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.