That said, last week a bit of domestic exertion proved a welcome distraction, as I spent the majority of each day glued to a computer screen. We seem to have now filmed pretty much all the footage we need for the promotional films that we’re making for The Organisation. As such, I’ve been staying in the house, editing these in earnest, while Louisa goes out around Accra with different volunteers to capture the last shots that we still need. Having never picked up a TV camera five months ago, Louisa is now shooting footage of a quality that will soon see me demoted to tea boy.
Our efforts however are beginning to look somewhat wasted. In the last few weeks we have run into several former volunteers now living elsewhere in Accra. Their individual accounts of problems at the hands of The Organisation have confirmed our growing impression of a very badly run business masquerading as an NGO. It would appear that several other filmmakers have been here before us, though their footage is nowhere to be found. It seems increasingly likely that The Organisation has either lost it (very possible), or that it was never given to them by our morally-torn predecessors. Suffice to say that we currently feel like the PR officers aboard the Titanic.
With only a matter of weeks left volunteering with The Organisation anyway, we have accordingly redoubled our efforts to find work elsewhere. Carving out our niche in Ghana’s media is proving tricky: it’s highly developed with new digital TV stations popping up all the time, yet the majority of people working in it are on jealously guarded contracts. We have been hanging out with several Ghanaian television producers who have been very friendly towards us, although I suspect we are in a queue of people lining up to curry favour with them. Getting a job in Ghana is very much about who, rather than what, you know.
For me, networking is akin to attempting a DIY vasectomy, but it seems we have no option. To this end, last week we gate-crashed a reception at the British Council being held to recognise people with degrees from British universities. We had invitations as we technically qualified, but I suspect that few of the eighty or so Ghanaians in attendance had spent three years vomiting alcopops into their shoes to get where they are today. After several speeches and the cutting of a cake, we found ourselves mingling with none other than the British High Commissioner. As I mentally recited “Ferrero Rocher…Ambassador’s reception…” mantra-like in my head, I thrust our business card into his hand and laughed recklessly at his anecdote about Swindon.
Thus far the only person who has called since the event is an I.T. specialist who had insisted that I dance with him when the band started playing. Undaunted of course, our Unique Selling Point may yet be that we can at least get the job done. One of the big three mobile phone networks in Ghana trades under the slogan “the network that really works” setting a new benchmark for aspirational advertising slogans. In its working life, Ghana suffers from a mass culture of presenteeism. Turning up at the office (on time optional) is effort enough; anything actually achieved between the hours of 9am and 5pm is an unexpected bonus.
Before I get lynched for veiled racism by a mob of angry Guardian readers, these are not my words but those of a panel of Ghanaian business leaders, speaking at a conference we were filming the other week. BarCamp is an international network of informal conferences for young entrepreneurs, and we had gone along to the 2010 event in Accra to dip a toe in the waters of commerce. In the face of loan restrictions and interminable red tape the mood amongst delegates was defiant. The representative for the department of trade and industry was nearly flayed alive on announcing blithely that it currently takes five to seven years to get a trademark registered here.
In fact, despite problems such as this, we keep on meeting Ghanaians who have chosen to move back to Ghana from lives abroad for the opportunities the country currently has to offer – Daniel, the PR exec who lived in Balham for eleven years; Parlos the Boot’s chemist who returned here to successfully become a TV presenter – to name but two. If you have the mind to be an entrepreneur, then urban Ghana currently seems to be the American frontier, both in terms of opportunities and challenges.
We managed to leave all this business talk behind this weekend, getting on a dilapidated tro-tro and heading North-East to the Volta region to visit the world’s biggest artificial lake. Dammed in the early 1960s, the Lake Volta hydroelectric plant feeds power not only to Ghana but neighbouring countries such as Togo and Benin as well. In an unusual use of local resources, a German company has recently begun work with an underwater saw, logging trees for timber that are still standing on the lake bed from when the area was first flooded.
At nearby Wli we climbed several hundred metres up through dense, steaming forest to the upper reaches of one of the highest waterfalls in West Africa. Our guide was a cheerful hunchback called Ousman who described changing jobs from tailor to farmer to tour guide as we wheezed our way up the precariously narrow path. At the upper reaches, as with the lower falls, our efforts were rewarded with a massive plunge pool into which we waded in our stinking clothes.
The falling water is so fierce that it blows thick spray hundreds of feet into the surrounding undergrowth, which is far more lush as a result. The spray is blinding and you must wade backwards, shielding your eyes, if you want to attempt to get under the main cascade. Here it feels more like someone is tipping bags of gravel on to you from a great height, such is the force of the water. I staggered back to the edge of the pool jubilant with the knowledge that after that kind of cleaning my boxer shorts would be good for at least another couple of days.
