Making friends in Ghana

As has already been noted, I've been feeling quite lonely in Ghana. One of my solutions to this was to go for a walk and make friends with the people I bumped into.

One of the people I met was 'the lady at the bottom of the hill'. The first time we said hello, and the second time I invited myself in (the semi-detached is not the posh type, there are no fences keeping me off the square of mud outside the house that I’m going to call a yard) and asked to have a closer look at what she was doing. The truth was that I was bored and had time to kill, but for all the difference it makes, I was also genuinely interested because it had something to do with food. I watched and learnt as she showed me how she mashed plantain with banana with her hands (explaining kindly that I could also use a blender for this part if I preferred) then she mixed in some wheat flour and deep fried it in a vat of boiling oil that was next to her. She was making two types of things (and I can’t remember what either of them were called, however I did learn the word for delicious, which I retained instead: “Daveve”) the other one was similar but had egg in it and the four that was poured in was corn flour mixed with some spices. When I tried it, I can vouch for the fact that it certainly was, never before has a cakey thing been so very spicy! She vacated her chair and invited me in, but I’m sad to say that by this point, I no longer had time to kill and had to hurry off, but as I did so I was given a bag of deep fried cakey-things (her better selling variety too) all for free and promised that I would come back. I haven’t fulfilled this promise yet, and I should have, but I will go back and cook a batch for her. I hope benefiting from some close supervision.

It just goes to show, you can't make generalisations - not everyone is unfriendly!

The Walk of Lonliness

I’ve heard  staff before me say that Ghana is a lonely country. This is true to an extent. People here are not as friendly as I found them to be in Uganda or Kenya. I can see that a social support network would take longer to build up, something I’m acutely acutely aware of since I’ve got no host parents and my counterpart, Prince, lives in Ho and so has lots of friends who he’d rather be talking to.

I went for a walk on Sunday to see if I could encounter some of the local community myself. I'm surprised at how lonely it is here. I'm also surprised that I was ready to go out on a walk and befriend strangers...but there you go. It happened!

The first person who I met was called Winston. He leapt out of some bushes to say 'hello' and introduced himself. It soon became evident that he had smoked quite a lot of marijuana and was in a bit of an odd state. I wondered if, despite my lonely predicament, I might not do better to be a bit more picky about who I allowed to approach me. Still, it was nice to have a chat and then I was on my way.

I was walking up the next road feeling a bit more cheerful as I was enjoying the exercise, when I realised that a taxi was coming up behind me and appeared to be intent on running me over. Cars here swerve about on the roads to avoid the potholes, but this was different, it was quite a smooth dirt track and I had no doubt in my mind as to their malicious intent. If I’m honest, I can understand it. I do stand out a bit as a target being the only white person in the vicinity and I do represent approximately 300 years of oppression and, this being Ghana, also the slave trade. I eyed up the undergrowth and took a calculated leap into it just as the car came by. On reaching me it slowed and I could see (with my ankles in the shrubbery) that there was an amused driver and 2 ladies inside absolutely helpless with mirth. It had (apparently) been their intention from the outset to offer me a lift (which they proceeded to do) although on reflection I’m still surprised that there aren’t more Ghanaians around missing toes due to overzealous taxi drivers aiming to give potential passengers as short a journey to the car door as possible.

On my way back I met a man sat on a roof, he waved and said hello and asked if he could join me on the walk. I told him he’d be welcome to, and he seemed to be so surprised by my answer that he couldn’t comprehend it. Since he didn’t consider himself welcome to walk with me, he asked me for my number instead. If there’s one thing that’s always a bad idea in every country  of the world, including England, it’s giving strange men your number so I left him on the roof, waved, and walked away. 

Last of all I met a woman with 3 children, there’s nothing really to say about her, and she’s only notable because I liked her and since she invited me I’d like to go back to visit. I didn’t linger on my walk though as it was getting dark. Seeking out strangers in the daylight is one thing, but walking alone in the dark is quite another, and is much more dangerous here. Not even the local women walk about by themselves after dark here and so I’m sure it’s not a good idea for me to do so. Rather embarrassingly I can’t remember her name, but that doesn’t matter. In the daydream that I’ve already constructed, she knows someone with 2 spare rooms and will offer to be my new Ghanaian host mother. I might go back tomorrow morning instead of doing work related stuff. From past experience, the key to finding satisfaction and happiness when travelling has very probably got something to do with getting my fix of community integration, so with luck this’ll be the start of it.

Tonight I am the only one in the house. Everyone else is out at the football because Manchester United are playing Liverpool. As already noted, I just can't get excited about football - I've never been to Liverpool myself, so I cannot comprehend why so many Ghanaians are prepared to leave their homes to watch Liverpool kick a leather item around a field with 11 men who claim to represent the unified Manchester.
Unfortunately for me it seems that our resident cook is also out. I can’t go to get ingredients because a) there wouldn’t be anyone to lock the gate behind me b) it breaks every rule to wonder about alone after dark and c) because I don’t know where to go! I’m on the brink of improvising, a move that feels risky, since there are 3 food sources in the house: burnt beans stuck to the bottom of a pan in the kitchen, an unidentifiable thing in a pan in the fridge (which is troubling because without knowing what it’s meant to be, I can’t work out if it’s past it’s best) and some meat in a pan in the fridge (and again I can’t work out how old it is). None of these options seem like a very good idea! My host home here tend not to keep raw ingredients in stock, so making something from fresh isn’t an option either. Although I might send out an SOS to see if anyone can bring an egg to the house to facilitate an omelette. What a predicament!

I have a long way to go until I feel at home here.

Ghanaian Justice is so Unfair

This morning we went to the high court. Don't worry, none of my volunteers had got into trouble, we were just there to learn about the justice system.

It was a big room on the first floor (significant, as nearly every other building here is a bungalow). There was the Ghanaian crest above the judge’s chair mounted on a pink statement wall. Whereas visitors to the English high courts can expect to see a fraction of one case, quite amazingly we were treated to 10 cases in an hour.

Case 1: there was no lawyer and so the hearing was adjourned.

Case 2: this involved a chief. It was speculated that he was probably sewing someone over land rights. He was a marvellously fat man and looked as though someone with a tremendous budget has decided to dress as Genghis Khan. He had a blue hat, looking a bit like a footstool, a poncho, and boots that were leather on the inside and felt with stars on the outside, creating the impression from the majority of angles that his shoes didn’t match. Anyway, his lawyer was allegedly running late and so his case was postponed.

Case 3: The lawyer was present and he secured a postponement. Clever man.

Case 4: The plaintive was absent. Case postponed.

Case 5: A land dispute of some sort. “Where are your lawyers?” that classic question was addressed generally to everyone involved, “Our lawyer is in Accra” apparently they’re not feeling well. The other side’s lawyer made a similar excuse. Case adjourned.

Case 6: “The defendants are outside please I just saw them”. Without ever finding the defendants the discussion seemed to be continuing, but not in English (the official language of the court). I couldn’t quite work out what was going on. The judge and lawyers were talking together. Could it be that the people involved in the case were not to be separated from the audience and it was already happening? It’s certainly possible. It was initially hard to tell because they have air conditioning and ceiling fans making noise in the room as well as the windows open letting in noise from outside (it was an environmentalist's nightmare, but let's not dwell on that). I couldn’t actually hear clearly. But anyway, it seemed that the lawyers successfully secured an adjournment. On to case 7!

Case 7: “Where are your lawyers?” That favourite question rang out. “Please my lawyer says he has family commitments” and “Please my lawyer will not be present today. He says the case has already been adjourned by the court of appeal to 9^th November” What is this?! A Pre-adjourned case?! Someone else seems to be doing the work of the high court…

Case 8: I couldn’t work out what was going on here. The defendant has dropped the case? If you say so…

I began to think that it might save everyone a lot of time if we simply opened by asking if there were any lawyers on the premises and then if they could identify their clients. We could then proceed by hearing the cases of any lawyer who can claim a client. On the benches with the other volunteers, we were all starting to look at each other and wonder aloud (very quietly) what made lawyers turn up to court in the UK, I mean no one forces them to turn up, but I’m fairly sure that their reputation and that of their company requires it.

Case 9: Plaintive absent. Case adjourned.

Now I understand why people resort to ‘instant justice’ (i.e. catching someone red handed and setting them on fire) it’s much more timely.

Case 10: This seemed a bit more exciting because a prisoner was brought in with police guards. They called him ‘Yevu’ (white man) which seemed a bit unprofessional. He wasn’t wearing prison-esque clothes but green ‘Ghana print’. My initial assessment that this might be a more interesting case turned out to be right as this, it transpired, was a murder trial! Are the lawyers present? No? Oh well, said the judge, I’ve already written my statement and I’m going to read it anyway. The judge declared that there was absolutely no solid evidence against the man, so they couldn’t try him properly anyway. Apparently he had been seen arguing with the deceased over land shortly before the deceased was found to be dead in the bushes with a rope around his neck.  The judge seemed to think that suicide hadn’t yet been ruled out as a cause of death and so it was far from clear that there was any need to look for a murderer. Apparently this had occurred in March 2015 and the trial had already been adjourned several times, hence it’s lack of progress. This upset me because it means that a potentially innocent man had been held in jail for well over a year. Possibly the judge was thinking the same thing, as he told the man that he could have bail as long as 3 people would vouch for him that he wouldn’t run away. One of these 3 people had to have assets worth 50,000GHC (£10,000) that could be seized in the event that he failed to report to the police station to check in every Tuesday. I felt it unlikely that this poor accused gentleman could find 3 such people. After all, he was a foreigner, from across the border in Togo (where they speak French as a first language and white people are common). He wasn’t likely to have 3 wealthy Ghanaian friends, at least not to the tune of 50,000GHC.

I spoke to the judge afterwards and am very happy to say that he told me if this did turn out to be the case that he would change the terms of bail.

Actually it wasn’t just me that spoke to the judge, all of us crowded into his little office (air conditioned with the windows open as standard). We were invited to ask all we wanted, I recognise this as a rare privilege. I can’t imagine it happening in the UK (but then I can’t imagine any judge managing to clear their schedule of 10 cases in little over an hour either so this man did have time on his side).

He answered a lot of questions for us and also ranted about how corruption in the system meant that people who didn’t pay the right kind of lip service could be moved from courts in Accra (the capital) to less prestigious places. Since he himself had moved from the courts of Accra to be a judge here in Ho just earlier this month, I wondered if this complaint may be based on personal experience (but I didn’t dare ask!) He considered this to be quite corrupt.  Just as he said that sums of money went missing from court budgets so, for instance, there was to be money for buying computers for the courts in Accra, but it later transpired the purchasers bought second hand refurbished computers which were cheap and broke quickly. This, he explained, was why he was writing everything down himself long hand in the court room. Similarly, he said that his bungalow (provided by the legal system) was supposed to have running water, but it didn’t and if he wanted anything done he had to do it himself. Likewise, he pointed at the tomes on the bookshelf, and I could see that they were encyclopedias dated to the 1970s, the legal library wasn’t up to standard and he had to buy reference books himself. He has therefore created a little library at home at personal expense. Not only that but they couldn’t even put a lightbulb in his room, because the money wasn’t there, and so he had to open the curtains to get light. I couldn’t help but think that, while frustrating, these complaints paled into utter insignificance alongside the probably-innocent Togolese man we’d just witnessed who had been imprisoned for over a year because no evidence could be gathered to try him for murder. Now that’s something worth complaining about.

I asked (after spending a considerable amount of time working out how to tactfully phrase it) what he could do when someone offered him a bribe. Could he have that person arrested? Yes, said the judge, he could have the person arrested and people certainly had offered him bribes before. However, judges don’t like to attract too much attention to themselves, they don’t want to get misreported in the media and so for that reason, to protect themselves, all judges prefer to handle these things quietly and not to press charges. Hmmmmmm, I thought, and kept smiling. This man was quite charming but I feel like fear of media portrayal isn’t a good enough reason for judges to keep quiet…I can only conclude that legal libraries don’t furnish themselves!

I think, if you had a grudge against someone here, you could just accuse them of murder. It would be very simple; you wouldn’t need any real evidence. Safe in the knowledge that your victim would then be arrested, imprisoned for maybe a couple of years, and then if there was a court case to follow it would take years and even if they got bail your victim’s life would at best be restricted the conditions of it which would involve reporting to the local police station every Tuesday. I’ve made a mental note not to upset anyone!

If you think you have nothing in common with someone...LEARN!

If there's one person I could do with getting on well with in Ghana, it's Prince. He's my closest colleague, my Ghanaian counterpart, between the two of us we need to look after all the volunteers and we also need to live together. Preferably happily.

When I first met him, I was quite concerned that we would never bond. As inconveniences go this was massive! We seemed to have nothing in common. He likes football and has almost no other interests. He’s not fussy about how he gets involved with the sport whether it be playing it, watching it (TV or live), training for it or playing football video games. This is difficult for me because no matter how hard I try (and I have) I can't make myself care about whether 11 people who I don't even know have won the game they just played and even if I did care I still wouldn't want to indulge in the same sport for 2 consecutive weekends, let alone every day of every week, variety is the spice of life! (Or at least, the spice of my life).

Anyway, I decided that I would find some common ground by joining in his workout sessions in the mornings (he’s under the impression that if only I do the same amount of exercise as him I could have a 6 pack within a matter of weeks, as he does. He seems to have no idea that, for me at least, I'll need to loose some significant weight before you can see any 6 pack that may lurk underneath. For all I know, there might be one there already! This is a significant disconnect, since he’ll eat up to 4 meals a day if he can get his hands on it and carbohydrates are the done thing here). Despite my good intentions and the (admittedly questionable) incentive of my rippling 6 pack, I was soon getting bored of workouts in the morning. It’s not top of my list of home comforts before breakfast (actually I don’t have a list of things I like to do before breakfast, upon waking up, eating is the ONLY thing I'm interested in). However, since he was very good at exercise and I was very bad, I felt that it helped to even up our relationship since I was more confident in the classroom. As things have progressed and we’ve got to know each other better, things have got rapidly easier. He’s been teaching me Ewe (the local language); I’ve been teaching him to swim; he’s been teaching me to twerk (if only I was sure what twerking was I’m sure I’d learn much faster!), and he recently bought me home a giant slice of watermelon because he knows how much I’ve been missing my balanced British diet. He knows what my favourite local meal is (‘redred’) and we’re going to go for a run together tomorrow morning (at 6am because Ghanaians love getting up early, even on Sundays).

Part way through their first week in training, the volunteers were given 24 hours to go and do a challenge, so their teacher, Prince and I went off to a swimming pool at a local hotel. It was lovely; the hottest outdoor pool you've ever been in. The hotel was built on a hilltop, so from the poolside we could look back down over the town of Ho. Swimming was particularly nice because it’s so hot and humid here that no matter how much you sweat, it can’t evaporate fast enough to keep you cool or dry. Prince can’t swim so I set about teaching him: he has good arms, but not good legs, they sink. I tried to get him to float face up, on top of the water, at one point but there was abject panic. One thing he does like, is running races with me through the water, so that at least is one thing we can share. We’ve said I’m going to teach him to swim if he teaches me to dance. Personally I feel like I’ve got the more difficult task here, but maybe he feels the same.

On the following weekend we took the whole team back there to swim again. This was challenging for some, because Ghanaians typically can’t swim. True to this stereotype, only 1 of our Ghanaian team members could swim and even then his style was described by a non-swimmer to be “horrible”. He nearly drowned trying to win a bet that required him to swim a whole length (although 50GHC was on the line – that’s about £10, a lot of money!) I’m very happy to say that a quick thinking UK volunteer rescued him when it started to look like he was in trouble and his head went under at about 4/5 of the way there.

Prince obviously had the advantage of having had the one swimming lesson I'd already given him earlier that week. I’d been trying to teach him breast stroke – his arms were good but his legs were like windmills. It’s fair to say that he still couldn’t swim. The key barrier is that Prince sinks in water. I think that when you spend enough time in the pool, you develop a kind of instinct for what keeps you up, what moves you left, what speeds you about etc and so it’s an alien landscape to Prince, who hasn’t had the benefit of a lifetime of pool experiences. I’ve walked to and fro with him, holding him up to the surface so that he can practice doing widths, legs thrashing wildly. Then on Saturday we had a breakthrough. I am delighted to announce that Prince has now swam a width of the pool…UNDERWATER. This is perfect, because if you’re already underwater you can’t sink any further. He is like a little submarine! Breast stroke arms, kicking legs. At first it came about by accident when we were having a gliding competition but then we realised we were onto a good thing and practiced over and over. I was ecstatic. We’re going to work on surfacing and breathing next time, who knows, he may even be the first Ghanaian in the team to swim a length of the pool.

He'd better get busy with my dance lessons!

When am I too old to be afraid of the dark?

For the first week of my time here, all the volunteers and me are staying in a hostel. They've got dorms and I've got my own room but nevertheless I always sleep lightly when there are volunteers in the house. I'm like an anxious parent, ready to look after my little ones at a moments notice.

Last night I woke up at about 3am and saw a boy sitting in a plastic chair at the end of my bed. I thought he was a volunteer so I said hello but got no reply. Assuming he was asleep, I sat up and moved forwards to touch his arm in order to wake the figure, but when I did, I found that there was no one there. My hand touched air and I couldn't see him any more.

I was so disturbed by this that I couldn't go back to sleep. The room was hot, and the noises of the night in this new country were unfamiliar. I stayed awake imagining shadows until the room started lightening at 5am and I could see there were definitely no unexplained apparitions in it.

At that point, comforted by daylight, I remembered that I was a person with extremely poor eyesight, lying next to my glasses in the dark. It's very easy to imagine a chair is occupied when it isn't. I also remembered that sightings of ghosts are very rarely reported close to, in the day; which reflects the reduced need for over-imaginative fabrication to explain what people like me are seeing. Ultimately, my new Ghanaian home probably isn't haunted.

All the same, I don't want to turn out the lights tonight.

How to be Ghanaian...JUST DANCE!

I would say that I’m not 100% integrating myself in the household successfully because the one thing that you have to do here is get up really early in the morning in order to sweep floors. I’m not sure why this is but so far I’ve taken a fairly firm stance that I’ll sweep floors when I’m ready to sweep floors. Pat (our acting housekeeper and nominal house mum) wakes no later than 6:30 each day, sweeps floors, does domestic things, then naps until she’s ready to cook lunch and then naps again until it’s time to do more domestic things such as cook dinner – I just can't bring myself to sample this lifestyle! Today is my first day off in which to observe that this is her routine, so I think that maybe if the average day is less Saturday-ish she might also go to collage.

However, there are some things that I do rather well. Specifically: eat (but not spell) Fufu and Banku. The fact that I don’t require cutlery delights the household (and is a direct result of my training eating ugali in Kenya). I felt that my first go at Banku was absolutely filthy (it’s like eating mashed potato in thin soup but the soup has small shredded vegetables floating in it) but Prince (my housemate & colleague) told me I did it particularly well, which amazed me since I had orange soup stains on my forearms at the time.

Another thing that was a great success was doing my washing. Partly because foreigners learning to do it for the first time here don’t typically do it very well and partly because I took it out to the veranda, where my housemates Prince & Vincent were relaxing, and started to dance. Before I knew it, they’d leapt to their feet and also started dancing. Turns out this is a favourite pastime! It took me 2 hours to do my washing. By the end I was absolutely drenched. I suspect equal parts in sweat and soapy water. What a workout! Washing is actually a very good time to practice Ghanaian dancing. I’ve never given my legs much thought before, they usually operate on an ‘English default’ which is kind of like a transfer of weight from foot to foot but with preoccupied hands in soapy water, one has to focus a bit more on the feet. This is constructive because Ghanaian people don’t have a default and are quite creative with their legs. I’ve been learning a particular dance move, specific to Ghana, called the ‘Azunto’ which involves standing up and doing a motion with your hands that bears a surprisingly close resemblance to washing clothes (handy). Less handy is the fact that every few beats you have to stick one hand straight up in the air, which is quite disruptive to one’s rhythm. Every time I bent to pick up another item of clothing, I kept my legs straight, and shook my bum in the air, an absolute classic in Kenya, which delighted everyone. Although we had started early, I am not a fast washer and volunteers began to show up for their day’s worth of curriculum training, which takes place at my house. They looked on at these manic Ghanaian dancers with a sort of morbid curiosity. No one wanted to join in. But it didn’t matter, at least Prince, Vince and I had bonded as a family.

Too much of a good thing will give you flu

Applying for a Ghanaian visa has made me ill. Well, indirectly at least. The trouble is that they require me to travel all the way to London in order to submit a print out of the application form that I filled in on their website along with my passport. (There is an option to do this by post, but after seeing the level of organisation present in the Ugandan embassy I wanted to supervise the whereabouts of my important documents in person as much as possible). After travelling all the way to town, it would seem a bit rude to go home again and neglect the many wonderful people I happen to know are living there. Particularly considering that (by virtue of being granted a visa to Ghana) I know I won’t now be available to see them again for at least 3 months – that kind of ultimatum focuses the mind! As such, in the duration of 4 days I have been delighted to see old uni housemates, ex colleagues, current colleagues, a school friend, the sailing community, friends from Kenya, and Londoners from when I was a Londoner. It’s been intense!
Luckily for me (and my limited budget), I am now very easily pleased. Freshly returned from Uganda all I really want in life is to sit on a sofa with a cup of tea, talk to a friend and to go on walks. This begs the question though, how much of a good thing is too much? I have shin splints from all these relaxing walks! I veritably hobbled home from the station at the end of it all. I actually had to take a rest and sit down on someone’s garden wall. The trouble is that if you burn the candle at both ends, ever so occasionally the whole candle gets too hot and melts. Before I left London I sprawled on the sofa with the wonderful friends who hosted me, all of us wrapped in scarves, croaking, eating ice cream and oranges. If Ghana's high commissioner could see me now, he probably wouldn’t let me in!