Five Days At Joy Fm

Since my recent updates have been sporadic at best, I thought I might do a brief summary of an average week at the station. My time on these computers while at work is limited as my colleagues generally need to race in and do their stories on whichever PC is available, so I am generally leaping up halfway through an entry, never to revisit. So I apologize for the increasingly shoddy grammar and hasty structure that has no doubt begun to appear. I need an editor. Please forward your CVs/love letters to Flustered Sole White Woman (with glasses), JOY FM Studios, Kokolemle, Accra.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26th

Christmas music is playing on the ol' JOY FM stereo, the temperature is soaring, I'm sweat-soaked at 10:30 am. Behind me, a freezer stands filled with delicious beverages. Fanta, Coke, Dasani water. I'm assuming it's a conciliatory delivery from the higher-ups as our 'air conditioning system' - working sporadically at the best of times - completely shut down yesterday.

This is not a good thing. Hunter S. Thompson once said something about his Kentucky blood being too thick for Nevada. Similarly, my cholesteroyl-threaded Canadian blood is like pea soup in these situations. I wilted across three desktops, pungently. I was dying. It was therefore comforting to see that many of my Ghanaian colleagues, who are generally accustomed to the extreme heat, were also hating it. There was lots of cursing and even a few shirts being ripped open and chests fanned (by men, though I was also feeling tempted to follow suit.)

And apparently it's going to get hotter? The rainy season has ended, and apparently it's followed by a Ghanaian word that sounds like 'Hammer Time' (I am not kidding you, and JHR colleagues, please feel free to correct me, though I hope to God this is actually what it's called) when the true dry season starts and the true lurching slopping swelter of the Ghanaian heatwave begins. We are not looking forward to Hammer Time. Call it 2 Legit 2 Sweat.

I am mercifully saved from the swelter of the newsroom and jettisoned into the stink of Accra's streets at nearly midday as a colleague, Seth, and I, are sent out to the domestic violence and victims unit of the Accra Police Station. Accra is rife with acronyms for basically every organization, whether it be government, NGO, whatever. I think the one for this unit is DVVSSU.

Seth negotiates with the cab driver, who says he knows where we're going but actually doesn't. This happens sometimes. We spend twenty minutes or so meandering through the Ministries district in Osu, which hosts all the Ghanaian government buildings with a few names that to me, seem ever so slightly Orwellian (The Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment! The Ministry of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital City!)

After some yelling we finally get to the right building and go in. It's packed. People swarm every floor and look curiously at us as we march up the stairs. We enter a long dark and narrow hallway literally flooded with people - women sitting with children, old women, . I see one woman holding one of the large platter filled with oranges that would normally be on her head for selling.

We walk into the director's office. She's an austere lady, big and imposing, a lock of black hair falling over her glasses, which catch the light and obscure her eyes. She's intimidating. Seth, who I've determined has absolutely no fear whatsoever, leaps in and begins bombarding her with questions. For a moment, I cringe and wonder if we'll be - as Ghanaians say - "sacked." But to my surprise the lady is convivial and forthright. She shuts her office door to the lineups of anxious people outside and directs her receptionist to get us the right statistics.


My colleague then interviews her with questions we prepared earlier. He then asks her if we can interview someone who has come to file a report of domestic abuse. She says "No problem," and invites in the next complainant - a man! He is small and thin and shakingly relates his story to her in Twi. Throughout his narrative she nods silently. Afterwards she tells him to tell us his story and he begins talking into the microphone in English without hesitation.

"My wife is always beating me," he says. "I couldn't give her a baby and this is why she beats me. She said yesterday that she would kill me."


Seth nods reassuringly as I sit back on the couch trying not to let my mouth hang open. As the interview draws to a close, Seth asks if I have anything to add.


"Do you ever think of fighting back?" I ask. "Do you ever want to hit her back?" The man doesn't understand my nasal Western accent and Seth translates for him.

"Never," he replies. "She is my wife. I love her."

The coordinator told us earlier that in many cases, the victim of abuse doesn't want to leave their partner, even if the spouse is beating them. There are a number of reasons why, and concerns over finance are a big one. Divorces are expensive. Also, in a lot of cases, the spouse who is doing the beating is the family's breadwinner. If the person is thrown in jail, their partner has no way to sustain himself or herself, or their children.
Seth goes out to gather sound and a woman is brought in, along with an entourage of four others. Are these complainants too, or family members? I can't even tell. They talk animatedly in Twi while the woman sits astride the director. She is wearing a headscarf and there are lines around her eyes. Her hands play anxiously with a scrap of colourful fabric on her lap - Ghanaian women often use these scraps to tie their babies to their backs. I wonder where her baby is. I will call her "Ama."


Seth returns and Ama begins speaking to the coordinator. Unlike the man, she speaks loudly and quickly, and her voice is sharp - sometimes angry, sometimes deeply pained. She gestures plaintively at her hips and breasts and her voice breaks. Whatever she's saying, it isn't good.


Seth asks her if she could repeat her story into the microphone. A moment of confusion erupts - Ama thinks she's going to be filmed, and she panics. The other people in the room reassure her that it's just radio and that she will be anonymous. She relaxes and leans forward, once again addressing the director. The translation of the clip Seth used for the story is as follows:


He beats me every day. It's gotten worse ever since he returned from the States. I have come here so he's compelled to sign a bond which will prohibit him from beating me again. If he doesn't love me, he should just leave me to be where I was before he sacked me. I have been sleeping in an uncompleted building with my five months old baby where we struggle with mosquitoes every night. He should not beat me again. All that I need now is for him to allow me into our house. I would be very happy if he would not come close to where I will be with my children, since I don't need anything from him in this world again.


As it turns out, Ama's husband refuses to allow her in the house, so she sleeps in a derelict building with no roof. She actually has four children, and as I understood it all but the five-month-old were still with her husband. She has stopped breastfeeding one of the children due to "humiliations" she's received in the body, as Seth put it. At the end of her account, she burst into tears. There was a flurry of activity - the coordinator stood up, and all the other people in the room began shouting. We slipped out in the fray. We didn't even have a chance to thank her.


We went back to work and completed the report for the evening news. You can listen to the whole thing here: http://www.jhr.ca/fieldnotes/view.php?aid=956


As for me, I went home to my house, which has a roof, and drank a cold beer that probably cost the same as that woman's weekly income. I thought about the day and entertained all those requisite feelings of guilt that I'm sure my colleagues - and hell, anyone who's spent time in Africa - are no doubt incredibly familiar with, probably on a daily basis. I learned later that week in a follow-up story that Ama's husband had been granted bail. I am still wondering what will happen to her - or, worse yet, if nothing will happen at all.