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