of bummed, but I went over to the National Theatre (which is a pretty cool building – you can find pics on Wikipedia) to get info on the weekend’s schedule since I had nothing else to do. A while after I got back, though, Sam (the news editor) called me over and asked if I still wanted to go to the show that night, he had gotten hold of tickets. Of course I said yes, so I got to go on a date with the editor of the biggest paper in the country to a free show of a locally written and produced play. It was super cool.
The show, it turned out, was free because it was sponsored by MTN, which is the biggest cell service provider in the country (I’ve got my account with them, and it turns out they merged with Verizon in January, so their super-cool discounts for MTN family members extends to calling home, which I appreciate). The invitees (bigwigs MTN wants to curry favor with) were treated to lots and lots of MTN propaganda for about an hour and a half starting when the play was scheduled to begin. We were also treated to refreshments, though, so I’m not complaining too much. Sam is friends with a guy who is now a regional minister, as well, so I chatted with him for a bit (or rather, I listened politely and occasionally piped in when they were speaking English and talking about something I knew anything at all about).
The show was pretty good, although we left before the final act. Sam thought it was over after the 2nd act, but nobody was getting up and the lights were out and the plot hadn’t really wrapped up yet, but he charged out. I’m not sure if he actually thought it was over or just wanted to get home, since it was getting late and he had a wife waiting for him. In any case, not seeing the end didn’t stop me from writing a review, which hopefully I’ll be posting soon, so I won’t go into it.
On our way out a harried-looking MTN usher girl rushed at us to give us MTN-logo backpacks, which I later discovered contained MTN hats, shirts, and water bottles. I kept the water bottle, because I can use it, but let the driver have the rest. (An interesting note about the driving situation: when we got there we were told the parking lot was full and we needed to find a spot elsewhere, but Sam said, oh no, he’s just dropping us off and leaving, so we got through. Of course we immediately parked in front of a no-parking sign and all of us go out and went in.)
So they took me home, which was extremely nice of them considering I live in the middle of nowhere and it was probably a 2 hour trip there and back. I had a good conversation with Sam on the way, though, so hopefully he wasn’t too annoyed. We talked about the problem in the country (which had featured prominently in the play) of Christians seeing their role in religion as professing their faithfulness as loudly as possible but not doing much of anything else. This sort of goes along with what the guy I met in the cab told me – that Christianity isn’t about doing good things, it’s about adopting Jesus as your savior. Then it’s sort of an automatic in to heaven, but you can’t get in without it. Apparently in some of the poorer, more crowded neighborhoods women start wailing their prayers (ostensibly for the neighbors to hear) at 4am and keep going until dusk. It sounds pretty unproductive. Sam said he doesn’t like to talk about religion with people around here for that reason, which I can certainly respect.
We also talked about traveling and why I’m actually here (since I’m not really a journalist). He’s traveled all over the place, which is super cool. He started working as a sports journalist, so he went all over the place with Ghana’s various teams. He was in the US a bunch of times following a Ghanaian boxer (Azumah Nelson) who was apparently a 3-time world champ. Who knew? Probably lots of people, actually, just not me. He then got interested in other kinds of reporting, namely entertainment stuff. It’s certainly an interesting career track, and I think it probably says a bit about the news industry in general that the Graphic news editor’s background is entertaining people. He’s very knowledgeable about African government affairs, though, so he’s certainly qualified for the position.
My Saturday story: On Tuesday, I met a guy Tim (the presidential correspondent, not just a random guy) who told me he’d take me to his village this weekend. I said ok and he said good then, or something like that. Then I said, I think you’re joking, but I’d actually go with you. He sort of just smiled and walked away, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then Friday morning Tim came over to me and said all the plans were in place and he’d arrange things with me that afternoon. I was super-confused, but after I established what he was talking about, very excited. He’s a chief in his village, so the plan was to go to the Volta region for a program and then spend the night in his village, which was close to the program we were attending, which is very cool.
So we arranged to meet at a particular bus depot at 8am Saturday morning. I’ve never travelled that early on a Saturday, and I wasn’t sure how the traffic would be, so I left early and got there at 7:30. I called him and said I was there, just to let him know, since people are generally late and I hoped it would get him to show up on time. No such luck. He called me at around 9 wondering where I was, so I had to go walk over to where he was after co-opting a taxi driver to talk to him to figure out where that was.
So the event we went to was the 25th anniversary of the opening of a very nice resort in the region, run by a guy who graduated from secondary school with Tim and is a recently-appointed member of the Council of State (sort of like parliament in that it’s a deliberative body, but appointed by the prez and with no real authority, just recommending power. The coolest part of it is that the people get salaries, so it’s a pretty good patronage instrument – and yes, he is an NDC supporter).
The resort was beautiful, and was on the River Volta, which was cool to see. People were very nice – the secondary school was giving him an award in recognition of what-all he’s done, so the executive board of the alumni association (or whatever) were all there. The president of the exec board was a really good guy to know – Joseph Ayee, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies at the University of Ghana and has written lots of books about African governments and Ghanaian democracy. So we had a nice chat for a bit. He was in Swaziland for a while, and he said that most of the older folks like the monarchy, but the new generation is pretty pro-multiparty democracy, so once the old people get really old there might be a transition. Interesting.
There was some good traditional dancing and amazing food (I got special treatment since the buffet was almost all meat… when the waiter came over to ask what I wanted and I didn’t really have a suggestion, he said, “we have rice and salad,” so I apprehensively said ok. I forgot that the definition of salad here is really just vegetables, so I was super excited when I got an amazingly delicious stir-fry). I also got to say hello to Kubi, a photographer from the Daily Guide (one of the ones who had been locked up for a few hours with Awudu at the FBI-type place). He’s also from Volta, so he came up to cover the event and get free food.
One interesting cultural bit I learned from him concerned scars he’s got around his eyes. He, and several other people I’ve seen around town, has three cuts radiating from each eye. Apparently, when there are multiple still births in a family, the parents have to pretend not to love the subsequent children. The reasoning is that the devil only takes kids who are loved by their parents – he doesn’t really care about the ones whose deaths won’t cause anguish. So parents scar their kids to show they don’t like them, and sometimes they give them awful names like Slave or Rubbish dump or what have you. In some tribes they leave the child at the edge of the village and arrange for someone to go get it and raise it instead the birth parents. To me it sounds like the marks would be a sign of luck, since you got to survive, but apparently Kubi got made fun of a lot when he was younger, and he only came to terms with it when he was around 18. Very sad. I told him I thought they looked distinguished.
It turned out that I lugged my overnight bag to other regions for nothing, though, because Tim had to come back to Accra for an interview on Sunday morning. So we headed home, but of course only after stopping for a beer. Apparently the beers at the event weren’t good enough. I was also convinced that I needed to try Akteshie (or something like that), which is the name for locally brewed gin (96 proof). I took two very small swigs of it – pretty bad, although since I don’t like the taste of any alcohol at all it wasn’t that much different for me from sipping wine. Now I can say I’ve had it though, so that’s good.
On the way home Tim told me that I was the first foreign intern to take him up on his offer of traveling with him, which surprises me a little bit given the number of them that go through the office, but I think maybe he doesn’t make himself very clear about his seriousness. At least he’ll remember me, though. He also said that before I left he would take me to his village for real, and we’ll go see the waterfall that everyone talks about, so I have that to look forward to. He’s also going to take me to the press briefing at Castle Osu or wherever it is on Monday, so that’s exciting.
So he took me straight home as well, which was very nice of him, and also we passed through the port city of Tema, which was pretty cool even though it was too dark to see anything. I pretty much collapsed of exhaustion when I got home, since I had 5 hours of sleep each of the previous two nights.
Sunday morning I slept in until 8:15, which was exciting, and came in to town to the Graphic. I had to file my review, and while I was there I got pulled into drafting the story on Saturday’s event. So I have 3 bylines potentially coming up, all of them with pictures I’ve taken – in your faces, Dad, Michelle, and Kathy, who are all much better photographers than I am. I’m gettin’ published! : )
Awudu was going to come see me so I could help him with his GRE prep, but he showed up at the internet place and said he wasn’t in the frame of mind for studying, so he just said hello and went to his football game. So that was interesting. Now I’m hanging around and enjoying uninterrupted internet access for a tiny bit more before going home to what I hope will be a very boring evening. I might go over to a neighbor’s house for a tiny bit though – the guy’s name is Tony, and he’s an architect/ artist. He does charcoal pictures. So I said I’d try to find time to go see him and his work. Hopefully I can do that right before dinner time so I have an excuse to leave.
That’s all I’ve got for now – definitely an interesting weekend, though. Only 2.5 more weeks left in Ghana!
Thursday night I saw a billboard advertising a play, and coming in to work in the morning I heard a radio ad for the same play, so I decided to see if I could wiggle into a reviewing assignment and get a free ticket. I asked the news editor, but he said the show Friday night was invitation-only and the invites had all been passed out already. (For reasons I will get to shortly, I could not make the Saturday show.) So I was sort of bummed, but I went over to the National Theatre (which is a pretty cool building – you can find pics on Wikipedia) to get info on the weekend’s schedule since I had nothing else to do. A while after I got back, though, Sam (the news editor) called me over and asked if I still wanted to go to the show that night, he had gotten hold of tickets. Of course I said yes, so I got to go on a date with the editor of the biggest paper in the country to a free show of a locally written and produced play. It was super cool.
The show, it turned out, was free because it was sponsored by MTN, which is the biggest cell service provider in the country (I’ve got my account with them, and it turns out they merged with Verizon in January, so their super-cool discounts for MTN family members extends to calling home, which I appreciate). The invitees (bigwigs MTN wants to curry favor with) were treated to lots and lots of MTN propaganda for about an hour and a half starting when the play was scheduled to begin. We were also treated to refreshments, though, so I’m not complaining too much. Sam is friends with a guy who is now a regional minister, as well, so I chatted with him for a bit (or rather, I listened politely and occasionally piped in when they were speaking English and talking about something I knew anything at all about).
The show was pretty good, although we left before the final act. Sam thought it was over after the 2nd act, but nobody was getting up and the lights were out and the plot hadn’t really wrapped up yet, but he charged out. I’m not sure if he actually thought it was over or just wanted to get home, since it was getting late and he had a wife waiting for him. In any case, not seeing the end didn’t stop me from writing a review, which hopefully I’ll be posting soon, so I won’t go into it.
On our way out a harried-looking MTN usher girl rushed at us to give us MTN-logo backpacks, which I later discovered contained MTN hats, shirts, and water bottles. I kept the water bottle, because I can use it, but let the driver have the rest. (An interesting note about the driving situation: when we got there we were told the parking lot was full and we needed to find a spot elsewhere, but Sam said, oh no, he’s just dropping us off and leaving, so we got through. Of course we immediately parked in front of a no-parking sign and all of us go out and went in.)
So they took me home, which was extremely nice of them considering I live in the middle of nowhere and it was probably a 2 hour trip there and back. I had a good conversation with Sam on the way, though, so hopefully he wasn’t too annoyed. We talked about the problem in the country (which had featured prominently in the play) of Christians seeing their role in religion as professing their faithfulness as loudly as possible but not doing much of anything else. This sort of goes along with what the guy I met in the cab told me – that Christianity isn’t about doing good things, it’s about adopting Jesus as your savior. Then it’s sort of an automatic in to heaven, but you can’t get in without it. Apparently in some of the poorer, more crowded neighborhoods women start wailing their prayers (ostensibly for the neighbors to hear) at 4am and keep going until dusk. It sounds pretty unproductive. Sam said he doesn’t like to talk about religion with people around here for that reason, which I can certainly respect.
We also talked about traveling and why I’m actually here (since I’m not really a journalist). He’s traveled all over the place, which is super cool. He started working as a sports journalist, so he went all over the place with Ghana’s various teams. He was in the US a bunch of times following a Ghanaian boxer (Azumah Nelson) who was apparently a 3-time world champ. Who knew? Probably lots of people, actually, just not me. He then got interested in other kinds of reporting, namely entertainment stuff. It’s certainly an interesting career track, and I think it probably says a bit about the news industry in general that the Graphic news editor’s background is entertaining people. He’s very knowledgeable about African government affairs, though, so he’s certainly qualified for the position.
My Saturday story: On Tuesday, I met a guy Tim (the presidential correspondent, not just a random guy) who told me he’d take me to his village this weekend. I said ok and he said good then, or something like that. Then I said, I think you’re joking, but I’d actually go with you. He sort of just smiled and walked away, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then Friday morning Tim came over to me and said all the plans were in place and he’d arrange things with me that afternoon. I was super-confused, but after I established what he was talking about, very excited. He’s a chief in his village, so the plan was to go to the Volta region for a program and then spend the night in his village, which was close to the program we were attending, which is very cool.
So we arranged to meet at a particular bus depot at 8am Saturday morning. I’ve never travelled that early on a Saturday, and I wasn’t sure how the traffic would be, so I left early and got there at 7:30. I called him and said I was there, just to let him know, since people are generally late and I hoped it would get him to show up on time. No such luck. He called me at around 9 wondering where I was, so I had to go walk over to where he was after co-opting a taxi driver to talk to him to figure out where that was.
So the event we went to was the 25th anniversary of the opening of a very nice resort in the region, run by a guy who graduated from secondary school with Tim and is a recently-appointed member of the Council of State (sort of like parliament in that it’s a deliberative body, but appointed by the prez and with no real authority, just recommending power. The coolest part of it is that the people get salaries, so it’s a pretty good patronage instrument – and yes, he is an NDC supporter).
The resort was beautiful, and was on the River Volta, which was cool to see. People were very nice – the secondary school was giving him an award in recognition of what-all he’s done, so the executive board of the alumni association (or whatever) were all there. The president of the exec board was a really good guy to know – Joseph Ayee, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies at the University of Ghana and has written lots of books about African governments and Ghanaian democracy. So we had a nice chat for a bit. He was in Swaziland for a while, and he said that most of the older folks like the monarchy, but the new generation is pretty pro-multiparty democracy, so once the old people get really old there might be a transition. Interesting.
There was some good traditional dancing and amazing food (I got special treatment since the buffet was almost all meat… when the waiter came over to ask what I wanted and I didn’t really have a suggestion, he said, “we have rice and salad,” so I apprehensively said ok. I forgot that the definition of salad here is really just vegetables, so I was super excited when I got an amazingly delicious stir-fry). I also got to say hello to Kubi, a photographer from the Daily Guide (one of the ones who had been locked up for a few hours with Awudu at the FBI-type place). He’s also from Volta, so he came up to cover the event and get free food.
One interesting cultural bit I learned from him concerned scars he’s got around his eyes. He, and several other people I’ve seen around town, has three cuts radiating from each eye. Apparently, when there are multiple still births in a family, the parents have to pretend not to love the subsequent children. The reasoning is that the devil only takes kids who are loved by their parents – he doesn’t really care about the ones whose deaths won’t cause anguish. So parents scar their kids to show they don’t like them, and sometimes they give them awful names like Slave or Rubbish dump or what have you. In some tribes they leave the child at the edge of the village and arrange for someone to go get it and raise it instead the birth parents. To me it sounds like the marks would be a sign of luck, since you got to survive, but apparently Kubi got made fun of a lot when he was younger, and he only came to terms with it when he was around 18. Very sad. I told him I thought they looked distinguished.
It turned out that I lugged my overnight bag to other regions for nothing, though, because Tim had to come back to Accra for an interview on Sunday morning. So we headed home, but of course only after stopping for a beer. Apparently the beers at the event weren’t good enough. I was also convinced that I needed to try Akteshie (or something like that), which is the name for locally brewed gin (96 proof). I took two very small swigs of it – pretty bad, although since I don’t like the taste of any alcohol at all it wasn’t that much different for me from sipping wine. Now I can say I’ve had it though, so that’s good.
On the way home Tim told me that I was the first foreign intern to take him up on his offer of traveling with him, which surprises me a little bit given the number of them that go through the office, but I think maybe he doesn’t make himself very clear about his seriousness. At least he’ll remember me, though. He also said that before I left he would take me to his village for real, and we’ll go see the waterfall that everyone talks about, so I have that to look forward to. He’s also going to take me to the press briefing at Castle Osu or wherever it is on Monday, so that’s exciting.
So he took me straight home as well, which was very nice of him, and also we passed through the port city of Tema, which was pretty cool even though it was too dark to see anything. I pretty much collapsed of exhaustion when I got home, since I had 5 hours of sleep each of the previous two nights.
Sunday morning I slept in until 8:15, which was exciting, and came in to town to the Graphic. I had to file my review, and while I was there I got pulled into drafting the story on Saturday’s event. So I have 3 bylines potentially coming up, all of them with pictures I’ve taken – in your faces, Dad, Michelle, and Kathy, who are all much better photographers than I am. I’m gettin’ published! : )
Awudu was going to come see me so I could help him with his GRE prep, but he showed up at the internet place and said he wasn’t in the frame of mind for studying, so he just said hello and went to his football game. So that was interesting. Now I’m hanging around and enjoying uninterrupted internet access for a tiny bit more before going home to what I hope will be a very boring evening. I might go over to a neighbor’s house for a tiny bit though – the guy’s name is Tony, and he’s an architect/ artist. He does charcoal pictures. So I said I’d try to find time to go see him and his work. Hopefully I can do that right before dinner time so I have an excuse to leave.
That’s all I’ve got for now – definitely an interesting weekend, though. Only 2.5 more weeks left in Ghana!
Friday, July 3, 2009
Ghana Day 37
My toesies are in pretty terrible agony after walking a couple miles in uncomfortable heels this morning because I’m still not really sure how to get to work from the midway point I normally get dropped at. Sometime soon I’ll need to figure it out, but I’m sure my mom and sisters (at least one of them) will be pleased to hear that I might need to consider a pedicure before I get married so that my feet look a little less mangled when I walk down the aisle.
After hanging around at work for a while and looking into the story on Ogbogbloshie market and reading lots of interesting articles from Good magazine and BBC and CNN and all the other sites my bored surfing self has picked up, I came out to the orphanage where a few of the western girls are volunteering because Prince wanted a story written about the donation of items that they had so he could get the organization’s name in the paper. So I went over, but quite honestly it wasn’t a huge donation in terms of money spent on the items and probably not newsworthy as an event. The guy who runs the orphanage is certainly newsworthy from a human interest angle, though, so I might get that story printed based on him. I’ll try to keep a mention of the NGO in it for Prince’s sake, but it will probably be just in passing.
The only other interesting thing to happen today was on my ride home. I got into the tro-tro and was immediately joined by a guy who invaded my personal space much more than normal, smelled pretty bad, and was very loud and abrasive the entire way. As he boarded the bus, he was picking a fight with someone (I think he said he’d been insulted, although I’m not sure what the insult was). He told him he would fight him, and he said “your mother is a bushman, and your father… [pause to think of an original insult… fail]… your father was a bushman.” He then went on, either because of me or in spite of me, I was unsure, to say “I know the white man! I worked the beach for 22 years, and I know the white man! I know what he does! He just injects you, that’s all he does… [rambling, speaking in languages I don’t understand, shouting]… You are all slaves! You did not realize it before this moment, but that is all you are to these people, you are slaves! They think, this black man, he cannot be better than we!...” etc etc. At one point, he said, “I used to be a boxer! You see this arm [points to arm] this can knock you down in one blow!” And of course none of these phrases were devoid of expletives, but I’m leaving them out to spare my father. So anyway, I got to sit next to him the whole way home. Goody for me.
After hanging around at work for a while and looking into the story on Ogbogbloshie market and reading lots of interesting articles from Good magazine and BBC and CNN and all the other sites my bored surfing self has picked up, I came out to the orphanage where a few of the western girls are volunteering because Prince wanted a story written about the donation of items that they had so he could get the organization’s name in the paper. So I went over, but quite honestly it wasn’t a huge donation in terms of money spent on the items and probably not newsworthy as an event. The guy who runs the orphanage is certainly newsworthy from a human interest angle, though, so I might get that story printed based on him. I’ll try to keep a mention of the NGO in it for Prince’s sake, but it will probably be just in passing.
The only other interesting thing to happen today was on my ride home. I got into the tro-tro and was immediately joined by a guy who invaded my personal space much more than normal, smelled pretty bad, and was very loud and abrasive the entire way. As he boarded the bus, he was picking a fight with someone (I think he said he’d been insulted, although I’m not sure what the insult was). He told him he would fight him, and he said “your mother is a bushman, and your father… [pause to think of an original insult… fail]… your father was a bushman.” He then went on, either because of me or in spite of me, I was unsure, to say “I know the white man! I worked the beach for 22 years, and I know the white man! I know what he does! He just injects you, that’s all he does… [rambling, speaking in languages I don’t understand, shouting]… You are all slaves! You did not realize it before this moment, but that is all you are to these people, you are slaves! They think, this black man, he cannot be better than we!...” etc etc. At one point, he said, “I used to be a boxer! You see this arm [points to arm] this can knock you down in one blow!” And of course none of these phrases were devoid of expletives, but I’m leaving them out to spare my father. So anyway, I got to sit next to him the whole way home. Goody for me.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Published in the Graphic already
http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2391
I'm afraid it's not attributed in the online version, but I get a nice byline on page 3 in the printed paper : ) I think this story shows that the paper isn't always supportive of government, at least where it can back itself up by outside sources and facts.
Also go to http://www.graphicghana.com/dailygraphic/index.php to see it as one of the top stories on the site. It pays to hang out in bathrooms, I guess : )
I'm afraid it's not attributed in the online version, but I get a nice byline on page 3 in the printed paper : ) I think this story shows that the paper isn't always supportive of government, at least where it can back itself up by outside sources and facts.
Also go to http://www.graphicghana.com/dailygraphic/index.php to see it as one of the top stories on the site. It pays to hang out in bathrooms, I guess : )
Grandpa LeVan: Activist
Also to follow up on Grandpa LeVan's post, I talked to the Assistant to the Editor about doing a follow-up story on the Ogbogbloshie market (not that I pronounced it correctly at all), since the one-year anniversary of the report is coming up. He thinks it's a good idea for a story, and he's going to find me a reporter who knows what he's doing to go along with me and starting tomorrow we'll go to the market and do follow-ups to see if any change has been implemented. So thanks for the tip-off! If nothing's been done, maybe your seeing this documentary will have contributed to the government getting pressured to do something about the problem.
I'll take other suggestions for stories from the peanut gallery as well : )
(Here's the original Greenpeace report (it's only 20 pages): http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/poisoning-the-poor-electonic.pdf)
I'll take other suggestions for stories from the peanut gallery as well : )
(Here's the original Greenpeace report (it's only 20 pages): http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/poisoning-the-poor-electonic.pdf)
Ghana Day 36
Because today was Republic Day, when I went to work there was absolutely no traffic, since people got to sleep in. It was amazing. I wish every day were a public holiday. When I got to the office, I found out that I had been assigned to help cover the National Youth Rally in Independence Square, which I thought would be cool and all Ghana-nationalism-woohoo sort of stuff. As it turned out, the word “Christian” had been neglected in the advertisement/ press release/ whatever, and in fact it was the National Christian Youth Rally. I got some good pictures of people dancing around, and it as sort of nice to have something to do, but in general it was a pretty terrible assignment. It was essentially like going to church, but with a planned program of 4 hours. They issued a communiqué at the end (which we did not actually stay for but which we got a copy of), that called for abstinence education and censorship of internet, literature, radio, tv, and essentially all other forms of media that contribute to the moral decay plaguing society these days. So that was certainly fun to have to write about.
The guy I went with was sort of interesting. His name is Francis, and besides getting to the program an hour and a half late, he is a National Service Volunteer who’s been with the paper 8 moths. Apparently, after college Ghanaians need to do a year of voluntary service (an allowance is paid but not a salary) after completing school, and most students do this because employers look for your certificate of completion.
On the cab ride home, the photographer apparently told the driver he’d shave off a cedi from the price if I married the driver. Didn’t pan out though, sadly.
On the way back home after work, which was uneventful otherwise, I decided to try a new route, and I took a bus to “Accra,” since until now the Accra buses have stopped at the station I want to get home. Today they went to a totally different station, so I had to walk around for 45 minutes or so trying to find the place I wanted to be. I asked directions around 20 times (and got pointed in different directions several times), and finally got where I needed to be. Traffic home was again amazing, only 20 minutes, and nobody got off at any stops before mine, so we didn’t have to wait to fill the trotro at all.
~~~
In response to messages from yesterday:
An interesting conversation that I had forgotten about with one of the reporters: People try to be as unbiased (read: careful and non-inflammatory) as possible in their reporting, either for or against the government, in terms of reporting because you never know when the bosses will change. This also includes trying to refrain from making public political affiliations, although they’re sort of an open secret. Apparently a couple years ago (2006 I think she said), there was someone who was sneaking around and informing on his or her colleagues at the presidency, telling on what people were saying about the administration. The threat is apparently not so much of being fired, since that would raise a stink, as it is of being transferred or given crap assignments or less access to important people. So it seems people aren’t afraid of losing their cushy, well-paid jobs, per se, but I’m sure it’s also going to be hard for a reporter from the Guide, for example, to get hired here after being inflammatory. The paper is run not directly by the government but by a somewhat independent media body, the head of which has apparently stayed the same since the last administration, so it seems pretty clear that it’s not too terribly political.
What I heard from the news editor here is that the stories the Graphic reports on tend mostly to be concerning what the government does, since they do a lot and it’s easy enough to just take the press release and run with it. He said investigative reporting doesn’t happen all that much, although they pride themselves here on not running stories unless they’re sure they’re true (ass-covering of course). When I asked him about access to information, he said it was really easy to get information. And then he thought a second and said, unless of course it puts the government in a negative light. Then you can’t get anything.
In terms of dumping e-waste, I haven’t seen any of the dumps, but there is certainly a trash problem in the country and Africa is pretty good at taking the rest of the world’s trash and money, making sure that the former gets to the people and the latter not so much. So I’m not terribly surprised, but the situation does seem pretty bad. Here’s an editorial from my current paper from almost a year ago about the situation for those of you who want to know more: http://graphiceditorials.blogspot.com/2008/08/agbogbloshie-death-trap.html
The guy I went with was sort of interesting. His name is Francis, and besides getting to the program an hour and a half late, he is a National Service Volunteer who’s been with the paper 8 moths. Apparently, after college Ghanaians need to do a year of voluntary service (an allowance is paid but not a salary) after completing school, and most students do this because employers look for your certificate of completion.
On the cab ride home, the photographer apparently told the driver he’d shave off a cedi from the price if I married the driver. Didn’t pan out though, sadly.
On the way back home after work, which was uneventful otherwise, I decided to try a new route, and I took a bus to “Accra,” since until now the Accra buses have stopped at the station I want to get home. Today they went to a totally different station, so I had to walk around for 45 minutes or so trying to find the place I wanted to be. I asked directions around 20 times (and got pointed in different directions several times), and finally got where I needed to be. Traffic home was again amazing, only 20 minutes, and nobody got off at any stops before mine, so we didn’t have to wait to fill the trotro at all.
~~~
In response to messages from yesterday:
An interesting conversation that I had forgotten about with one of the reporters: People try to be as unbiased (read: careful and non-inflammatory) as possible in their reporting, either for or against the government, in terms of reporting because you never know when the bosses will change. This also includes trying to refrain from making public political affiliations, although they’re sort of an open secret. Apparently a couple years ago (2006 I think she said), there was someone who was sneaking around and informing on his or her colleagues at the presidency, telling on what people were saying about the administration. The threat is apparently not so much of being fired, since that would raise a stink, as it is of being transferred or given crap assignments or less access to important people. So it seems people aren’t afraid of losing their cushy, well-paid jobs, per se, but I’m sure it’s also going to be hard for a reporter from the Guide, for example, to get hired here after being inflammatory. The paper is run not directly by the government but by a somewhat independent media body, the head of which has apparently stayed the same since the last administration, so it seems pretty clear that it’s not too terribly political.
What I heard from the news editor here is that the stories the Graphic reports on tend mostly to be concerning what the government does, since they do a lot and it’s easy enough to just take the press release and run with it. He said investigative reporting doesn’t happen all that much, although they pride themselves here on not running stories unless they’re sure they’re true (ass-covering of course). When I asked him about access to information, he said it was really easy to get information. And then he thought a second and said, unless of course it puts the government in a negative light. Then you can’t get anything.
In terms of dumping e-waste, I haven’t seen any of the dumps, but there is certainly a trash problem in the country and Africa is pretty good at taking the rest of the world’s trash and money, making sure that the former gets to the people and the latter not so much. So I’m not terribly surprised, but the situation does seem pretty bad. Here’s an editorial from my current paper from almost a year ago about the situation for those of you who want to know more: http://graphiceditorials.blogspot.com/2008/08/agbogbloshie-death-trap.html
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Ghana Day 35
Today can go down as my first useful day at the Graphic. I got in around ten to 8 (I came in with Mike, who works in Osu and leaves every morning at 6am… unfortunately I just realized this weekend that he works in town, and starting Monday he’s on a 30-day leave, so I’m out of luck for rides except two more days this week (tomorrow’s a public holiday)). I interviewed the news editor and then waited around to see if he would find me someone to shadow. Sadly, it seemed that because it was raining this morning everyone had decided to go straight to their assignments and I had given up the day for lost when I fortuitously had to use the washroom. While I was washing my hands I met Mary Mensah, who’s a reporter on crime and security who has been with the paper 13 years. I told her that she should keep me in mind if she ever has (safe) stories to tag along on, and she was like, “Oh, what are you doing now? I’m on my way out.” So that was awesome.
On the way out we talked about Mary’s three girls (5 mo, 9y, and 19y, so very spread out) and other things, and she told me that as a crime reporter she used to go around with bodyguards all the time because she had reported on gangs who had sent her death threats. Apparently now she’s more careful in what she prints. She said that there wasn’t really a difference between the male and female crime reporters in terms of threats and so forth, but that the men tended not to care as much because they weren’t mommies. Sort of makes sense. No bodyguards now, though, apparently she’s safe to hang with now.
The program we went to was a one-day seminar on police service reform, which is pretty necessary in Ghana. The coolest part about the program was that it was held at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeepers Training Center, which I drive by a couple times a day but haven’t been in yet. It’s a beautiful facility, and there’s tons of really nice looking local art on the walls. After the speaker we had lunch, which was very swank and delicious and even included a salad, and then tracked down the event’s chairman for a followup interview, since of course we came in 40 minutes late (surprisingly, the event seemed to have started on time – perhaps the military types are better trained than the rest of the populace).
On the way home I learned a couple interesting things. Firstly, the Graphic pays very well. I didn’t hear a monthly salary, but it is better than any other paper in the country and all the reporters seem pretty comfortable. They get health care for themselves and their families and free petrol and car maintenance subsidies.
The other interesting thing concerns the road. One major reason for the 2 hour commute each way is that there’s a 2 lane road that turns into a 4 lane road halfway between Accra and its nearest suburb, with most of the way littered with potholes. There never seemed to be any real rhyme or reason to why the highway ends where it does, but apparently there were plans to extend it from Accra to Tema (the port city) under Nkrumah in the 50s, but when he was ousted work stopped. There is a minor progress towards clearing ground for another lane next to the current one for a ways, but apparently that was started by NPP, so when NDC came into power they decided they needed to reexamine all of the areas NPP had worked on. So now nothing is happening, and the rain is getting worse and therefore traffic much more terrible.
On the way out we talked about Mary’s three girls (5 mo, 9y, and 19y, so very spread out) and other things, and she told me that as a crime reporter she used to go around with bodyguards all the time because she had reported on gangs who had sent her death threats. Apparently now she’s more careful in what she prints. She said that there wasn’t really a difference between the male and female crime reporters in terms of threats and so forth, but that the men tended not to care as much because they weren’t mommies. Sort of makes sense. No bodyguards now, though, apparently she’s safe to hang with now.
The program we went to was a one-day seminar on police service reform, which is pretty necessary in Ghana. The coolest part about the program was that it was held at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeepers Training Center, which I drive by a couple times a day but haven’t been in yet. It’s a beautiful facility, and there’s tons of really nice looking local art on the walls. After the speaker we had lunch, which was very swank and delicious and even included a salad, and then tracked down the event’s chairman for a followup interview, since of course we came in 40 minutes late (surprisingly, the event seemed to have started on time – perhaps the military types are better trained than the rest of the populace).
On the way home I learned a couple interesting things. Firstly, the Graphic pays very well. I didn’t hear a monthly salary, but it is better than any other paper in the country and all the reporters seem pretty comfortable. They get health care for themselves and their families and free petrol and car maintenance subsidies.
The other interesting thing concerns the road. One major reason for the 2 hour commute each way is that there’s a 2 lane road that turns into a 4 lane road halfway between Accra and its nearest suburb, with most of the way littered with potholes. There never seemed to be any real rhyme or reason to why the highway ends where it does, but apparently there were plans to extend it from Accra to Tema (the port city) under Nkrumah in the 50s, but when he was ousted work stopped. There is a minor progress towards clearing ground for another lane next to the current one for a ways, but apparently that was started by NPP, so when NDC came into power they decided they needed to reexamine all of the areas NPP had worked on. So now nothing is happening, and the rain is getting worse and therefore traffic much more terrible.
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