the cooks

These women insisted I take their photo as I was leaving. They are the cooks who prepare the meals that the children are served at midday as part of the programme. They make everything from rice to beans to protein-heavy mixtures of maize and porridge. The school's head teacher told me two of them have not been paid for about six months and are constantly threatening to quit. This has been a problem in many of the schools across the country.

Up in the North

The Internet at JOY is allowing me to post some photos today, so I thought I might take the opportunity to post some pictures from last week, when I travelled up to Tamale, the capital of Ghana's Northern Region.

I visited one school in the Nanjbagu-Yapala area to discuss a few issues with the head teacher. JOY FM has been following the government's school feeding programme. The idea is that children are given one meal a day (using food produced by local farmers) as an incentive to keep them coming back to school. The programme sounds ideal on paper but has a few problems. One is that it's led to extreme overcrowding in some classrooms and putting more stress on teachers who are already dealing with low wages and a lack of resources.
At the school I visited overcrowding wasn't exactly a problem - there were only 50 students! (The head teacher assured me that they are growing and hope to enroll 80 by the end of the year.) There were five classes. The youngest class had children ranging in age from 7 years to toddlers fast asleep on the floor. Many of these kids' parents travel long ways to farm as the land in the village is no longer fruitful. So they leave all their kids to the school, knowing that they will get a square meal and a virtual babysitter for the day. I snapped some pictures of the kids and the school as a reporter and I drove away in a pick up truck belonging to a local Tamale radio station.

conversations in ghana pt 2

+ Sophie and I are sitting beneath a pristine white awning outside one of those beautifully ornate Ghanaian homes – it’s large, white, with Spanish tiling, and unique sloping angles that I’ve only ever seen in this country. Our friend Uncle Ray is celebrating the one-year anniversary of his dad’s death and he’s invited us. The men in his family wear flowing white robes that hang to their feet. Later, they will change into matching t-shirts that feature a silkscreened photo of their sweetly smiling father, above the words “MY DAD.” People have been drinking and eating all afternoon. As people begin packing up the tables and chairs, we linger with Uncle Ray, his business partner, his almost-wife and brother drinking wine as the sun dips below the palm trees lining the driveway. The discussion shifts into a dissection of George W. Bush’s recent visit to the country, during which the soon to be ex-president pledged $17 million to fight malaria. Most Ghanaians I know are highly scornful about this, particularly as there were murmurings about the installing one of Bush’s Africa-based military babies, AFRICOM, in Ghana. And of course, there’s always oil – three major discoveries in Ghana in the past year or so – making the country, in the words of President Kufuor, an “African tiger.” Uncle Ray’s business partner begins railing and everyone joins in.

“Do we want to be sucked dry for oil?” someone says. “Do we want to be like Angola? Why the hell did he come now? Why does he choose to care now? The foreigners only care when something’s in it for them. No offense-” as the two foreigners at the table squirm and squirm and squirm.

+ Earlier in the day, a young man at the party tugged my sleeve. “What do you think of Ghana?” he asked. “Honestly.” This is always a difficult question and as a foreigner, you can expect to be asked it several times a week, especially after you've logged more than a few months here. As a guest of his country, I am reticient to say anything other than “It’s nice.” However, that feels idiotic. And most people would prefer an honest response. I look at him. “I wish people would be on time more often,” I say.

The young man claps. “That’s the problem,” he says. “We’re too laid back. We’re not getting anything accomplished. We complain and complain, but yet we can’t even tell someone we’re going to be there at 9 instead of 8. How can we make sure people are fed and have clean water when we can’t even be on time?”

"But there is a flip side," I say. "In Canada some people are completely anal retentive. People work and work and walk down the streets to their jobs and don't even smile at each other. People have invented a disease called "executive burnout" because we work too much. People are not enjoying their families."

"But still," the young man says. "You have jobs."
He looks at me and laughs.

“What’s wrong with us?” he asks.

I reach for my beer. I smile. I can't answer.

Conversations in Ghana pt 1

+ Peter, a reporter from my station, and I are interviewing a lawyer who represents an international trade fair held yearly in Accra. We perch on chairs in his comfy office littered with books and newspapers, legal texts and the ubiquitous framed photograph of President John Kufuor that I have seen in more than one “big man’s” office here. A tv set bleats insistent news from TV3, a local network. There’s a story about Zoomlion, a country-wide waste management company. The volume is low and we can’t figure out what the story’s about. Shots of the workers picking up trash are juxtaposed with shots of various streets and neighbourhoods in the metropolis, littered with plastic “Pure Water” bags, paper, and occasionally, mounds of burning garbage. In Accra, it’s hard not to follow the herd and litter; trash is everywhere, piled high in the open sewers and set aflame at the roadside. The lawyer sighs so heavily that papers fly off his desk. “What is wrong with us?” he asks. “We can’t even pick up our own garbage? How can you solve a country’s problems if you can’t even pick up the garbage?”

We don’t answer. We smile helplessly. Later we will interview the Director of the Fair, who will deny that most people in Ghana don't have enough money to shop there. Later still Peter will ask for my advice regarding some girl problems.

+ I am sitting with two roommates drinking at the beach bar near our place when the power goes out. This Ghana group has been lucky as we just escaped a period where rolling blackouts were a common occurrence across the country. These days blackouts are rare. It’s the water shortages that are becoming acute. At our place the water stops running for one or two weeks at a time. At alternate weeks, the taps sometimes begin flowing again and we frantically fill buckets anticipating the next time they go dry. On this evening, however….we are waterless and powerless. On top of all this, the heat is the most oppressive it’s been since we’ve arrived. No power means no fan, which means lots of sweating and sleeplessness, and means waking up smelly and sweaty in the morning with no water to shower with. We skip home and light candles, excited at first, and then the reality of the situation sets in. My roommate begins to rant.

“This is Ghana,” she says. “This isn’t Liberia, where they’re recovering from a civil war. This isn’t Sierra Leone, where the country was torn apart by revolutionaries. Those countries have a reason for power outages. What’s Ghana’s excuse? The politicians pouring their money into campaigns when there is no money for water or power?”

We don’t answer. Instead I eat trail mix sent from Sophie's mother. I read an article about cocoa pods and fall asleep, the bed already soaked.

running on fumes

Ok this is a cop-out post that's mostly intended to direct your attention to two stories I've done recently with a couple of reporters on the JHR website....

The first is a story I did with Seth where we visited a cocoa farm just outside Kumasi and spoke to some farmers as part of a feature on Ghana's National Chocolate Day.

You can hear the report here: http://www.jhr.ca/fieldnotes/view.php?aid=1096
And you can check out a public album of photos I took during our trip here:
http://dal.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2104693&l=35d7d&id=94807058

The second story is about Accra Psychiatric Hospital. Bernard and I read that some patients who had been declared mentally fit were still wasting away in the hospital because their families weren't coming to pick them up. We went to check it out:
http://www.jhr.ca/fieldnotes/view.php?aid=1111

I have been running around like a crazy person recently, have lots to say, but my head is a giant knot full of snarls and mess. Hoping it will be untangled in the next couple of days and I can actually force out some coherent thoughts.

this part is called "talking to children, part one"

In Kumasi last night, as I walked back to the delightful spartan and ambience-free Presbyterian Guesthouse - or "Presby" - after buying apple juice and cookies, passing a group of small children in their school clothes;

Small girl: What is your name? (standard)
Me: Alice (my "Ghanaian" name...it's more common in these parts than "Alison")
Girl: (points at belt) What is her name?
Me: What?
Girl: (points at belt) Her.
Me: Oh. My belt? Alice.
Girl: Your belt's name is Alice?
Me: Yes. Yes it is.
Girl: (points at my mouth) And what is your mouth?
Me: Alice.
Girl: (points at shoes) And what is called your shoes?
Me: Alice.
Girl: Your name is Alice. Your belt is Alice. Your mouth is Alice. Your shoes, Alice.
Me: That is correct.
Girl: Give me your cookies.
Me: No.
Girl walks away with the rest of her coterie of small girls, nose in the air, giggling all the while, leaving me standing, as usual, wondering what the hell just happened.

Four Months In, Still Kickin'

A few days ago, the final group of JHR volunteers in Ghana marked the halfway point of our stay here. In four months, the organization will leave Ghana forever after a five-year term, and the six of us - Sophie, Zitner, Indica, Brennan, Nicole and myself - will be bidding our newsrooms and our Ghana lives goodbye. After four months, my feelings are decidedly mixed, and I suspect four more months won't rectify that. Many of my colleagues have already written posts far better than mine about their "four-month feelings" and I'm not entirely convinced I should follow suit. This is an oft-belaboured point round these parts, but good writers generally tend to write about their travels long after they've come home. Graham Greene wrote about living in Sierra Leone when he was back in England; Hemingway wrote about Paris long after he'd left. I imagine Margaret Laurence's glorious stories and novels about Ghana in the 1950's were penned once she was back on Canadian soil thinking about Canadian things. In keeping in this fine tradition, Alison "Run-On Sentence" Lang would probably do best to leave the more serious contemplating for when she's come home from Ghana and is sitting alone and jobless in her childhood bedroom, a dog and a glass of Ontario wine at her side, feverishing contemplating what to do next.

That being said, I know there are things I like here. A not-particularly brief and hastily-written list of them follows. I encourage my colleagues to comment and add their own.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS....ABOUT GHANA

+the way BBC reporters and anchors refer to it as "GHANER"

+picking up heavily sweetened Nescafe coffee in a bag on my way to work

+the bare-naked girl who is about six who comes out before her bath at the coffee stand and starts yelling “AMA!” at me. Her Ghana day-of-the-week name, as I later learned, is also Ama.

+delicious egg sandwiches that cost the equivalent of one dollar

+being chased down the streets of Anomabo by children banging on tins and pots screaming “OBRUNI-BA! OBRUNI-BA!” (white girl, white girl!)

+ shito sauce. No, this isn't a euphemism for some kind of gastrointestinal problem, but in fact the name for the deliciously hot pepper or "pepe" sauce that accompanies virtually every meal here.

+a woman at Anomabo gesturing at Eric’s piercings and then gesturing at her crotch

+my work days, which can begin with everyone quietly reading newspapers and then just as quickly turn to – raging arguments about Robert Mugabe! Grown men wrestling each other and dancing to reggae! People yelling and asking questions about each other’s sex lives!

+the devil strawberry vodka, Cardinal, that has often led to that phenomenon known as "white woman dancing" that I warned about in an earlier post;

+the way people look at themselves in the mirrors while they dance at nightclubs here;

+when one colleague told me I make him feel “like a human being” and gave me a copy of a book he had written;

+most men’s dress-up shoes have a slight heel, which means the men walk around the newsroom clacking like women in stillettoes;

+talking with Angela (a former neighbour) about church. “I don’t have money, but it’s okay,” she told me. “Tomorrow I get small money. I know my God is taking care of me";

+kenke with tomato, onions and avocado;

+watching Hannah do aerobics on Saturday mornings as our neighbours watch in confusion;

+watching Sophie and Hannah teach Ghanaian men how to do yoga;

+ little kids

+ the woman who said "Oh! Sorry baby!" when I ran to catch a trotro and in my haste smashed my head on the roof

+omo tuo (rice balls in palm nut soup);

+eating groundnuts and roasted plantain every day (and watching my colleagues descend on the food in a feeding frenzy when it arrives);

+ the fact that you can get out of any awkward situation, argument or scenario through wordplay, jokes, or even merely a smile

+the bar near my house where women in the neighbourhood go to smoke cigarettes, drink soda and talk trash;

+the horrible angle shots exhibited in the Nigerian films that are hugely popular here;

+a colleague’s request that I find him a “white woman with a big ass”;

+developing a wonderful cameraderie with the women I live with, from travelling together to rushing home from work and stripping off our sweat-soaked and impractical business-casual outfits, smoking on the porch and griping/exulting about our days, sharing illnesses, loneliness, work frustrations, heartbreak and tears, and laughing like maniacs at basically everything. If it were not for these two ladies, I probably would have gone home by now. They know who they are. Thank you.