Lindsay's Adventures: Ghana Edition

DC Day 3

2009-07-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

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!

Ghana Day 57

2009-07-23T03:51:00.002-07:00

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!

Front page story

2009-07-23T03:51:00.001-07:00

my front page story:

http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2821

Ghana Day 56

2009-07-22T01:38:00.000-07:00

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

Agbogbloshie stories

2009-07-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

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)

Ghana Day 55

2009-07-21T01:42:00.001-07:00

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.

Pictures

2009-07-20T02:34:00.001-07:00

Ghana Days 52-54

2009-07-20T02:31:00.001-07:00

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.

Ghana Day 51

2009-07-17T07:01:00.001-07:00

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.

Ghana Day 50

2009-07-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

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!

Ghana Days 48 and 49

2009-07-15T01:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Katey's post on the Obama visit

2009-07-13T04:49:00.001-07:00

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).

Pictures

2009-07-13T04:06:00.002-07:00

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

2009-07-13T04:06:00.001-07:00

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.

Ghana Day 43

2009-07-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

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

Ghana Day 43

2009-07-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Ghana Day 43 is postponed until tomorrow, because I have not yet had time to write it. Sorry!

Management

Ghana Day 42

2009-07-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Ghana Day 41

2009-07-07T02:26:00.001-07:00

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.

Some pictures

2009-07-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

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).

Ghana Days 38-40

2009-07-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

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!

Ghana Day 37

2009-07-03T03:29:00.001-07:00

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.

Published in the Graphic already

2009-07-02T05:16:00.000-07:00

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 : )

Grandpa LeVan: Activist

2009-07-02T02:40:00.000-07:00

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)

Ghana Day 36

2009-07-02T02:25:00.000-07:00

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

Ghana Day 35

2009-07-01T01:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Ghana Day 34

2009-06-30T09:39:00.001-07:00

It was my first day at Graphic today, and getting there was an adventure. I was told the wrong directions, so I got out and had to get a cab so I could see where on earth I was supposed to be going. I was also told by a 40 or so year old guy that he loved me. Apparently I’m just irresistible, since I had only sat there for 2 minutes and had only told him my name at that point. I’m actually surprised that this hasn’t happened more often, though, since it sounds like all the other girls are getting quite a bit of it. It was almost a self-esteem booster to know that I still had the same kind of draw that I had in Cameroon.

In any case, I got to the building ok, but Ransford (Editor) wasn’t in when I got there at 9, and since of course no one else was expecting me the subeditor wouldn’t show me around until I’d been formally introduced. Finally he got in around 11, and so I got a tour of the offices where 6 papers are produced (Graphic, Sports Graphic, Graphic Junior, the Mirror, and a couple others that have escaped my mind). It took me a while to get internet to work on my laptop, and so by the time I had settled it was nearly 1. I went around and tried to introduce myself and write down everyone’s names and get cards, but as it turns out there are a *lot* of reporters at the Graphic and not enough computers, so the turnover of people sitting in the newsroom is pretty impressive. I mostly gave up trying to introduce myself to everyone. I’m under instructions though to come early in the morning, when I’ll be able to ask the news editor Samuel some questions and get attached for the morning onto a reporter. I’m going to go in with Mike in the mornings from now on I think, so getting there by 8 hopefully won’t represent a problem.

In terms of intellectual discoveries, I’m not sure today was stellar, although I did hear a few people talk about how the Graphic has a heavier burden of proof than other papers, which is why it doesn’t print many scandals or feature them prominently. You have to be “very careful” in what you want to say. The house style at the Graphic sounds much more reasonable though, and it seemed there were actual rules to be followed rather than just a general sensationalism. In all, I think the Graphic’s got sort of a snooty opinion of the private papers, but don’t necessarily look down on at least some of them.

So that was my first day. A parliamentary correspondent, Daniel, took pity on me and was restless when I left, so he walked me out and showed me the bus stop and everything. The weather is back to hot and humid today, so the ride home was icky, but since I left early it was shorter than normal.

And now it’s 7:45 and I think I’m ready for sleep. Yes, I’m that lame.

Ghana Day 33 (cont’d from yesterday)

2009-06-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

The rain eventually let up around 3pm, so thankfully my trip home was mostly dry. I ended up being one of the only people in the office today, which seems odd to me since Monday is the big news day. Awudu was the only reporter there when I got there, and we had a nice discussion about old news stories, Iran and how revolutions are usually unsuccessful, sharia law and how it’s not so terrible if you don’t interpret it like a crazy person, taking multiple wives, juju, and getting into US grad schools. I told him I would help him prepare for the GRE a bit before I go (he’d like to be a sociology professor at the University of Ghana), and I feel that will be a more productive use of my time than trying to teach fraction conversion to private school students who don’t understand my accent.

After a bit Bennett, Halifax, Mohammed (who is the guy I interviewed yesterday who does sports and entertainment), and Al Hadji wandered in. I couldn’t tell if it was a normal time for that or if the rain held them off, but they were the only ones who were there while I was this afternoon. Halifax had just gotten back from a weekend-long conference in Cape Coast about media coverage in the election, and I made him tell me all about that.

It sounds like it was a very useful, productive activity. They talked about how some reporters were unprofessional, and came away with a recommendation that the media body should have more teeth to punish people caught publishing things that were obviously untrue. They also discussed the problem of their citizen reporters, who were recruited from universities and other places to cover all of the polling stations, since the papers obviously don’t have the manpower normally to do it. These pinch reporters apparently didn’t know election law very well and were crying foul about things that actually should be happening (like ballot boxes being taken away – to go to the central tabulation area) and having trouble following up on things that maybe shouldn’t be happening (letting a station manager say he wasn’t sure about something going on at the polling station, he’d have to call his boss in Accra). So the suggestion there was to have more, earlier, and better training for them. Also they discussed toning down partisanship in the coverage, which is sort of funny to hear coming from a top Daily Guide political reporter, and starting to collaborate on electoral issues now for the 2012 elections rather than waiting until the last minute. So it sounds like it was a fruitful conference.

Before I left I got lots of pictures with everyone, so that was nice, and I got told that not very many of the international volunteers have such good relationships with people at the paper, and that I was one of maybe two or three they’d had that they really liked. I think that might have something to do with how long I was there – it seems like many people who come are only around for two weeks or so. Also I’m sure the language barrier gets in the way in the office. But it’s certainly nice to know that I’ll be remembered more than the average white intern and that I gave off good, not unfriendly vibes despite what I thought was sort of limited interactions with my colleagues (compared to what I would have at an internship in the States). Since one of my main goals for this trip is to make good contacts, I think I can say that my time at the Daily Guide was a success.

Besides having cold, wet socks and shoes, it was a very nice last day at the office.

2009-06-28T05:47:00.001-07:00

Ghana Day 32

Today was a productive although fairly boring day. I got up a little past 7 and hung around for a bit before Katey and I went in to town. We changed money on the way out, and then caught a trotro in the rain (Katey forgot her umbrella, and mine is small, so it was certainly a fun time). The trotro we got was rather leaky, and I was given a really nasty rag to keep the water off my arm and pants leg, and eventually I decided the rain water was probably cleaner and gave up on it. It was certainly an interesting experience though to drive around on the dirt roads in torrential rain. All the gutters we passed were either full to the top (they’re a few feet deep) or overflowing, and people were all huddled around under awnings and things. We passed a small herd of goats huddled under a tree, that was cool.

So I got into the office and read papers for about 7 and a half hours, with breaks in the middle to interview the entertainment and sports editor (who said he didn’t mind talking to me for an hour because he likes girls) and Al Hadji, who showed up mid-afternoon. In terms of work, I got through April in papers, so I’ll have to go back in tomorrow afternoon to finish May and the couple June issues I don’t have, as well as to say goodbye to all the people I told I’d be around on Sunday for.

The power is off now, which is sad. Hopefully it will come back on soon so my computer doesn’t die : (

(Update from Sunday -- The power definitely did not come back on, and was still out when we left. We went out to Accra in the morning to be touristy, and made it to Fort Usher, which is kind of cool and very crumbly. It used to be a prison, and Kwame Nkrumah (1st prez) was held there for a while apparently. While we were there it started raining, which wasn't surprising since it rained solidly through the night. We hung out for a while, and I decided I would be lame and abandon the gang to come into the air conditioned, dry, internet-filled office to finish up my research. Definitely glad I made that decision, because it's rained for the past hour since I left them with no sign of letting up. So much for tourism!)

Ghana Day 31

2009-06-27T05:34:00.000-07:00

It was my last session of parliament today : ( Sadness. Before I got to work I stopped at the closest thing to an Office Max and picked up a couple nice pens, which I gave as presents to Al Hadji, my editor ho helped me get into the Graphic, and Awudu, who has humored my tagging along with him for 3 weeks now. They both went over very well, with Al Hadji telling me how much he loves pens and Awudu being way overly pleased.

Parliament itself was sort of interesting. The minister answering questions was the guy in charge of road construction, so he fielded 5 questions from MPs asking when roads/ bridges in their constituencies would get built/fixed/whatever. In most of the cases, the completion date on the project has passed and construction is around 10% completed, so it was pretty dismal. Hopefully that wasn’t a representative sample of construction projects, with the squeaky wheel getting to ask questions and whatnot, but it might just be.

There were at east 3 times over the course of the morning (as there was yesterday) when fewer than half of the MPs were in the floor so there wasn’t a quorum and they had to wait around while people went looking for the other guys. It was really annoying. Apparently committee meetings have been scheduling sessions during parliament, which is rather problematic seeing that committee members are MPs. The leadership has been complaining about that since the beginning of the session, but I haven’t seen much improvement.

The final thing relates to oil production. There is a new contract about to be signed for oil exploration rights and whatnot, and the agreement is good (better than one from before, because it give the government 20% of the revenue rather than 15% as it was before. So everyone is happy with the agreement, but the president has appointed as head of the Ghana National Petroleum Commission (or whatever GNPC stands for) someone who worked as an employee of the previous contract holder. In fact, he only resigned from that post the day after officially taking over this new position. So the NPP is really upset and wants the president to get rid of him, and the NDC mostly agrees but can’t say anything. They haven’t been obnoxiously yelling NPP MPs off the floor and telling them to sit down though. Finally they decided to put off the resolution to pass the contract until next session so that they could deliberate. I’m interested to see if anyone tries threatening to withhold the contract approval in exchange for the guy’s resignation.

Back at the office I wrote the story on the roads. Apparently the reporters were teasing Awudu and saying they wanted to tag along to parliament too, since my stories have been getting printed pretty frequently in the past week or so. I feel like that’s not actually my fault though, because Awudu re-encapsulates the stories and gives them better headlines, so they’re more attractive and readable and “house style.”

My editor gave me a nice little testimonial that he signed with the pen I got him, which was nice. He also offhandedly told me about something I thought was sort of major. There’s a minister who just resigned who is from the same ethnic group as he is, and he said the elders put pressure on him not to say anything bad about the guy. There was a story yesterday that he said he managed to keep out of the paper, but today’s story had to go in and so he said he was just “writing the facts” rather than spinning it, so hopefully the elders would not be too upset with him. He explained it as if it were perfectly normal as well. I suppose it might be.

I was also told on good authority today that although the political writers here are pretty extreme and sensationalist, they believe what they’re writing and the paper has only printed an erroneous story (with someone at the paper knowing it, of course) once – and the journalist who made it up was suspended, made to work in the printing room for a while, and then brought back on as a completely non-political writer (apparently he was too good to just fire). The explanation for why he did it was that he was under a lot of pressure to make headline news. But he made up an interview he had had with a minister, so I’m not sure how he didn’t think that would come back and bite him in the ass. I know I’ve said the PR people here suck, but they’re not that bad.

After that I pulled out the back volumes of the paper, and tomorrow (Saturday) I’ll be going into the office, despite nominally have had my last day, to look through them and pull out good stories bits for comparison with the Graphic.

The ride home was interesting. Normally my tro-tros do things I’m not terribly fond of and go through mud I don’t think they should, but this time I think we were in actual danger of tipping over, getting stuck in pond-sized puddles, and getting stuck on large and narrow mounds of dirt multiple times. It was pretty ridiculous. We completely left civilization for a while, and honestly it took us about the same amount of time as it would have if we had just waited in traffic (and I would have been able to buy snacks on the side of the road if we had done that). Oh well.

Alright, passing out now!

Ghana Day 30

2009-06-26T02:30:00.001-07:00

Man was I tired today.

It was the first day where there’s been lots of rain going on when I’m supposed to be leaving, so I decided to be a wimp and stay inside until the worst was passed. I’m not sure I could have gotten a cab anyway (or wanted to be in one that was moving through such hard rain). I was greeted at work with a paper that contained my story about the minister being “grilled”, which was pretty exciting (although again not on the website).

The interesting part of parliament today (not the part I wrote on, which was about irrigation and water runoff) was a discussion I did not actually think was newsworthy since it addressed something that happened in January. Foolish of me to think matters got resolved satisfactorily while they were still news.

So what happened in January is that the NDC came to power and got rid of 30ish foreign service officers who had recently been hired by the NPP, replacing them with other people. Now at the time, this story was added to several others about clientelism and NDC taking advantage of its regained power to restore its supporters to posts. (At least apparently that’s what the Guide said.) From what I gather, the NDC did not refute the allegations well or at all. I didn’t know that, I figured obviously if they had info they’d make it public.

So that’s why I was surprised when the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was brought out and he gave a super long speech about what happened. There had been 30 positions to fill, and 400ish applicants. They all took a written test, and the 157 top scorers got interviews. Of those, 30 were recommended. But it turns out NPP did not accept these recommendations, because after the recommendation the Minister ordered that only 11 of them be kept, and the spots were instead given to others 22 people who I think did not make the final 30 and 7 more who did not make interviews. Also, obviously, instead of filling 30 positions they filled 40.

So the real question is, why were these massive irregularities not immediately clarified? It was in the government’s power and interest to do it, but it did not come out until an NPP MP of all people called on the minister to say what had happened to the original group. That was a backfire if I ever I saw one. I’m just astounded at the failure of the government’s PR group.

In other news, the breaking story for tomorrow is that the minister who bought the tractor at 10% of the price says the paper got it wrong and that he had paid the other 90% at a previous time. Except apparently he paid all of this for 5 tractors (of which he shouldn’t have been able to buy any), so he bought each at 20%. Really, government of Ghana? You suck at this.

Tomorrow is my last day at the Guide, so hopefully I can pester some people into talking to me at the very last minute. I feel like I’ve learned a lot but at the same time haven’t accomplished much in terms of real research.

Ghana Day 29

2009-06-25T02:13:00.000-07:00

I am officially halfway through my stay in Ghana! We celebrated the momentous occasion with a sending-off party for John and Maddie, who are returning to the states tomorrow. We went to a Lebanese restaurant that was really delicious and sort of reasonably priced (not that I paid – John picked up the tab).

During the actual day I had lots to do as well. Parliament was alright, but rather boring. The MPs spent an hour on one question, and it was more debating whether or not people were allowed to ask follow-up questions than actually debating an issue. And the worst part is the question was framed as, “Can the minister tell us if he knows something,” so it would have been eminently easier to just let the guy stand up and say, no, I do not know that (which he eventually did). The topic of the day was communications (cell) poles and their location in residential areas. MPs are concerned that there might be health risks, but that wasn’t the question that was officially posed to the minister (and so the one he prepared for). They asked what the policy was on placing poles in residential areas. So he gave them lots of legal statutes, and when they wanted to ask about substantive things he wasn’t ready. It was obnoxious.

Besides that there was an update on a couple irrigation works. At least these two places were supposed to be rehabilitated by 2006, and they still haven’t been given over to the farmers. That minister claims end of August is the sweet time, though, so that’s good news.

After parliament I found my way over to the Daily Graphic’s HQ. That was an adventure. The first cab I got it, the guy said he knew where I was going but then obviously didn’t, so I gave him a cedi for his trouble (and to make him ok with letting me and my larger fare go) and got a second cab. That one knew where we were going, and in fact the driver was nice enough so that I compromised my don’t-give-your-number-to-strangers rule (which tends to be a rule that is broken more often than followed). His name is either Frimpong or Frimporg (I heard and sort of recognize the first but I think he might have spelled it for me as the second, so whatever), and he has a 1.5 year old daughter and they live in Accra by Kasoa. He’s not married anymore (if ever) though because apparently he hates the mom, who “tricked him” into having the baby. In any case, I made sure he knew I did not hate my man and he still “wanted to have a white friend,” so that’s cool.

Anywho, I got to the Graphic and eventually got in to see Ransford Tetteh, my editor’s friend. Apparently, he is also an editor – of the state newspaper. So that was definitely a good in. We had a lovely 2 minute meeting in which he told me I could start whenever I wanted as long as I got him an email from my school introducing me (which Barak complied with immediately, so I’m golden). He seemed very nice, and the Graphic is very swank (there was a water cooler in the reception area, and it was at least a two story building!). I think it will be a cool place to send the remainder of my time.

Also, I was told there’s no “editor’s fee,” so I’m saving $125. Very cool.

After that I went to pick up the parliamentary and presidential election results at the electoral commission. The letter I dropped off last week never made it to anyone important, of course, so I hung around for an hour while a couple bureaucrats passed around my jump drive. Mission accomplished, though.

After that I went back, wrote my two stories about the cell towers and irrigation, and hung around for wayyyy too long waiting for the folks to get into town so we could go to dinner.

Altogether, a much fuller day than I’m used to and I’m super tired now. I think tomorrow I’ll probably knock off early so I can fall asleep at a decent hour.

Story

2009-06-24T11:11:00.001-07:00

http://dailyguideghana.com/newd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4111&Itemid=262

You'll also notice (if you look in the next few hours) that this is the top story on the sports section of the daily guide homepage.

Ghana Day 28

2009-06-24T02:48:00.001-07:00

Parliament was fruitful – I wrote two stories. One was the MPs congratulating the soccer team on having practically qualified for the World Cup (we’re 3-0 after winning against Sudan on Saturday), and the other was the Energy Minister getting grilled (yes, yes I did use that word in the headline) on when certain communities would be getting electricity. The story I didn’t write, because of a plethora of acronyms and place names I didn’t understand and coming in late and whatnot, was that the agreement between the ministry and the oil companies and whoever else is responsible for that stuff has not yet been signed, but the minister maintains that the oil will be exploited on time.

Interesting developments in the political world. Rawlings apparently accepted money for the NDC’s campaign from the governor of Rivers State in Nigeria, as reported by papers there. The NDC spokesman assured everyone yesterday that the two men had only ever met once, and briefly at a state visit, which sucks for him because today the Guide printed photos of the two hanging out together. Apparently we’ve got at least 2 friendly get-togethers documented. The interest here for the Nigerian is that he was accused of stealing lots of money from his government, and he left the country during his trial. While he supposedly stayed in Europe while he was gone, Guide has evidence that he stayed in Ghana for at least some of the time. So this campaign money was meant to buy political goodwill and asylum.

I did not have my meeting today with the guy from the Graphic, because he was busy, so that will happen tomorrow. I’m crossing my fingers. Also tomorrow I’m going to the Electoral Commission and out to dinner, so very exciting happenings and a much busier day than I’m used to in Ghana.

Ghana Day 27

2009-06-23T02:54:00.002-07:00

Katey came to work with me today, which gave me an excellent opportunity to hear names again that I had forgotten and strike up conversations with people I don’t normally talk to, in the name of getting her acquainted with them. Some interesting things came out of it.

So Cephas, who is the photojournalist I leant my camera to right before I went to Cape Coast, turns out to be a fascinating character. He’s not actually Ghanaian, but Liberian, and he came to the country as a refugee during the 1980s when horrible things were happening between Sierra Leone and Liberia. Apparently there is actually a refugee camp outside of Accra, which boggled my mind because I haven’t heard a thing about them. It really makes you wonder, because the number of displaced people and refugees in the world is really huge, and they have to go somewhere. So Chas has an NGO and a newspaper that are active in helping the Liberian population in Ghana. The paper is called The Vision (thevisiononline.net) and it’s a bimonthly paper that has news of interest to the folks there, and the NGO is there to help cater to some of the camp’s needs, to help people resettle in the now-peaceful Liberia, and to work on relations between the refugees and locals. Apparently there’s some significant xenophobia towards these folks. It’s really very interesting that people from Ghana’s neighboring countries face such hostility, but foreigners from elsewhere do not and folks from different ethnic groups within the country seem to get along alright. In any case, Cephas is going home to Liberia for a month starting in early July, but he offered to take me to the camp possibly this weekend. That will certainly be an experience.

In terms of why they are still here (since the war is obviously over), Cephas says it’s not so much a matter of lack of resources to get home, because the UN offers people a free trip home and $100 to start their lives again. The problem is more that there aren’t many jobs back home and $100 is not sufficient to start an enterprise or anything like that, especially with a family in tow, so people are mostly trying to save up as much as they can so that they can do something good when they go home. That sounds pretty reasonable.

Bennett was an even more interesting fount of knowledge today. There was a piece in the paper about how some recent military promotions were strongly ethnic (9 total, 6 were Volta [NDC-supporting region], and the other 3 were split between two other NDC supporting areas). The paper had a quotation from someone complaining that these people weren’t qualified for the promotion, so I asked Bennett (the author) if these people were really trustworthy or if they were more jealous because they had been passed over. Apparently the answer to my question is Bennett thinks both, and that these were people who had “been in line” so to speak and were skipped. Whether or not this was actually a meritocratic decision is still undecided, but it does reek strongly of regionalism.

So we were also given a bit of history about this current chapter in the military. Apparently in 2001 or so there was a gentleman (possibly a general, but high-up) noticed that there was strong regional bias in the armed forces after so long under the NDC, so he started trying to recruit with a more equitable formula. Bennett had a breakdown of the military by ethnicity (not one that the press was supposed to have, but that the military did not challenge when it was printed). It showed the Volta Region (the Ewes, very pro-NDC, and apparently one of the smallest regions population-wise) with 25% of the officer corps and 27% of recruits. The Eastern Region also had fairly high numbers, while the Ashanti region, which is supposedly NPP, had 3% or so of officers. There are ten regions. He carried on with that for many years under the NPP, but this January, right after NDC took power, he was charged and tried in a military court for charges that I didn’t catch. It seems nothing in particular was found against him, but he was discharged from the military. Bennett had a copy of the dismissal letter, which listed as the complaints only that “his services were no longer required” and that he had hurt the forces’ reputation by media coverage of him (not his saying anything, mind you, just being covered). I also saw his military academy scores, which were all impressive, so he was obviously a bright guy who happened to piss off the wrong people. I was assured that it had not been he who had been leaking things to the press but some other contact the Guide had in the military.

That led into a discussion of the election, because that is what Katey is studying here. She’s looking at the swing vote; the first round of the election was not decisive, but NPP got closer to 50% than NDC. But in the 2nd round, around 18% of voters – the amount who had voted for 3rd parties – all seemingly decided to vote NDC rather than NPP. It’s Katey’s job to ask around and find out why. So Bennett’s take on it, although he still says he’s not sure, is that it might have had something to do with popular displeasure at a couple things the NPP did in office between te two rounds. One thing was the oil, which I’ve talked about before. NDC called for the oil decrease, and NPP did it right before the 2nd round, after leaving high the rest of the 8 years they were in power. Also, there had been a big problem with traffic violations and after October or so lots of drivers had been jailed for them. The drivers had been campaigning strongly for NDC. After the first round, someone in the government said there had been some sort of error and had them all released. Although both of these things were obviously meant to influence the vote, it seems they had the opposite of desired effect.

Possibly a less credible explanation is one of irregularities. Bennett said that the woman ahead of him in line had been illiterate and asked the polling agent where she should mark, and he told her to mark on the NDC spot. Bennett said he reported the incident, and the person in charge thanked him and said it would be dealt with right away, but Bennett says he had heard of lots of other instances. I don’t think the electoral observers saw anything like that though. Apparently the NDC had also made sure that its supporters applied for the position of people who return the ballots to the Electoral Commission, although how they exploited that was left to innuendo.

In terms of campaigning, Bennett also affirmed that there had been some significant ethnic aspects. The Ashantis apparently own most of the commercial property in Accra and do very well for themselves, so the NDC played up how that group was responsible for all the problems people around here were seeing. They also connected the Ashantis to the NPP. While the NPP is not necessarily an Ashanti party, it is strongly Akan, which is the umbrella ethnicity for 7 or 8 or so groups that include Ashanti. So the NPP certainly suffered from that connection.

Bennett allowed that the NPP certainly had its share of faults in the campaign as well (like using the incumbent advantage), but the NDC was worse. Obviously. (Bennett strongly follows the paper’s editorial line.)

So that was what I learned today.

In terms of my future here, I heard from Prince that the application to the Graphic that I put in would take a month to get processed, so I should pick a different paper to switch to. That defeats the purpose, because my desire was to see public versus private paper, and I told him so. He’s “using his contacts” to see if he can speed it up to get me in for a week or two. However I mentioned this later to Al Hadji Gomda, the news editor, and he expressed disgust at the bureaucracy and called his friend over at the Graphic, and I’m going to go over there in the afternoon and meet with him. Hopefully something good comes out of that, because I’m not very impressed with Prince’s connections so far.

Also, there is salsa dancing at a club in town every Wednesday that Katey and I will be checking out, and a woman at work told me about a vegetarian restaurant that I definitely need to go to. So those are both exciting things. Apparently there are a good number of vegetarians, and the woman thinks it’s a health-based decision for most of them. Yet more evidence of how well off this country is. You either don’t eat meat because you can’t afford it, or you don’t eat meat because you can afford substitutes.

Looking forward to being back in parliament tomorrow!

With the Signpost

2009-06-22T11:31:00.001-07:00

Ghana Days 24-26

2009-06-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

So I took Friday off to help Katey acclimatize and show her around a bit. Her plane was apparently only a third full, and the arrival gate definitely showed that. When I arrived there was definitely a throng of people outside, but this morning the airport seemed very leisurely and rather sparsely populated. Definitely a less flustering visit.

Katey was pretty culture-shocked, having never been in Africa before, but she handled it and the jetlag remarkably, I thought. If I showed up somewhere at 9am I think I’d probably sleep all day, but we went out into the city and walked around a fair amount. I think she was nonplussed by the commute time (which was actually shorter when we went since it was around noon), and she was definitely nonplussed by the constant sweatiness when you’re out and about, but so am I, so it’s alright. We went downtown and hung out at the internet café for an hour, and then I went to the Electoral Commission to drop off a request for parliamentary election results. Barak and a PhD student from UCSD are writing a paper of some sort on ethnic voting in elections, and the results aren’t online yet. Apparently burning a CD with them is extremely time-consuming though (those excel files can be tricky…), so we couldn’t wait for it and I have to come back on Wednesday.

When we left we just wandered around a bit, because Katey likes to walk and she wanted to see some sites, but she was pretty tired and we gave up and came home. Altogether a fairly fun day, and we get along pretty well (at least while she’s jetlagged, I suppose I shouldn’t make judgments yet ).

~~~

Saturday morning I went to the school nearby to tutor. I figured I was on Ghana time so I left late, but it turns out they actually start on time, so my teaching was limited. Looks like I’ll be doing 9-12 for the rest of my Saturdays if I think I’m accomplishing anything, although it’s hard to tell if I’m an effective teacher. I was teaching math, which is sort of tough to explain to begin with (we were converting fractions to decimals and percents, so not terrible, but 1.0 = 100% was tough to grasp for some folks), but I’m pretty sure my American accent was difficult to understand. It’s funny to be on that end of things, since I’ve definitely complained before (or commiserated with people who complained) about professors with bad accents. I’m working on speaking slowly though, so hopefully I’m not too unintelligible.

While I was waiting for my class to get back from break, I chatted with the headmaster, Bennett, for a bit. He’s an engineer, but he couldn’t find a job when he graduated so he’s taken on the school. He says he plans to go back to school for IT once he’s gotten the school’s ducks in a row, so to speak (my phrase, not his) and he’s sure he can pass it off and have it run well. He seemed fairly knowledgeable about things in general, so he was interesting to talk to.

Bennett seemed to think that there is in fact an ethnic (or perhaps regional is a better way to describe it) component to party affiliation, despite Barak’s research to the contrary. This is pretty interesting, since it shows that ethnicity/ regionalism is still present, even if it does not predominate in fact. He thinks the NPP is popular among Twi speakers, while Ewe and the northern regions support NDC. He says they tend to be disappointed in their elected leaders, though, because they don’t allocate benefits according to this split. So there’s an unfulfilled expectation of ethnic favoritism, which is interesting – and Bennett seemed to think that ethnic appeals were a factor in the campaign, so people have a reason to expect such favoritism. However, he said he only listened to radio interviews and never went to rallies, so he’s not a stellar witness.

He had an interesting take on democracy as a system. He thinks that Ghana has a problem importing western democracy wholesale, which is certainly a viable argument. I’m not sure what I think of his suggestions to tailor it though. He thinks that it’s problematic to have an essentially two-party system, and that to solve this (to beat Duverger’s Law, for those of you who have taken Barak’ Institutions class), the country needs to place term limits on parties. So if NPP has been in power two terms, they can’t run a presidential candidate (or something) for 8 more years. That way other parties have a way to get their voice in. Bennett’s a CPP supporter, but ironically he voted NDC to avoid throwing his vote away. Perpetuating the two-party system he hates : )

He also expressed displeasure at the constantly changing national education policy. Every new administration has overhauled the former administration’s plan, so he thinks there should be one plan that elected officials have to follow regardless of their party. Very interesting idea. Not terribly practical, but he didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of ending up with bad policy.

All in all, he was a smart guy to talk to and I got some interesting viewpoints.

On the way home I had yet another interesting conversation. I got into a cab that was dropping one guy a bit down the road from where I picked it, so I had a very short conversation with the other passenger that mostly consisted of his asking for my number and my saying no sorry. After he got out the cab driver told me how happy he was I had said no – not because of anything specific the guy had said, but because he was Nigerian.

I don’t recall if I’ve written about this yet, but the Nigerians here are the most maligned of any group in the country. If there is ethnic hatred, it’s all channeled towards the poor Nigerian immigrants. They’re the trouble-makers of the country. So the cab driver told me on the way to taking me home (which he offered to do at a very reduced rate since he was so well pleased with me) about how Nigerians come to the country and they do not work, but rather have loud parties and steal things. Apparently 20 years ago, before the big Nigerian diaspora I’m assuming, you could leave your house unlocked without fear, but now even locked houses are targets for Nigerian thieves. I told him it was hard for me to believe – was the entire country’s worth of people really terrible? And he said yes, yes they were. So I mostly left it at that. Grandma as well has talked about how rowdy Nigerians are and how the hotel she worked at for a while wouldn’t let to Nigerians, because they trashed rooms and did not pay rent. Apparently they are often recognizable on the streets because they speak loudly and make a ruckus. Very interesting ethnic profiling, especially considering how extremely un-homogeneous Nigeria is. If I have to make a completely wild, mostly uneducated guess, I would say that the folks who come from Lagos are probably the ones who get noticed more. Lagos is the largest city in Africa (one of the largest in the world), and there’s lots of poverty and from what I’ve heard it’s a pretty rambunctious urban environment. I can see that sort of setting producing people who tend to be louder and rowdier, compared to Accra-dwellers who tend to be pretty laid back. That’s a totally wild extrapolation though. It would be an interesting study to do.

The rest of my Saturday was super laid back. I broke down and bought a pair of shoes (my super glue shoes didn’t really come out of the last round of glue very well), but since they’re channeled through Goodwill (with the sticker still on one shoe) they only cost me $2 (3 cedis). I think I can probably absorb that cost ok. Anyone interested in how secondhand goods and textiles get to Africa, btw, should check out Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, which is a really light read and very interesting. The last third-ish is the part that deals with the secondhand trade, but the rest is about cotton farming and textile production and is pretty interesting.

Beyond that I’ve just been reading, napping, and rationing my movie collection, and that’s the plan for Sunday as well.

~~~

The plan for Sunday worked out as planned, although I additionally had the pleasure of washing my underwear and socks and hauling water. I’ve got more clothes (since some are rewearable) than underwear, so to save on laundering costs I’m trying to do those myself. But I felt bad about using lots of water, so I decided to replenish what I took, and then I decided to just fill up all the buckets in the bathroom, because I had nothing better to do and Emma, who usually does it, has 2 sick children and is possibly sick herself. So that was a good 8 trips back and forth from the reservoir with two big buckets per hand each. I did find yet another good use for socks though – in addition to being handy towels and dust cloths, they make good handles for the buckets (which have sort of thin, wirey handles that hurt the first time I picked them up). I know Douglas Adams says never leave home without a towel, but a healthy supply of socks seems to be even better.

I started Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses Saturday night. So far I’m very impressed, he’s got an excellent writing style and can really paint a picture for the reader. I hope nobody succeeds in carrying out Khomeni’s fatwa calling for his death : /

Ghana Day 23

2009-06-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

I lied, we came to the internets today so Katey could send "I'm alive" emails, so you all get the joy of my Thursday post : )

---

Too much walking in heels happened today. My feet hurt and my shoes are crumbling : ( I’m hoping I don’t have to buy a new (used) pair while I’m here, I’d really like to just make due with this pair for 5 more weeks… but I’m not sure that’s gonna happen. We shall see how far I can get on shoes that are 25% super glue.

Parliament today was somewhat interesting for what did not happen – a declaration of assets bill was supposed to be considered according to last week’s forecast agenda, but shockingly the report was not ready or something like that and it did not get brought up.

What was brought up, besides passing a resolution to accept a loan to build a power plant, which is sort of good news, was alcoholism. Someone decided to make a statement about it and how it’s evil, and thus debate on the topic was opened. One guy proposed that MPs take alcohol tests to set an example, but he was booed down pretty quickly. Some other guy decided he needed to make a distinction between alcoholism and drinking just a bit of it, which was sort of entertaining because of the banter it inspired. One MP got up and said he wasn’t a doctor so he shouldn’t be saying that taking a little alcohol is good for your heart unless he could quote a study (because the first MP had said red wine was good for the heart), and this prompted the speaker of the house to say that the 2nd MP was wrong, and she herself (the honorable speaker) had found that a bit of it was good. This brought down the house for about 5 minutes.

Personally I thought the alcoholism thing wasn’t terribly pertinent or newsworthy, but I think Awudu got a story out of it about how the Speaker likes her booze. So whatever works for him.

After parliament I went off on my own. I walked a quarter to a half mile to where I could pick a tro-tro, and I went to the University of Ghana and walked definitely a half mile if not a mile to the conference room where the math conference was being held. It’s a really impressive campus – very large, fairly well-kept grounds, and paved roads. Poorly marked buildings though, and it was mostly by chance that I happened to be walking behind the two guys whose job it was to open up the doors and get the venue ready (of course, I was 5 minutes after I was told it would start and they only barely beat me to it).

The conference was slightly interesting. There’s going to be a math journal in Ghana starting soon, although I don’t have a launch date yet. There was also a guy who talked about how he struggled in his first math class in college because inappropriate examples were used – he was told to find trajectories of cricket balls and things like that, which he was totally unfamiliar with. He said that making math more accessible would involve using examples that were familiar, like how close together to plant cassava trees so that they offer the highest yield. Anyway, I wrote a story bout that. Dunno if it will show up anywhere.

P.S.

2009-06-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

I might not be posting until Monday, since I'm not likely to be in the office tomorrow. I'll be showing Katey around! It'll be nice to have another poli-sci egghead around :)

Ghana Day 22

2009-06-18T01:54:00.000-07:00

It was a bad day for commuters. While I had a perfectly lovely time getting a taxi in the morning, we wet around on a dirt (and at that time, mud) road to avoid traffic. We got held up behind a shiny, new-looking black BMW that was stuck in the mud and trying to move sideways. On the way home, we passed a tro-tro (big van this time) that had apparently tried to get around traffic by driving on the burm but misjudged the depth of a puddle and sank right in. When we saw it, its back right corner was about 4 feet lower than its other corners.

Oil update: I posed Grandma’s opinion to Awudu the other day to see what his reaction might be. Technically, it seems she was correct. The NDC called for price reduction in oil, the NPP reduced the price. However, the prices were (according to Awudu) super high because of international prices, which makes sense, and then after the reduction the NDC said they would reduce it even more. According to my always-reliable source, the degree of difference between the Ghana oil price and the international price has been higher under the current NDC government than it was under the NPP.

An interesting sidebar from the Graphic yesterday (I’m having Grandma give me her day old papers to save on having to buy them myself) – there’s an article (not an editorial, mind you) in the paper talking about how indebted the Tema Oil Refinery was under NPP and how they said they were raising petrol prices to pay down the debt, but then didn’t. What is interesting, though, about the article is the way it ends: “Looking back at the events of last December, one cannot help but applaud Ghanaians for having rightly jettisoned the NPP Government, for, one could not rightly imagine what would have been the fate of this country if it had remained in such hands for four more years.” Ha! This article was most definitely written at the urging of the current admin (if not actually ghost-written by a politician) in response to the anger and accusations over the petrol hike.

Another interesting thing I glean from this particular paper is that the government seems to be doing some good things. Starting in September, one million Ghanaian children will have free school uniforms. I may have missed it, but I don’t think the Guide carried this story despite its obvious interest to everyone with family. Limited space I’m sure…

So today Parliament got pretty rowdy. First the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development had to answer three questions, and sucked a little at some followups. For example, road construction equipment has been delivered to 36 out of 42 Districts that ordered it, but he did not have reasons on hand exactly why the last six had not been delivered. I’m not sure why that sort of thing would not make it into the first answer, let alone why the Minister wouldn’t be prepped to answer it. Oh well.

He was what I covered though, so obviously not worth too much time. The interesting parts were Awudu’s stories.

First, the Minister of Finance had to get up and tell everyone how much the transitional team’s operating costs were. I don’t know exactly why such costs weren’t known before now, since they met between mid-January and mid-March, but whatcha gonna do. In any case, apparently more than 350,000 cedis were spent for the 2 months (around $250,000), and 135,000 cedis ($94,000) of that was spent on lunch, water, snacks, and tea. That’s for close to 200 people for two months. It’s actually sort of reasonable (maybe even a bargain) by US government standards I think, but I’m pretty sure the Government of Ghana doesn’t have the same sort of resources. So the MPs (NPP minority of course) kept shouting about it and how “one point three five billion cedis were spent on tea” – because obviously you need to say it in the old cedis so it sounds more impressive. I guess some ministries have an annual budget of less than 40,000 cedis, so they might have a point. What I thought was funny though is that they complained loudest over the Minister’s claim that the transition team was multiparty and that the members of all the parties involved in the team were given Honoraria, when they claimed they had not been paid. They were pretty indignant.

A second question got posed but got an inadequate amount of time, which was the provision of a complete list of the sale of state-owned companies (divestment) and how much money had been made and how much was still owed. No totals were given, and we started late, so I calculated up a bunch of number combinations. About $3.5 million is still outstanding to the government from various sources in 2000 and before, so the first NDC admin. Around $825,000 is still owed from sales in the first NPP administration (although there were fewer of them), and since then there’s a lot of money that’s owed but since the purchases were recent I would need to look at a bunch of contracts to know how much of that is actually delinquent. This was all provided to us in the form of a spreadsheet basically, with no totals of anything anywhere except the total number of sales. Really not user-friendly. I thought I was being a good reporter type by looking into it a bit more and aggregating things, but Awudu claimed the story and never asked me for figures, so who knows what sort of story comes out of it.

Tomorrow I’m going to parliament and then to the University for a conference on math : ( I hope I survive it!

Ghana Day 21

2009-06-17T01:54:00.001-07:00

Hey! I wrote a story! It made it onto page 4, but not the website : / See the post below for the text, since I wouldn’t deprive you all of my literary genius.

So this evening I finally got around to getting a Daily Graphic (the state paper). It’s a little like a book. Very substantial. (The Guide only has 25 or so pages, this one is probably 100.) It certainly isn’t what I’d call hard-hitting, but at the same time it is much more informative and has more useful type stories that mostly avoid the sensationalism and wild accusations the Guide mostly has. So give and take I suppose. It will be interesting to work there, if I ever get confirmation on that.

So today I made my way all by my lonesome to Parliament. Awudu had trouble getting a car to the office because of the rain and oversleeping—shockingly this morning I had a total 5 minute wait time on getting a ride into the city, which is a personal best. I think perhaps I was up at my normal time and everyone else sort of lets the rain slow them down, so I beat the folks who would normally take up space in the cars.

In any case, we went in to parliament, and besides the statements about today being the Day of the African Child (as per my article), the only interesting point of business was that there was an Urgent Question that was scheduled to be addressed to the Minister of Youth and Sports on the African Hockey Championship to be held in July in Ghana (field, not ice – I asked). Unfortunately, the Minister is on leave because he was found to have been misappropriating government funds (in a story that involved stealing thousands of cedis worth of diapers… very bizarre). Apparently his deputy is also having trouble, and so is the next in line, and no minister was briefed to be able to come before parliament and answer the question. So there was lots of shouting about that with people being indignant about not having this very important question answered.

There was also supposed to be a tabling of several reports that I could have written a story about, but the relevant minister decided they were faulty and withdrew them again. Oh well.

The only other interesting part to my day was seeing the final, submitted draft of the paper I wrote with Barak on political coercion in Tanzania. Very exciting and it’s nice to know it’s where it belongs now – where I have no more work to do for it.

Tomorrow should hopefully be an interesting day in parliament, since there are 4 or 5 questions to be answered, so I’ll likely get to write up some of those. It will probably be a pretty long session though : /

Until tomorrow!

Involve Children in Decision-Making -- Minister

2009-06-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

Involve Children in decision-making-Minister
By Lindsay Robinson

AFRICA CELEBRATED its annual International Day of the African Child on June 16, with a call by the Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, Hon. Akua Sena Dansua to involve children more in decision-making, both in the policy world and at home.
Hon. Sena Dansua who was presenting a paper on the day on the floor of Parliament yesterday said when an important family decision is to be made, children should not just be sent away but encouraged to participate in the discussion.
The Day highlights the challenges and tragedies but also the potential and achievements of children on the continent.
Her plea was witnessed by children who had been selected from each of the nation’s ten regions to attend the day’s parliamentary session and also to contribute to discussions about the African child with the Committee on Gender and Children, thus lending credence to the Minister’s call.
This year’s theme is “Africa Fit for Children: Call for accelerated action towards their survival,” reflecting the call for accelerated progress on the United Nations “Declaration and Plan of Action of Africa Fit for Children,” which was adopted in 2001.
It called for various improvements, including increasing access to education, participation in decision-making, overcoming HIV/AIDS, physical protection, and mobilizing resources for these goals.
The annual celebration of African children commemorates the tragedy of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa, in which thousands of school children protested against the poor quality of education in apartheid-era South Africa, leading to hundreds of deaths and more than a thousand wounded.
Other MPs who voiced their support for the day included the Majority Leader and MP for Nadowli West, Hon. Alban Bagbin, who warned against the practice of certain religions to prevent children’s receiving life-saving medicine or crucial education.
Ms. Cecilia Abena Dapaah, MP for Bantama, emphasized the value of listening to the nation’s “future leaders,” especially on matters like education, health, and nutrition that directly impact them, while Mrs. Irene Naa Torshie Addo, MP for Tema West, urged the country to focus on the extra challenges faced by the girl child.
She went on to say that in her constituency, more than 250 children sleep outside every night, and across Africa there were more children outside of homes than in them, according to a study from two years ago.
Mrs. Catherine Abelema Afeku, MP for Evalue-Gwira, for her part told the august assembly to remember that African children also have enormous potential and have accomplished much despite the challenges they face every day.

Ghana Day 20

2009-06-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

A new twist to the petrol price saga: I asked Grandma what she thought on the matter, since she voted NDC and has usually come down on their side, unlike the people I work with. She says that while the NDC’s move was discouraging for morale for its supporters, it is not necessarily far off what they promised. According to her, during campaign season petrol was extremely expensive, and once the NDC promised to reduce the price the NPP went ahead and did just that, cutting it by around half, so that the NDC could not use it as an issue. So increasing the price now by 30% is not putting it at the same level as before. This is my insight from her, although I have not seen prices over time to confirm it. I would not be shocked if she is right though.

A couple big stories today were interesting and the Deputy Editor Bennett was talking about them with me in a rare decision to speak English at the office (thus allowing me to enter the conversation without being obnoxious). The president’s spokesman on Friday was caught buying subsidized farm equipment, which is being sold at 10,000 cedis per tractor (as a down payment, plus 8,000 on an installment plan) to underprivileged farmers in the country. The man has no farm and is certainly not underprivileged, so this was quite a controversy. However, Saturday night someone in the ministry of agriculture leaked the receipt to Bennett (more on that in a second), and it turns out that not only is he getting this tractor plus other equipment when he shouldn’t be, he also only paid 1,000 cedis for it – 10% of what he was supposed to put down. Super big story coming out of the NDC, since it’s supposed to be the squeaky clean party.

Interesting bit about the leak: Bennett has a contact at Agric through whom he got the leak. The actual leaker’s identity is unknown, although the document looked pretty good (it was stamped with the minister’s seal and all that jazz). It seems like leaks are not a daily occurrence, but they are fairly frequent, and the Guide has a number of contacts like this around the bureaucracy. It sounds like most of them are only on deep background though, and their identities aren’t always known. This seems to me to be a bit problematic if they are regularly getting tips like this, since it’s a no-no to have people able to accuse each other anonymously. But for real leaks, it’s good that there is protection for whistleblowers through anonymity, which is not true in every African country – so it’s a trade-off. Also, apparently the leaks frequently come from dissenting factions of the ruling party (whichever it may be), so often the paper is used to serve the role of exposing “enemy” party members. Pretty typical of media everywhere, I think, and ultimately pretty healthy for democracy since everyone should be afraid of screwing up.

The other big news item today was the state seizure of a former MP’s car while she was at church on Sunday. I think I have mentioned before that the NDC has been trying to impound government cars that were taken by MPs and ministers who did not retain their seats after the election. According to Bennett and the paper today, this particular minister purchased her car after using it officially for 4 or 6 years or however many, which is standard practice. I’m not positive any of our reporters actually saw the purchase documents, but they seemed pretty convinced she had them. Regardless, the point Bennett makes is still pretty good – whenever something comes out against the NDC, they tend to deflect media attention by seizing a car or something like that (in this instance, the spokesman and the tractor were the embarrassing story to be covered up). It mostly worked, too. The car seizure headline and picture were the prominent part of the front page, with the tractor story a somewhat smaller headline with no art.

An unsubstantiated rumor: Bennett thinks the NDC has been seizing cars and hiding surveillance equipment in them to record the goings on/ movements/ conversations of these NPP rivals. He said no such equipment had been found in any car yet, although he claims that there are people in the NDC (or at least in the government) who have told him that’s what’s happening. It’s not a substantiated-enough story yet to go to print, though, as far as I know.

My ride home was pretty interesting. I was waiting for the bus and said hi to the guy next to me (cuz that’s what you do), and he very out of the blue asked me if I spoke French. I don’t know what the percentage is of white folks in Ghana that speak French, but I’m sure it’s pretty small. For whatever reason, he and his fried happened upon one who did. So Roger, Valex, and I had a nice chat on the way back. They are both students from Côte d’Ivoire. It’s funny how much better I can communicate with francophone Africans than with most English-speaking Ghanaians. So I’ll probably be hanging out with them later (at least Roger – I think Valex is leaving tomorrow), which is cool because they were fun guys and I need some French practice anyway.

Once the got off I spoke with the guy next to me, who it turns out is a radio presenter for Rock FM called Otumfuo Nana. I had a little more trouble understanding him, since he was speaking English, but we had a nice chat and he said he would take me to his station, which I think would be quite cool.

So Katey will definitely be staying with me starting Thursday, which should be fun. I just need to make sure my stuff is off the extra bed : / Sorry for the mess in advance, Katey!

Back to parliament tomorrow I hope!

Ghana Days 17-19

2009-06-15T02:43:00.000-07:00

Friday I went again to parliament with Awudu – I think I’ll be doing this Tue-Fri for the next 2 weeks. It was more interesting this time, because things actually got talked about. There was an Urgent Question on the agenda that took up a significant amount of time. Because the administration has blamed the oil hike partially on the fact that the Tema Oil Refinery is not recovering the full cost of operation, the Energy Minister was called in to answer the question of how much under-recovery there is daily at the TOR. He did a very poor job. He gave a total figure for last year that seemed to be the total debt in the energy sector, but it was unclear. One of the components was TOR, but it was not broken down, and I think it might just be how much the facility owes in general. Also, the total figure he gave was something like $347 million of debt, but the components he submitted only totaled $337 million. When pressed about it he said he hadn’t mentioned the $12 million somewhere else, but this obviously doesn’t result in $347 million, so just generally he did a terrible job at life that day. The minority gave a press conference afterwards complaining. I’m pretty sure nobody was happy.

Beyond this, a few contracts were briefly discussed, but the motions to approve them were all put off until the following week. There was a report tabled that might be interesting – the human rights and justice type report for Ghana—but it’s from the 2004 period. And I thought the US bureaucracy was behind on things. This is pretty bad.

The weekend hasn’t been terribly noteworthy. I went out with the other Americans on Saturday and we went to overpriced touristy places (got “macaroni and cheese” at John’s hotel, ice cream downtown, and I got fries at the Irish pub we went to in the evening). I don’t think that’s going to happen much more often, my compatriots have pretty expensive tastes for my budget.

Today (Sunday) I’m just hanging out. I’ve got some downloaded television to watch and some books to read, so that’s pretty much my day. Not too exciting, but I’m ok with it.

To look forward to in the future: in two weeks I should be starting with the Daily Graphic, which is the biggest paper and state-run. I would give you the website to check it out, but in fact the largest paper in Ghana has no website (at least none that is running). I might figure out why while I’m there, but it doesn’t sound like there’s a good reason anyone knows. Also, starting next Saturday I’ll be tutoring English and French once a week at the orphanage Elizabeth and Maddie work at. I was supposed to start this weekend, but as you can read that did not happen (I don’t think Prince actually set it up when he said he did).

A word on my cohabitants – Maddie is leaving a week from Wednesday, but it seems Elizabeth is enjoying her stay (and putting off real life), so she’s going to be staying an extra month. That means she’s leaving in August with Matt, so she’ll be around for my whole stay. I’m also getting a roommate named Sabrina on July 1, who apparently knows Elizabeth from school, but had not told her she was going to be coming. I’ve been told she’s a nice girl though, so I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Before that it’s also possible that Katey, from Georgetown, will be staying with us until she finds another place (she gets in on Thursday). So basically our building is Grand Central Station for US citizens for a while.

Ghana Day 16

2009-06-12T02:20:00.000-07:00

So my article did not appear in either of the two subsequent papers – it may come out on the weekend, since I think there are fewer reporters doin stuff and they need filler.

On Thursday I went to parliament for the first time. It was a bit like the House of Commons in terms of unruliness, and people talked rather loudly while others had the floor. A couple people got shouted down and told they were wasting time, sit down! When we got there they were all talking about child labor, because June 12 is International Child Labor Day or something like that. It was sort of a point counterpoint almost, with some people decrying horrible working conditions for children and the under-attendance at school and so forth, while others emphasized that the idea shouldn’t be taken to an extreme since children helping out with their families to make money is very important (just to be done outside of school hours). Lots of people were very upset about international opinion that the Ghana cocoa trade uses “child labor” because they say the skills are being passed on to the new generation, the kids go to school as well as work, etc. All god arguments I think. It’s rather silly to say children can’t work if there are school fees to be covered that would not otherwise be found (or if they otherwise would not eat). Of course where they are driving down labor prices and amount of employment for adults, that’s also a problem. It’s generally a sticky issue.

After that they debated the wording of a question for an hour (I think—it’s hard to follow, even in English). At the end of that time they withdrew the question. Then the session was adjourned. I’m afraid no pictures are allowed, so you don’t get to see it : (

Following the session we chased after an MP for an interview because he is suing another paper for defamation for saying he used state funds to fly his girlfriend to Europe, or something like that. I didn’t get to sit in on the interview – Awudu had me sit outside : ( After that we chased down the deputy minority leader, who repeated some things we’ve already printed about how the president broke faith with Ghanaians when he increased the price of petrol. So that was kind of cool.

As a sidenote, commuting home in the rain after dark sucks. I very fortunately got a seat in a car going home, but there were 30 people waiting to mob the next tro tro to come by (I think I was at an advantage because I was willing to pay the higher price). It was a little scary. Also, people drive much slower in the rain, so even though I left the office at 6, I was only home at 9. Yikes.

Ghana Day 15

2009-06-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

It’s raining again finally! I appreciate very much that all the rain I’ve experienced here has occurred while I am in my bed enjoying the sound of rain and the breeze through the window as opposed to outside waiting for a trotro. I’m sure that as the rainy season picks up this will change though : (

Today’s conference was very interesting and full of anecdotes about how people with disabilities are mistreated and the reasons behind it, including religion (disability is the sign of demons occupying a child), superstition (the parents pissed off their ancestors), and so on. Apparently there are lots of laws on the books outlawing discrimination based on special ability, but they aren’t enforced (and in some cases, according to one chief, haven’t been distributed to the tribal level so they can be learned). There are also building codes that are supposed to be followed, but even new buildings are not following them. I wasn’t aware of it, but supposedly a couple hunchbacks have disappeared in the north over the past months, and they were presumably being used in the same way albinos are in Burundi and Tanzania (killed and used for parts in witchcraft). Overall, the message coming out of the conference was that persons with disabilities should be treated equally but are not now, particularly in the rural areas. So I wrote a story saying that – it might make it into the paper some day. Don’t judge me for all the language though, I had Charles edit it (meaning he put in some choice phrases like “all and sundry”). I’m not sure how much more editing will be done before it goes in (if it goes in) as well, but it might happen since I unedited a couple things I thought did not exist in the English language.

This relates to nothing at all, but one of the deaf guys completely reminded me of a young Morgan Freeman. Just to let you know.

Another story about nothing: I’m having my laundry done today (hopefully it’s not out on a line getting rained on right now…), and both of my towels smelled funny so they both made the dirty pile. So after my shower I dried off with clean socks. They worked surprisingly well.

Ghana Day 14

2009-06-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Today’s excitement didn’t really happen at work, because for whatever reason no reporters showed up this morning before going on their assignments, so I was at the office again all day doin nothing much. The exciting part, believe it or not, was my commute home.

Firstly, I picked up the wrong tro-tro. The guys who yell out destinations aren’t always comprehensible for me, so I generally ask confirmation for my destination. Well today I thought I heard Nungua, and asked if that was right, and the guy nodded and waved at the van. So obviously I got in. Then he started yelling out the window “Eta” or something and we turned the wrong direction, so I was like ummm… But everyone was perfectly sympathetic and I got dropped off near a big bus depot in the neighborhood called 37 (don’t ask me why it’s called that, I dunno). The conductor guy tried to get me to pay for the short trip, and I wasn’t really planning on arguing over 40 cents, but everyone around me yelled at him and he gave it back.

So I found the bus depot ok; it’s a really huge area full of tro-tros waiting their turn to take folks to the various places. It took me a couple times asking directions, but I finally found the right section for where I was going. So we filled up and started off on our journey.

An intercalary section: The nation is generally upset right now with the NDC government, as last Friday it announced a fuel hike, to take effect Monday. I think it’s still subsidized, just not at the same degree. People are particularly upset because the party campaigned and possibly even won on a platform of keeping fuel prices down. Now that they’re in power, they’re saying “oops, didn’t realize how much money that would take.” While I understand price fluctuation, shame on you NDC for campaigning on a platform you know is untenable.

So anywho, we take off from the bus stop and people start complaining angrily in languages I don’t understand. Then we complete a circle and come back into the bus stop, where just about everyone descends. A kind woman next to me explained that they were all upset at having to pay 55 pesewas instead of the 45 that was standard before the price hike Monday. That woman and I were the only two passengers to stay on the bus; I’m not too sure what happened to the other guys or if they found a van to take them for less. To be honest, I only paid 50. That was my original contribution (and I think what they were sposed to be charging, according to the standard rate increase), and when I offered the guy a 5 pesewa coin he turned it down. Whatever.

This trend of charging more than what’s sanctioned in the increase seems to be pretty common. I’m only sposed to pay 5p more, and on both my routes now it looks like I’m up 10p. It sucks to be people for whom that is an important amount of money.

My other news is that I think I’m going to change horses midstream. While I’m getting some good insights at the Guide, I think it would be helpful to get a feel for the state-run paper as well, so in 2 weeks or so I’m going to be working at the Graphic. Hopefully it doesn’t suck. It should be a pretty good experience though, and I’ll hopefully get an idea for how much censorship there is. It will also be good for the paper I need to write – I’ll be able to draw on survey data from the state paper and its partisan top rival.

Until then I’ve got assignments (yay!). Tomorrow I’m covering a conference on disabilities that I came across all by myself, and then doing something with the business paper’s analyst. Then starting Thursday I’m going to bother Awudu while he attends parliamentary sessions and things, so that should be fun.

Health update: I’m still coughing enough to annoy everyone around me, but I feel mostly better otherwise.

Update from Day 15:

I’m writing this from the Kofi Annan Center of Excellence in ICT, where in fact I do not have a wireless internet connection. I think perhaps this is a bad sign for the center. The conference on culture and disability that I am attending nominally began 8 minutes ago, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person here who is not setting up in some way. My commute was interesting again. I got a taxi instead of a tro-tro because there were people to share it with and no buses were coming my way. I had a nice conversation with a guy named Mark, who is an accountant here. It was a long trip, and towards the end he asked me if I was a Christian. I guess this is a pretty common thing to ask strangers. Mostly people have let me go when I told them that I was and tried to drop the subject, but Mark pressed me so I decided to tell him the truth. It was sort of entertaining, but definitely not something I should do very often. I got him rather riled up. He didn’t accept my explanation that I thought people should just be good and that would get them into heaven. Apparently I am now going to feature in his prayers, so that’s nice. My salvation is important.

People are slowly starting to filter in and I need to save my battery for the conference, so you get more on the day tomorrow.

Ghana Day 13

2009-06-09T02:07:00.000-07:00

Short, boring update because my day was short and boring. While I’m feeling better, I’m definitely not at the top of my game and I wasn’t up to chasing after people to find a good assignment. Nobody jumped to give me anything, so I left early to beat the Monday traffic (which is pretty bad). The only productive thing I did today was to pass on some work to our parliamentary correspondent. The poor guy is having a malaria bout, but I think the prospect of around a month’s pay for less than a day’s work made him feel better. (Barak had given me a database of parliamentary candidates to be checked for ethnicity for around $100). I also finalized a survey on media freedom and sent it to all of the reporters whose email addresses I was able to get.

Besides that I mostly sat and cursed the internet connection, which has been extremely slow since last Wednesday, read my book, bought some yummy and melty Ghanaian chocolate, and am going to bed by 8:30. Sweet life.

Ghana Day 12

2009-06-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I went to the June 4 rally and got to see former president Jerry John (JJ) Rawlings speak. I was really nervous I would miss him, because he was scheduled at 2pm and we left the office at 2:03 for whatever reason. Turns out I would have been better pleased had we left at 3. We got there only to wait through a dozen lesser speakers (some of them pretty important, but mostly lower level officials). While this might have been interesting, all of them were speaking in Twi, so I was pretty darn bored. I also reinforced my understanding of how much I cannot be a real journalist here, since there will probably never be an event where I won’t need a translator.

Thankfully, JJ spoke in English. I don’t really know why, but I was grateful. Surprisingly, he took the current administration to task. He said that his protégé Mr. Atta Mills was not working fast enough to prosecute people who were corrupt in the last administration. He also said lots of stuff about probity and accountability and the meaning of June 4 – lots of the same stock rhetoric. But this apparent break with the NDC, or at least threat to it, is certainly interesting and might lead to a new party formation (either a new party or a new leadership structure within the NDC).

I’ve also been getting my ear talked off about NDC versus NPP policies. It seems like everyone has an opinion, and impressively a lot of people have opinions based on ideological grounds. Essentially the NPP supporters like that the NPP seemed to have provided lots of services and more democratic governance, and they believe that the NDC were despots who did not do enough to help the people. NDC supporters on the other hand think the NPP was full of crooks and that their programs weren’t widespread enough, did not take macroeconomic stability into account (the NPP increased the debt burden significantly), and think the NDC is accountable and doesn’t tolerate corruption. From what I can tell, almost all of these arguments are legitimate, so it’s a problem of choosing between two evils. Fortunately for Ghana, the sides both have strong, good aspects, so over the course of the next few decades, if things don’t radically change, I predict that the parties will have to refine their policies to reduce the easily identifiable bad parts and work on their good parts. Good parties are certainly not built overnight, and these two have only had 5 elections so far to pan things out. I think the trajectory looks good, but time will tell.

I got home late again Thursday and met more thoroughly the two American girls who moved in on Wednesday. They’re both very nice, although not sisters as Prince told me. Elizabeth is 23, and she is dating a guy whose sister (Maddie) came with her on the trip. Elizabeth is from Tennessee, while Maddie is from Cincinnati (although I think she said she has since moved somewhere else). Elizabeth’s father John is also on the trip, who is a very talkative and pretty stereotypical southerner – on our trip this weekend he wore a cowboy hat. The girls are working at the orphanage that I plan on spending my Saturdays at, and they’ve visited once. Apparently the living conditions are pretty atrocious, because it’s run by one individual who has no source of funds, and it sounds like John is planning on donating new beds. I guess I will see for myself pretty soon.

On Friday we took our weekend trip to Cape Coast. Fortunately we missed the bus, so Prince hired a van, and that van had air-conditioning, so we traveled in style. After we got there we went to the Cape Coast castle, which was built by the British and used as a slave port. We got a tour through the male and female dungeons, the punishment room, and the door of no return. A couple tunnels had been blocked off by the Brits after the end of the slave trade, and I was somewhat surprised they hadn’t been opened back up for the museum. One was a tunnel directly to the water that I think would have been interesting. The dungeons were pretty awful. They were very deep in the ground and had ventilation only at the top. Apparently when they were dug up in the 1900s or whenever there was about a foot worth of straw, sand and excrement caked onto the floor. The captured slaves were supposed to defecate and urinate in a groove in the floor that started at one end and ran through a couple rooms downhill to the ocean, but obviously this was not always unblocked. Apparently women who got pregnant (by white men) were spared the voyage though, and they were given “cushy” jobs as servants in the castle. People who got sick were thrown into the ocean so they wouldn’t infect the rest of them, which I am sure must have been a big percentage. I think one of the worst aspects of the whole place was that the first Anglican church built in Ghana was in this castle right next to a spy-hole to the male dungeon, so on their way to church (and probably during church) the Englishmen there could hear the captured Africans yelling and dying. It was all very grim.

One weird thing was that on the tour I started talking to an American girl who turned out to be a student in SFS at Georgetown (going into senior year). Very small world.

Saturday morning we went to Kakum National Park, which is a rainforest with a canopy walk. There are 7 bridges suspended between extremely tall trees that visitors walk along. They’re very safe, and you’re almost surrounded by net (unless you’re very tall, which I am not – they came up to my armpits). It was still a bit scary, and I mostly looked at where I was stepping rather than down into the trees and the ground several hundred feet below me, but when I did look it was a very nice view of the forest. I also got to smell a lavender tree. That was pretty cool.

After that I touched a live alligator. I was just not out to please my mother this weekend. : ) He was tame and several people went before me. Apparently alligators can’t turn fast, so if for some reason he had decided the people touching his back were more interesting than the lady in front of him feeding him chicken gizzards, a person would be able to get out of the way. In theory. In any case, it was an extremely touristy thing to do.

In terms of health, this was not my weekend. My stomach was still getting upset with me all the time on Thursday, so I started that day a diet of bland and packaged food (bananas, crackers, etc). I tried to keep this up over the weekend, and while I wasn’t totally successful, I think my stomach has forgiven me and settled down (I’ve asked Grandma not to make my food spicy anymore – we will see if that helps). However, according to Dr. Matt (who isn’t really a doctor but has helped out a lot in hospitals), the stomach thing made me immuno-suppressed, which is why starting Friday morning I’ve had the cold that I recurrently get. (Dr. Matt thinks I have a virus.) It was pretty bad and I was probably not amazing company most of the weekend, particularly today (Sunday). I’m just about over the worst of it now though.

To add to these things, however, our trip to the beach on Saturday afternoon led to yet another Lindsay ocean mishap. This time I did not lose my glasses or skin my knee, but I did take a chunk of skin out of my toe. I’m not sure what did it, since I was in the water, but the beach was not the cleanest one. There were plastic bags and things floating in the water and trash washed up on the beach. It’s possible I cut it on something icky, although more likely it was just a piece of shell. That’s what I’m going to stick with anyway. Lucky for me I had my first aid kit along with me, as well as a handy Dr. Matt, and it got cleaned, treated with iodine (and later hydrogen peroxide), and bandaged with gauze. Although it looked pretty nasty at the time, I think most of what came off was callus, and I just nicked a little vein in my toe. It’s a pretty small cut. So that was exciting, and has reinforced my utter dislike of the ocean.

Last night we watched on network tv what we were pretty sure were bootleg copies of the two Narnia movies, which is kind of cool. They both had problems with track speed, and the second had Chinese subtitles. It’s funny what people can get away with.

That’s about all I have to tell. Today we got home at noonish, and after greeting Grandma (who is having a recurrence of malaria, poor woman) I planted myself in bed where I am being a stick in the mud all afternoon. I really wish I had movies to watch, but I’ve got plenty of reading material, so until I talk to you next time I’ll probably be doing nothing but drinking fluids, reading, sleeping, and trying as hard as I can to clear my sinuses.

(Update: feeling better on Monday, but definitely gookier)

Ghana Day 8

2009-06-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

For a day that I thought was going to be my most boring yet, today turned out to be pretty darn exciting.

Until around 2 or 3pm I did nearly nothing besides surfing the web and downloading episodes of Dollhouse to watch in all the spare time I surprisingly don’t really have at home. Our paper today ran some interesting stories though, that provide a good backdrop to my day’s events. Firstly, one of the former NPP ministers of something or other was detained without charge for 10+ hours by Ghana’s FBI equivalent for a while (probably in a corruption investigation), which drew a pretty big crowd of protestors who were upset at what they saw as the harassment of the opposition. My paper took the same view as the crowd (although that’s not terribly surprising, as I shall soon explain). On another slightly undemocratic and much more interesting note, two of our reporters were detained for 6 hours for sitting outside a minister’s residence and eating peanuts while they waited for him to come home. Apparently they were sitting in an unmarked security zone. Rather than being shooed off, they were brought into custody without a phone call or anything of the sort. A higher up eventually (after a couple hours) said they were free to go, but the security guy in charge of them more immediately decided he was on a power trip or something and didn’t release them. They got out eventually when the afternoon shift replaced the morning guys.

Finally, there has been some controversy about a Ghanaian national holiday that was banned in 2001, the June 4 celebration. On June 4, 1979 (30 years ago today), Flight Lt. Jerry John Rawlings took over power in a military coup. He was the one who eventually (in 1992) held the first free elections, which he subsequently won (twice). As I’ve explained I previous posts, he’s a pretty controversial guy. In any case, when the opposition came into power in 2001 they decided (probably rightly) that the anniversary of a military coup, regardless of how much it was designed to bring probity to government, was inappropriate for a democracy to celebrate. It was thought until a few days ago that this holiday would not be revived, but we found out for sure and certain today that in fact the 30th anniversary will be marked with much gusto.

So it turns out democracy is not perfect in Africa’s only country that has passed the two-turnover test. Ah well.

So besides listening to as much of the gossip about these and a few other stories, collecting business cards, and composing a survey of media freedom to try to con people into answering, I thought my day was going to be unproductive. This was particularly true because apparently my news editor was off looking at bodies in the morgue (or something) all morning and only appeared intermittently in the afternoon. Just when I thought I would give up and go home early, however, he showed up again and I had the opportunity to rush him and ask if I could help cover the June 4 stuff. He said ok, in fact that’s what he was trying to get my colleague Awudu to go cover – I had not realized it, but this evening there was an NDC rally. So with much complaining and grumbling from Awudu, we set off.

The grumbling, I soon found out, was because Awudu and the photographer who went with us were the two unfortunate detainees. Sad for them, but I have to say I thought it was pretty cool that I got to cover a story with the guys who made the news that day. He was annoyed that he was being sent to yet another event where he believed he was going to be harassed (whether or not that belief was merited). I never found out if he would have been though, since he stowed his journal in my bag to avoid detection as a journalist and used the white girl as cover – nobody questions the white folks.

So on the way over I got to grill Awudu about what he thought of things. Firstly, the impression I got from my first day’s reading of the paper was entirely well founded – the paper has a marked pro-NPP bias and is certainly anti-NDC (party in power). This explains why national government people aren’t happy to see us. I asked if this meant that pro-NDC stories never appeared in the paper, and he said no, they cover good things NDC does – they just never make the front page. His reasoning for why the paper liked NPP is that the NPP allowed much more media freedom than the NDC had done during its stay in power. Later, however, the photographer (who is pro-NDC) told me that he thought the NPP allowed media freedom only to keep its real actions out of sight and use the media for untruthful propaganda. Awudu told me that the media house they’re in is actually about 60% pro-NDC, but the newsroom itself is mostly NPP. Awudu claims to be mostly NPP, but thinks there are lots of good people in the NDC. So it seems like a mixed bag, but with a definite bias in the Guide.

Awudu said that in general, the media is free and can print whatever stories it likes. Even though the NDC (who had maintained criminal libel laws) was now back in power, it couldn’t really touch anyone in the media without having everyone on its back, as evidenced by his own detention.

The rally itself was interesting but not amazing. As with most rallies, it was full of propaganda and singing and playing up the crowd, which usually obliged the speakers by shouting and cheering wildly and once storming the stage. The people who spoke were notable, although since I’m pretty new to Ghanaian politics I don’t think I really appreciated it as much as I could. The attorney general (a woman) spoke, as did the majority leader in parliament, some big shot business guy, the youth organization’s leader, and Rawlings’s wife. In typical Ghana/ Africa fashion, it was supposed to start at 4, kicked off at 4:40, was supposed to last an hour with each of 8 speakers taking 5 minutes each, and continuing until around 8pm. At least it was a nice, air-conditioned venue.

Lots of ambassadors showed up, but Japan and Spain were the only mostly democratic countries in attendance that I caught– it was Iran, Libya, Ethiopia, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria, and a couple others. Seemed like most of the democracies were distancing themselves from the event.

One positive thing I learned was that (at least for that particular event), state funding was not used (although the venue was state-owned, and I’m doubtful they paid for the facility). It was done with private contributions by party members.

We got back too late for the story to be published tomorrow, but it’s likely it will show up on Friday. I’m theoretically helping to write it, although Awudu apparently likes to be a pundit, pick out the few blunders in every speech, and highlight those for the readership – so I’m not positive I’ll want my name on it. We shall see though.

One other exciting thing happened, which was my taking the tro tro home late at night. It was fine, except for a guy who really desperately wanted to be gangsta sat down next to me and gave me look-over. I’m pretty sure he’d been drinking. Anyway, he tried to pay my fare for me (without telling me – discussing it in Ga with the tro tro guy and then handing off the cash), so I had to force my fare on him so he wouldn’t feel like I owed him anything. I also told him the wrong stop I was getting off at and fairly loudly called Grandma to tell her I’d be home soon. So with all my bases covered I was fine, and thank god he didn’t get off at the stop with me (since he’d already claimed to be getting off at the stop I said I’d be leaving at).

So tomorrow (today for you readers) is the actual holiday, and I’ll be going to see Mr. JJ Rawlings himself speak in I’m sure a huge crowd of people. Should be another fun day. Then Friday I’m off and we’re visiting Cape Coast and some other things, so this will probably be my last post until next Monday. But be sure to keep an eye on the Guide for more stories : )

Ghana Day 7

2009-06-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

Today’s adventure was going to the kick-off of the Public Health Week in Accra. It “started at 10,” which today meant what it normally means on African (or I should probably say non-US) time, which was 11:15 or so. I shadowed Stella again, but she didn’t come into the office before going there so I had the opportunity of finding my way by myself. That’s really not at all true of course, since there’s no way anyone could get anyone by herself without knowing the city, but I got there with the support of 6 or 7 people pointing the way rather than one person leading me, which I think is an improvement and pretty much how it’s going to be for the rest of the time.

The event itself was a bit boring, since the three keynote-type speakers said the same thing (down to referring to the same stats and using the same sound bites), and the skit that the health workers put on was in Twi (or possibly Ga), so while I’m sure it was entertaining based on the audience’s reaction, I had no idea what was going on beyond one girl getting lung cancer for smoking. After the program people were encouraged to get screened for some diseases (hypertension, diabetes, malaria, etc) and have their BMI assessed, as well as donate blood. While I briefly considered doing the latter, I decided that among other things, I probably can’t stand to lose the water weight right now since I’m pretty consistently dehydrated as it is. So I’m off the hook as far as my mother is concerned.

I think perhaps the best part of the event was that afterwards they handed out lunch in takeaway bags. This would not be the best part normally – jut a highlight – except that this particular event had highlighted the importance of eating fruits and veg and avoiding fats, and all of the food we were given was fried. (Also all meat except for a little bag of fried dough snack sticks, so I ended up handing mine over to a boy who was trolling for food and definitely needed some fat more than I did, along with the non-alcoholic beer it came with. I took a sip of the beer and yes, it is still really nasty even without the alcohol in it. Sorry everyone.)

Tonight I am swapping the boys that are living in my compound. Matt is in (yes, he’s nerdy, in keeping with all the Matts I know – studying chemical engineering or something), and Stephen will be leaving tomorrow night before I get home from work. Matt will be around for the rest of my time here, as he’s also spending 8 weeks. He’s got a strong travel background (his dad has moved around to places in South America and Asia a lot) and wants to be one of those bleeding heart doctors who does surgery in third world countries. He’s very friendly and chatty, and should be a pretty tolerable guy to live with. Now I just have to cross my fingers that the two sisters showing up tomorrow are equally amicable. This place is sort of starting to feel like a hostel.

Ghana Day 6

2009-06-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

Pre-post note:

Sunday night was awful. The power went out around 9:30 until maybe 11, so the super powered fan that allows me to sleep without bathing in my own sweat was dead in my prime laying in bed hours : (

Real post:

So Monday was a very eventful (and above all sweaty) day for me. I started work at the Daily Guide. Prince showed me how to figure out which tro-tro was going the direction I wanted (it involves hand signs and something close to an auctioneer’s call by the driver’s assistant). Tomorrow I get help again, and Wednesday I might try it on my own. The hardest part is really recognizing where I need to get off before I’ve passed it, particularly on the way home since it’s dark. Traffic is pretty terrible both ways, so apparently I’m going to be going to work around 7am and leaving for home around 7pm so that I can avoid being stuck for two hours in the congestion (normally it should be a 20 minute trip).

The Guide has a lovely office – air conditioned with internet – and the people seem mostly nice. Some of the reporters were very chatty and welcoming, although some seemed were less so because they working or else sort of blasé about the temporary freelance writer in their midst. Apparently I’m not an uncommon occurrence; there’s a Swiss Katherine in the newsroom as well who seems maybe about my age.

So today I read the newspaper to get an idea for the “house style” that I should be trying to emulate, which to be honest might be a bit hard since it’s more biased and sensational (in verb and adjective choice if in nothing else) than I’m used to writing in or reading news in. I’m sure US papers have house styles as well, but not quite in this way I think. I’ve also discovered that for all I’ve been told that the paper is not biased, it is highly critical of the current government’s efforts to attack the former ruling party’s officials and also uses some rather dismissive language about the new party’s various efforts to do things. I suppose it’s possible they’re just calling it like it is, but there certainly were no articles disparaging the other party. I think I might try to find some articles from when the NPP (other party) administration to see if they’re just critical of the party in power.

So I was sent out on assignment this afternoon with Stella, one of the reporters in the staffroom who was a newcomer to the city (although she’s been working 6 years for the paper in the Ghanaian second city of Kumasi). I think she got me since she was new, I felt a bit bad for her. Also, we had very little idea where the press conference we were attending was being held, which resulted in a few mishaps on the journey. That, combined with a stop at the bank and general traffic, meant we did not get there until 45 minutes after the official start time of the conference. I honestly had not thought that would be a problem, but it turns out they had started nearly close to time (probably 30 minutes late), so we only caught the last part of the translations and the q&a session. We waited around for about an hour afterwards to get a copy of the speech though, so no real harm was done. The news editor had each of us write our own story, presumably as a tryout for me. I doubt that my version will be in the paper, but Stella put my name on her story as well, so that was nice. In any case, I’ve mostly figured out where things (like the bathroom) are now, so I’m set to start work whenever the editor decides how good I am and gives me an assignment. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind tailing real reporters for a while instead of writing my own stories, since my personal goal here is to make contacts with people and understand the challenges of reporting – which I’m sure are different for a native who speaks the language than for a white girl with only English. My major challenge is going to be finding the place I need to go and hoping that the people I need to interview speak English.

On that note, Stella tells me that the hardest part about being a reporter in Ghana is the long hours (when events occur in the evening) and balancing them with family. Doesn’t sound too terribly different from the challenges of lots of working women. She said that reporters are not afraid to put their bylines on stories as long as they are giving both sides of a story and have their facts checked. It is when you do not have an opposing viewpoint that you’re sharing or you are exposing a high level official or something similar that you normally put “The front desk” as the byline – no Woodward and Bernstein here. It sounds like the actual publication of a controversial story is ok though, and the papers can withstand government pressure as whole entities.

That’s about all. I had a lovely but very long trip home with Albert, who works as a sort of courier for Navog (although that’s not to say he’s not an important member of the group, since there aren’t more than 5 or 6 people in the NGO). He told me he didn’t think that things changed very fast in Ghana – in terms of attitudes, infrastructure, etc. I’m not sure I agree with him, if you take a look at the sort of change that occurs with every generation, but it’s an interesting opinion to consider and reflects the opinion it seems of most people here that la plus ça change etc. It certainly supports Afropessimism. He’s also challenged me to a card game, although he said he won’t tell me which game until the time we play so that he can catch me off guard. Also, apparently there’s all night reggae music every Wednesday on the beach (8pm to dawn) that might be interesting to check out at some point. Apparently it’s a big tourist attraction though, with more white people than black people – definitely not a really ethnically Ghanaian event, just something fun that happens.

Alright, time for bed since I’m up so early.

Ghana Day 5

2009-06-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got a fair amount of exercise. I walked around for a couple hours trying to find first the forex bureau to change some money (successful) and then the beach (unsuccessful). I finally had a taxi take me to Coco Beach, which was nice enough although pretty well covered with trash in the section I was in. The driver told me 25 pesewas (100 pesewas = 1 cedi, pronounced seedy, valued at 1.42 cedis to the dollar), and then when we got there he told me 1.50 cedis and was like, “Maybe no one has taught you yet what you should pay.” Riiight. I gave him my 50 pesewa coin since that was the smallest I had and I didn’t feel like arguing, and I just got out. He dropped me at a Ramada Inn (very fancy resort on the beach) that I’m pretty sure was not there for public access to the beach, but since I’m obruni (Twi for white) and didn’t ask anyone, everyone assumed I belonged. I picked up a few pretty shells and took a couple pictures, but getting there more than staying was really the adventure.

Also, I got followed by a pig for an eighth of a mile. It was sort of funny.

Dinner was peanut sauce, which was excellent, and Grandma stuck in some Ghanaian cheese, which is pretty much exactly like paneer (Indian cheese), which I appreciate. It was served with mashed up rice; I probably would have preferred just regular rice, but I won’t be picky. It was quite good.

In the evening I went out with Steven (the Scot) and Prince, and we were joined by three of Steven’s friends from the 2nd division soccer/football team he coaches. It was a pleasant enough outing, although the music was very loud and my ears rang for a long time afterwards. In Ghana (as in other 2 African countries I’ve visited), the average bar is usually an outdoor area with plastic tables and chairs and a set of speakers. It’s kind of nice to hang out outside when it’s cooler out, as long as you don’t forget to put on the bug spray.

While I was at the internet café yesterday, waiting for the internet connection to get restored, I met a girl named Millicent who seemed very nice. At the end of our chat, in which she had professed her interest in being my friend and we had a nice discussion about where we both came from and so on, she asked me to come to her church in the morning, and I was like what the hell. Not exactly like that of course.

So not knowing anything about the Pentecostal Church (and honestly, probably still not knowing much about its western variety), I showed up at 7am this morning at our meeting place and we went to a church that is also usually a school. Millicent asked me if I would mind covering my hair and helped me put on a head scarf for the occasion. The kids were having Sunday school, which involved some pretty cute dance routines. The service itself was certainly something I’m glad to have gone to, but definitely not something that I was thrilled to actually sit through. It lasted about 2 hours (once it started at 9ish), and around half was a sermon and half was song and dance. The latter was definitely the more entertaining part, since I don’t so much speak Twi. There was a drum set rather than an organ, which I think I prefer since it’s more conducive to not falling asleep. A couple times some of the ladies who were taken by the spirit to do so got up and formed a sort of Conga line to the front, where they circled up and danced before going back to their seats. It was much more entertaining when the men did it of course; I don’t think anyone will argue with me when I say that on the whole, African men have a far better sense of rhythm and dance skills than American men. There were also several sections of loud prayer, where everybody got to shout their own personal prayers in their own way. Altogether, besides the (for me) very conservative views of this particular church, I think this is probably one of the best services I’ve been to.

Of course I’ve long been convinced that going to church as an atheistic spectator and pretending to go along with things makes me a particularly bad type of sinner. This was rubbed into my face when at the end visitors to the church (ie me) were invited to the front to be welcomed, and the pastor said, “Can we expect to see you here in church to take fellowship for the rest of your stay?” before handing me the microphone in front of a crowded church. I declined as nicely as I could, although I’m not sure there was really an acceptable answer to them besides yes. I’m afraid I might have gotten myself into a little more than I could handle there. But still, it was a good experience to have had.

That’s about all for the weekend. I start work tomorrow. Hopefully tonight I’m going to interview Steven, who’s pretty excited to give me a story about his team before he leaves the country Wednesday. It will be good to show up with an article (or the makings of one) tomorrow so I can impress my editor and get a good assignment faster, even if it is an article about sports.

Ghana Day 4

2009-05-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

Not much to report since last time. It’s probably going to be a pretty boring weekend filled with reading and such things. I don’t have any real work to do (except a little bit for the paper I’m writing with Barak) until I start on Monday, at which point I hope I’m given interesting things to do and think about. I went wandering around the neighborhood yesterday for a few hours (and found an internet café, which was excellent). I was planning on going to the beach today, but it finally decided to rain last night and is continuing to drizzle as I write this. It rained hard enough to wake me up, and Matt will tell you how impressive that is. So it’s fairly muddy around, and the beach is possibly not the best idea in the rain. Hopefully the sun will come out later. In terms of other entertainment, I’m going to wait to explore the city until I have (hopefully) made a few friends who know what’s around to do. My entertainment budget is pretty close to nonexistent. I need to wait and see how much I’m likely to spend on taxi and tro tro (large vehicles where lots of people pile in) fare every day before I can assess how much extra I will have for that sort of thing. I hate to give up on being a tourist, but I really am here more for the work experience, so that has to come first.

I think that in Ghana English is not quite as widely spoken as French was in Cameroon. I have had some trouble talking with a few people, which is rather disappointing. Also, Ewe (pronounced ay-vay, sort of) is what is normally spoken in the house here, so hanging around with the family is not terribly enthralling. This differs from my Cameroon family, who only rarely spoke anything but French at home. It is possible of course that they were a fluke, or else avoided speaking anything but French in front of me out of courtesy, so it’s hard to make a generalization.

The kids are all fascinated by the solitaire games on my computer. Around 7 of them (one is small and got covered up in the picture) piled into my room on the currently spare bed last night to draw a house in paint and play spider solitaire. It was pretty cute.

2009-05-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

Pictures of the folks: Gifty, me, and Prince at Independence Square; Charles, me, and Prince at the stadium, Grandma preparing okra, and me getting drumming lessons.

Ghana Day 3

2009-05-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Interesting political observations blog:

Corruption seems to be the major scourge of the country now. Grandma (my host) told me some of her political views while I was waiting for orientation to begin (characteristically around an hour and a half late). She was a supporter of Rawlings, even though he was a dictator, because he was a clean, no-nonsense sort of dictator. His cousin had someone shot for a minor offense, and the judge let him off the hook because of his connection. Rawlings told the judge to look into the case again and make sure he got it right, and the retrial ended with the president’s cousin going before the firing squad. So the moral of that story I guess is that he was either against nepotism or else didn’t like that particular cousin very much.

Grandma’s brother in law told her about a recent occurrence that is supposedly fairly typical. His father is a pensioner and recently had a stroke. The director and some other folks at the pension bureau brought him in to sign for a pretty sizable pension and then took the money themselves – taking advantage of his forgetfulness brought on by the stroke.

While I was waiting in the car in the center of Accra for one of the program directors to tip the guard at the stadium and buy some street food, I had the opportunity to watch one street that came up from several ministry buildings, including the Department of Labour and the IRS. I saw several cars coming out that were very new, including at least one shiny new Mercedes Benz. One of the biggest anticorruption pushes right now by the government is to get the previous administration’s bureaucrats to return all of the state-owned cars that are available for government use. This might have been a recovered car or a personal car, but in any case it is unlikely the government has so much money that it should be providing Benzes as state cars.

There is a popular radio personality here who remains anonymous and has a 30 minute segment every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 5:30pm. I cannot recall his pseudonym, but I was told it translates roughly into “the gossip.” He seems to have some pretty high level informants and has broken several stories (for example former ministers fleeing the country because they were afraid the new administration would prosecute their corrupt acts). He is very popular and hard-hitting, but obviously the media situation in Ghana is not yet free enough for such a figure to think he would be safe if he disclosed his identity. I’ve been told that the Daily Graphic, the widest-selling paper, tends to support the government line and is state-owned (to be confirmed later I hope), but the Guide, where I will work and which is supposedly the 2nd largest paper), attacks both of the major parties. Sometimes, however, they still succumb to state pressure in what they print. (I hear this from the organization’s director Prince, who used to work at the Statesman as a graphic designer and currently does IT work for three papers, not including the Guide.)

Touristy blog:

Orientation was pretty fun and very touristy, and included lots of picture taking. Prince, Gifty, the driver Charles, and I all went to Independence Square, which is the large central gathering place (where Obama is likely to speak when he comes in July), the national stadium, and the Centre for National Culture.

Independence Square is a big open space by the ocean, and the most interesting parts about it (I thought) were 1) the prominent statue of General Kokota, a previous military dictator, and 2) the fact that no pictures were allowed of the eastern part of the stadium, since the president’s former (not current) residence was in that direction (it’s a castle from colonial times, and would be really cool to look at, but unfortunately you cannot approach it).

The stadium was pretty cool, with the bleachers in red and yellow and the grass in green to round out the national colors. We saw the national ping pong (table tennis) team practicing, and Prince decided he wanted to try. He claims he played in school, but you would never guess it – he returned two serves total in the boundaries. I got some good video of it. He’s definitely a better director than table tennis athlete.

At the Centre for National Culture, which is a pretty cool artisan market, Prince had a friend of his who makes drums give me a drumming lesson. First they played me a welcome drum song, although apparently it was quiet because of a (possible Muslim?) festival going on for which quiet is usually observed. I thought they were plenty loud myself; I don’t know what full blast would have been. I got a short video of that as well. The lesson was not as good, since I was drumming as well – I’m a worse drummer than I am a singer, and that’s saying a lot. Everyone seemed rather disappointed that I would not be making any purchases that day, but unfortunately I don’t really have any disposable income and if I can buy anything, it will be right before I leave.

Speaking of money, it turns out the older $100 bills are not valid currency in Ghana. This poses a bit of a dilemma for me, since $350 of my money is in fact in old bills. I’m going to need to make some arrangements to get some transferred to me somehow, but this will be upsettingly expensive. Apparently no volunteer has ever run into this problem before me, so Prince was as surprised as I was.

We had lunch at the sort of family-owned restaurant that isn’t really a restaurant as much as it is some chairs set up in a family’s courtyard. We had kenkey, which is a steamed mash of fermented maize (not much taste to it, but better than the fufu I had in Cameroon). It traditionally goes with fish, but I had it with the two pepper sauces and an egg. I have to say that I’m not sure African food is really up my alley (since I can’t eat most of it), but dinner was better and I’m sure I’ll find enough to keep me happy while I’m here. There are a few dishes that I had in Cameroon that I loved, and at least one (peanut sauce) is served here as well.

I discovered that I will be sharing my room starting next Tuesday with a girl from the States, and her sister and possibly brother will be down the hall. They are going to be volunteering at an orphanage nearby.

Ghana Day 1 (delayed post)

2009-05-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been in Ghana now for four hours, and I haven’t stopped sweating since I stepped off the plane. Besides the mugginess (I was told it rarely got above 30 degrees, which isn’t terribly reassuring), everyone has been super friendly starting from even before I got anywhere near the continent. I met a Ghanaian man who lives practically next door to me (Alexandria, VA) on the flight from DC to Heathrow. He stole my window seat, but besides that was very nice and we sat together waiting for the flight to Accra and chatted. He expressed optimism about the future of his country, which seems to be a general feeling in Ghana.

Quick Ghanaian recent history lesson: Ghana became the first African country to be independent from colonial Europe in 1957, but democratic experiments were repeatedly interrupted by coups. The military dictator, John Rawlings (who was pretty benevolent as dictators go), won the first two presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 after he decided a transition to democracy would be a good idea, and then he stepped down after his term limit. His party won the 2000 election, but lost the 2004 elections. In December 2008, his party made a comeback because Ghanaians didn’t like how the new folks were running things. Ghana is rare in that its parties have a fairly ideological bent, rather than being simply manifestations of whatever obvious societal cleavages exist. While the new president, John Atta Mills, was Rawlings’ vice president and hand-picked successor for the presidency, everyone tends to see him as a fresh start for the country. Rawlings certainly implemented some good policies, but his administration was far from spotless. It’s pretty interesting that so many see him as detached from previous corruption and mismanagement. More on that once I learn more though. (This is certainly not a Ghana- or Africa- specific lesson mind you – lots of people have very short memory spans).

So on the second leg of the flight I met another man who was very nice, although not Ghanaian. He has a family-owned business in Accra and West Africa and general, but the family is Greek. Besides offering me his card to call him in case I got in trouble (since I showed up in the country not really knowing where I was going besides that I was supposed to be picked up at the airport), he offered me some interesting insights on foreign direct investment in the country. His business requires skilled management, which he imports from Korea, and then the work crew is largely African. Not an isolated trend by any means. I asked him what he thought about corruption in the country as a business owner; while saying it couldn’t compare to the United States or similar, he did think it was pretty tolerable here. Besides which, he said, corruption isn’t really the problem; he doesn’t give money for nothing, he offers payment for expedited service – “and that’s not really corruption.” It’s interesting how the concept of corruption can be twisted to fit a number of definitions.

I was picked up without incident at the airport by Prince and Gifty, the people who run National Volunteers of Ghana (Navog). They are both wonderfully nice and welcoming. I am staying in the Nungua Estates area in a decent sized compound that houses numerous people, all of whom I don’t think I have met yet. The matriarch is Patience, but everyone calls her Grandma (she is Prince’s aunt). Her husband is Mike. The children and grandchildren I am not straight on and will provide a family tree for later, but her son Tony lives in the same building in the compound as I do with his wife and two children, along with a Scot named Steven who will only be around for another week before he leaves. Steven’s been here helping to coach one of the local football teams, so he’s occasionally a local hero (and sometimes the local punching bag, when the team loses). Seems like a very nice chap though. Contrary to the businessman on the plane, Steven tells me corruption is ubiquitous and is rather appalled by it.

Orientation happens tomorrow (Thursday), and I’ll be learning all about Accra, changing money, getting a phone, seeing sites, and all that jazz. I don’t start work at the Daily Guide until Monday, so I have plenty of time to acclimatize myself, see some sites, maybe do a little of the reading I wanted to get done before I got here. In any case, I’ll probably have time for a few more entries and maybe some pictures pretty soon.

Boring first post

2009-05-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hi there! This is the start of the Ghana edition of my blog. I am not actually in Ghana yet, so I have nothing at all interesting to report. I'll be leaving on Tuesday (May 26) and arriving there Wednesday (May 27), so you might get a blog that is worth reading sometime before the end of the month. Until then, I'll be catching up on my reading : )