As we prepare to board the 747 that will carry us over half of the continent in comfort, I wonder if our refugees traveled like this?:
Posts
Expat Life: Overheard at the Airport
1 week ago
Friday, May 28, 2010
Ghanaian refugees flee by the thousands
As we head out of Ghana tomorrow for a two week reprieve in the windy chill of Cape Town, 'on the road again' as they say... I read today that Ghana has it's first refugees (estimates run about 3,500), pouring out of Northern Ghana into neighboring Togo. The people who have fled are amongst the country's poorest, and are claiming human rights abuses and chieftancy disputes in the hostile dry semi-desert of the north.
As we prepare to board the 747 that will carry us over half of the continent in comfort, I wonder if our refugees traveled like this?:
As we prepare to board the 747 that will carry us over half of the continent in comfort, I wonder if our refugees traveled like this?:
Sunday, May 16, 2010
China Colonialises Ghana over fois gras
As we pulled into the tiny obscured driveway of our favourite restaurant in Ghana the other night for a predictably lovely supper, we were flanked on both sides by two heavily armed, camouflaged soldiers.
We didn’t expect that.
We also didn’t expect the four police cars and long black limos with tinted windows that filled the parking lot with their ominous presence and a disturbing but electric energy. The feeling that something important was about to happen.
As a sliver of gravel was found by the security guards for our car, we emerged hesitantly, and noticed the suited Chinese robot-types standing strategically around the lot. It was like an Asian replica of an American presidential security force.
It turned out that Ghana’s Vice President was meeting some Chinese foreign officials for a discussion over supper, and they happened to have good taste.
They dominated the space and the energy of the evening, as politicians and others with overblown egos tend to do – the entourage on both sides, ensuring their heavy presence was known and felt.
So throughout our supper, between my goat cheese and honey rocket salad and peppery yet creamy Portuguese chicken livers, I pondered the three Chinese guys standing outside, through the window in the front garden.
I thought about what the supper on the other side of the dining room really meant. I wondered what deals were being sealed over Cabernet Sauvignon and sole meuniere. I also thought it strange – important men from two cultures, both with strong and defined cuisines, choosing to dine together in another totally foreign restaurant…
Witnessing that meeting just brought home to me what I’ve been reading about and seeing from afar for years in Ghana – the slow undercurrent of Chinese stronghold in Africa. The new colonization in progress.
I thought it strange, when a few months ago we noticed the team of labourers who were busily erecting the colossal new Ministry of Defense building (funded entirely by a $50m grant from China), in Accra. They were all Chinese! In Ghana! Pushing wheelbarrows and heaving loads of cement.
You had to ask yourself why on earth there would be a need to import unskilled Chinese labourers to do grunt work in a developing country where the unemployment rate hovers around 71%!!!
A few years ago, China fronted $622m for the Bui Dam project in Ghana - and imported 500 workers from China at that time as well.
The stories about China’s extreme generosity toward Africa and specifically Ghana are abounding.
But the real question is what lies behind the grants and loans and projects.
The truth is that China stands to benefit, and indeed is already benefiting far more than Ghana. Government policies are bent and stretched and molded to facilitate China’s aims.
Ghana currently imports more from China than any other country in the world.
“From 2000 to 2008, China’s exports to Ghana increased manifold from $93 million to $1,512 million.” Something like 1500% increase?! I sense a trend here…
In terms of trade, Ghana exports raw materials like cocoa, gold cotton and timber at less than $50m per annum to China, while imports of cheap Chinese electronics, textiles, plastics etc. flood the market and threaten the precarious position of local manufacturers and merchants.
And China’s eye is on the big prize. Oil. China is only second to the USA in terms of oil consumption in the world, and large offshore deposits of oil have been discovered off Ghana’s coast in the past few years… a match made in heaven?
Recently a consortium of Chinese companies (CNOOC) out bid Exxon Mobil for a share in Ghana’s oil exploration. They allegedly added a $2billion concessionary loan to the Ghana Government, to help increase it’s infrastructure in gold exploration.
So they have secured their place and guaranteed China’s position to reap the rewards as the oil starts to flow.
Ghana’s professor George Ayittey, interviewed this week on TV3, warned that:
“Barter deals with China - in which China sets the rules - have a huge potential for graft and corruption. Everybody should be able to see exactly how much Africa is getting from the deal.”
Despite CNOOC’s dismal track record for human rights, environmental protection and general lack of experience, they now have a foothold and Ghana’s new oil business.
I wonder if the Vice President, having shaken hands with his Asian counterparts, then washed his French supper down with the bittersweet wine of his country’s impending colonialization.
We didn’t expect that.
We also didn’t expect the four police cars and long black limos with tinted windows that filled the parking lot with their ominous presence and a disturbing but electric energy. The feeling that something important was about to happen.
As a sliver of gravel was found by the security guards for our car, we emerged hesitantly, and noticed the suited Chinese robot-types standing strategically around the lot. It was like an Asian replica of an American presidential security force.
It turned out that Ghana’s Vice President was meeting some Chinese foreign officials for a discussion over supper, and they happened to have good taste.
They dominated the space and the energy of the evening, as politicians and others with overblown egos tend to do – the entourage on both sides, ensuring their heavy presence was known and felt.
So throughout our supper, between my goat cheese and honey rocket salad and peppery yet creamy Portuguese chicken livers, I pondered the three Chinese guys standing outside, through the window in the front garden.
I thought about what the supper on the other side of the dining room really meant. I wondered what deals were being sealed over Cabernet Sauvignon and sole meuniere. I also thought it strange – important men from two cultures, both with strong and defined cuisines, choosing to dine together in another totally foreign restaurant…
Witnessing that meeting just brought home to me what I’ve been reading about and seeing from afar for years in Ghana – the slow undercurrent of Chinese stronghold in Africa. The new colonization in progress.
I thought it strange, when a few months ago we noticed the team of labourers who were busily erecting the colossal new Ministry of Defense building (funded entirely by a $50m grant from China), in Accra. They were all Chinese! In Ghana! Pushing wheelbarrows and heaving loads of cement.
You had to ask yourself why on earth there would be a need to import unskilled Chinese labourers to do grunt work in a developing country where the unemployment rate hovers around 71%!!!
A few years ago, China fronted $622m for the Bui Dam project in Ghana - and imported 500 workers from China at that time as well.
The stories about China’s extreme generosity toward Africa and specifically Ghana are abounding.
But the real question is what lies behind the grants and loans and projects.
The truth is that China stands to benefit, and indeed is already benefiting far more than Ghana. Government policies are bent and stretched and molded to facilitate China’s aims.
Ghana currently imports more from China than any other country in the world.
“From 2000 to 2008, China’s exports to Ghana increased manifold from $93 million to $1,512 million.” Something like 1500% increase?! I sense a trend here…
In terms of trade, Ghana exports raw materials like cocoa, gold cotton and timber at less than $50m per annum to China, while imports of cheap Chinese electronics, textiles, plastics etc. flood the market and threaten the precarious position of local manufacturers and merchants.
And China’s eye is on the big prize. Oil. China is only second to the USA in terms of oil consumption in the world, and large offshore deposits of oil have been discovered off Ghana’s coast in the past few years… a match made in heaven?
Recently a consortium of Chinese companies (CNOOC) out bid Exxon Mobil for a share in Ghana’s oil exploration. They allegedly added a $2billion concessionary loan to the Ghana Government, to help increase it’s infrastructure in gold exploration.
So they have secured their place and guaranteed China’s position to reap the rewards as the oil starts to flow.
Ghana’s professor George Ayittey, interviewed this week on TV3, warned that:
“Barter deals with China - in which China sets the rules - have a huge potential for graft and corruption. Everybody should be able to see exactly how much Africa is getting from the deal.”
Despite CNOOC’s dismal track record for human rights, environmental protection and general lack of experience, they now have a foothold and Ghana’s new oil business.
I wonder if the Vice President, having shaken hands with his Asian counterparts, then washed his French supper down with the bittersweet wine of his country’s impending colonialization.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Precious Ladies Ass
I guess Ghana specializes in alternative, green computers or uses these methods to repair regular ones??!
Some phrases just shouldn't be abbreviated...
This place is gone now, but I'm happy someone got a photo of the sign. Naming your pub and Internet cafe Virus is just wrong on multiple levels. Maybe they died of one such virus...
Ghanaians can sleep anywhere it seems - on narrow benches, traffic medians, work desks.. but the goats take the cake! Only Ghana goats can make an overstuffed roof of an ancient mini van (tro tro) look peaceful... sweet dreams!
(I've recently discovered a facebook page where various travellers and volunteers put up photos of the things you can only see on the streets of Africa. Some of the Ghana ones above... these things I will definitely miss when I leave the motherland...)
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Our Perpetual Lady of Diet Coke
After that last very 'Ghana-centric', long disturbing post that may have been overlooked by most (judging by the fact that the few comments came from the author (surprising but welcome!), and not many others... I thought I'd post this silly cartoon - as I sip my second DC of the day...
Ah, the religion of those in the know... :)
The image - thanks to Natalie Dee - the ever-talented cartoonist and post modern satirist (don't really know what that means but it sounded good).
Ah, the religion of those in the know... :)
The image - thanks to Natalie Dee - the ever-talented cartoonist and post modern satirist (don't really know what that means but it sounded good).
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Controversial - Obruni tears down Ghana and builds it up again
I am sure I will take alot of heat for posting this article - but it was truly interesting, thought provoking and it crudely tears open the wounds that neither Africa nor the West want to face...
A Ghanaian colleague of mine found this article on a popular news and editorial website here called Modern Ghana, written by a British man who lives in Ghana (who I have somehow managed not to meet)...
Please read the whole thing, before making sweeping judgments... by the end, the guy has come full circle on his appreciation of Ghana.
Happy reading! For those of you who really know Ghana - what do you make of this?
“What do you want in Ghana? Go back to your country!”
Are you the kwasia (idiot) who shouted this at me yesterday from your taxi while I was minding my own business and waiting for my tro-tro at Presby junction? What made you come out with such an exclamation? Was it just too much apio (akpeteshi - local moonshine), or do you have a matter you want to discuss with me? Have you been to aborokyire (abroad) yourself and learnt only the bad things from there, like racism and anti-social behaviour? Did you witness my brothers sticking pickaxes in your brothers' heads, simply for having the audacity to possess beautiful black skin, and has this made you want to treat all non-Ghanaians with a similar contempt? Why didn't you come back when I asked you “woye hwan?” and signalled you to “bra!” (come), so that we could continue the conversation? I wanted to know what warranted such an uncalled-for verbal attack, and to ask you why you are so keen for me to go back to my country. As you were too much of a coward to stop the car and allow me to answer, I am forced to write my reply down and publish it on the web for you. Your provocation will not make my readers happy- this article isn't going to be quite as positive as the rest.
SEBE.
I might have retorted by telling you that I can't go back to my country because the UK has been taken over by millions of African immigrants, asylum seekers and illegal workers, leaving no jobs, houses or white girls left for the obroni. I'll go back to my country if you can remove all the Ghanaians from there first. Or, perhaps I should have laid the blame for my continued presence here on the procrastination and incompetence of your empty-promise government, who invited me over here in 2007 for discussions that are still to be had (“The minister has travelled to South America to collect some more cocaine, the secretary will be with you as soon as she finishes playing Solitaire”). Perhaps you were just jealous of the injustice of our respective visa regulations and angry that it takes you ten times more money and a hundred times more documents to get a visa to my country than it does for me to get one to yours. Maybe out of the vexation your aboa (silly) question laid on me, I should have lied and answered that, like most foreigners, I'm here because it's so damn easy to deceive the black man and even easier to sleep with the black woman. Whichever reply I chose to use would have been an angry one: your unprovoked, out-of-the-blue comment from the safety of a speeding taxi really pissed me off. I wasn't in the mood to “fa wo adamfo” (make friends with you), buy you a Star and tell you the real reason why I'm here, which is because there's no waakye and nkati cake in aborokyire (abroad), and because the GHanja is a hundred times cheaper than the ganja. And don't you know that a true prophet is never recognised in his own country? Imagine if Jesus Christ had been told to shut up and go back to Bethlehem every time he went out to preach his Father's word.
Anyway, why do you have a problem with foreigners in your country? Don't you want us to bring in our dollars, pounds and Euros to help prop up your feeble economy? Does “Travel and See” only apply to Ghanaians struggling to get “inside”? Tourism is Ghana's third highest earner of the money you expect to magically appear in your pocket every day. The money's definitely not going to end up in your pocket if you permit the perpetuation of the paradox that the most loved tourist hang-outs, like the bambootastic Tawala Beach Resort in La and Kumasi's Four Villages Inn, are built and owned by foreigners. Your other big earners are begging the IMF/World Bank/International Donors for loans, and all your yahoo contacts and “bogga” friends and family for remittances. Doing something yourself to create wealth doesn't seem to strike you as being possible (and dozing in your kiosks and containers every day selling foreign crap to each other does NOT create wealth). If you do really want all the foreigners out of Ghana, do you want them to take all their foreign inventions and imports with them when they go? Should the Americans and Germans leave with all their cars which you sit in, should the Chinese tear up all their roads you drive on, and should the Japanese take back all their mobile phones you talk on? Do you want the Indians to leave too? How on Earth will you survive without all their razor blades, matches and biscuits? Your people will probably die of thirst if the Thais cancel all their deliveries of Vitamilk. You probably want the South Africans to head back south too, but you love their Accra Mall with its fancy apparel, expensive food and Hollywood movies, don't you? Let's also tell the Norwegians and Canadians to go back to their fjords and Rocky Mountains and take all their mining equipment with them, leaving you to dig up your own oil and gold with a stick. And just make sure that you can produce your own corned beef and rice before you kick out the Argentineans and Vietnamese, OK? Are you sure you are able to function as a 21st century citizen alone? You haven't even caught up with the 18th (toilet in every home), the 19th (electricity in every home), or the 20th (shoes on every child) yet. Should the British take back all their educational legacy, Eurocentric textbooks and Cambridge curriculum, leaving the black man to devise and implement his own more acceptable, appropriate and Afrocentric schooling system? (Well, actually, yes they should.)
The latter matter goes to show that, even though I thought you put your point across in a rather rude and very un-Ghanaian manner (you didn't even greet me first!), you are arguably correct. The white man has done nothing but rape, pillage and underdevelop bibiman (the black man) since he “discovered” it hundreds of years ago.
He tries to hide the fact that by that time it had already for thousands of years been the home of mighty empires, luxurious palaces, golden warrior kings, rich internal trade routes, and the world's first great universities, religions, civilisations and bushdoctors- a time when Europe was wallowing in Dark Age squalor and dying from bubonic plague. It's all gone downhill for Africa and uphill for Europe from then on: the white man should have been told to go home as soon as he arrived, just as strongly as you told me yesterday. Perhaps your forefathers should have had your same strong convictions back in 1471 and told the Portuguese to “Vai tomar no cu!” when all this kwasiasem began. Instead, they deferentially allowed them to build their dirty slave castle on Elmina's sacred ground in exchange for a few bags of shells and bottles of cheap whisky. Ayikoo (good going!). Why didn't your great-grandfather tell my great-grandfather to stick the Bond of 1844 up his sorry white ass, instead of sycophantically signing it, thereby forcing his own free black people to become subservient to some faraway white queen? In 1957 the “colonial master”, after making himself fat and rich through 300 years of slave dealing and 113 years of natural resource stealing, “granted” you independence of your own land. How noble and gracious of him. At the time, did your fathers follow your proud and outspoken example and cry foul over this “Mickey Mouse Independence”? Obviously they didn't, because Lucky Dube was still singing about such empty emancipations more than fifty years later.
That's one of the messages Kwame Nkrumah was trying to tell your predecessors before the CIA had him killed off. As well as Osagyefo, you have many more historical figures you can be proud of, who did stand up to the Imperialist immigrants, but can you tell me about some of them? Probably not- you didn't look very educated. Most schoolchildren should know the name of the Ejisu Queenmother who bravely defended the Golden Stool in 1901, but how many can name the Akwamu chief who whipped some Danish ass in 1693 to become the Governor of Christianborg Castle- the only African to ever gain such a status on the Gold Coast? Name the Asantehene (1720-50) who demanded that the Europeans set up factories and distilleries in Africa, instead of forcing his people to buy imported goods. When your son gets back from school tonight, ask him why MacCarthy Hill is called MacCarthy Hill, and what happened to MacCarthy before he became a hill. I'll pay his school fees for a year if he knows. The Ashantis should be proud of chopping off that white invader's head in 1824. But are your children learning about and celebrating these great people and moments in black history, so they will be inspired to become great themselves? Or are they just traipsing 5 miles to their dull little concrete schools every day so they can memorise some Babylonian nonsense in order to regurgitate for the BECE then forget it? More worrying still, where are today's freedom fighters and role models who will be the future inspiration for your children's children? Osofo Kantanka can't do it all by himself. Who is going to stand out from the crowd and make sure that Ghana 2050 is not just a photocopy of Ghana 2010 (only with more layers of plastic waste)? Your leaders will never achieve anything for you and your people by dressing in suits, flying in planes and attending conferences, Bretton Woods negotiations and HIPC summits. Don't tell me to go home to aborokyire, tell them to come back from there.
Perhaps you shouted at me to go back to my country because you also realise that no state which uses a foreign tongue as its official language has ever progressed, and no economy that relies on foreign aid, Structural Adjustment Programmes and 98% foreign trade has ever grown. Do you also agree that Africa can never develop until it breaks its dependence on the white man? Are you also aware that the West is deliberately keeping Africa poor so that they can remain rich? I can empathise with your point of view; you want the obroni to stop meddling in Mother Africa and allow her to go through her own agricultural and industrial revolutions, without which no developed country has ever been created. Next time you drive past your Vice-President, will you have the balls to shout at him that begging for Brazilian tractors is not the answer?
However, please don't make the assumption that all foreigners are wicked (only most of us). There are a handful of abrofo afrophiles with no hidden agenda who are here for positive reasons, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm one of them. I challenge you to charge me with any offence against Ghana (apart from the herbs, which I only use in my own home with a police officer present). I have never taken money, natural resources, state secrets, smuggled cocoa or trafficked children out of your country (but I do always return home with a suitcase full of Golden Tree chocolate and Mapouka Cream Liqueur: why are these delicious Ghanaian products never available overseas, but I can always buy overpriced European Mars Bars and Baileys here?) I am not one of these “foreign investors” who your government seems to love so much, despite the fact that even if these vampires invest a million dollars, they're going to suck out more than a billion in the future. I have no interest in profiteering from your people by owning a telecommunications company, Lebanese supermarket or Irish bar. I am not here to impose my English expertise on the primitive African. In fact, the opposite is true: I have learned more here about respect, personal relationships, spiritualism and good living than I gained from decades in Europe. I am not a paedophile or a batty boy. If you don't believe me, ask my wife. If you don't believe her, ask my girlfriend. I'm different to most Englishman in that I learn other people's languages, instead of expecting the whole world to speak mine. I've already written at length about the myriad reasons why I've chosen to leave my unfriendly country of birth and live in asomdweman, none of which I believe are detrimental to Africa. Quite to the contrary, I only want to lead a conscious life here and do as much as I can to help my beloved adopted country. That's why I'm writing this column- nobody's paying me for it, but I hear on the grapevine that a lot of people are “feeling” it. That's the only form of payment I desire. I'm also doing my utmost to bring more tourists to Ghana- if you and your friends would stop shitting on the beach, then I'm sure it would help to attract a lot more.
Of course, I agree with you that there are plenty of wicked, Godless, money-grabbing foreigners in Ghana who do deserve to be on the receiving end of your scathing attack, and I forgive you for getting me mixed up with one of them. They're the ones who are doing their best to keep Africa down, whether it be by stealing your oil, imposing the price of your cocoa, braindraining your best graduates, transplanting their “foreign expertise”, or forcing you to be generation after generation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. We refer to these neo-colonialists who are feeding off the dying remains of your continent as “white men vultures”. I'm sure you have heard the local appellation of “Obroni p3t3!” (white vulture) - I half expected you to add that one when you were shouting at me. Even though these people share my colour, they certainly don't share my principles, and I want to get them out of Ghana as much as you do. These people definitely do not deserve your country's Akwaaba (welcome). I can't wait for the day when Kofi Wayo becomes president- he promises to arrest all the Chinese vultures who are buying up your factories and farmlands and galamseying in your rivers, and send them all to the firing squad. With Blakk Rasta as his vice-president, there would be a similar fate in store for all the depraved sexual deviants who are coming here to rape your sons and daughters, and for all the crazy junkies who are flooding the country with their evil Colombia powder.
I might even go so far as to say that any foreigner in Ghana who is not a tourist, volunteer, charity worker, philanthropist, prophet, or anyone like Joseph Hill with a desire to help “bring back the money with the sign of the Lion on it and take back the money with the sign of the dragon on it” can be referred to as obroni p3t3. The businessmen, miners, foreign lenders, hoteliers, vehicle dealers and makers of porn movies are all here to enrich themselves at your expense, so I don't blame you for being angry when you see a white man in your country. Nor was I surprised when a Rasta man who didn't know I was one of his brethren shouted “Slave master!” at me as we passed recently. Rather, I'm surprised that I'm not at the receiving end of these anti-white sentiments more often, considering the brutal and exploitative way in which my forefathers have treated yours over the past 500 years.
I'm sick of hearing, when I reveal that I'm British; “Oh! Our colonial masters! We love you! You taught us everything we know!” If Ghana had colonised Britain and sold my ancestors into slavery, I don't think I would be so friendly to Ghanaians. So your outburst was actually a breath of fresh air. Maybe more Ghanaians should be like you and strive to kick the bad foreigners out- they're only going to continue downpressing you if you don't. But get out the car and talk to them first: there's a small chance that you might actually like them. Strangers are only friends who have never met.
Ian Utley is the author of
“Culture Smart! Ghana, the Essential Guide to Customs and Culture”
A Ghanaian colleague of mine found this article on a popular news and editorial website here called Modern Ghana, written by a British man who lives in Ghana (who I have somehow managed not to meet)...
Please read the whole thing, before making sweeping judgments... by the end, the guy has come full circle on his appreciation of Ghana.
Happy reading! For those of you who really know Ghana - what do you make of this?
“What do you want in Ghana? Go back to your country!”
Are you the kwasia (idiot) who shouted this at me yesterday from your taxi while I was minding my own business and waiting for my tro-tro at Presby junction? What made you come out with such an exclamation? Was it just too much apio (akpeteshi - local moonshine), or do you have a matter you want to discuss with me? Have you been to aborokyire (abroad) yourself and learnt only the bad things from there, like racism and anti-social behaviour? Did you witness my brothers sticking pickaxes in your brothers' heads, simply for having the audacity to possess beautiful black skin, and has this made you want to treat all non-Ghanaians with a similar contempt? Why didn't you come back when I asked you “woye hwan?” and signalled you to “bra!” (come), so that we could continue the conversation? I wanted to know what warranted such an uncalled-for verbal attack, and to ask you why you are so keen for me to go back to my country. As you were too much of a coward to stop the car and allow me to answer, I am forced to write my reply down and publish it on the web for you. Your provocation will not make my readers happy- this article isn't going to be quite as positive as the rest.
SEBE.
I might have retorted by telling you that I can't go back to my country because the UK has been taken over by millions of African immigrants, asylum seekers and illegal workers, leaving no jobs, houses or white girls left for the obroni. I'll go back to my country if you can remove all the Ghanaians from there first. Or, perhaps I should have laid the blame for my continued presence here on the procrastination and incompetence of your empty-promise government, who invited me over here in 2007 for discussions that are still to be had (“The minister has travelled to South America to collect some more cocaine, the secretary will be with you as soon as she finishes playing Solitaire”). Perhaps you were just jealous of the injustice of our respective visa regulations and angry that it takes you ten times more money and a hundred times more documents to get a visa to my country than it does for me to get one to yours. Maybe out of the vexation your aboa (silly) question laid on me, I should have lied and answered that, like most foreigners, I'm here because it's so damn easy to deceive the black man and even easier to sleep with the black woman. Whichever reply I chose to use would have been an angry one: your unprovoked, out-of-the-blue comment from the safety of a speeding taxi really pissed me off. I wasn't in the mood to “fa wo adamfo” (make friends with you), buy you a Star and tell you the real reason why I'm here, which is because there's no waakye and nkati cake in aborokyire (abroad), and because the GHanja is a hundred times cheaper than the ganja. And don't you know that a true prophet is never recognised in his own country? Imagine if Jesus Christ had been told to shut up and go back to Bethlehem every time he went out to preach his Father's word.
Anyway, why do you have a problem with foreigners in your country? Don't you want us to bring in our dollars, pounds and Euros to help prop up your feeble economy? Does “Travel and See” only apply to Ghanaians struggling to get “inside”? Tourism is Ghana's third highest earner of the money you expect to magically appear in your pocket every day. The money's definitely not going to end up in your pocket if you permit the perpetuation of the paradox that the most loved tourist hang-outs, like the bambootastic Tawala Beach Resort in La and Kumasi's Four Villages Inn, are built and owned by foreigners. Your other big earners are begging the IMF/World Bank/International Donors for loans, and all your yahoo contacts and “bogga” friends and family for remittances. Doing something yourself to create wealth doesn't seem to strike you as being possible (and dozing in your kiosks and containers every day selling foreign crap to each other does NOT create wealth). If you do really want all the foreigners out of Ghana, do you want them to take all their foreign inventions and imports with them when they go? Should the Americans and Germans leave with all their cars which you sit in, should the Chinese tear up all their roads you drive on, and should the Japanese take back all their mobile phones you talk on? Do you want the Indians to leave too? How on Earth will you survive without all their razor blades, matches and biscuits? Your people will probably die of thirst if the Thais cancel all their deliveries of Vitamilk. You probably want the South Africans to head back south too, but you love their Accra Mall with its fancy apparel, expensive food and Hollywood movies, don't you? Let's also tell the Norwegians and Canadians to go back to their fjords and Rocky Mountains and take all their mining equipment with them, leaving you to dig up your own oil and gold with a stick. And just make sure that you can produce your own corned beef and rice before you kick out the Argentineans and Vietnamese, OK? Are you sure you are able to function as a 21st century citizen alone? You haven't even caught up with the 18th (toilet in every home), the 19th (electricity in every home), or the 20th (shoes on every child) yet. Should the British take back all their educational legacy, Eurocentric textbooks and Cambridge curriculum, leaving the black man to devise and implement his own more acceptable, appropriate and Afrocentric schooling system? (Well, actually, yes they should.)
The latter matter goes to show that, even though I thought you put your point across in a rather rude and very un-Ghanaian manner (you didn't even greet me first!), you are arguably correct. The white man has done nothing but rape, pillage and underdevelop bibiman (the black man) since he “discovered” it hundreds of years ago.
He tries to hide the fact that by that time it had already for thousands of years been the home of mighty empires, luxurious palaces, golden warrior kings, rich internal trade routes, and the world's first great universities, religions, civilisations and bushdoctors- a time when Europe was wallowing in Dark Age squalor and dying from bubonic plague. It's all gone downhill for Africa and uphill for Europe from then on: the white man should have been told to go home as soon as he arrived, just as strongly as you told me yesterday. Perhaps your forefathers should have had your same strong convictions back in 1471 and told the Portuguese to “Vai tomar no cu!” when all this kwasiasem began. Instead, they deferentially allowed them to build their dirty slave castle on Elmina's sacred ground in exchange for a few bags of shells and bottles of cheap whisky. Ayikoo (good going!). Why didn't your great-grandfather tell my great-grandfather to stick the Bond of 1844 up his sorry white ass, instead of sycophantically signing it, thereby forcing his own free black people to become subservient to some faraway white queen? In 1957 the “colonial master”, after making himself fat and rich through 300 years of slave dealing and 113 years of natural resource stealing, “granted” you independence of your own land. How noble and gracious of him. At the time, did your fathers follow your proud and outspoken example and cry foul over this “Mickey Mouse Independence”? Obviously they didn't, because Lucky Dube was still singing about such empty emancipations more than fifty years later.
That's one of the messages Kwame Nkrumah was trying to tell your predecessors before the CIA had him killed off. As well as Osagyefo, you have many more historical figures you can be proud of, who did stand up to the Imperialist immigrants, but can you tell me about some of them? Probably not- you didn't look very educated. Most schoolchildren should know the name of the Ejisu Queenmother who bravely defended the Golden Stool in 1901, but how many can name the Akwamu chief who whipped some Danish ass in 1693 to become the Governor of Christianborg Castle- the only African to ever gain such a status on the Gold Coast? Name the Asantehene (1720-50) who demanded that the Europeans set up factories and distilleries in Africa, instead of forcing his people to buy imported goods. When your son gets back from school tonight, ask him why MacCarthy Hill is called MacCarthy Hill, and what happened to MacCarthy before he became a hill. I'll pay his school fees for a year if he knows. The Ashantis should be proud of chopping off that white invader's head in 1824. But are your children learning about and celebrating these great people and moments in black history, so they will be inspired to become great themselves? Or are they just traipsing 5 miles to their dull little concrete schools every day so they can memorise some Babylonian nonsense in order to regurgitate for the BECE then forget it? More worrying still, where are today's freedom fighters and role models who will be the future inspiration for your children's children? Osofo Kantanka can't do it all by himself. Who is going to stand out from the crowd and make sure that Ghana 2050 is not just a photocopy of Ghana 2010 (only with more layers of plastic waste)? Your leaders will never achieve anything for you and your people by dressing in suits, flying in planes and attending conferences, Bretton Woods negotiations and HIPC summits. Don't tell me to go home to aborokyire, tell them to come back from there.
Perhaps you shouted at me to go back to my country because you also realise that no state which uses a foreign tongue as its official language has ever progressed, and no economy that relies on foreign aid, Structural Adjustment Programmes and 98% foreign trade has ever grown. Do you also agree that Africa can never develop until it breaks its dependence on the white man? Are you also aware that the West is deliberately keeping Africa poor so that they can remain rich? I can empathise with your point of view; you want the obroni to stop meddling in Mother Africa and allow her to go through her own agricultural and industrial revolutions, without which no developed country has ever been created. Next time you drive past your Vice-President, will you have the balls to shout at him that begging for Brazilian tractors is not the answer?
However, please don't make the assumption that all foreigners are wicked (only most of us). There are a handful of abrofo afrophiles with no hidden agenda who are here for positive reasons, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm one of them. I challenge you to charge me with any offence against Ghana (apart from the herbs, which I only use in my own home with a police officer present). I have never taken money, natural resources, state secrets, smuggled cocoa or trafficked children out of your country (but I do always return home with a suitcase full of Golden Tree chocolate and Mapouka Cream Liqueur: why are these delicious Ghanaian products never available overseas, but I can always buy overpriced European Mars Bars and Baileys here?) I am not one of these “foreign investors” who your government seems to love so much, despite the fact that even if these vampires invest a million dollars, they're going to suck out more than a billion in the future. I have no interest in profiteering from your people by owning a telecommunications company, Lebanese supermarket or Irish bar. I am not here to impose my English expertise on the primitive African. In fact, the opposite is true: I have learned more here about respect, personal relationships, spiritualism and good living than I gained from decades in Europe. I am not a paedophile or a batty boy. If you don't believe me, ask my wife. If you don't believe her, ask my girlfriend. I'm different to most Englishman in that I learn other people's languages, instead of expecting the whole world to speak mine. I've already written at length about the myriad reasons why I've chosen to leave my unfriendly country of birth and live in asomdweman, none of which I believe are detrimental to Africa. Quite to the contrary, I only want to lead a conscious life here and do as much as I can to help my beloved adopted country. That's why I'm writing this column- nobody's paying me for it, but I hear on the grapevine that a lot of people are “feeling” it. That's the only form of payment I desire. I'm also doing my utmost to bring more tourists to Ghana- if you and your friends would stop shitting on the beach, then I'm sure it would help to attract a lot more.
Of course, I agree with you that there are plenty of wicked, Godless, money-grabbing foreigners in Ghana who do deserve to be on the receiving end of your scathing attack, and I forgive you for getting me mixed up with one of them. They're the ones who are doing their best to keep Africa down, whether it be by stealing your oil, imposing the price of your cocoa, braindraining your best graduates, transplanting their “foreign expertise”, or forcing you to be generation after generation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. We refer to these neo-colonialists who are feeding off the dying remains of your continent as “white men vultures”. I'm sure you have heard the local appellation of “Obroni p3t3!” (white vulture) - I half expected you to add that one when you were shouting at me. Even though these people share my colour, they certainly don't share my principles, and I want to get them out of Ghana as much as you do. These people definitely do not deserve your country's Akwaaba (welcome). I can't wait for the day when Kofi Wayo becomes president- he promises to arrest all the Chinese vultures who are buying up your factories and farmlands and galamseying in your rivers, and send them all to the firing squad. With Blakk Rasta as his vice-president, there would be a similar fate in store for all the depraved sexual deviants who are coming here to rape your sons and daughters, and for all the crazy junkies who are flooding the country with their evil Colombia powder.
I might even go so far as to say that any foreigner in Ghana who is not a tourist, volunteer, charity worker, philanthropist, prophet, or anyone like Joseph Hill with a desire to help “bring back the money with the sign of the Lion on it and take back the money with the sign of the dragon on it” can be referred to as obroni p3t3. The businessmen, miners, foreign lenders, hoteliers, vehicle dealers and makers of porn movies are all here to enrich themselves at your expense, so I don't blame you for being angry when you see a white man in your country. Nor was I surprised when a Rasta man who didn't know I was one of his brethren shouted “Slave master!” at me as we passed recently. Rather, I'm surprised that I'm not at the receiving end of these anti-white sentiments more often, considering the brutal and exploitative way in which my forefathers have treated yours over the past 500 years.
I'm sick of hearing, when I reveal that I'm British; “Oh! Our colonial masters! We love you! You taught us everything we know!” If Ghana had colonised Britain and sold my ancestors into slavery, I don't think I would be so friendly to Ghanaians. So your outburst was actually a breath of fresh air. Maybe more Ghanaians should be like you and strive to kick the bad foreigners out- they're only going to continue downpressing you if you don't. But get out the car and talk to them first: there's a small chance that you might actually like them. Strangers are only friends who have never met.
Ian Utley is the author of
“Culture Smart! Ghana, the Essential Guide to Customs and Culture”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Jordan - another world altogether...
Promise a follow up post on the ancient beauty and wonders of Jordan - but had to share this...
Thursday, April 22, 2010
My Lebanon - a feisty, feasting flurry of fun
My first impression of Lebanon was hatched through a cloud of smoke at the luggage carousel at Beirut’s Hariri airport.
After having our passports scrutinized for the dreaded Israeli stamp (which warrants immediate deportation), we wandered through to collect our bags and were greeted by a nightclub’s worth of exhaled smoke. Passengers and pilots all getting their fix after the long journey. But right there in the public areas of the airport? It just seemed so lawless, such an olden-days-before-the-international-ban type atmosphere…
In a way, it seemed like rebellious teenager, and my later impressions of Beirut as a city stayed true to that initial perception.
As we weaved our way through the streets that night I tried to soak it all in. Every sight, every building, person, smell, colour, curb… to compare what I saw to all of the stereotypes that had been built up in the collective mind of the westerner.
When I mentioned heading to Lebanon to many North American friends, the reactions were all negative or at least bemused.
“Why Lebanon??!"
“Will you be safe?”
“Interesting choice of holiday destination…”
What images came to their minds?
- Hezbollah – dangerous terrorists
- War – building rubble and wailing women
- Black veils oppressing women
- Anti Christian, anti Jewish, anti democracy-progress-development.
And the truth is that if I’d never met the amazing Lebanese people that I have in Ghana, I never would have gone.
But how wrong everyone was!
I must say though, that the streets of Beirut are not for the faint hearted when it comes to driving – and by extension, walking! There are no rules or at least no adherence to lanes, lights, right of way.. it is survival of the fittest and fastest. If you can hit the accelerator and the horn at the same time, you are on the right path.
But the more surprising feature of the roads is the actual cars. Bling bling bling… we learned quickly that it’s all about keeping up with the Khourys when it comes to your car in Beirut. The streets were full of the latest Porsche Cayenne, Ferraris, high end Audis and GMCs… Everywhere there is valet parking (including at McDonalds – no joke), and at the end of an evening at a club it’s a Hollywood scene as all the fancy cars pull up and the groups get in one by one, silently screaming “Look at us!”.
I later learned that many of these cars are on credit, but it’s all about living large in the here and now, and that general lust for life attitude carries over into all aspects of life. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much in the same period of time. We were in the hospitable hands of the greatest friends and every extended family member or friend we visited had a feast awaiting us.
Food itself is a phenomenon in Lebanon. The flavours are fresh and vibrant and indulgent. Food is not about hunger and digestion but socialization, fun, people. A good dose of Arak (Lebanon’s version of Pastis or Ouzo) also goes a long way to make a mezze meal stretch smoothly on for hours. It’s amazing to witness and take part in, even if your Arabic is limited to Inshallah, and Shukran…
As a matter of fact, most Lebanese are fluent in at least three languages. Everyone speaks French, English and Arabic, and many speak others like Italian, Spanish or even Chinese!
There is a true affection between the Lebanese and the French and it is evident everywhere. One night, as we walked along the busy, bar lined streets of Gemmayze, we came to one of our friend’s favourite places. The windows were perspiring and we could see a lively crowd within – separate tables of families and friends all joining in together to sing along with the performer, her backup piano squished in the semi circle of tables, backed onto the washrooms. We opened the door and the flood of voices hit us. They were singing French ‘classics’ and everyone knew the words. It was a vision of what Paris would be like if it’s population was Lebanese! We joined the crowd and ate, drank and tried to sing along. It was a spectacular evening, of the type it seems only the Lebanese know how to carry off so naturally.
The more time we spent in Beirut, the more I realized that due to CNN and it’s sisters, the West has a warped and uninformed idea of what Lebanon is about.
- Women in Beirut are all about glamour – eyebrows are tattooed perfectly, (if severely) nails are done, hair shines with not a lock out of place and the high heeled shoes made me unsteady on my feet just looking at them. I barely saw abayas and hijabs, let alone the niqabs that cover the whole face. I also have never seen more facial plastic surgery in my life – and I have been to Los Angeles! Dr. 90210 has nothing on this place ☺
I don't know how they feast so much and stay so fit... the gyms must be busy!
- The biggest KFC I’ve ever seen, like a a KFC Mega Mall, spanning a full city block – I saw in Beirut.
- Dunkin’ Donuts is everywhere, and police (like their American counterparts) can be found hovering with a coffee in hand.
- The sound of Christian Church bells rivals the Muslim call to prayer all around Lebanon
- Skiing is a popular winter sport in the mountains of Lebanon
- Most signboards around the city of Beirut are in English or French
- Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits is a popular fast food joint (and I thought it was too regional to come to Canada!)
Beirut is a modern city, but it has character. It has many battle scars. It cannot completely hide the years of bombings, of invasions and civil wars, and there are many buildings, their facades pock marked with bullet wounds. It’s so difficult for an outsider to imagine what the place and the people have gone through, and so recently, when you meet the open, friendly kind-hearted masses.
I think that being through trauma makes us appreciate each day, each flower, each fruit.
We saw vibrant red poppies, sprouting up through concrete landscapes, and tasted exotic fruits like escadinia (a small oblong yellow fruit, like a plum, with shiny rich brown seeds inside), and bomali, a huge citrus fruit, somewhat like a grapefruit but larger and sweeter, and the sharp tang of fresh almonds, green and slightly fuzzy, eaten with salt.
When friends took us to the hills outside the concrete jungle of Beirut (where there is no free standing homes, just miles and miles of highrises), we came to a different world. We drove through tiny Druze villages perched atop cliffs and wound our way to a magical home, built into the side of a mountain. It took my breath away.
Artichokes and orange trees and huge fresh green beans grew all around and the house itself, like a secret cabin, peeked out, fully open to the trees and blooming flowers that sheltered it.
There was a feast there too – a luncheon where the guests poured in from the city, and the drinks and food poured out of the open kitchen just as fast.
There was an Easter egg hunt for the kids as it was Easter Sunday, and trays of baklawa for us adults. Yum.
This is the Lebanon we were embraced by – the fast and the slow, the sad and the joyous, the vibrancy that flows in the people, the places, the soul of the country.
Some great links about Lebanon:
Blogging Beirut
Lonely Planet
Lebanon.com
After having our passports scrutinized for the dreaded Israeli stamp (which warrants immediate deportation), we wandered through to collect our bags and were greeted by a nightclub’s worth of exhaled smoke. Passengers and pilots all getting their fix after the long journey. But right there in the public areas of the airport? It just seemed so lawless, such an olden-days-before-the-international-ban type atmosphere…
In a way, it seemed like rebellious teenager, and my later impressions of Beirut as a city stayed true to that initial perception.
As we weaved our way through the streets that night I tried to soak it all in. Every sight, every building, person, smell, colour, curb… to compare what I saw to all of the stereotypes that had been built up in the collective mind of the westerner.
When I mentioned heading to Lebanon to many North American friends, the reactions were all negative or at least bemused.
“Why Lebanon??!"
“Will you be safe?”
“Interesting choice of holiday destination…”
What images came to their minds?
- Hezbollah – dangerous terrorists
- War – building rubble and wailing women
- Black veils oppressing women
- Anti Christian, anti Jewish, anti democracy-progress-development.
And the truth is that if I’d never met the amazing Lebanese people that I have in Ghana, I never would have gone.
But how wrong everyone was!
I must say though, that the streets of Beirut are not for the faint hearted when it comes to driving – and by extension, walking! There are no rules or at least no adherence to lanes, lights, right of way.. it is survival of the fittest and fastest. If you can hit the accelerator and the horn at the same time, you are on the right path.
But the more surprising feature of the roads is the actual cars. Bling bling bling… we learned quickly that it’s all about keeping up with the Khourys when it comes to your car in Beirut. The streets were full of the latest Porsche Cayenne, Ferraris, high end Audis and GMCs… Everywhere there is valet parking (including at McDonalds – no joke), and at the end of an evening at a club it’s a Hollywood scene as all the fancy cars pull up and the groups get in one by one, silently screaming “Look at us!”.
I later learned that many of these cars are on credit, but it’s all about living large in the here and now, and that general lust for life attitude carries over into all aspects of life. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much in the same period of time. We were in the hospitable hands of the greatest friends and every extended family member or friend we visited had a feast awaiting us.
Food itself is a phenomenon in Lebanon. The flavours are fresh and vibrant and indulgent. Food is not about hunger and digestion but socialization, fun, people. A good dose of Arak (Lebanon’s version of Pastis or Ouzo) also goes a long way to make a mezze meal stretch smoothly on for hours. It’s amazing to witness and take part in, even if your Arabic is limited to Inshallah, and Shukran…
As a matter of fact, most Lebanese are fluent in at least three languages. Everyone speaks French, English and Arabic, and many speak others like Italian, Spanish or even Chinese!
There is a true affection between the Lebanese and the French and it is evident everywhere. One night, as we walked along the busy, bar lined streets of Gemmayze, we came to one of our friend’s favourite places. The windows were perspiring and we could see a lively crowd within – separate tables of families and friends all joining in together to sing along with the performer, her backup piano squished in the semi circle of tables, backed onto the washrooms. We opened the door and the flood of voices hit us. They were singing French ‘classics’ and everyone knew the words. It was a vision of what Paris would be like if it’s population was Lebanese! We joined the crowd and ate, drank and tried to sing along. It was a spectacular evening, of the type it seems only the Lebanese know how to carry off so naturally.
The more time we spent in Beirut, the more I realized that due to CNN and it’s sisters, the West has a warped and uninformed idea of what Lebanon is about.
- Women in Beirut are all about glamour – eyebrows are tattooed perfectly, (if severely) nails are done, hair shines with not a lock out of place and the high heeled shoes made me unsteady on my feet just looking at them. I barely saw abayas and hijabs, let alone the niqabs that cover the whole face. I also have never seen more facial plastic surgery in my life – and I have been to Los Angeles! Dr. 90210 has nothing on this place ☺
I don't know how they feast so much and stay so fit... the gyms must be busy!
- The biggest KFC I’ve ever seen, like a a KFC Mega Mall, spanning a full city block – I saw in Beirut.
- Dunkin’ Donuts is everywhere, and police (like their American counterparts) can be found hovering with a coffee in hand.
- The sound of Christian Church bells rivals the Muslim call to prayer all around Lebanon
- Skiing is a popular winter sport in the mountains of Lebanon
- Most signboards around the city of Beirut are in English or French
- Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits is a popular fast food joint (and I thought it was too regional to come to Canada!)
Beirut is a modern city, but it has character. It has many battle scars. It cannot completely hide the years of bombings, of invasions and civil wars, and there are many buildings, their facades pock marked with bullet wounds. It’s so difficult for an outsider to imagine what the place and the people have gone through, and so recently, when you meet the open, friendly kind-hearted masses.
I think that being through trauma makes us appreciate each day, each flower, each fruit.
We saw vibrant red poppies, sprouting up through concrete landscapes, and tasted exotic fruits like escadinia (a small oblong yellow fruit, like a plum, with shiny rich brown seeds inside), and bomali, a huge citrus fruit, somewhat like a grapefruit but larger and sweeter, and the sharp tang of fresh almonds, green and slightly fuzzy, eaten with salt.
When friends took us to the hills outside the concrete jungle of Beirut (where there is no free standing homes, just miles and miles of highrises), we came to a different world. We drove through tiny Druze villages perched atop cliffs and wound our way to a magical home, built into the side of a mountain. It took my breath away.
Artichokes and orange trees and huge fresh green beans grew all around and the house itself, like a secret cabin, peeked out, fully open to the trees and blooming flowers that sheltered it.
There was a feast there too – a luncheon where the guests poured in from the city, and the drinks and food poured out of the open kitchen just as fast.
There was an Easter egg hunt for the kids as it was Easter Sunday, and trays of baklawa for us adults. Yum.
This is the Lebanon we were embraced by – the fast and the slow, the sad and the joyous, the vibrancy that flows in the people, the places, the soul of the country.
Some great links about Lebanon:
Blogging Beirut
Lonely Planet
Lebanon.com
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Mud on my face, a big disgrace
Seems I've disappeared without a trace....
Here I am bathing in the healing mud of the dead sea!
Actually I've been to Beirut and Jordan too. Wow. No time to post today, but I promise profound observations of the beauty of the Middle East!!!
Here I am bathing in the healing mud of the dead sea!
Actually I've been to Beirut and Jordan too. Wow. No time to post today, but I promise profound observations of the beauty of the Middle East!!!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Up in The Air - Observations of a traveler
I’m in an airport again. Ran around like an absolute mad woman at the office today, delusional in the belief I would get all the loose ends tied up and leave early. Got home the usual time, threw the last things into my bag (realized the humidity in Accra is rotting the zippers of the luggage), and had a shower. Then ran around the house trying to organise food for the boys at home for the week, and had about half an hour to unwind. Now I’m sitting in Accra’s International airport. It’s 33 celcius outside and it’s 9pm. The air-conditioners are not working in the airport today. Little tickly beads of sweat are gathering into fluid streams, and find their way down my temples, behind my ears, under my bra. I feel soggy.
An hour ago I was fresh and clean.
This scenario plays out about twice a month. I travel a lot for work. Every chance I get, I travel for pleasure as well. Sometimes I like to combine the two. I probably travel too much but who’s to say what’s too much. Last month it was Sierra Leone, now it is Canada, later this month it will be Lebanon and Jordan (but that one’s for pleasure!), and then the day we get back, we’re on a plane to Nigeria.
Whenever I am in transit I find myself considering my identity, my place, my cultural constructs of the world. Where do I belong?
I’m looking down at myself. My t-shirt was bought in Houston while at an Oil & Gas exhibition. My jeans were bought last year on the trip to the PDAC show in Toronto. My shoes were bought when down in South Africa last year for a wedding. We got my watch in Los Angeles on Rodeo Drive (which was a bit surreal). My laptop from a mall in Germany, my phone on a trip through Dubai.
Living in Ghana, where adventures with local salons have led to disaster*, I even have a hairdresser in Dubai! Go to her every time I’m passing through. I think that might be an indication that I travel too much.
This trip is taking me via Heathrow, back ‘home’ to Canada. The term ‘home’ doesn’t really fit into my reality. Though Toronto is my birthplace and I grew up in the surrounding suburbs, I have lived in a completely different world for close to 15 years. I’ve spent 14 of the 22 years of my adult life (that’s 63%), on another continent in a world so far away on so many levels. My concerns are not the concerns of anyone I know in Canada. My day to day reality, something so different, so removed. And now that has become the norm for me.
I think the day I first realized the extent of my alienation was when I arrived at Pearson International some years ago, carried along by the drowsy crowds of arriving passengers, and noticed acutely the accents of the immigration officers. I picked up the certain nuances that characterize a Canadian accent - something I didn’t realize existed before I left her shores.
In the expat world of Ghana, I spend time amongst Ghanaians, Nigerians, British, Germans, Jordanians, Polish, Lebanese, South Africans, Americans, Spanish, Italians, French - and the odd Canadian.
For now, that life is home. Our house, a 70’s monstrosity, was once the Libyan Embassy. With company furniture and a few local nick nacks, we have no sentimental connection. Our next home will be a boat, and we will take it where our whims carry us.
Over past few years, whenever I arrive back in Toronto I find that I’ve lost the connection to the city. It has become like so many others – arrive one week, notice the new buildings, smell the unfamiliar air, off to another destination the next week.
With an outsider’s eye, the city no longer feels comfortable. It has no spark, no recognizable beauty. It is a suburb. Life goes on here, mothers take their kids to school in their 4x4s, each neighborhood has it’s chain store mall, the sidewalks are straight and the grass is cut. There are laws and rules and things work. Elevators go up and down, water comes from the taps. In winter a grey hue descends and covers everything. It wills people to hibernate against it’s grizzly embrace. In summer it is peeled away and people live more each day for those few ‘thawed’ months, when the sun visits.
All of this is a foreign world to me. At ‘home’ in Accra I dodge potholes in the road, look away at traffic lights, as the beggars push their thin babies to the car window. I argue with the house cleaner/cook about putting mint instead of basil in the spaghetti sauce and for forgetting that bleach isn’t to be used on the coloured clothes… I worry about the generator not starting or the water supply being cut off for weeks. I worry about the malaria spreading mosquitos every night when we’re out past 6pm. I consider 26 degrees celcius a cold day and 38 degrees a hot day – and I can expect the average temperature all year to be 30 to 34…
11 hours have passed and I’m in another airport. I’m surrounded by a whirlwind of colour and sound – undecipherable chatter and coats and bags and parcels and the swoosh of late passengers dashing toward gates.
I sit quietly and am very aware of myself as one among the many. Just another passenger headed to another destination.
But my trip is not like any other. I happen to be heading to Toronto. Though I don’t live there anymore, it is my family that draws me back. I am lulled by their welcoming arms at the airport. The delight and excitement in my mother’s eyes when she first catches sight of me among the crowd. I am attracted to the nostalgia, to the din of the family’s chatter on a Sunday afternoon, while my sister cooks up a gourmet meal. There is a tenderness and a level of comfort that has no equal. When I am back in Ghana I keep the memories of these visits in a place deep within me. Mementos. They remind me what the term home actually means.
An hour ago I was fresh and clean.
This scenario plays out about twice a month. I travel a lot for work. Every chance I get, I travel for pleasure as well. Sometimes I like to combine the two. I probably travel too much but who’s to say what’s too much. Last month it was Sierra Leone, now it is Canada, later this month it will be Lebanon and Jordan (but that one’s for pleasure!), and then the day we get back, we’re on a plane to Nigeria.
Whenever I am in transit I find myself considering my identity, my place, my cultural constructs of the world. Where do I belong?
I’m looking down at myself. My t-shirt was bought in Houston while at an Oil & Gas exhibition. My jeans were bought last year on the trip to the PDAC show in Toronto. My shoes were bought when down in South Africa last year for a wedding. We got my watch in Los Angeles on Rodeo Drive (which was a bit surreal). My laptop from a mall in Germany, my phone on a trip through Dubai.
Living in Ghana, where adventures with local salons have led to disaster*, I even have a hairdresser in Dubai! Go to her every time I’m passing through. I think that might be an indication that I travel too much.
This trip is taking me via Heathrow, back ‘home’ to Canada. The term ‘home’ doesn’t really fit into my reality. Though Toronto is my birthplace and I grew up in the surrounding suburbs, I have lived in a completely different world for close to 15 years. I’ve spent 14 of the 22 years of my adult life (that’s 63%), on another continent in a world so far away on so many levels. My concerns are not the concerns of anyone I know in Canada. My day to day reality, something so different, so removed. And now that has become the norm for me.
I think the day I first realized the extent of my alienation was when I arrived at Pearson International some years ago, carried along by the drowsy crowds of arriving passengers, and noticed acutely the accents of the immigration officers. I picked up the certain nuances that characterize a Canadian accent - something I didn’t realize existed before I left her shores.
In the expat world of Ghana, I spend time amongst Ghanaians, Nigerians, British, Germans, Jordanians, Polish, Lebanese, South Africans, Americans, Spanish, Italians, French - and the odd Canadian.
For now, that life is home. Our house, a 70’s monstrosity, was once the Libyan Embassy. With company furniture and a few local nick nacks, we have no sentimental connection. Our next home will be a boat, and we will take it where our whims carry us.
Over past few years, whenever I arrive back in Toronto I find that I’ve lost the connection to the city. It has become like so many others – arrive one week, notice the new buildings, smell the unfamiliar air, off to another destination the next week.
With an outsider’s eye, the city no longer feels comfortable. It has no spark, no recognizable beauty. It is a suburb. Life goes on here, mothers take their kids to school in their 4x4s, each neighborhood has it’s chain store mall, the sidewalks are straight and the grass is cut. There are laws and rules and things work. Elevators go up and down, water comes from the taps. In winter a grey hue descends and covers everything. It wills people to hibernate against it’s grizzly embrace. In summer it is peeled away and people live more each day for those few ‘thawed’ months, when the sun visits.
All of this is a foreign world to me. At ‘home’ in Accra I dodge potholes in the road, look away at traffic lights, as the beggars push their thin babies to the car window. I argue with the house cleaner/cook about putting mint instead of basil in the spaghetti sauce and for forgetting that bleach isn’t to be used on the coloured clothes… I worry about the generator not starting or the water supply being cut off for weeks. I worry about the malaria spreading mosquitos every night when we’re out past 6pm. I consider 26 degrees celcius a cold day and 38 degrees a hot day – and I can expect the average temperature all year to be 30 to 34…
11 hours have passed and I’m in another airport. I’m surrounded by a whirlwind of colour and sound – undecipherable chatter and coats and bags and parcels and the swoosh of late passengers dashing toward gates.
I sit quietly and am very aware of myself as one among the many. Just another passenger headed to another destination.
But my trip is not like any other. I happen to be heading to Toronto. Though I don’t live there anymore, it is my family that draws me back. I am lulled by their welcoming arms at the airport. The delight and excitement in my mother’s eyes when she first catches sight of me among the crowd. I am attracted to the nostalgia, to the din of the family’s chatter on a Sunday afternoon, while my sister cooks up a gourmet meal. There is a tenderness and a level of comfort that has no equal. When I am back in Ghana I keep the memories of these visits in a place deep within me. Mementos. They remind me what the term home actually means.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Getting arrested, the Triple F cups and the Chameleons
Memorable moments from Makola market...
These days I’m quite careful about what comes with me on our indulgent Saturday market visits. After all, it is a crowded market in the 'developing world' and theoretically I and my friends would be walking targets... I usually wear a pair of multipocket pants that can house little wads of small bills. I don’t wear any jewellery and I leave my watch behind. Because of what we’re likely to step in, I wear the most basic chale-wotes (flip flops) that can be easily washed off, and most of all, I leave my iPhone behind.
This is all precautionary, since despite the swarms of people I find myself amongst, I’ve never had a thing snatched or stolen. In 13 years of Saturday market adventures.
This week’s visit started out more exciting than most. I drove into my trusted parking lot at the edge of the chaos that is Makola, lost in the stories of my market buddies T and J as we chatted in the cocooned world of my air-conditioned 4x4. Targets on wheels in this case...
As I came around the corner, a uniformed female police officer was in my path and made some motion to me. I assumed she was ‘asking’ if I was turning into the parking lot and I nodded and headed on in. I parked and we gathered ourselves, ready to head out into the heat and congestion, when at my passenger door there was the same police officer and her male colleague, faces pursed and annoyed. I knew immediately NOT to open or even unlock our doors, and feared we had a long tedious argument on our hands.
I rolled the window down half way. They immediately started with the verbal assault.
Female officer (indignant): “Madam, why?! I was arresting you, and then you kept driving! You didn’t mind me!”
Me: “Oh! Madam I didn’t realize! I was just parking. What did I do wrong?”
Male officer pushing forward with furrowed brow: “You are arrested for passing through the traffic light.”
Me and friends: “WHAT?!”
MO: “It was red!”
Me and friends: “No it was not!”
I knew this like I knew my own name. The truth is that though I have my Canadian driver’s license and I keep it valid, I haven’t updated my Ghanaian one since 2000. *Bows head and blushes*… Maybe I am lazy, or more likely it’s that I like living on the edge. Some bungee jump, I drive with a non-valid license… Anyway, for this reason, I make sure I do NOTHING wrong on the roads, lest I find myself in a situation such as this one!
For this reason I knew the officers had simply spotted a few obruni ladies and figured ‘easy target’ for a Saturday shake down… But we weren’t having it.
Just then, MO shoves his sweaty aggressive hand past my friend, indicating at me,
MO: “Where’s your license and registration? Give it!”
We ignore this demand the first time around, hoping the argument T has sparked with the FO about how she is sick of Ghanaian police taking advantage of obrunis, would sway his attention. But he asked again.
Me – really hesitantly: “Please I don’t have it with me”
MO – “Ah! Why?” deeply furrowed brow now… (I’ve given him some ammo!!! Oh no!)
Then the din of T’s indignant protest, assuring them we did nothing wrong and that they were unfairly targeting us, became quite loud. And a miracle happened. Their brows slackened and they backed down. No bribe, no demand that we be taken to the station for processing…
MO: “Do well and be honest. You passed through the red light, but I’m just warning you.”
Me: “I did not run the red officer, and thank you.”
And they skulked away, without a pesewa of bribe money. We felt proud and relieved and giddy. It’s not that often you get arrested and then let off with a warning!
And then we were free to start our market adventure. Phew! Ghana police 0, market mongers 1!
As we headed out of the parking lot on foot, J glanced to her side, to the mobile phone seller’s wooden hut a couple meters from us. She cringed and grabbed my arm.
J: “Oh my god! That was…oh… bad.”
T and I: “What? What was it?”
J: “The man in there that was petting a cat… he just squeezed it’s head and shoved it in a bag. Next came the hammer.”
Me: “Oh. I’m sure that was the meat for today’s soup. Sorry-o. They do eat cats here.”
J: “I know, just didn’t want to witness the slaughter…”
Ok, onto the street. Deep breaths. After all, this is adventure day!
And all around us life swirled and screamed and splattered itself across the pavement. Carried along with the tangible heat and jostled limbs.
We browsed the 'selection' clothes that the girls line the streets, selling by hand, and hid them when the AMA goons came by to whip them or steal their goods in a bogus attempt to 'clean the streets' of hawkers... I found a near exact replica of my favourite expensive perfume for GHC18 (about $12), down to the Made in France label. I opened it and tried it out... Exactly the same as the real one! Market bargain!! (That one made my day, really). I won't however, mention the little tied black plastic bag, literally full of shit, that T stepped in, since there was a trusty 'pure watah' seller on hand and a full on the spot wash of the chale-wotes was done...
I was struck by all the things around us that needed documenting! That needed to be photographed. But alas, in my caution of ‘traveling light’, I left the trusty iPhone at home. So it wasn’t to be.
I’ll have to leave to your imagination the transvestite in full yellow leotard in Rawlings Square, dancing for the huge crowds, his painted face melting through the streaks of sweat…
The huge bowl of dried, once alive, chameleons for sale, alongside buttons and brightly coloured cloth and Maggi cubes… just in case you need to cast a spell after cooking and sewing.
The triple F cup naked mannequin, proudly jutting out of the little shop selling cheap Chinese ladies clothes. She stood in front of two other less endowed mannequins, with a rack you’d find difficult to fit any shirt over… How, why?
The how and the why of the market are never answered, which is what gives it the intrigue and the charm. It leaves us all covered in dust and sweat and with fresh coconut juice pouring down our faces, slurped and gulped straight out of the coconut, sliced open for the parched, by a machete wielding seller. It leaves us with the deep desire to come back again the next available Saturday.
These days I’m quite careful about what comes with me on our indulgent Saturday market visits. After all, it is a crowded market in the 'developing world' and theoretically I and my friends would be walking targets... I usually wear a pair of multipocket pants that can house little wads of small bills. I don’t wear any jewellery and I leave my watch behind. Because of what we’re likely to step in, I wear the most basic chale-wotes (flip flops) that can be easily washed off, and most of all, I leave my iPhone behind.
This is all precautionary, since despite the swarms of people I find myself amongst, I’ve never had a thing snatched or stolen. In 13 years of Saturday market adventures.
This week’s visit started out more exciting than most. I drove into my trusted parking lot at the edge of the chaos that is Makola, lost in the stories of my market buddies T and J as we chatted in the cocooned world of my air-conditioned 4x4. Targets on wheels in this case...
As I came around the corner, a uniformed female police officer was in my path and made some motion to me. I assumed she was ‘asking’ if I was turning into the parking lot and I nodded and headed on in. I parked and we gathered ourselves, ready to head out into the heat and congestion, when at my passenger door there was the same police officer and her male colleague, faces pursed and annoyed. I knew immediately NOT to open or even unlock our doors, and feared we had a long tedious argument on our hands.
I rolled the window down half way. They immediately started with the verbal assault.
Female officer (indignant): “Madam, why?! I was arresting you, and then you kept driving! You didn’t mind me!”
Me: “Oh! Madam I didn’t realize! I was just parking. What did I do wrong?”
Male officer pushing forward with furrowed brow: “You are arrested for passing through the traffic light.”
Me and friends: “WHAT?!”
MO: “It was red!”
Me and friends: “No it was not!”
I knew this like I knew my own name. The truth is that though I have my Canadian driver’s license and I keep it valid, I haven’t updated my Ghanaian one since 2000. *Bows head and blushes*… Maybe I am lazy, or more likely it’s that I like living on the edge. Some bungee jump, I drive with a non-valid license… Anyway, for this reason, I make sure I do NOTHING wrong on the roads, lest I find myself in a situation such as this one!
For this reason I knew the officers had simply spotted a few obruni ladies and figured ‘easy target’ for a Saturday shake down… But we weren’t having it.
Just then, MO shoves his sweaty aggressive hand past my friend, indicating at me,
MO: “Where’s your license and registration? Give it!”
We ignore this demand the first time around, hoping the argument T has sparked with the FO about how she is sick of Ghanaian police taking advantage of obrunis, would sway his attention. But he asked again.
Me – really hesitantly: “Please I don’t have it with me”
MO – “Ah! Why?” deeply furrowed brow now… (I’ve given him some ammo!!! Oh no!)
Then the din of T’s indignant protest, assuring them we did nothing wrong and that they were unfairly targeting us, became quite loud. And a miracle happened. Their brows slackened and they backed down. No bribe, no demand that we be taken to the station for processing…
MO: “Do well and be honest. You passed through the red light, but I’m just warning you.”
Me: “I did not run the red officer, and thank you.”
And they skulked away, without a pesewa of bribe money. We felt proud and relieved and giddy. It’s not that often you get arrested and then let off with a warning!
And then we were free to start our market adventure. Phew! Ghana police 0, market mongers 1!
As we headed out of the parking lot on foot, J glanced to her side, to the mobile phone seller’s wooden hut a couple meters from us. She cringed and grabbed my arm.
J: “Oh my god! That was…oh… bad.”
T and I: “What? What was it?”
J: “The man in there that was petting a cat… he just squeezed it’s head and shoved it in a bag. Next came the hammer.”
Me: “Oh. I’m sure that was the meat for today’s soup. Sorry-o. They do eat cats here.”
J: “I know, just didn’t want to witness the slaughter…”
Ok, onto the street. Deep breaths. After all, this is adventure day!
And all around us life swirled and screamed and splattered itself across the pavement. Carried along with the tangible heat and jostled limbs.
We browsed the 'selection' clothes that the girls line the streets, selling by hand, and hid them when the AMA goons came by to whip them or steal their goods in a bogus attempt to 'clean the streets' of hawkers... I found a near exact replica of my favourite expensive perfume for GHC18 (about $12), down to the Made in France label. I opened it and tried it out... Exactly the same as the real one! Market bargain!! (That one made my day, really). I won't however, mention the little tied black plastic bag, literally full of shit, that T stepped in, since there was a trusty 'pure watah' seller on hand and a full on the spot wash of the chale-wotes was done...
I was struck by all the things around us that needed documenting! That needed to be photographed. But alas, in my caution of ‘traveling light’, I left the trusty iPhone at home. So it wasn’t to be.
I’ll have to leave to your imagination the transvestite in full yellow leotard in Rawlings Square, dancing for the huge crowds, his painted face melting through the streaks of sweat…
The huge bowl of dried, once alive, chameleons for sale, alongside buttons and brightly coloured cloth and Maggi cubes… just in case you need to cast a spell after cooking and sewing.
The triple F cup naked mannequin, proudly jutting out of the little shop selling cheap Chinese ladies clothes. She stood in front of two other less endowed mannequins, with a rack you’d find difficult to fit any shirt over… How, why?
The how and the why of the market are never answered, which is what gives it the intrigue and the charm. It leaves us all covered in dust and sweat and with fresh coconut juice pouring down our faces, slurped and gulped straight out of the coconut, sliced open for the parched, by a machete wielding seller. It leaves us with the deep desire to come back again the next available Saturday.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Recalling How Toyota Has Let Us Down
Village goat 1, Toyota 0...
Early last year we picked up our brand new shiny white Toyota Fortuner from the dealership in Accra. Buying a car new and from the dealer is at once a luxury as well as a necessity if you want a reliable car in Ghana. There are a lot of what is called ‘home used’ cars on the market- that have been used abroad and sent to Ghana in various stages of disrepair, with no guarantees of any sort.
So it was great to pull off the lot in the new smelling 4x4, once we’d convinced them to remove the plastic wrappers from all the seats (apparently in Ghana many new car buyers like to keep it on as a status thing…) ANYWAY – it was certainly a step down from the shiny new model Land Cruisers bought in bulk by the NGOs in town, but it was a Toyota – a brand I’ve always trusted.
My very first car as an independent woman was a modest little gold painted, Toyota Corolla. It was used and unassuming, but it represented an important phase in my life – my first days as a newly single mother and business owner, and that little car was so reliable! I washed it every weekend myself in the summer and treated it to car washes in the winter. It carried my most important human cargo every day – my little boy – and it served me without a hitch for years. Since then I’ve always had the naïve appreciation and trust in Toyota as a company. Made in Japan meant quality, reliability, longevity…
But something has changed with Toyota. Something dangerous and far reaching. It threatens to damage a solid reputation.
Back in Ghana, on the road, the first hour out of the dealership we were on the pseudo-highway, headed down the coast. As soon as we hit 95km, the car made a strange noise. JW, unlike me, is quite in tune with cars. He knew immediately something was wrong. This problem persisted and a vibration happened any time we went above this speed.
It had to be sent back for wheel realignment. It never got better.
Then one day, on a Sunday drive to the beach, a car in front of us lost it’s bumper at full speed – it just fell/flew off and it was up to JW to react fast, which he did. But our Fortuner had it’s own ideas. As soon as he swerved, the car felt unsteady, unbalanced and as if it would tip right over. It was quite scary.
Another Sunday soon after, a goat wandered into the road, as they are apt to do – in fact on the roads of Ghana, one must be ready for random animals, children and stray car parts to float into your path without warning, oblivious to your presence or speed. JW swerved again and the car wobbled precariously, seeming for that split second that it would overturn, before righting itself. It was frightening.
We did some research and found out these models are assembled in South Africa. They have been banned in many Western countries for being too top heavy, too dangerous.
SO – it seems Toyota have been trying to send the junk models into Africa.
We gave the car into the work pool and bought a Mitsubishi…
With all the recent recalls of Toyota cars in the west, I now believe they have cut corners in all their markets. The president of the company, (Mr. Toyota!) actually made a public statement last week that the company had grown too fast and priorities had become confused.
Once a company with a long held reputation for quality starts endangering people’s lives around the world to save a few pennies and sell bulk vehicles, it’s time to lose the loyalty. Time to turn somewhere else. I think our next car will be a German one…
Early last year we picked up our brand new shiny white Toyota Fortuner from the dealership in Accra. Buying a car new and from the dealer is at once a luxury as well as a necessity if you want a reliable car in Ghana. There are a lot of what is called ‘home used’ cars on the market- that have been used abroad and sent to Ghana in various stages of disrepair, with no guarantees of any sort.
So it was great to pull off the lot in the new smelling 4x4, once we’d convinced them to remove the plastic wrappers from all the seats (apparently in Ghana many new car buyers like to keep it on as a status thing…) ANYWAY – it was certainly a step down from the shiny new model Land Cruisers bought in bulk by the NGOs in town, but it was a Toyota – a brand I’ve always trusted.
My very first car as an independent woman was a modest little gold painted, Toyota Corolla. It was used and unassuming, but it represented an important phase in my life – my first days as a newly single mother and business owner, and that little car was so reliable! I washed it every weekend myself in the summer and treated it to car washes in the winter. It carried my most important human cargo every day – my little boy – and it served me without a hitch for years. Since then I’ve always had the naïve appreciation and trust in Toyota as a company. Made in Japan meant quality, reliability, longevity…
But something has changed with Toyota. Something dangerous and far reaching. It threatens to damage a solid reputation.
Back in Ghana, on the road, the first hour out of the dealership we were on the pseudo-highway, headed down the coast. As soon as we hit 95km, the car made a strange noise. JW, unlike me, is quite in tune with cars. He knew immediately something was wrong. This problem persisted and a vibration happened any time we went above this speed.
It had to be sent back for wheel realignment. It never got better.
Then one day, on a Sunday drive to the beach, a car in front of us lost it’s bumper at full speed – it just fell/flew off and it was up to JW to react fast, which he did. But our Fortuner had it’s own ideas. As soon as he swerved, the car felt unsteady, unbalanced and as if it would tip right over. It was quite scary.
Another Sunday soon after, a goat wandered into the road, as they are apt to do – in fact on the roads of Ghana, one must be ready for random animals, children and stray car parts to float into your path without warning, oblivious to your presence or speed. JW swerved again and the car wobbled precariously, seeming for that split second that it would overturn, before righting itself. It was frightening.
We did some research and found out these models are assembled in South Africa. They have been banned in many Western countries for being too top heavy, too dangerous.
SO – it seems Toyota have been trying to send the junk models into Africa.
We gave the car into the work pool and bought a Mitsubishi…
With all the recent recalls of Toyota cars in the west, I now believe they have cut corners in all their markets. The president of the company, (Mr. Toyota!) actually made a public statement last week that the company had grown too fast and priorities had become confused.
Once a company with a long held reputation for quality starts endangering people’s lives around the world to save a few pennies and sell bulk vehicles, it’s time to lose the loyalty. Time to turn somewhere else. I think our next car will be a German one…
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Bad Dogs and Johnny Paul Tireless
The streets of Freetown...
Welcome sign at Lungi International Airport. Apparently Sierra Leone has a Secretariat dedicated to 'attitudinal and behavioral change'...
A custom designed gate on the streets of Freetown.
Typical 'sidewalks' crumbling - people are quite adept at dodging the cement chunks and gutter openings...
The royal statue at the gates of my hotel, the Kimbima... (one of the newer and better hotels that touts itself as a 5 star)
Piled and rotting rubbish and the threat painted on the wall, warning people not to piss here...
More rubbish and graffiti.
A teddy bear sale above the gutter on a main street sidewalk. So cute! Just wondering who in Freetown has the funds, time or energy to buy used plush toys from the roadside...
A typical glimpse of a family house compound. I love all the colours. Laundry, buckets, pots, cups, people, all parts of the busy whole.
Avocado seller.
Childhood in many parts of Africa is about hard work and co-parenting can start by age 5. Here a big sister carries her sibling on the long walk to school.
The mobile phone companies signs provide decoration across the country in many villages. Fresh coats of pain are offered to poor and dilapitated buildings, at the cost of free advertising for the Cellco...
Love the name of this business...
Waterloo Street.
A bunch of guys ... lots of waiting around.
More 'free' paint jobs for tired walls...
Lots of corrugated tin structures...
Amerikin Enterprises...
Growth, Togetherness, Happiness. The promises of yet another mobile phone operator.
Welcome sign at Lungi International Airport. Apparently Sierra Leone has a Secretariat dedicated to 'attitudinal and behavioral change'...
A custom designed gate on the streets of Freetown.
Typical 'sidewalks' crumbling - people are quite adept at dodging the cement chunks and gutter openings...
The royal statue at the gates of my hotel, the Kimbima... (one of the newer and better hotels that touts itself as a 5 star)
Piled and rotting rubbish and the threat painted on the wall, warning people not to piss here...
More rubbish and graffiti.
A teddy bear sale above the gutter on a main street sidewalk. So cute! Just wondering who in Freetown has the funds, time or energy to buy used plush toys from the roadside...
A typical glimpse of a family house compound. I love all the colours. Laundry, buckets, pots, cups, people, all parts of the busy whole.
Avocado seller.
Childhood in many parts of Africa is about hard work and co-parenting can start by age 5. Here a big sister carries her sibling on the long walk to school.
The mobile phone companies signs provide decoration across the country in many villages. Fresh coats of pain are offered to poor and dilapitated buildings, at the cost of free advertising for the Cellco...
Love the name of this business...
Waterloo Street.
A bunch of guys ... lots of waiting around.
More 'free' paint jobs for tired walls...
Lots of corrugated tin structures...
Amerikin Enterprises...
Growth, Togetherness, Happiness. The promises of yet another mobile phone operator.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Gone gone gone, she been gone so long...
I've been gone so long. I feel as if I'm sheepishly crawling back into this space to see if I'm still welcome. If someone will throw tomatoes or old shoes at me... I'm ducking.
Waiting...
Phew! Ok I see I'm safe. Well my excuse is that life has been happening in a big way. Some experiences that are beyond the world of blogging and far closer to the world of book/screenplay that have come my way...
But also I have traveled and though I had no Internet connection, I did write about the experience and I share it here:
Notes from a business trip in Sierra Leone…
A simple three day business trip to Sierra Leone is basically anything but that. The 2 hour flight becomes an 8 hour journey, since once you arrive in the country, you discover the airport is across a large body of water from the capital city…
My last visit involved boarding an ancient Russian helicopter to get the last leg across. Back then, the helicopter was run by a shady little company called Paramount Airlines. The beast was at least 40 years old, struggled to move, and held it’s passengers like captives, with all the luggage in the middle and rough benches around the perimeter. There were tiny round windows with no glass, which was a good thing because the heat inside was literally unbearable. The few wafts of breeze through the windows kept us going… All said, the journey from the airport to Freetown was about 10 minutes, but those were terrifying… Two years ago they crashed for the final time and that very day, the pilots and all staff closed up the offices and left the country. Their signboards still line the streets to Freetown…
I was pleasantly surprised this time though, climbing aboard the helicopter at Lungi airport. It was obviously bought over from the UN when they evacuated a few years ago, and was a significant step up from the ancient beast.
There are two other methods of reaching the mainland from the airport but the chances of all options being operational at the same time are slim to none. The hovercraft takes about 45minutes, the ferry can take 5 hours, the speed boats only 25 minutes, but they bash along on the waves, and have been known to run out of gas half way…
So I braved the helicopter, which is now only a 7 minute journey on a professional looking craft, with airline seats, luggage compartment in the back, and headsets to block out the noise. Luxury!
But the improvements in Sierra Leone since my last visit seem to have ended there. On arrival.
There was some sort of a commotion in the lobby as I arrived. My attention was quickly pulled from the rusting airconditioners outside, and the dark wood paneling that choked the small lobby, by the reactions of the staff. Having seemingly woken from their working trance, they all gathered around the tiny elevator at the far end of the room.
In their signature broken English, I pieced together that all the back and forth was about the elevator being stuck and some poor sod being stuck inside.
The men in the lobby, some cleaners, some guards and various other hangers-on, all gathered around the old metal door with some large object and began to pry it open. There was a lot of noise, rough banging and eventually the door was sufficiently damaged, and pulled aside on an unnatural angel. Inside, a white man’s chubby, hairy calves were revealed, along with a tote bag hanging down with the words “London Museum” visible. The floor of the elevator car had jammed half way between the two floors.
One man ran for a chair from behind the reception desk and was met with hesitation and resistance by the lady who had no interest in having her seat be used in a rescue effort. She was supposed to be checking me in, but apparently had no interest in that either.
Eventually the man was pulled, twisted and finally’ born’ like a red pudgy newborn, feet first out the bottom of the elevator door, a bit shaken but still with a witty comment for the staff, “I’ll be taking the stairs from now on!”.
This is the type of scene that plays in my head at every African hotel I’ve been to. This is the worst nightmare that has had me climbing 14 stories continually up and down to my room in Nairobi, Kenya on a 4 day trip – getting exercise by sheer circumstance… There are the persistent power outages and the general African lack of maintenance that render elevators a no-go area for me.
My colleague had brought me supposedly to ‘one of the new hotels’ but NOT the one that I’d been booked into, that actually had it’s own website and had been reviewed on Tripadvisor. That was too good to be true. Turns out there are a myriad of NGO and church conferences going on in town this week – surprise, surprise… and hence the lack of rooms.
So, for $130 a night, I got the Kimbima Hotel, a building overlooking the ocean, which claims to be a 5 star hotel but still manages to look like a dismal depressing dungeon…
The place literally looks as if it were built without an architect, by 10 rival groups of 7 year olds, each group trying their best to mismatch what had been done by the group before. No door closes properly, many staircases lead to nowhere, windows lead onto walls, and columns, trellises, tiles and all are installed on angles. Electricity sockets are not straight, doors are not straight, stairs are nor straight nor are each the same height. Uniformity and straight lines are not concepts in building here. There are cement, wood and tile surfaces with various patterns, paneling and interlocking bricks and all can be found in one room or one area.
There is mold in the hallways, in the rooms, in the chairs. I hope it’s not in the sheets.
This morning I came out of my room and met the cleaning crew. They’d swept up all the creatures of the night and managed to tip hundreds of wellfed cockroaches onto their backs. As I descended the 7 stories down to the breakfast room, I passed many twitching roaches, each having lost this one little battle, surrounded by yesterdays’ dust and crumbs…
On the beach though - you can’t help but have positive thoughts. The promise if each new wave as it laps the shore is infinite. I took a long walk down the beach, after learning the president had announced a new holiday, one day in advance, in the middle of my 3 day trip…
In Ghana, though we live in a coastal town, there is no serene beach, no long luxurious stretch of mother nature’s cool white sand to play in. All the patches of sandy coastline are divided up between hotels and various communities that would rather use it as a toilet than construct latrines…
So I love this about Freetown. There is a gorgeous stretch of beach, just a walk from the hotels. It’s just beyond the huge UN Peace Keepers compound that was a hive of activity only a few years ago. It stands empty now. I hear they left everything in tact when they moved out. Every airconditioner, TV set, fridge. A local guy is now renovating it, apparently with the aim of converting it into a hotel. I can only imagine what changes will be made…
Walking along, as I dig my toes in the sand, I pass the remnants of cafés that boomed with music, patrons, cocktails… dotting the boardwalk along the beach in the UN days. Even the American movie Blood Diamond alluded to the hedonistic bar scene that existed.
Now, there are only crumbling reminders. The bleached wood chairs and tables, in varying stages of disrepair, with rust stains, like blood pouring from their wounds, these are the carcasses of the false economy that ran Freetown. When the UN left, the bar scene died. The prostitutes now circle at night, their eyes are wild and desperate. I watch them, younger and younger, circling the fewer prey…
I come to a dilapidated gazebo on the beach. On the sides are painted warnings, “No Weapons Allowed” with rudimentary drawings of rifles with big red X’s over them. This was a disarmament stand during the war. It’s a reminder that this beach held much more than waves and cocktails and party goers, not so long ago.
I’ve been told they’ve sent many of the ex-child soldiers off to Afghanistan and Iraq to do menial labour jobs. This is considered good as they will return with some money in their pockets. I’m not sure how true this is, but what about the legacy in their minds? In their violent and vacant hearts?
Back at the hotel, as I climb the dusty path to the long winding road along the bay, I can’t help notice the hundreds of dogs I pass. All are sleeping, spread carelessly across the dusty rocky ground. They lie in the paths of cars and pedestrians, a symbol of the despair around them. Each house along my path leads down to the water. They should be prime real estate! Instead, they are unpainted, half built or half torn down structures, with squatters sitting in the exposed rooms, washing their few tattered clothes and stringing them across the unkempt yards, blowing in the breeze like captive birds…
Waiting...
Phew! Ok I see I'm safe. Well my excuse is that life has been happening in a big way. Some experiences that are beyond the world of blogging and far closer to the world of book/screenplay that have come my way...
But also I have traveled and though I had no Internet connection, I did write about the experience and I share it here:
Notes from a business trip in Sierra Leone…
A simple three day business trip to Sierra Leone is basically anything but that. The 2 hour flight becomes an 8 hour journey, since once you arrive in the country, you discover the airport is across a large body of water from the capital city…
My last visit involved boarding an ancient Russian helicopter to get the last leg across. Back then, the helicopter was run by a shady little company called Paramount Airlines. The beast was at least 40 years old, struggled to move, and held it’s passengers like captives, with all the luggage in the middle and rough benches around the perimeter. There were tiny round windows with no glass, which was a good thing because the heat inside was literally unbearable. The few wafts of breeze through the windows kept us going… All said, the journey from the airport to Freetown was about 10 minutes, but those were terrifying… Two years ago they crashed for the final time and that very day, the pilots and all staff closed up the offices and left the country. Their signboards still line the streets to Freetown…
I was pleasantly surprised this time though, climbing aboard the helicopter at Lungi airport. It was obviously bought over from the UN when they evacuated a few years ago, and was a significant step up from the ancient beast.
There are two other methods of reaching the mainland from the airport but the chances of all options being operational at the same time are slim to none. The hovercraft takes about 45minutes, the ferry can take 5 hours, the speed boats only 25 minutes, but they bash along on the waves, and have been known to run out of gas half way…
So I braved the helicopter, which is now only a 7 minute journey on a professional looking craft, with airline seats, luggage compartment in the back, and headsets to block out the noise. Luxury!
But the improvements in Sierra Leone since my last visit seem to have ended there. On arrival.
There was some sort of a commotion in the lobby as I arrived. My attention was quickly pulled from the rusting airconditioners outside, and the dark wood paneling that choked the small lobby, by the reactions of the staff. Having seemingly woken from their working trance, they all gathered around the tiny elevator at the far end of the room.
In their signature broken English, I pieced together that all the back and forth was about the elevator being stuck and some poor sod being stuck inside.
The men in the lobby, some cleaners, some guards and various other hangers-on, all gathered around the old metal door with some large object and began to pry it open. There was a lot of noise, rough banging and eventually the door was sufficiently damaged, and pulled aside on an unnatural angel. Inside, a white man’s chubby, hairy calves were revealed, along with a tote bag hanging down with the words “London Museum” visible. The floor of the elevator car had jammed half way between the two floors.
One man ran for a chair from behind the reception desk and was met with hesitation and resistance by the lady who had no interest in having her seat be used in a rescue effort. She was supposed to be checking me in, but apparently had no interest in that either.
Eventually the man was pulled, twisted and finally’ born’ like a red pudgy newborn, feet first out the bottom of the elevator door, a bit shaken but still with a witty comment for the staff, “I’ll be taking the stairs from now on!”.
This is the type of scene that plays in my head at every African hotel I’ve been to. This is the worst nightmare that has had me climbing 14 stories continually up and down to my room in Nairobi, Kenya on a 4 day trip – getting exercise by sheer circumstance… There are the persistent power outages and the general African lack of maintenance that render elevators a no-go area for me.
My colleague had brought me supposedly to ‘one of the new hotels’ but NOT the one that I’d been booked into, that actually had it’s own website and had been reviewed on Tripadvisor. That was too good to be true. Turns out there are a myriad of NGO and church conferences going on in town this week – surprise, surprise… and hence the lack of rooms.
So, for $130 a night, I got the Kimbima Hotel, a building overlooking the ocean, which claims to be a 5 star hotel but still manages to look like a dismal depressing dungeon…
The place literally looks as if it were built without an architect, by 10 rival groups of 7 year olds, each group trying their best to mismatch what had been done by the group before. No door closes properly, many staircases lead to nowhere, windows lead onto walls, and columns, trellises, tiles and all are installed on angles. Electricity sockets are not straight, doors are not straight, stairs are nor straight nor are each the same height. Uniformity and straight lines are not concepts in building here. There are cement, wood and tile surfaces with various patterns, paneling and interlocking bricks and all can be found in one room or one area.
There is mold in the hallways, in the rooms, in the chairs. I hope it’s not in the sheets.
This morning I came out of my room and met the cleaning crew. They’d swept up all the creatures of the night and managed to tip hundreds of wellfed cockroaches onto their backs. As I descended the 7 stories down to the breakfast room, I passed many twitching roaches, each having lost this one little battle, surrounded by yesterdays’ dust and crumbs…
On the beach though - you can’t help but have positive thoughts. The promise if each new wave as it laps the shore is infinite. I took a long walk down the beach, after learning the president had announced a new holiday, one day in advance, in the middle of my 3 day trip…
In Ghana, though we live in a coastal town, there is no serene beach, no long luxurious stretch of mother nature’s cool white sand to play in. All the patches of sandy coastline are divided up between hotels and various communities that would rather use it as a toilet than construct latrines…
So I love this about Freetown. There is a gorgeous stretch of beach, just a walk from the hotels. It’s just beyond the huge UN Peace Keepers compound that was a hive of activity only a few years ago. It stands empty now. I hear they left everything in tact when they moved out. Every airconditioner, TV set, fridge. A local guy is now renovating it, apparently with the aim of converting it into a hotel. I can only imagine what changes will be made…
Walking along, as I dig my toes in the sand, I pass the remnants of cafés that boomed with music, patrons, cocktails… dotting the boardwalk along the beach in the UN days. Even the American movie Blood Diamond alluded to the hedonistic bar scene that existed.
Now, there are only crumbling reminders. The bleached wood chairs and tables, in varying stages of disrepair, with rust stains, like blood pouring from their wounds, these are the carcasses of the false economy that ran Freetown. When the UN left, the bar scene died. The prostitutes now circle at night, their eyes are wild and desperate. I watch them, younger and younger, circling the fewer prey…
I come to a dilapidated gazebo on the beach. On the sides are painted warnings, “No Weapons Allowed” with rudimentary drawings of rifles with big red X’s over them. This was a disarmament stand during the war. It’s a reminder that this beach held much more than waves and cocktails and party goers, not so long ago.
I’ve been told they’ve sent many of the ex-child soldiers off to Afghanistan and Iraq to do menial labour jobs. This is considered good as they will return with some money in their pockets. I’m not sure how true this is, but what about the legacy in their minds? In their violent and vacant hearts?
Back at the hotel, as I climb the dusty path to the long winding road along the bay, I can’t help notice the hundreds of dogs I pass. All are sleeping, spread carelessly across the dusty rocky ground. They lie in the paths of cars and pedestrians, a symbol of the despair around them. Each house along my path leads down to the water. They should be prime real estate! Instead, they are unpainted, half built or half torn down structures, with squatters sitting in the exposed rooms, washing their few tattered clothes and stringing them across the unkempt yards, blowing in the breeze like captive birds…
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