“Okay…” Ida, one of the producers, breaks the silence. “Okay, so your point is that if we accept the NDC’s offer to fund half of the broadcast, it might cause problems if we then say anything critical of them.” Heads begin to nod in considered acceptance of this.
I say something about journalistic credibility and then hit them with my Defiant Bill Nighy Stare. Hilda the news editor concedes. Sort of. “I suppose we’ll still have the free accommodation that they’re offering all journalists.” One step at a time. I decide to keep my mouth shut for the time being and we move on.
The news team are not stupid. This is just the way things are done in Ghana, where the much-maligned creep of party politics into every aspect of daily life is quickly forgotten about when it offers to buy you lunch on route.
With a general election looming next year, Ghana’s political parties are in the throws of nominating their presidential candidates. All eyes are currently on the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), which is rocking the establishment with a family feud of the highest order.
Ghana’s current president John Atta Mills is being challenged as the NDC’s presidential candidate by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, Ghana’s former first lady. Weighing in from the sidelines is Nana Konadu’s husband, Jerry Rawlings. Like an over-zealous parent at sports day, Ghana’s former military-dictator-cum-first-elected-president is vocally backing his wife against the man who once served as his vice president.
Political dynasties abound the world over, and the Rawlings clan is just another to add to the list. Ghana is well aware of this and public debate rages as to whether the electorate should extend their rule.
Beyond NDC infighting, scratch the surface of party politics in Ghana and what bleeds from underneath is centuries of tribalism. The NDC has traditionally drawn its support from the Ewe people and from tribes in the less developed Northern regions. In contrast the NPP is broadly aligned with the Akan people and the traditionally powerful Ashanti.
There are also religious divides to take into consideration, with Northern Ghana predominately Muslim and the South predominantly Christian. In urban areas both religions co-exist remarkably peacefully, but belief is still another line along which political fissures can emerge.
To top it all off, Ghana’s countless indigenous social divisions have spent the best part of a century being shoe-horned into the bureaucratic pigeonholes of the British Empire. Like a fat man forced into a leotard, the resulting spectacle is unpleasant to look at and as inflexible as a dead dog.
Nowhere is Britain’s bureaucratic legacy more evident in Ghana than at public events. Custom dictates that everyone tabled to speak (and you can guarantee there will be at least fifteen of them) is required to begin by addressing every notable individual in the room. Thus begins the familiar litany of “ladies and gentlemen, honourable guests, members of the press…”
The most expensive coffee beans in the world are produced in Indonesia, where they are collected, partially digested, from the droppings of a native wild cat, the Asian palm civet. In a similar vein, the abundance of Ghanaian bureaucratic excrement has given birth to a linguistic crap-cutter of rare beauty – the phrase “...and all protocol observed.”
So long as this catch-all nicety is the last line of your introduction, you could confidently greet an audience by pulling out your pockets and asking who wants to see your elephant impression. You have all bases covered.
As an obruni – a foreigner - no matter how long you are here (almost 10 months for us now) some Ghanaian social rituals never quite become normal, no matter how often you experience them. One is saying goodbye to friends. The other is being called fat.
The past few weeks have seen a number of our very close friends leave Ghana, returning to their home countries to begin academic courses, new jobs and generally resume normal lives. The absence of Mel, Kat, Anna, Heather and shortly Maurice will render Accra a quieter, more sober and significantly more dull place.
Ghana has a different model of female beauty to that in the West, and while we idolize anorexics, Ghana prefers its women curvaceous. Accordingly, it’s not uncommon for Ghanaian women to be greeted with complimentary observations such as “oh, you’ve put on weight!” For obruni women raised on a Western maxim of “get thin or die trying”, this can be a little hard to take, particularly as these comments aren’t always made in ignorance of how non-Ghanaians may receive them.
The other day we met with one of our departing friends to wave her off to the airport. As we waited for her ride she recounted with a dry chuckle that while walking home across Accra for the last time that afternoon a Ghanaian man walking in the opposite direction had smiled at her and brightly announced “you’re fat-o!”
The friend in question has just completed an internship working for an organisation promoting women’s rights. After several months of receiving similar ‘compliments’ with a fixed grin she seized on a final opportunity to foster some cross-cultural understanding at a grass-roots level. Stepping into his path she planted a hand on his chest, fixed him with a look that could circumcise and politely told him to go fuck himself. All protocol observed.
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