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!
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