Ghana Days 48 and 49

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.