June, 2007

I bought a rusty umbrella from a street seller the other day that was probably once owned by a lolly pop lady from an English suburb.  It is a beautiful piece of equipment with a plastic pink handle and protruding spokes that have the power to blind passers-by.  My new brolly got me thinking about how some of the things you buy out here have been at one stage thrown out by someone from the West and yet in their new home they are treated as gold dust.  A lot of the clothes that are sold in Ghana in the markets have been sent over from charity collections from places like the U.K and you see people walking around in familiar clothes.  A lot of market goods, like Ghana itself, have a British past. 

Last week I was at a press conference for the Ghana Stock Exchange and upon closer inspection of one smartly dressed Ghanaian stock broker I noticed that his blue shirt had “Boots” embroidered onto the breast pocket.  I saw another man walking down the road in a striking red jumper from Safeways.  I’d love to tell the former employees of these shops where their work shirts ended up.  Material possessions in Ghana have such a greater sense of history about them than in our own disposable nation.  I was thinking how strange it would be if I bought something here that I had at one stage thrown out.  It would be an uncanny reunion. 

Ghana continues to excite and confuse me.  The rainy season has begun.  Those drains I mentioned in Chapter One never had a chance.  When Africa rains, she doesn’t hold back, flooding the roads and evoking the dried out contents of the open sewers to once again roam through Accra.  This time at ankle height.  Sadly unlike the biblical scene of Noah’s flood, number two doesn’t refer to the procession of animals.  A lot of the time during these downpours the city just grinds to a halt because roads become unusable and your average brolly is mocked by the intensity of the rain.  However, on the days when I’m not wading through a deluge of excrement, I am still enjoying myself immensely.

I think I have developed a stomach of steal.  I don’t become overwhelmed with nausea as much now when certain dishes are put in front of me.  Having said this, I have just spent the last 48 hours in and out of hospital, this time not for me but for a friend who contracted salmonella from one of the local chop bars we always eat from and had to be flown home. 

Still, we don’t really have much choice in dining venue so I continue to play food roulette. On my way to work whilst aboard the tro tro I normally pass some money out of the window to a street seller that has come to take advantage of the hungry traffic sufferers.  There is a lovely lady called Florence who, despite having an unnerving amount of facial hair for a woman, sells the best pineapples for about 10p. In the evenings I normally dine from a plastic bag that I have bought from the rice street seller or buy a roll from a woman carrying a big bowl of them on her head.

Incidentally, people carry everything on their heads.  It isn’t only the street sellers and the more rural country dwellers, it is literally everyone and everything.  In Accra you will see business men and women carrying handbags and briefcases on their heads and women running down the road with huge bags of water just balancing (water is sold in bag form) without dropping a single one.  It is amazing to see how much they can hold.  To get water to our house we have to carry this enormous sack of 500 ml sachets which collectively contains about 10 litres.  It is quite far to walk with this amount of weight in your arms so one day I tried to go for the head tactic and ended up pretty much paralysed   (much to the amusement of the Ghanaian onlookers).  A friend of mine who did a placement at the local hospital told me how he had seen a patient rigged up to an I.V drip and instead of carrying the bag on one of those trolleys that you wheel around, she carried it on her head!  Ingenious.

As much as I have settled in, the constant brutal reminders of poverty and corruption are still very poignant.  A couple of weeks ago I was doing my washing at the back of the house, scrubbing all the dirt off my clothes into a bucket of grimy water when I saw a lot of little hands poking out of gaps in the window of the property that backs onto ours.  This place is a shelter for abused children and I decided to pop round.  As soon as I walked through the gates I was met with a crowd of excited orphans who all wanted me to pick them up and give them a cuddle. 

I learnt that a lot of the children have been raped or have run away from abusive parents or abandoned and are in desperate need of the company of adults they can trust. Heart breaking but reassuring that a few of them have reached safety in shelters like this one.  A few of the girls sat me down and tried to braid my hair into the similar corn row style they were sporting but soon got fed up because my hair would not hold the style.  Thank God!

I’ve noticed lately that Accra is ruled by Lebanese ex pats who have come over to presumably escape their own political climate and develop businesses. They provide some very visible contrasts of living.  Mercedes parading through the streets as beggars hold their hands up to the window in a desperate plea for food or spare change.  That kind of thing.  It makes me feel very awkward.  Whenever I talk to any of the ex pats they always tell me how beautiful they find the country and I wonder how far they are looking.  Which part do they find beautiful, the emaciated people at the side of the road or the children who run into traffic and try and sell water for a 2 pence profit? 

Perhaps I am being a bit too black and white but as a volunteer I have the burden of a dual perspective and have seen too much of a very close to the surface underworld to share their opinion of Ghana.  Yes, it is beautiful but not in the obvious sense that they are talking about. 

I live a double life here.  At risk of sounding horribly self righteous, I reside in basic surroundings, take public transport, eat simply with everyone else from the side of the road, I shower from a bucket of cold water every day, toast my bread by holding it over a gas flame, sleep on a soiled mattress and stumble in the dark when the power is shut off every second day.  But when playing at being humble and local becomes too trying, I have the choice to frequent pleasant air-conditioned venues with rose tinted windows where you can escape the sights of the city and delude yourself into thinking that the country is wonderful.  After an hour of comfort you then open the door and you are back in the hard city, feeling almost guilty that you shut reality out and enjoyed something that the people you live around can never experience.  A cold glass of wine.

Work is becoming increasingly challenging and exciting.  Everything I have submitted has been published and my colleagues are appreciating the English perspective and writing style.  I haven’t quite made the front page yet but I had a second page feature in today’s paper so I am creeping closer!  I’ve reported on human rights affairs, namely women’s reproductive rights which is a highly contentious subject given the opinions on abortion and birth control out here.  I’ve also covered other issues such as trade between Africa and the States and the policing system in Ghana.      

            The other day I was sent off to the Ghanaian Army military base for a ceremony at which the Minister of Defence and the British High Commissioner attended.  I was the only journalist there apart from the army’s private press and felt slightly awkward as everyone was dressed in their military attire and was belting out the Ghanaian national anthem.  I nervously scuttled around trying to be as invisible as a blonde in a black community can be but spent most of my time trying to ward off advances made by the cheeky squaddies on the back row.  The British High Commissioner gave me a look of understanding from where he was sitting on the high table, being the only other white person in the congregation. 

At the moment I am writing a feature on corporal punishment and I have been to interview some of the children who are abused by the teachers in their schools.  Because I am of the age where caning to me seems like an ancient tradition it is shocking to see it being used as a perfectly normal and just form of punishment for petty acts of misbehaviour.  Half the time the teachers just beat them for no reason.  There are so many social issues out here that are reminiscent of Britain in recent centuries with things like attitudes towards homosexuality, women’s rights and corporal punishment.  I feel like a time traveller, gone back to witness societal campaigns that in my own age have been fought for and won.

The most pressure I have felt since working for The Chronicle was when I wrote an article on a press conference I attended where the Zimbabwean Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Law was condemning the British media, particularly the BBC for portraying Mugabe as a dictator.  I sat very uncomfortably throughout the conference as one of two white people as the minister slated the British government for their dealings in things like the Zimbabwean land issue.  I understood at that point some of the battles of ethics a journalist has to go through when reporting on subjects that they do not necessarily agree on.  It is sometimes rather difficult to remain impartial!  Because there are so few British in Ghana compared to other places I sometimes feel like I am out here to represent Queen and country and am often treated like a British ambassador by the less affluent who think I have the power to go back and tell the prime minister all about their country.

The journalists I work with are so intelligent and insightful.  I love talking about the differences of our respective countries in relation to things like culture, the economy and politics.  I am learning a lot of skills which I will hopefully be able to transfer to a publication back at home.  It still feels strange that my first stab at journalism is on a foreign paper where political issues and human rights affairs are so rife.  I’ve been thrown in the deep end and have had a lot of responsibility and pressure put on my shoulders for someone of such a junior position.  I am so pleased I have done this instead of slogging away at work experience in London where the only writing I would be doing would be jotting down the tea and coffee orders so I don’t forget them when I am asked for the eighteenth time that day.

So at the end of my second month I can summarize by saying that most importantly, I am still alive.  I have adapted to my new surroundings but occasionally crave comforts like pavements, hygiene, a pillow (currently using a rolled up towel), a washing machine (rather than a bucket), a shower (rather than a bucket) and meal times that are a pleasure and not a gastronomic gamble.  On a more personal level I am missing friends and family, not to a degree of acute homesickness but enough to have made me develop a bizarre ritual of saluting every British Airways plane that is heading towards the motherland.