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.