"it's not goodbye, it's see you later. jerk."

I've been home for about 48 hours. I feel both safe and happy and extremely confused and sad. I haven't spoken with many of my friends or loved ones because frankly....I'm still trying to figure out how to be myself around you after so much time away.

In the meantime I've been grappling with the best way to sum up my time in Ghana. It's bloody near impossible. In the end I decided to use my pictures and my friends' pictures and (mostly) other people's words in an attempt to show the year....this messy, infuriating, saddening, maddening, absolutely incredible eight months. And yes, it is smarmy at times, and a tad sentimental.... But that is what goodbyes are for, no?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"In your honeymoon stage, your arrival in a new country is characterized by initial enthusiasm, lots of energy, excitement...it's fantastic."
-a handbook on "intercultural effectiveness" that JHR trainers received before they arrived in Accra, October 2007


photo by Brennan Leffler
photo by Hannah Zitner

photo by Sophie Nicholls

"You think it's tough now? Come to Africa." - Liberian rapper Afrikan Boy, from M.I.A.'s song "Hussle"

photo by Peterking Quaye

"I think there's no denying that JHR is a little redundant at JOY FM these days." - a JOY FM colleague to me when I was about three months into my placement

"I am totally useless here! I need to come home!'
-me in countless emails, texts and phone calls to my boyfriend

"Those insignificant gestures which put a smile on a strangers' face make the greatest difference. Lots of love." - my JOY FM colleague Stevo in a text message

"Dance like nobody's watching...."-I forget

"Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”- Zadie Smith

photo by Sophie Nicholls

photo by Sophie Nicholls

"Thank you for making me feel like a human being."
-my colleague Emmanuel, writing an inscription to me in a book he wrote

"It's funny....to feel so lonely in a place where there are so many people around you...all the time..."

-me to about six different people at various times....

"I'm still not sure about you, God. The world seems to spin faster and faster out of control, like a twisted merry go 'round, operated by a demented psycho. There seems to be a certain randomness to it, like nobody's actually in control at all. So here's the deal: change the balance. give the poor a break. Send them rain, responsible leaders, brilliant doctors and scientists. Send the west a little fear, drought, pestilence and fire." - My friend, colleague, confidant and travelling companion Brennan Leffler


photo by Sophie Nicholls

"What the hell is wrong with this place?"
-everyone at various times

"Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated." - from "How to Write About Africa" by Binyavanga Wainaina
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa/1




"Charity doesn’t seem like a very sustainable way to help someone, but sometimes people can’t wait for a sustainable solution. Sometimes people just need something to get through the day and tomorrow they will deal with what is thrown at them. Being intelligent and working hard doesn’t guarantee you a job. People who are successful are those who have family or friends who are able to help; people to send them money or get them a job. Others take it one day at a time and hope that that their luck will change."


-JHR trainer Nichole Huck


photo by Brennan Leffler

"Journalists must tell real life stories and must be practical. They must write on current issues for people to know whether their lives are changing for better or worse." Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister of Information and National Orientation



"Former UN Secretary General Busummuru Kofi Annan on Tuesday reminded Members of Parliament that words could soothe or inflame, calm or incite and, therefore, as leaders they had to exhibit maturity and play by the rules of decent campaigning."

- article from http://www.myjoyonline.com/, July 2007


"Well ladies, I guess that's it. Shit. What now?"
-My roommate, Hannah sends us a text message before she flies out of Ghana


"I know what you mean. I have the need to go "home" but I don't even know where home is..."
-my dear Bea Houston, email, October 29th 2007


"The best part about leaving Ghana? Being anonymous again..."




"The worst part? Coming home."
-JHR colleague Doug Murray

I have some words for some people. Thanks to my JHR colleagues and my dear ones who kept in touch from home while I was away. Whenever I felt like those wild dogs Sanity and Logic were ducking away from me round the corner, you helped me grab the leashes and pull them back. I love you. Thank you to everyone who supported me so I could come here. I tried my best. And thank you so much to my friends in Ghana. It has been such a pleasure working with you and drinking with you and eating, eating, eating with you and getting to know you a little. I'm going to miss you like hell.

African Unity??

My country director, Ato Kwamena Dadzie, is a prolific journalist in Ghana. He's done TV, radio, (still producing a show at JOY FM) and publishes a column weekly in the Daily Dispatch, where my colleague and roommate Sophie is completing her placement. I'll be attending his wedding the day before I fly home to Canada.

Today is my last day working at JOY, and I felt compelled to post Ato's most recent editorial, which clearly and hilariously and beautifully and sadly illustrates so many thoughts I've had here and articulates them so much more concisely and honestly than I can. If you are going to read anything on my wretched little slice of the Internet, I urge you...please read this.
It explains a lot of things that have happened in Ghana and Africa last week, and last year, and for much too long. It made me laugh and it also made me feel like I have a gigantic hole in my heart. Ato I hope it's okay that I reprint this....


So much for African Unity, eh?
In a few days, all of us on this wretched continent will be celebrating African Union Day. May 26th will be a public holiday in almost every country - except in Morocco, which is not a member of the AU. It’s a commemoration that is supposed to remind us to focus on the need to unite as one big nation. After all, they say, we are one people – torn apart by colonialism and slavery.

I am looking forward to May 26th. Who doesn’t like a public holiday? But I’m so not looking forward to what that day represents – one big United Republic of Africa. I am very sure it will not happen in my lifetime. Just about a year ago, when African leaders gathered in Accra they chose to turn a blind eye to all the major challenges confronting the continent at the time. Darfur was on fire, Mugabe was delighting himself by plunging his country deeper into economic and political chaos and Somalia was (and still is) every brute’s paradise.

If our leaders had been wise and perceptive, they would have seen the global food crisis and the escalating fuel prices coming. They would have deliberated on how to deal with the impending crisis. Now the crises are here and look at them scrambling around like frightened rats.

In July last year, all they wanted to talk about was ‘African Unity.’ Our leaders look at the European Union and they think they can easily replicate it here in Africa. They even want to go further and create one big African nation. It took the Europeans 50 years to build their union. Mind you, it’s not a big federation yet. But, our leaders – always with warped ambitions – think they can achieve what the Europeans have not been able to achieve in five decades.

Those few days of the AU summit (which, by the way, was very badly organised) made the rest of the world wonder whether there were more ostriches than human being in Africa. Why ignore today’s problems and spend the whole time thinking about how to force a dream to come true? The world laughed at us. Between July 2007 and now, a lot has happened on this continent that demonstrates clearly that we are a bunch of jokers who like to dream silly dreams and talk and talk and talk about everything and nothing.

Take the recent attacks on African migrants in South Africa as an example. For more than a week, South African gangs have been attacking their fellow “brothers and sisters” from other African countries, accusing them of literally taking over their country. According to the rampaging mobs, the other Africans have left them jobless and spouseless whiles contributing to the increasing crime wave in their country.

It’s a strange case of xenophobia which doesn’t really surprise me because Ghanaians can be very xenophobic too – especially to people from other African countries. For example, there are a lot of people in this country who talk about Liberians as if they are aliens from another planet. Just cast your mind back to the recent incidents at the refugee camp at Buduburam. Even government ministers were spewing xenophobia all over the place. The Interior Minister was throwing tantrums because the Liberians had dared to say that Ghana is not good enough for them. Ghana is not good enough for even Ghanaians so what’s so strange about refugees saying that they do not like to stay here any longer? For daring to complain, our own government, which prides itself in pushing the African unity agenda, is feverishly preparing to send back more than 20,000 Liberians to “their country”, according to Nana Obiri Boahen, a ‘hanger-on’ minister at the Interior Ministry.

After all the talk of African Unity one would have thought that Africa is for all of us and that Liberians are supposed to feel at home in Ghana, my compatriots should feel at home in South Africa and Ethiopians should settle in quite nicely in Eritrea. Thanks to xenophobic attitudes like what we saw with the Liberian incident and what we are saying in South Africa, Africans cannot help but feel like strangers in their own land.

Where there is no xenophobia, you see major strife that makes the whole idea of African Unity appear like an attempt to build a mansion without a foundation. For example, Chad and Sudan are threatening to go to war. Sudan’s president, Omar Al Bashir, accuses his counterpart from Chad Iddris Derby of sponsoring and arming a group of rebels who almost took over Khartoum a couple of weeks ago. Last year, when some rebels came so close to his palace in N’Djamena, Mr. Derby blamed it on Mr. Al Bashir. Can anyone realistically expect these two ‘warlords’ to bury their differences for the sake of a united Africa? They should but they won’t. Ethiopia and Eritrea are still sworn enemies. Add all the civil wars to these and you will see that we surely have a long way to go.

Even in the sphere of economic co-operation, which should form the basis for future political integration, our continent is not doing as well as it should. Nigeria will not allow textile from other African countries. They will not even allow us Ghanaians to sell our tomato puree in their country. And we in Ghana do not want Nigerians to engage in buying-and-selling in our country –unless they can pay a fee of 30,000 dollars. The Lebanese can afford to pay. But for our average brother from Naija, this is more than his working capital.

A few months ago, police men went about closing down the shops of Nigerians who had not paid up. It was yet another eloquent demonstration that we like to talk more than act.

Just a few months after African leaders had discussed their grandiose African Unity plan Stanbic Bank of South Africa put in a takeover bid for our Agricultural Development Bank. The very same people who were arguing for African Unity turned around to say that “Ghanaian banks like ADB should remain in Ghanaian hands.”

To make it even worse, the political sphere in most African countries is a chaotic mess. It’s true that some of us have taken the democratic path. But dictators are large and in charge in several other countries. Mugabe has no intention of ending his madness anytime soon in Zimbabwe. If he hadn’t been acting so silly for a man of his age, Zimbabweans would have had no reason to go to South Africa to add to the number of illegal immigrants there. No African leader is willing to call mad Mugabe to mellow. The problems he has caused in that country will take a long time to heal.

Almost every African country has major problems that will take decades to be resolved. For most of them, there isn’t even a resolution of any sort in sight. Somalia is one of them. So is DR Congo. And Chad. And Djibouti. And the Comoros. And Sudan.

This means that if the unity they talk about is to be achieved anytime soon, the chaos in Somalia, the genocide in Sudan, the xenophobia in South Africa and the corruption in Nigeria will all be problems for that one United Republic of Africa to deal with. And come to think of it, is there anyone amongst our current crop of leaders who can serve as the first president of the United Republic – thinking more about the welfare of the people and less about himself? Kufuor buys jets when his hospitals are collapsing, Mbeki can’t see a crisis where there is one, Kibaki won’t concede defeat, Odinga comes in and appoints all his cousins as ministers (and gives each of them a fleet of official cars) and Mugabe, well, doesn’t seem to have his head screwed on properly.

If what the AU has achieved in over 50 years of existence and what it is noted for is anything to go by, then we are better off being a disunited Africa – each nation for itself and its citizens. This is how it will be long after I’m even dead and gone.

A United Republic of Africa will not happen anytime soon. But if our leaders push it to boost their egos, I’m sure it will turn out to be one hell of a chaotic, banana republic. I definitely do not want to be a part of it!

Source: Ato Kwamena Dadzie/Daily Dispatch

My favorite headline from myjoyonline.com thus far

Tony Aidoo: Do not trust Kufuor

Last Updated: Thursday, 22 May 2008, 9:26 GMT Previous Page

Dr. Tony Aidoo. Email Print Have Your Say ( 7 ) Dr. Tony Aidoo says Ghanaians should not trust President Kufuor because he is not trust worthy. He said the President is like someone “who when he sells a second-hand car to you, make sure you look into the bonnet because the car probably has no engine in it.”

gone daddy gone

On a sick day in Accra, your Canadian friend in Ghana pauses for a moment and thinks about some good and bad things in recent days:

Good?
+ Lupe Fiasco
+The phrase "Abou-DAM!"which means "crazy person" and is the tagline for a very popular and possibly insane hiplife artist here named Kwaw Kesem. It's kind of like saying "WORD!" or "Yeeeeaaah!" (in your best Little Jon voice) but sounds infinitely better.
+The fact that I found cheese fries here on a Saturday night, and waakye on a Sunday morning.
+hugs from people who you previously thought didn't like you.
+Me to younger brother (who I haven't spoken to in about six months): "Blah blah blah Ghana this Africa Accra music fun miss you"
Younger brother: (after a brief pause) "Is it true you don't have TV there?"

Less than good:
+A woman pushed me out of a tro-tro the other day in the usual crush. I fell on the ground and broke my heel. They were really nice shoes. I was irritated.

+I have been sick on and off for two weeks. The cause is mysterious. Food? Water? Lack of water? Ulcer? Dysentery? Whatever it is, it makes me wish I was home in bed where I could be all pouty and pitied appropriately.

+In another "Ghana is great for Alison's ego" vein, people keep calling me "white man." In some dialects here, the gender nouns are different, so I understand to a certain extent. But five times in a row? When I'm wearing a skirt? Really? Give a sister - or "brother" as it were - a break.

+I woke up early one day and sat alone by the beach near our house. I was blissfully in thought about various things. The breeze ruffled my hair. The tide was excitingly high. And then I was approached by three men who engaged me thusly (each conversation exactly the same:)
"Hello. What is your name? Where you from? Oh, Canada? I want to go there. Can I have your phone number? I want to be your friend."
After seven months, this exchange is no longer charming. With the first man, I respond with very Canadian politeness: "No, I already have a friend, thank you, see you later, bye."
With the second, I am slightly more brusque; "Please, I came here to be alone, I don't give out my number. Thanks."
And finally, to the third: "Why don't you go jump in the ocean and leave me alone?"
Then I actually did walk into the ocean, soaking my skirt, while my would-be husband looked on with mild interest and also confusion. Then I stormed off, clumps of sand whirling around me, sweaty at 10 am. Pissed off by a situation that I thought was funny a few months ago.

I wrote this list to make my sick head feel better. Looking at the list, it's unfortunate, but the irritating things are resonating longer with me. And I think once the little things begin to grate, when you are not as easily charmed or amused anymore, that it is time to go home. It's not real. It's not how I want to remember this place. So, I go.

the drowned city

Yes, it's another JHR foreign correspondence article, posted here for your viewing pleasure. The longer I'm here, the higher I climb onto my soapbox. Sorry.

The rainy season has once again fallen upon Ghana. Part of me is loving it. Twice this week I've woken up to early morning thunderstorms and rain hammering my window. The air, for once, gets cool, and I wrap up in a blanket and am lulled back to sleep by the noise.
For other residents of the city, however, this season brings the same kinds of problems over and over again. Drains become flooded and the resultant mix surges up and out into residential areas. People's homes become flooded with the dirty water. Property gets destroyed. People get sick from living in sewer water. This year the National Disaster Management Organization announced that they had put together a team of heavy hitters to provide relief to flooded areas, consisting of no less than the Navy, the Air Force, the Police Service, the Fire Service, the Red Cross, Civil Aviation, the Ghana Health Service and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. This is because last year, five people died in floods in Accra.

I don't know what's been done previous years - I wasn't here. But my colleagues say every year the same areas of the city get slammed with downpours and floods, and every year both NADMO and the AMA say they're going to do more to stop it - to unclog the drains filled with garbage so the rainwater might pass through, to provide support and supplies to those who have lost property, and assist with "prevention."

Most people know about the floods that tore about the northern region of Ghana last fall. Nearly half a million homes were destroyed. Around 20 people died. A lot of crops were destroyed. The international press was all over it. I wonder if people would be surprised to learn that even in the country's relatively developed capital city, people's homes are rendered uninhabitable due to flooding. I was.

The city's drainage system seems to be a big part of the problem. As I went out with JOY FM reporter Peter Mensah to check out parts of Accra a day after a serious rainfall, we ran into a contractor working on a drain in the city's Odorna area. He told us what was wrong with the city's drain system, how it overflowed during floods, and what needed to be done to fix it. We invited him onto JOY's NewsNite programme to explain it for listeners. Of all the politicians and disaster officials that have appeared on JOY FM since the rainy season began, his explanation was the most concise - and seemed to have some viable solutions.

But government still needs to act when it comes to the people who have to live in areas near drainage ditches because they have no where else to go. Although no one's died yet, people in the city are still sitting in waterlogged homes with their belongings piled on the roof. Young girls wade through knee-deep water just to leave their houses to go to school. People can't eat the food cooked in their compounds because it may have picked up some of the sewage that has spread all over the ground.

The worst part of all of this is like so many other stories in Accra, it's nothing new, and every year, very little changes. As we walked through a ruined compound in Odorna, we met one woman who smiled widely at us. When we explained why we were at her house, she began shouting at us. "You journalists, you come take pictures, then you leave!" she screamed. "Every year this happens and we are tired of it! Why don't you people help us?"

Part of her tirade is included in the report posted below. At the time, I felt unfazed. I've heard those kinds of jibes many times as I've been out with JOY's reporters. In Accra, just as in Canada, there are those same stories that come up year after year. You know - Christmas shopping season is here! The first big winter snowstorm has arrived! Parts of the city are being submerged in sewer water! And a lot of the stories that recur are - woefully - related to human rights abuses, like the overcrowding in Accra Psychiatric Hospital. People see reporters coming around and documenting their misfortunes every year. When it doesn't inspire any immediate change, they understandably become frustrated. I can't blame JHR nor JOY FM for this particular problem. It's so heartbreakingly rare that journalism actually changes policy. I didn't take this job with JHR to save Africa; I didn't choose to become a journalist so I could spearhead massive social change and win a Pulitzer Prize. But it's still upsetting to see people so disheartened - with government, with both foreign reporters and journalists in Ghana, with themselves - and to know that they have been telling the same stories of their soaked clothes and dirty feet and water up to their knees, year after year after year. And right now the rains have only just begun to fall.

i wrote an article...for jesus.

Well, sort of. I wrote this small piece on religion in Ghana for a newsletter my mom puts out through the Presbyterian Church of Canada. It's a little treacly - did you know you can't swear in articles for the Presbyterian Church of Canada??? What cheek! - but the sentiments are heartfelt. Mostly. And yes, I was born and raised in the Presbyterian Church. So I wrote this piece from the perspective of a lapsed religious person. It's not particularly offensive but I hope it doesn't offend anyone - particularly the Ghanaians who might read this blog. To them I say this is just my way of saying, "I wish I could be invited to your party."


I am sitting in a rickety, cramped VW van in a parking lot filled with hundreds of rickety, cramped VW vans, in a giant dusty parking lot, in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, a country on the coast of West Africa. The van is called a “tro tro” and it is the most prevalent form of public transit in the city. It is 30 degrees Celsius in the middle of the dry season, and the driver will not take us to our destination until the van is stuffed to the brim with commuters. Sweat drips off my nose and onto my jeans as I sit with the other passengers and wait. And wait. We sit stock still, trying not to move. I wonder if it is possible to be any more uncomfortable. And then suddenly, a man leaps onto the bus with us. Despite the heat he is dressed in a grey suit and tie. He is smiling. His eyes gleam huge and brown and ecstatic.
“May the Lord be with you!” he roars.
A silence follows - as thick as the hot, polluted air.
The man’s expression is inscrutable. He pauses, and then, more insistently:
“MAY THE LORD BE WITH YOU!”
“And also with you,” murmurs the crowd on the tro tro. Finally full, the vehicle is set to move off. The man remains with us. For the entirety of our 45-minute ride, he remains. And he preaches, and preaches, and preaches, at the top of his lungs, looking at all of us in turn. And the people in the tro tro sit, and some of them listen, and most continue to murmur their assent when he pauses in his lecture; “Ah-men.”
At the end of the ride, before everyone stumbles out into the hot, swarthy streets, hands reach forward to take some of the damp pamphlets our preacher has been wielding throughout the drive.

I’ve been here for six months – but it took me all of two days here to realize that this type of Public Display of Piety was omnipresent, and constant, and would take a great deal of getting used to.

In Ghana, faith is everywhere. It floods onto the streets from stalls selling gospel CDs. It lights up buildings at three in the morning as members of the charismatic church wander around the room, speaking in tongues to each other as you walk home from a night out. It causes the country’s electoral commission to consider changing the day that the country goes to the polls to elect Ghana’s next president in December – because that day happens to fall on a Sunday. And yes, sometimes it rides with you to work and back in the form of an evangelical tro-tro preacher, and there is no way to get away from it.

And the pervasiveness of religion in Ghana is by no means exclusive to Christianity. I recently took a trip to the capital of Ghana’s northern region, Tamale, where the population is overwhelmingly Muslim. I visited a colleague’s workplace only to see reporters leaving halfway through the day to pray at the mosque. During a break on the 14-hour bus ride to the area, I sat on a bench and watched as dignified Muslim women, their heads wrapped in scarves and eyes lined with kohl, spread out a mat in the parking lot, removed their shoes, bent their heads to the earth and worshipped in silence. And, more disruptively, I was awakened every morning by a four-thirty am call to prayer broadcast from the mosque right beside my rooming house.

Although we pride ourselves on our tolerance for different cultures and religions in Canada, I can’t help but wonder how we would deal with a presence as impassioned - and inescapable - as the tro-tro preacher. No doubt he would have subject to an onslaught of rolling eyes and irritated glares from other passengers – and maybe even forcibly ejected from the car itself. Canadians – and in my experience, Presbyterians – keep their love of God to themselves. When we pray in church, we bow our heads in silence as the minister recites the benediction. We sing nicely arranged hymns in a reverent and orderly fashion. We rejoice, sure, but our rejoicing happens on the inside, or in privacy.

In Ghana, the opposite occurs. The people in this country celebrate their faith in a completely open and unselfconscious manner, and quite often, it’s beautiful. Sometimes, it can be annoying. And it’s especially jarring to see this element in the newsroom where I work. Generally most of us don’t think of newsrooms as the most pious of places. Most journalists I know in Canada haven’t been to church in years. Not so at JOY FM. Every morning before the editorial meeting, we begin with a prayer. It was easy enough to get used to this – until the day that we switched newsrooms and a preacher was brought in to christen the new working space. As he sang and asked for God to bless the pristine white walls of our working space, my colleagues whispered, shuddered and shouted beside me. It was an intimate moment and I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Afterwards, I was ashamed by my reticence. Why is this awkward? I asked myself.

Although I lapsed into lazy Presbyterianism when I hit my twenties, I was once a good Presbyterian. I did youth group. I sang in the choir. I taught Sunday School, for heaven’s sake. There’s no need for embarrassment. So I reigned in my confused expression, smiled and went along with it. I feel anything else would be....rude. And yet, these completely open displays of faith will forever retain an elusiveness that makes this erstwhile skeptic wistful, and maybe a little sad. Despite myself, I wonder, "Why can't I feel like that?" It's like when you go to a party at your friend's house and all their friends are there and you don't really know any of them. Meanwhile they know all the same songs and inside jokes, and are laughing their faces off. You try to join for some of the time, smiling goodnaturedly. Sometimes the people invite you in and are really quite hysterical and you are having a riot and loving everyone. And then some of the time you feel awkward and sad and wish more of your own friends were along for the ride. For me, that's the crux life in Ghana.

One Sunday, my roommate and I took a walk around the dusty red roads of our neighbourhood. We literally stumbled across the ruins of a half-completed building – the neighbourhood church. Inside, men and women in beautifully patterned traditional clothes sang their lungs out while a preacher swayed at the front of the room and a man banged out the melodies on an old piano. A woman pulled us onto a bench and we stood quietly with the congregation in our jeans and tank tops. We felt grubby and conspicuous in this humble setting and didn’t know any of the words to the hymns. And yet, as the gentle unadorned voices rose around me in one sweet melody, and as the women held hands and smiled at us, I didn’t feel out of place in the least. It was a nice way to feel.

Although I don’t entirely understand expressions of faith and devotion here, I know it all comes from a place that is good, a place deep down that provides release and for many, some kind of enlightenment. I haven’t resolved my own dealings with my faith and I’m not sure I ever will. But as a stranger in this country, wandering far from home, I do feel I’ve been privy to something that is as intimate as a secret and really quite powerful and inexorable all at once.
And to take that away with me, I think, is enough.

The three classroom block looks more like an abandoned structure fit for drug peddlers than that for student

I always scan Ghana Web with interest. (And sometimes, rage - like when they reprint an editorial from the country's most-read newspaper about how people shouldn't use condoms because they "don't work.") I've reprinted an article from the site that reports a school that sounds like an almost exact replica of the school I visited in the north. I have noticed a tendency among some reporters to brush off these kinds of stories because "we've done it before" or "there's nothing newsworthy about that." Then they continue reporting stories that feature inane back and forth arguments between policy-men and cabinet ministers - people who are clearly trying to use the media in Ghana as a platform to express their own agenda. It breaks my heart that human interest and human rights stories are treated so fancifully here, like "fluff" pieces. So it's great to see a Ghanaian journalist highlighting a sad example of inequality - an issue that IS decidedly political, despite what anyone else might argue - in his own country. I've reprinted the article here along with some comments from the site's readers that range from thoughtful to...well...basically racist. It originally ran in the Daily Express newspaper. The reporter was not credited on the website.


Headmaster’s ‘office’ is under a tree

George Havor sits under a nim tree with his head buried in a notebook. He is looking through the books of his students with close attention. Mr. Havor, 53, is the headmaster of Gamenu Junior High School.“I enjoy my job,’ he told me with a smile, even though the chair on which he sat in his ‘office’ looked weak and wobbly.

Gamenu is a small village in the South Tongu District of the Volta Region. The village is more or less in a coma-like situation as one has to walk miles before one gets to meet another person on a long stretched red earth. The village is stashed way out of some of the major towns like Dabala, and I was told catching a vehicle to the village doesn’t always come easy.It was therefore little wonder when most of the teachers had not reported to work on the Wednesday after the Easter Break. They were been expected later that afternoon when the market women start returning from Dabala.

Mr. Havor who says he has been teaching for the past 28 years said he was transferred from another school to Gamenu almost three years ago and the situation has not changed. The three classroom block that houses the JHS looks more like an abandoned structure fit for drug peddlers than that for students. The palm fronds used in roofing part of the building have dried up forcing the sun to shine into the room.

The JHS 2 classroom is in a sorrowful state. A heavy downpour I am told blew off the roof of the building, which used to be a middle school many years ago. The structure together with an equally dilapidated upper primary block was constructed by the community, together with staff quarters.The JHS 2 students have been relocated into a classroom for the primary department, and that’s no better- the chairs are also not enough with three students sharing a seat instead of two. Sadly, not everybody gets to have the opportunity of sitting on a chair.Some of the students, according to Mr. Havor have to either bring their own chair from home or stand.

The floor is un-cemented and looks a bit tacky. The headmaster said the total population of the JHS is seventy-six (76), adding that the state of the school “does not enhance proper learning.” Mr. George Havor told the dailyEXPRESS that the situation has compelled authorities to close early or not allow the students to come to school on rainy days.

He noted that many students who end up at home sometimes refuse to come back again and rather join their parents or friends to the farm. “We are talking about the future of a whole generation that is being wasted.” A new 3-classroom block is being put up with the help of the European Union, and many of the townsfolk and the students are looking forward to its use.Mr. Havor who receives visitors to the school under his nim tree office told the dailyEXPRESS he made a request to use one of the rooms in the new block as his office temporarily but that was turned down. “I was told to wait till everything has been completed,” he said.

COMMENTS:
from Kofi in NY:

This Gemanu school matter is sad but it not Gemanu alone that has this problem in the country. Recently my village school was renovated at a cost of 100 milliom GHCd by the inhabitants. What are these EWE* fools waiting for? They're only interested in chieftaincy disputes, killings and jujuism.This is not gov't matter but selfhelp before the state can lend a hand.

*Ewe is the ethnic group that comprises a large part of the Volta Region.

from Nana Ansah:

HOW THE OTHER HALF DIES....AS KUFUOR* BUYS TWO JETS!
K4 wasted money on a gargantuan scale, so please read Kwabena’s posting titled: "AS KUFUOR BUYS TWO JETS!" to see why children in Gamenu are deprived of their fundamental right to be educated. Kwabena’s presentation elaborates the real symptoms as to why the other half dies i.e overspending on useless projects.If JJR didn’t care in 20 years, does it follow that Kufuor 8 years should also neglect them ? In the US-Mega-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff is wallowing behind bars and the governor of NY resigned recently when caught in the web. Unlike our Osei-krom democracy, Kufuor stays mute on NPP Amoateng (MP) for over a year and rewards Anane for adultery by re-appointing him as a minister. See the difference! Gamenu will outlive this shrewed politrickcians. Long Live Ghana.

*Ghana's President. Recently made headlines for buying a presidential jet and having a presidential palace built. He has about eight months left in office.

conversations in ghana pt. 3

During the morning meeting today (in front of all staff) 8:30 am:
Reporter: Alison! You look tired. Your eye is red.
Alison: Yeah, I guess I'm tired!
Reporter: You need more sleep.
Alison: Yeah.
Reporter: Or a good shagging. *

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Walking through the promenade at Danquah Circle, Saturday night, 12:30 am, on my way to meet Hannah with a sackful of egg sandwich:
Liberian prostitute (I've met her before): My friend!
Alison (pausing on the street with typical, damnable Canadian decorum) : Yes?
Liberian prostitute: My friend and I were looking at you!
Alison: Yeah?
Liberian prostitute: Yes. And we were saying to each other, you know, this girl has a good shape.
Alison (who has been called fat by three different people this week, preens) Ah! Thanks.
Liberian prostitute: And your hair is nice. Very different.
Alison (beams): Aw. Thanks.
Liberian prostitute: Yes. But you have a flat ass.
Alison: Ah?
Liberian prostitute: Yes!
(Liberian prostitute then turns and seamlessly, almost gracefully, horks a line of perfectly stringy phlegm from her right nostril onto the pavement. It sluices downward like a pasty Christmas ribbon. After this, I will buy her an egg sandwich.)

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*I should point out for the benefit of my probably-blanching parents that Reporter s not implying we should "shag" together. He's married and we are friends. This is simply what passes for morning small talk at JOY, often uttered in the same breath with such pleasantries as"what did you do last night?" and "I want porridge for breakfast."

dance party at nicole's

I stayed at my colleague Nicole's house in Tamale. There are some kids who live next door who come around quite often for sachets of water, bites of their food, and borrow Nicole's bike. Although the house sometimes resents the lack of privacy, it also has its benefits - including the potential for spontaneous dance parties, set to the background of Malian traditional music. The little girls in these photos were teaching us a dance that appears in both Mali and Ghana that involves making a circle, meeting your counterpart in the middle and...bumping butts. The last photo is my favorite from my time in Ghana.

six months

I wrote this for our Foreign Correspondence site (I've been a bad girl and haven't posted anything in like, a month.) This is a slightly sugar-coated version of how I actually feel about things, nicely sanitized and packaged for CIDA and their ilk. Mind you, I love my colleagues at work and will cry like an idiot when I leave. But my tongue is bruised and swollen from being bitten so often, so many months in a row.

It all feels like a very long time ago.

We stumble groggily off the plane. We walk into Kotoka International Airport past a sign that warns pedophiles not to enter the country. We go to the luggage area only to discover that most of our luggage has been left behind in London. We wait two hours to sort out the various forms and queues and lineups. We are then met by Ato Kwamena Dadzie, a man who up to this point I’ve only known through an email or two, and thrown into a tro-tro, riding through the black hot night, the air thick and always smelling like something is burning.

We get to the hotel. I revel in the fact that my bag was the only one that wasn’t misplaced, only to open it and find out someone’s gone through it and stolen all my toiletries and bug spray and spilt my jumbo bottle of hand sanitizer over all of my clothing. A few of us sit on my bed and start half laughing, half crying. I feel completely alone.That was six months ago.

I can’t really say I’ve gotten used to things here. On paper it looks like I’ve done a lot and seen a lot since our last little group arrived on Ghanaian soil half a year ago. I’ve fallen in a sewer, ridden to Kokrobite on the back of a motorcycle, licked the inside of a cocoa pod, played with kids amidst piles of garbage and filth in slums. I’ve listened to the stories of domestic violence victims and psychiatric patients whose families haven’t visited in more than twenty years. I can keep a drum beat (but like most white people here, I still can’t really dance.) I’ve done the 14-hour bus trek to Tamale and back, I’ve swam around Lake Bosumtwi and not contracted a water borne parasite, I’ve climbed to the top of mountains in the Volta Region.

But there’s still times when I get on the wrong tro tro and end up in a part of Accra that’s completely new to me. I don’t fall down as much as I used to, but still I occasionally trip over Accra’s uneven roads once in awhile - because my shoes are all falling apart. There’s still times I’m sitting at work while people are telling jokes around me and I realize I just don’t get it. There’s still times I realize I am sitting out at the bar talking to someone whose parents operate mines in the Western Region and are probably indirectly responsible for polluting people’s water supply – and here we are, sitting, laughing, sharing a drink. I’m not sure if these experiences will lead to some big revelatory event that I won’t realize until I get home. More likely, they are colourful moments, situations of interest resonating with various degrees of profundity and eventually folding over and into the tapestry of that grand old thing, Life Experience.

Then there is work. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never know what my co-workers truly think about me, that some of my questions about their intentions and ideas will never be fully answered, and that some cultural practices have seeped into journalistic practices and have limited the way journalism is practiced in my newsroom.

I was trying to get in touch with Ghana’s gay and lesbian advocacy group, GALAG. I made a few phone calls to numbers connected with the group’s leader, Prince. I got a few suspicious “No, Prince is out of the country” responses. Then I sent an email explaining who I was and that I worked for JOY. I received this response two weeks later:

No one serious will talk to Joy FM from the Gay and Lesbian Scene in Ghana. Most of their journalist are full of hypocrites. They never work based on professional ethic of journalism and do not in any way respect nor grant fair and hearing when its comes to the issues of gays and lesbians. Prince.

I felt terrible. For awhile. Then I thought to the way the reporters in my newsroom joked and tittered like thirteen-year-old boys when I tried to broach the topic of lesbianism in Ghana. I thought about the fact that my general manager is rampantly homophobic and has said to me, “How can you believe in God and also believe in the gays?” I am not surprised that JOY has ostracized this community. And the worst part is that there is little I can do to undo this. I can argue with my GM till my throat goes raspy (and I have!) about why gay people should not be thrown in prison for being gay. I can tell stories about how in Canada, we have gay pride parades – to the interest of some colleagues and the complete horror of others. There are some things you can’t change at JOY. The newsroom mentality on homosexuals is only one of the more obvious examples. It is very difficult to realize that despite the goodwill, the hospitality, and the level of comfort I’ve grown to experience at JOY, I am still a guest, and only a guest. Due to my culture, the culture of my workplace, our stubbornness, and our egoes, there are some bridges I won’t be able to cross in the remaining time that I have here.

And that is simply something that I will never get used to.

young ones

The ubiquitous "ridiculously cute Ghanaian children" picture. You can see that some of these children are of pre-school age. The school isn't big enough to separate kids into various classes, so all of these children are in "Class One." When I visited their class many of the younger kids were asleep on the floor. Parents send them to school because they know they will come away with a square meal in their bellies. Many adults have to travel for miles to farm because the land in the area is no longer tenable. If the kids aren't in school, they go to farm with their parents for the day. Funding for the feeding programmes was disrupted earlier in the year. Teachers told me during this time the school shut down because all the kids were out working with their parents.
See the desk in the background with the two men sitting at it? That's the head teacher's office. In Accra, too, many of the school heads have their desks situated outside under trees. Whether it's due to a lack of space or the stifling heat inside the buildings, I couldn't tell you.