Ghana. Episode 1.

We are in Ghana. It’s big! It’s cheerful! It smells like a Glastonbury Portaloo!  After a six-hour flight we arrived here pretty much without incident. Standing in baggage reclaim at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport we did begin to wonder if our hold-alls had gone on to Kenya. It turned out that we were just operating already on Africa Time, which is GMT+whenwearegoodandready. Truly, there is a corner of this globe in which an Alderson can be made to look punctual.

Behind the immigration desk at the airport was a sign that greeted visitors to Ghana thus:

-         We warmly welcome you to Ghana!

-         Paedophiles and other sexual deviants are not warmly welcomed to Ghana.

-         If you are a paedophile or sexual deviant it would be better for everyone involved if you would go somewhere else.

In matters still capable of making the British squirm Ghana appears to be earnestly open. Alongside the (clothed) ‘Page 3’ girls in yesterday’s Ghana Mirror ran an article about the menopause. The next page was a full-page advert for the kind of cream that treats “embarrassing itching”. The paper’s international news included a story taken from the Sun about a disabled man getting his car towed. In Wales.

We were met at the airport by Kuarshie, one of the Ghanaian staff responsible for looking after the stream of volunteers come to work on the various projects they farm people out to. He appears to be one of the few staff managing to survive a radical purge of dead wood from the organisation, begun only days before our arrival by the new manager, Klwuha. Ethiopian by descent, she has left a job working in Holland for an oil company to be airdropped in here to Sort Shit Out.

Whether the organisation had really become as disorganised as she makes out is open to debate (just not with her). She is physically tiny, fiendishly organised and utterly terrifying. We may yet ride her coattails to some interesting parts of Accra, as she is embarking on visiting all the projects in the city that the organisation currently feeds volunteers to. Tomorrow morning we go with her on our first recce to see one of the organisations that we might film. Yes folks, what development project could more emotively reflect the needs of poverty-stricken Africa than…a planetarium. 

Alongside the obligatory orphanage and school for the deaf are a few more esoteric projects available for volunteers to help with, a reflection perhaps of the fact that Ghana is relatively wealthy by African standards. Yesterday we sat in a bar next to a Ghanaian wielding an iPhone. Frequently, requests to be your friend from people you meet on the street begin with “are you on FaceBook?...”

That said, Ghana still does a good line in rubbish-strewn wasteland. Accra looks like the surface of the moon, daubed with red and white Vodaphone advertising, to which someone has thoughtfully added a ring road by way of decoration. Some of the city’s most oft referred to landmarks are its massive noisy roundabouts, making it look like a post-apocalyptic version of Swindon. Accra is definitely not a pretty place, and on Friday afternoons those able to do so flee the city for the surrounding towns and villages, creating a gridlock of beaten-up tro tro minibus taxis and massive privately owned SUVs.

Driving in Accra is not dissimilar to driving in London – at any one time you may have up to four lanes of traffic, each notifying the other of where it bloody well intends to go by leaning on the horn. On the way back from the market this afternoon we watched a rather flash sports car careen into one of the open sewers that line each side of the road. I have a horrible feeling that it’s a question of ‘when’, rather than ‘if’, I fall into one of these myself.

Although the rainy season is supposed to have ended by now, there have been occasional downpours over the last few days. These have had the unexpected benefit of sluicing through the open sewer network, reducing the gag-inducing stench of the city to a more palatable odour, akin to that of a flatulent great uncle.

As we wander about town, trying to avoid falling into one cess pit or another, we get amazingly little hassle from local Ghanaians. Small children and teens occasionally shout Obruni! – ‘foreigner’ or ‘white man’ – as we pass by. Others, young and old, want to shake your hand and know where you’re from. The odd half-hearted attempt to sell you something is usually quickly forgotten if you offer your name and ask for theirs. We’re like Big Brother contestants opening a shopping centre  – passably interesting but by and large to be ignored.

It’s easy to forget that people of all ages tend to speak reasonable to excellent English. For the fact that most Ghanaians speak Twi (pronounced ‘chwee’) to each other, or Accra’s own Ga dialect, it’s disconcerting when a roadside stallholder of around 60 suddenly breaks into English to give you detailed cooking instructions for the unfamiliar root vegetable that you’ve just invested in from her stall.

Armed with a vague idea of how not to poison ourselves, this evening we managed to combine tomatoes, carrots and Unfamiliar Root Vegetable with super noodles in our first venture at home cooking. We are sharing a large house with around four or five other volunteers; unfortunately space is about the best thing the place has to offer. Louisa and I have at least been spared the single-sex dorm rooms. We thankfully have our own private room with just the one bunk bed in it. Louisa has the top as I still sleepwalk on occasion.

After six days here the initial shock is beginning to subside a little, and a growing filming schedule offers some potential order amist the chaos. On Tuesday we’re off to visit the Ghana Red Cross to see what there is to capture on camera there. I can’t think of a better place to be if tonight’s cooking takes its toll on our insides. Even if it does, until it rains again no one will be able to smell the consequences anyway.