March 30, 2005
Sachet blues
Nearly anywhere you go in Ghana, you can find someone selling water in small clear plastic bags, called "sachets". The plastic bags are presumably cheaper to produce than bottles, and maybe easier to transport in bulk, and they retail at a fraction of a cent.
Stop at a traffic light at any major intersection in Accra, and hawkers will walk up to your car, with huge bowls perched on top of their heads filled with water sachets. (The throngs of hawkers at these intersections sell nearly everything but the kitchen sink).
Typically I buy bottles of Voltic water, produced somewhere up near Lake Volta. But in a pinch, I'll buy a sachet.
Opening and drinking from a sachet is definitely an acquired skill. You bite off a corner of the plastic to create a litle hole, then squeeze the water into your mouth.
The first time I did this, acting confidently as though I'd done it a million times, I squeezed the bag while biting off the corner and all the water in the sachet spurted all over me while the taxi driver dissolved into giggles.
I still can't get it quite right, but the water squirting onto me is a nice relief from the heat anyway.
The plastic sachets have created a major waste management problem in Ghana. There are very few garbage cans to be found anywhere, and as in so many African countries, litter is common. Empty water sachets carpet the streets and gutters here. Ghana's vice-president formed a National Waste Management Programme last year to tackle the issue.
The program has run into some problems, but the sachet pollution is a topic of discourse here, and a Ghanaian journalist has even produced a documentary on the sachets. The doc will be screened at the upcoming first annual Environmental Film Festival of Accra (sadly, I will miss the festival).
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 3:12 PM | Comments (1)
March 29, 2005
Snacking Ghana-style
I've had a lifelong love affair with snacks. Snacking to me is as vital as breathing oxygen. As my sister and brothers will attest, I panic if I sense there are no snacks within a ten-minute radius of wherever I am.
So it's natural that since I first set foot on African soil so many years ago, I have loved West African snacks.
In Niger, I adored beignets, farine masas, grilled taro root dipped in ground piment, sweet dates, kooli-kooli ground peanut chunks, and Lebanese frozen chocolate bars. In Ghana, I've learned to crave what I initially thought were inferior snacks. Here, plantains are King Snack, and pretty much the only snack. Everywhere you go there are plantains. Fried whole plantains. Grilled plantain halves. Thinly shaved fried plantain slices. Tidy round plantain chips. Baked plantain slivers. Whatever snack is available, it seems to almost always be based on the plantain.
Once in a while, a young boy or girl walks by with a load of fried taro root chips on their head, and I eagerly snap up baggies full of the salty white and purple chips.
I recently found myself waxing poetic with a Togolese chef about the crispy sugar-dipped beignets and piment-laced corn fritters of our neighboring francophone countries... I think I may be overdue for a day-trip to Lome, Togo, for some serious snacking.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 12:47 AM | Comments (4)
March 28, 2005
Obruni waawu
A seemingly ominous phrase that visitors to Africa soon discover is benign is "the dead man's market." These are the markets selling cast-off clothing from North America and Europe, and they blanket the African continent. It's often startling to be in a little bush village and see someone wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "I Got Lei'd in Maui" or "Kel's Irish Pub Rocks!".
Here in Ghana they call the used-clothing markets "obruni waawu", literally "a foreigner has died." The used western clothing is affordable for the poor, and considered fashionable by the hip. Ghana imports more used clothing than any other African country, running a clothing and fabric trade deficit of nearly forty million dollars a year.
The clothing arrives in huge plastic sacks bound with thick metal bands. It's amazing to watch someone open a bundle, and see the layers and layers of tightly packed clothes burst out. I have no idea how they get so much compressed into one bundle -- it's like they use a giant Ronco vacuum-seal device from the TV infomercials (hello, KRON-4?!).
There's an enormous dead man's market in Accra, in the Kantamanto area. There are rows and rows and rows of stalls with a dizzying selection of used clothes. The stalls are stuffed with high school football jerseys, fun-run T-shirts, nightclub wear, baby clothes, skirts, dresses, men's suits, sweat suits, socks, shoes, underwear, lingerie, and tons and tons of blue jeans. Most of the clothes are simply heaped in piles or left in bags for shoppers to paw through.
Visiting the Kantamanto market is exhausting. Filming there, as I did last week, is an order of magnitude worse.
Today is a national holiday (yet another one!), so this morning I headed to Kantamanto to look for a couple T-shirts. Luckily my intuition was right and it was a very quiet day there, with only about one-third of the vendors open. I eventually found a couple decent T-shirts, for which I paid about 2,000 cedi each (roughly 30 cents).
Then, the sun beating down on me and sweat rolling down my back, I took shelter at the nearby "God's Grace Fast Food" snack stand. They were out of fast food. In fact, they were out of all food. But they did have a cold Coke and a chair with an umbrella over it, which at that point was like manna from heaven.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 2:51 PM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2005
Bi-cultural flip
The text message beeped onto my cell phone last night: "Beach tomorrow. Meet at Vasili's Cafe 9am."
And so with that high-tech missive from the Canadians, I found myself spending Easter Sunday in expatriate comfort at White Sands Beach, an hour west of Accra and just off the Cape Coast road.
Breakfast in Accra was chocolate croissants and tea at Vasili's, where even a Catholic priest in his white robe and pink sash stopped by for morning sustenance. Then into the air-conditioned SUV of Mustapha, a young Lebanese friend of my Canadian friends. He plugged his iPod into the car stereo, set it to 'shuffle' and off we went.
White Sands Beach is about 15 minutes past Buduburam, and next to the fishing village of Gomoa Feti. It's on a cove and protected from the incredibly strong undertows and rip currents that usually make it impossible to swim along this coast. The beach area was developed two years ago by a Lebanese entrepreneur, who put up some tables and palapas, a barbeque grill for kebabs, and a wood-burning oven for pizza. He also somehow got rights to make the beach private, and so there is an entry fee of 25,000 cedi (around three dollars).
The entry fee means that hawkers aren't milling about the beach, and it means the beach isn't being used as an outdoor toilet facility, which is the case with most public beaches here.
We bought our entry tickets, quickly claimed a palapa, spread out our towels, and plunged into the waves. We got in some good bodysurfing, swimming, naps, and snacking on hummus, calamari and fries (they're "Mexican fries" here, not "French fries" and most definitely not "Freedom fries"). We even rented the 3-person catamaran for an hour, a bargain at 80,000 cedi, which is about nine dollars.
It was a blissful escape from the dust, heat, grime and stressful hum of everyday life here. Of course, there were still African moments, like our kebab order taking three hours to be filled because there 'are no kebabs' they said, even as platters of kebabs continuously streamed past us.
Interestingly, a Ghanaian company was holding its five-year anniversary celebration at the beach (on Easter?!), and the employees set up under the palapa next to us. They cavorted in the waves, held beach footraces, and staged a hilarious game of tug-of-war in front of us.
Every day I'm reminded of the parallel universes I inhabit here. I spend my days with Ghanaians and with Liberian refugees, who have rich cultures and impressively strong family ties, but are often scraping along to just barely get by in pretty dire circumstances. But I spend many evenings -- and today -- with expats like me, who can afford three-dollar pina coladas and four-dollar pizzas, and who have access to air-conditioned cars with deliciously tinted windows and two thousand songs on an iPod.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 8:35 PM | Comments (1)
March 26, 2005
The Ice Man
Iso Paelay is the thirtysomething host of a popular music entertainment show Thursday nights on Ghana's TV3. Stage-named "Ice Baby" or "Ice Man", Iso interviews local personalities, spins records and generally holds forth with great energy and charisma.
But it's an accident that Iso is here in Ghana at all.
With a Liberian mother and Sierra Leonean father, Iso ("ICE-oh") grew up in Liberia until civil war broke out, then fled to Sierra Leone. When that country dissolved into its own civil war, Iso bounced among refugee camps in the two countries. He eventually made his way to Ghana, where he was able to bootstrap a life.
As I hung out with him the other night, it struck me that he is just one of hundreds of thousands of young West Africans whose lives have been spent in chronic limbo, fleeing from one war only to have to flee another, losing contact with their families and making their way as best they can.
For men like Iso, fleeing war meant not only not being murdered, but not being abducted into one of the militaries and forced into killing. For women who escaped wars so gruesome they defy explanation, the best case scenarios have often been brutal. Rape was all too common. Prostitution and HIV are prevalent, and teenage motherhood is a not-so-bad outcome.
By all standards, Iso is a success here. But he told me he doesn't feel he's accomplished much until he gets a college degree. He had just begun university in Liberia when Charles Taylor's rebels invaded from Cote d'Ivoire in 1989. Iso's career is hot here, but he's hoping to go to Corvallis, Oregon to study at Oregon State University, of all places. Strange to be here talking to an African war refugee and hear he's dreaming about my faraway home state.
There are so many youth of war who are now heading toward middle age with lives derailed, dreams still deferred, and families scattered across thousands of miles, if still alive at all.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 10:38 PM | Comments (1)
March 25, 2005
Got religion?
It is believed that Christianity arrived on the Gold Coast (present day Ghana) with the first Portuguese settlers in the sixteenth century. Christian missionaries began streaming in during colonial times and the flood continues today. The majority of Ghanaians have embraced Christianity -- and how.
Religion is evident everywhere around me. The streets are littered with restaurants, shops and companies named with faith in mind. Some of my recent favorites include "Praise God Cell Phone Repair", "He Is Risen Chop Bar", "Shower of Blessings Boutique", "Faith Chemical Store", "God First Spare Parts", "By God's Power" medicine stand, and "The Finger of God Beauty Salon". When the business name is not a profession of faith, some add postscripts giving full credit to their higher power, as with the "Happy Home Fashion" shop.
City taxis and tro-tros (that's 'bush taxis' to my Niger friends) profess their faith on fenders and windows. "Well Done Jesus" is spelled out in adhesive letters on the back window of the taxi in front of me. "It's God!!!!!!" reads the front fender of a tro-tro bound for the coast. "It's a Miracle" proclaims the bumper of a tro-tro heading to Buduburam. (It usually IS a miracle that these tro-tros are moving).
While more than seventy percent of Ghanaians are Christian, according to the 2000 census, somewhere around twenty percent are Muslim. Most Muslims are in the north, but I have happened upon many stores here in the south named in praise of Allah.
Today, Good Friday, is a national holiday and the thousands and thousands of churches in Ghana are filled with worshippers. Even Mahmoud, a Muslim friend here, is heading to the mosque this morning for a special prayer session... Or maybe he just gets to go to the mosque for midday prayers since he has the day off. Unclear to me, as are so many things here.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 8:26 AM | Comments (1)
March 24, 2005
Heat relief
It figures. The day I finally have an air-conditioned ride out to Buduburam, the refugee settlement, is the day the cool weather arrives.
"Cool" is a relative concept, of course. Yesterday morning dawned gray and menacing. A huge thunderstorm hit around nine in the morning, and the rest of the day was spent in the refreshing 80- to 85-degree range.
It was the first time on this trip that I haven't had to use my little sweat towel to wipe the dripping sweat from my face and neck throughout the day. Most Ghanaians carry small towels or big handkerchiefs for just this purpose. They're carried either in your pocket, handbag, or perched on your shoulder. One of my first days here, I bought mine from a street hawker while stuck in pollution-choked traffic near the Kaneshie market. It's a small towel somewhere between washcloth and hand towel size. It's a necessity, and at a price of 2,500 cedi (30 cents), it's one of my best investments so far.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 4:59 PM | Comments (3)
March 22, 2005
Spamstorm
Since I started using cybercafes in Ghana two weeks ago, spamming to my Yahoo! email account has increased more than fivefold. Coincidence?
Some Ghanaians warned me that no matter how much care I took, people would be peering over my shoulder at these places and noting down all my information. They blame it on Nigerians and Liberians. (There's a scapegoat for every situation, eh?!).
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 2:51 PM | Comments (2)
March 21, 2005
Currency death spiral
Carrying money around in Ghana is a necessity in this cash-based economy, but it's no simple feat.
Ghana's currency, the cedi, ("cee-DEE"),has gone the way of the old Italian lira, with one U.S. dollar worth 9,200 cedi. The depreciation spiral has been decades in the making. In 1983, one U.S. dollar was worth 90 cedi. In 1993, one dollar would net 720 cedi. The breathtaking drop from there to 9,200 cedi in ten years has been tragic for the struggling economy.
As their currency has spiraled downward, Ghanaians have watched their purchasing power plummet. The current price index for Ghanaians is impossibly high. The average Ghanaian wage is somewhere between one and three dollars per day. Think of your daily gross pay, then imagine that that's what a gallon of gas cost you. It's unimaginable.
For Westerners, the cheap cedi means bargain living, even for Americans with the plummeting U.S. dollar. Taxi fares start at about 50-cents for a short hop, with long trips around $3-4. A cold Coke is 60-cents, and a bottle of Ghanaian Star beer is 70-cents.
But purchase any commodity or service at Western prices, like hotels, electronics, or private transportation (i.e. driver), and dealing with cedis becomes challenging.
That's because the largest bill available is the 20,000 cedi, or $2. And that's not a common bill. The most common is the 10,000 cedi, or $1, bill. So it's like transacting all business in cash and in one-dollar bills. A trip to the money-changer leaves me with large wads of cash, and as I make purchases around town, the big notes multiply into more bills of smaller denominations.
Trying to discreetly carry that many bills around requires two different wallets and more secret hiding spots in clothing and bags. All well and good until I need to pay for something and can't find the proper bills in the first or second wallet.
I try to keep my cash organized in some fashion, with small bills of change in the most accessible wallet, but somehow as each day progresses my money management system dissolves into chaos and I end up openly rummaging through wads of bills in various pockets and wallets to find a 15,500 cedi taxi fare.
There may be hope for the currency in the form of the new West African Monetary Zone and its proposed new currency, the "eco". The eco would follow the example of the CFA, the currency used in most francophone countries here. "Eco" countries are mostly Anglophone West Africa, including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia and Guinea (the only francophone country of the lot). The current thinking is that the eco would be tied to the South African rand for stability.
Apparently plans for establishing the "eco" are behind schedule, but are moving ahead nonetheless. I've seen billboards in Accra and Kumasi promoting the "eco" concept.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)
March 20, 2005
Blame Canada
When a Ghanaian law enforcement official is called to task for detaining and beating up a Ghanaian reporter, he may have to blame Canada.
For a country relatively new to democracy and open expression, Ghana has a surprisingly active and diverse media. There are more than a dozen national daily papers, scores of radio stations, and four television stations. But the news reporting can be superficial, and the media seem hesitant to dig under the surface.
Enter the Canadians. Journalists for Human Rights is small nonprofit founded by our neighbors to the north. Its flagship program is here in Accra. Canadian journalists volunteer for a few months, mentoring Ghanaian journalists in reporting on human rights issues and instructing them on their legal rights as reporters.
Because of JHR, every Thursday, page three in Ghana's Chronicle is the "Social Justice" page, and it's filled with stories exploring Ghana's lack of habeas corpus, prostitution, domestic violence and more. Met TV, a national television station, airs an in-depth story on human rights every Saturday. And JoyFM injects human rights reporting into its daily newshours now.
Jamie, Bonnie, Colleen and Drake are the intrepid Canadians currently working in Ghanaian newsrooms. They typically work behind the scenes, giving the bylines and credits to the journalists they are mentoring, but they also do their own freelance reporting to supplement their small stipends.
Ato Dadzie is JHR's country director. When he was detained by police and beaten up two weeks ago, his story was featured on the Chronicle's "Social Justice" page.
Seeing the results of their work is inspiring. It strikes me that what JHR is doing is a brilliant way to foster good, investigative journalism in countries with new media freedom.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 4:33 PM
March 18, 2005
Wahala
Americans tend to get irritated when gas prices go up. Imagine if they doubled overnight.
That's what happened in Ghana just three weeks before I arrived. The government announced they were abolishing the subsidies that kept gas prices at about 15,000 cedi (the local currency), or $1.50, per gallon. Gas now costs around 30,000 cedi ($3) for a gallon, and the effects of the price hike are being felt in every corner of the country.
The protests began last week. Dubbed "Wahala" by the organizers (that's Hausa for "suffering" or "hardship"), the first demonstration resulted in a few arrests, lots of press coverage, and passionate debate among Ghanaians.
The second "Wahala" protest was yesterday morning, in the midst of an impressive police presence. It wasn't a huge demonstration, but hundreds marched, danced and sang, and even former Ghanaian president Jerry John Rawlings was there. The protesters say the steep gas prices aren't the result of abolished subsidies, but rather the consequence of outrageous new government taxes. The high gas prices, they say, will cripple the country.
What effect "Wahala" will have on gas price policy is unclear, but what's impressive is the amount of media coverage and public debate the demonstrations have caused.
Meanwhile, on my own little practical level, as a foreigner, figuring out taxi prices in African cities is usually a challenge. The taxis often don't have meters and taxi drivers perceive foreigners as walking ATM machines. Figuring out fares here in Accra in the wake of the gas price hike is confounding. Two weeks into my trip and I'm just getting a handle on what constitutes a fair price for any given taxi ride.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)
March 16, 2005
An island of calm
Needa Jehu-Hoya is in no danger of working herself out of a job anytime soon. She works for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) in Ghana.
This country of 20 million people is a relative newcomer to democracy and stability, with its national constitution and open elections dating back to just 1992. It's a poor country, with a GDP of just $320 per capita. Ghana is on the World Bank's list of "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries," and as such is in line for some relief of its staggering external debt, which currently hovers somewhere between $4-$7 billion. With a crushing unemployment rate, young and old alike scramble for months and even years to secure jobs here.
Yet Ghana has been the safe haven for hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighboring countries over the years. Call it the curse of being one of the most peaceful countries in the region.
When Liberia's civil war erupted in 1989, dragged on through the nineties, and spread to Sierra Leone, Ghana took in a stream of Liberians fleeing the chaos, although it doesn't share a border with Liberia. At the same time up to 150,000 Togolese fled to Ghana for shelter from their repressive ruler, Gnassingbe Eyadema.
The UNHCR estimates that there are now less than 100,000 refugees in Ghana, most of them Liberians, and most long-term refugees. Most of these refugees live in or near Buduburam, an hour west of Accra. The UNHCR no longer calls Buduburam a "camp", but rather a "settlement", because after sixteen years, there are no longer tents and mess halls but permanent buildings and businesses (and limited foreign aid). Some of the refugees have permanent jobs in Ghana. One is even an anchor on a popular television channel in Accra.
Absorbing and caring for the waves of refugees from its neighbors puts an obvious burden on the struggling Ghanaian government and people, but as more than one Ghanaian has told me, they believe their duty is to help spread peace and stability in the region.
That's a tall order. As Liberia's situation improves, or at least remains stable with 15,000 UN peacekeepers in place, Ghana's neighbor to the west, Cote d'Ivoire, teeters on the brink of civil war.
Togo, the tiny country to Ghana's east, is in a tense state of limbo, with its strongman president of three decades, Gnassingbe Eyadema, buried this weekend and elections scheduled in the next few months. Eyadema's son, Faure Gnassingbe, attempted to seize the presidency hours after his father's death, but harsh sanctions imposed by ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and the European Union convinced him to step aside. Still, many longtime Togo analysts judge the situation there extremely fragile.
And so Ghana, and the UNHCR, wait. They wait to see if Liberia's peace will hold after that country's elections in October. They wait to see what Togo's elections will bring. They wait to see if Cote d'Ivoire will disintegrate into violence and send streams of refugees into Ghana. And they wait to see if Ghana's young democracy will be strong enough to weather the storms of its neighbors.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 12:43 PM | Comments (2)
March 15, 2005
Fufu
Pronounced "foo-foo", it's the staple of many West African diets. Necessary comfort food for West Africans. Something to get used to for westerners traveling in this region.
Made from pounded cassava, white yam, corn, or any other starchy vegetable, fufu is served as a gelatinous mound swimming in sauce. You dip your fingers in (right hand only!), squeeze off a blob, swish it around in the sauce and eat.
The sauces are often very spicy and are usually dotted with hunks of chicken, fish, goat meat or bushmeat.
Here in Accra, many seem to prefer banku ("bank-oo") to fufu. Banku is similar to fufu, but made from ground corn that is somehow fermented and then cooked. It's served the same way as fufu, but they tell me it's lighter.
In cities like Accra and Kumasi, and even in small villages, bowls of fufu and banku are sold by vendors on almost every street corner and in local restaurants. A big bowl of fufu in a decent restaurant sells for 15,000 cedis, or $1.50. I'm sure it's much less in the street.
The thing about fufu is it seems to expand in your stomach after consumption. Couple it with a carbonated soft drink or beer, and it seems to swell exponentially in the belly.
Add that to a 100-plus degree day of sun, and it's a recipe for this "obruni" (foreigner) to spend the afternoon or evening horizontally inert.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 12:34 PM | Comments (3)
March 14, 2005
Ashanti land
The Ashanti were once the rulers of a vast swath of present-day Ghana, their culture rich in tradition and ritual and their wealth coming from the gold snaking through their land.
This weekend I ventured up to Kumasi, the heart of the former Ashanti kingdom. Or perhaps not former, as there is still an Ashanti monarchy. King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II ascended the throne in 1999, when the former king passed away and the Queen Mother, his aunt, Nana Afia Kobi Jeiwaa Ampem II, chose him as king. Royal lineage is matrilineal among the Ashanti, a detail that appeals to me.
The adventure began Saturday morning, when I took the 7:30am bus, which left at 9:30am. Ghanaians had forewarned me that the buses never leave on time, so I was prepared. At 9:30, everyone queued up and quietly boarded, with minor scuffles breaking out over seating. Then the driver got on and the hullaballoo began. Half the bus started yelling at him in rapid-fire Twi, the local language. He shouted back "sorry! sorry!". The exchange went on. I asked Prince, the Ghanaian man traveling with me, what it was all about.
"They're mad because the bus is late," he said.
"But it's always late, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yes."
"So they're not surprised are they?" I couldn't figure it out.
"No. But every Ghanaian has to voice their opinion," Prince explained. "And then we go."
Sure enough, the argument petered out, the driver took his seat and off we went. The passengers mostly slept or watched the Nigerian romance movies playing at full-volume on the video screen in front of the bus. In the end, the four- to five-hour trip took nine.
Kumasi is a sprawling city of nearly one million people. Just a few hundred kilometers north of Accra, it is lush and hilly and cooler than the capital.
On the bus, Prince, my host's nephew, told me he was going back to his hometown for a funeral. Prince's mother had requested that I join them at the funeral.
So on Sunday afternoon, Prince arrived at my hotel to direct my taxi driver to the funeral. The streets in Kumasi are so confusing even the taxi drivers don't know where things are. The driver wasn't the only one confused -- at this point, I still didn't know whose funeral this was, and Prince was not providing details.
We eventually pulled up to a driveway swarming with people dressed in black-and-white cloth, with drums and singing blaring from big speakers. The big front lawn was covered in black awning, and rows of people, all dressed in black and white cloth, sat in red plastic chairs around the perimeter of the yard. The band was in the middle of the lawn and a few old women were dancing slowly in front.
Prince's mother, Sapomaa, gave me a giant hug, then grabbed my arm and led me in shaking hands along the rows of people. She then took me out to the lawn and led me in a dance, which involved another woman dancing out and rubbing money on my cheek. Thankfully, we soon took seats, and like everyone else, sat watching the band. I was served goat kebabs and a Coke. The drums soon lulled me into a trance.
Suddenly, a flurry of activity at the gates, and a big, huge man swathed in black-and-white woven kente cloth walked down the driveway. A young man walked behind him holding an enormous black umbrella over his head. A phalanx of four drummers marched behind, beating out a rhythm that silenced the band.
"The king!" exclaimed an old woman next to me. With much ceremony, the 'king' sat on a special, cushioned chair, the umbrella-man taking a seat behind him, all the while keeping the umbrella over his head. The new drummers beat out fast, mesmerizing rhythms for more than half an hour as people filed past to shake his hand.
Turns out he is the chief of a nearby town, and is Sapomaa's brother (and the brother of my host in Accra, Helena). It was their cousin who had died, and this was not the funeral, but the one-year anniversary of the funeral. The cousin, his wife and two children apparently were killed by a gas leak in their home in Ohio (ahem, Martin, Meg and the McIntoshes! Ohio, yet again the culprit!).
Sapomaa led me to the chief to shake hands and take pictures. A few minutes later, and with much commotion, the chief went into the house, the umbrella-man close behind. Another chief with his entourage and his own umbrella-man showed up (his umbrella had fringe). I was ushered into the room to join the chiefs and their entourages. Someone flipped on the overhead fan, and Sapomaa and her sister walked in with two coolers full of ..... ice cold beer!! Yes, Guinness and Ghana-made Star are apparently part of Ashanti funerals/memorials, or at least this one.
Then the food started arriving... and those of you who read my blog of March 10th will have a pretty good idea of where things went from there.
(The chiefs and Queen Mothers in Ghana hold power and have considerable influence on Ghana's internal affairs. Here are some interesting notes about the National House of Chiefs in Ghana, an institution that is written into the national constitution.)
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 11:13 AM | Comments (1)
March 11, 2005
Only haiku will do
(celebrating Steers Drive-Thru on Oxford Street)
cheeseburger and fries
oh what lovely comfort food
no fufu today
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 3:37 PM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2005
A rough shoot
It's a piece of advice I've heard television photographers and military personnel receive before they attend long ceremonies where they'll be standing around for long stretches of time. But I didn't remember it until too late.
"Don't lock your knees!"
Yesterday afternoon I went to film the graduation of Accra's police recruits. It was a favor of sorts and gave me a chance to really fool around with my camera in the bright sun here.
The ceremony started at 2pm, outdoors on a huge parade ground. I was joined out on the tarmac by a gaggle of Ghanaian newsmen (no women). As I ran around and sideways and backwards while filming, I wondered how our KRON photographers do it with their huge cameras.
Since my camera is hand-held, one of my (countless) challenges is keeping it steady while shooting. When they started handing out the diplomas, I planted myself in front of the dais and, I guess I locked my knees in an attempt to further steady myself and the camera. The ceremony went on and on and on and on.
It was also a thousand degrees hot with crushing humidity and a blazing sun beating down on us. I was drenched in sweat.
Suddenly, a roar rushed through my ears and the world started spinning. My only thought was to get out of there as soon as possible. I shoved aside the other photographers, and staggered/ran through the ceremony to the back of the stands.
A murmur went up from the crowd. I collapsed under the first tree I could find. Matei, my driver, appeared with a bottle of water and beckoned to a man standing nearby with a heaping platter of coconuts on his head. He pulled one down, chopped off the top with his machete, and bottoms up! Then he chopped it open and had me scoop out the insides with a piece of coconut shell.
Satisfied that I could now walk, I went up to the officers building, hoping to just rest somewhere cool for a while. No such luck.
The ceremony had finished, the dinner reception had begun, and my presence was requested at the head of the VIP table. I was served platters of food. Since it would be rude to refuse the hospitality, I gamely sat in my chair next to the top brass and ate.
Meanwhile, the fufu I'd eaten earlier for lunch was doing what fufu does, and was expanding exponentially in my stomach, sort of like bread dough rising .... and the banquet food kept arriving. I was lapsing into severe food coma. I slumped back in my chair, catatonic. I pasted a big smile on my face (learned it from you, Curt), and remained like that throughout the rest of the evening, until I was excused and staggered out to my car and home.
(more later on "fufu", Ghana's national dish).
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 10:21 AM | Comments (2)
March 9, 2005
West Africa Wins Again
American and European expats who have lived in West Africa can occasionally be heard to utter in complete frustration "West Africa Wins Again!". Or "Wawa"! It's a sort of Murphy's Law writ large for the endless, and often bureaucratic, obstacles that can impede every step forward.
I uttered the phrase this week as I spent hours and hours entangled in the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Information.
When I arrived here, I dutifully went to the Minstry with a file of papers that the Ghanaian Embassy in the US had given me (the papers included about $100 worth of passport photos they made me give them). With the papers, they said, I would get my press accreditation.
I had the misfortune of dealing with the "Media Liaison" of the Minstry. He is a rotund man prone to impromptu outbursts filled with insults about journalists. I first encountered him sitting in a dusty office sparsely furnished with worn 1970s office furniture. A big, rusty fan on the wall provided the only movement in the dark room. This man said he'd need time to add his signature to my media pass, and asked me to come back in two hours. I gave him four and a half.
When I returned, my file was undisturbed on his desk. He informed me that I needed to provide him a list of every person I would talk to in Ghana during my stay... and he wanted phone numbers. He also informed me, with a somewhat smug smile, that he was going to have to "charge a fee," though he wasn't ready to say how much that would be.
He instructed me to come back to the office today, and ordered me not to "do any journalism" until I had my accreditation papers.
My driver this week is a police sergeant and seemed to take all of this very seriously, so for once I decided I should obey the law.
I went back to the crumbling Ministry building today armed with just one name and phone number, and wrote it on the handwritten "form" his assistant provided. Mercifully, the man was not in the office, and his assistant looked at my paper, shrugged her shoulders, and handed me my media pass. No mention of the fee. I'm not sure the pass is actually valid, but it satisfied my driver, so I think I'm just this side of legal now.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 1:35 PM | Comments (3)
March 8, 2005
419'ing not allowed
The rooster's crowing woke me up while the moon was still high in the pre-dawn sky today. Accra is a bustling city complete with epic traffic jams and internet cafes on every other corner, but chickens and goats still roam free in the most unlikely urban spaces.
I'm back at Cybercity in the Dansoman 'hood of Accra. They have posted signs today announcing that "419" activity is no longer allowed. "419" (or "Nigerian" or, in the U.S., "Advance Fee Fraud") schemes are those spam emails we all receive from alleged relatives of various deposed African and Middle Eastern presidents. They tell us they have millions and millions of dollars in a bank account, but they can only access the money if we wire them thousands of dollars.
The scheme has been around since the 1920s (obviously in paper format then), as Snopes.com explains, and has morphed with the times. The spread of the Internet to third-world countries has this flip side -- fraud is up and a lot of it reportedly originates in African cybercafes.
It's not clear to me how effective these paper signs will be in stopping the "419" activities here at Cybercity, but one of the staff does seem to be constantly walking around checking everyone's computer screens, so maybe that's the tactic.
When I ask the computer guys about it, they just give me their lovely Ghanaian smiles and sweetly say "It's all okay."
(These scams violate section 419 of Nigeria's penal code, hence the name.)
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 10:48 AM | Comments (1)
March 7, 2005
I cannot get away from Ricky Martin
The fans are cranked up on high, Ricky Martin's "La Vida Loca" is booming from a huge cassette player and I'm lined up with Ghanaians at a row of computers in the Cybercity internet center.
Freeborn, the son of my Ghanaian host, chats on his cell phone nearby as I check email.
I was last in Accra about 10 years ago, and while many of the sights are unchanged -- hawkers at wooden tables selling Chinese-made plasticware, women in bright African dresses and flip-flops, beat-up Opel taxis careening down the streets -- the technology has taken a great leap and Accra is rocking.
Accra is also very hot, about 100-degrees and muggy. Freeborn's cousin, Prince, has advised me to just stand in front of the fan all day today and maybe tomorrow as I acclimate. (tempting)
Today is a national holiday, in observance of yesterday's Independence Day. I missed the parades and festivities yesterday (arrived late at night), but am hoping to get down to the beach where bands are playing and people are lounging. Maybe I'll just lounge with them.
I was surprised yesterday when I boarded my London-Accra flight to find that my seat-mate, Ishmael, is a former refugee from Buduburam, the camp in Ghana where I plan to shoot a story or two. Ishmael, a Liberian teenager, moved from the camp to Philadelphia three years ago. He was on his second plane trip ever, going back to Buduburam to visit his aunts and cousins. Hopefully I'll find him when I go to the camp later this week.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)
March 4, 2005
Packing up
Well, it's finally time to ship out. Tomorrow night I fly to London, then on to Accra, Ghana's capital.
At the moment, I'm in Washington, DC, in the final throes of preparing for the journey. Those who know me know how much I love packing (not!). My big challenge today is getting all my camera gear in order -- a lot of gadgetry for someone who likes to travel light.
I'll arrive in Accra on Sunday night, the night of Ghana's Independence Day . Hopefully there'll still be some celebrating going on so I can catch a glimpse of the big holiday.
I'm planning to hit the cybercafes of West Africa throughout my travels and update this blog, so stay tuned...
Meanwhile, here's a link to info on my fellowship program.
Posted by Cathryn Poff at 6:45 PM | Comments (6)