Ghana 10: Holiday

Despite two negative test results and a course of drugs I still suspect that I might have malaria. That or this train carriage is very, very hot. The woman sitting next to me looks flushed and is buying a bottle of water from the trolley drone, so it’s possible that the air conditioning is broken. However, she’s of an age when she could just be having a hot flush, so I’m not convinced that her heating problems offer me any reassurance.

Technically I am on holiday. After almost a year in Ghana, Louisa and I have flown back to the UK for three weeks to remind our respective parents what we looks like. When you’re earning a Ghanaian salary, being written out of wills is something to be guarded against at all costs. With my darling sister currently performing her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe, now is the perfect time to pass off living in West Africa as a comparatively sensible career move.

With similar concerns in mind, Louisa pointedly asked me on the return flight not to use my usual description of Accra being ‘like Swindon but with a few more open drains’. This apparently doesn’t help bolster our reputation as fearless filmmakers surviving in the Heart of Darkness. Watching from West Africa over the past few weeks while the UK set itself on fire, I suspect that Swindon may represent more of Conrad’s nightmare than the noisy stability of modern Ghana. While glued to CNN at work, a shot of an armed rebel watching a flat-screen TV had me scurrying to Immigration to seek political asylum before a colleague pointed out that we were watching Tripoli and not Tottenham.

With police complicity in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and now the riots making international news, it’s been an embarrassing few weeks to be a Brit abroad. Ghanaian colleagues have been asking with genuine concern whether it’s safe for me to return home, and then more thornily, why the riots are occurring in the first place. For really acute middle class liberal guilt, try explaining to someone who earns the equivalent of £120 a month why their former colonial masters are clubbing each other in the street over looted trainers.

Although Ghana gained independence in 1957 it still has strong ties to the UK and, on the quiet, looks up to Britain. To see its master-turned-mentor tearing itself apart while Ghana pulls itself up by its economic bootstraps is frankly unsettling. It’s like coming home from your paper-round to find an authoritarian parent drunk and weeping in front of Trisha.

Before we left Ghana our Canadian friends and seasoned ex-pats Joe and Janine warned us of the dangers of trying to do too much during brief visits home. Cancelling our planned visit to JD Sports we took heed of their advice, but possibly not enough. We were too busy drawing up daily schedules of where we were going to be and booking our next lunch dates.

Arriving home in August should have buffered us against the shock of the change in climate. Of course since 2001 British summer now occurs during the last week of April, so we arrived back instead to what has felt like a Siberian winter. Louisa immediately went down with a shocking cold while I began to do the Malarial Sweats, a routine that has you alternately flushing hot and cold while humming Mad Dogs and Englishmen through clenched teeth.

I’m currently rattling north on a train Halifax to see my 94-year-old grandfather. Despite me frequently telling him that I’m working for a TV station, his concept of our life in Ghana is firmly based on him having seen Zulu when it first came out in 1964. During a previous phone conversation I detailed some of the hardships of our life here (no Strictly Come Dancing; over-priced cheese). His advice was for us to fall back to the hospital buildings and make a last stand there - sage advice if we were fighting off thousands of armed natives, but less useful if you’re just trying to get Skype to connect.

That said, as another wave of heat engulfs me and sweat begins to trickle down my spine, retreating to a hospital building doesn’t seem like a bad idea. I’m beginning to wonder whether North Yorkshire has any provision for treating tropical diseases when the ticket inspector bustles into my train carriage, apologising. “Sorry for the heat in here. The air-con’s broken. Someone’s coming on board at the next station to have a look at it.” As he pushes on down the aisle the woman next to me rolls her eyes and fans her face with her hand. “It’s like bloody Africa in here” she says. “Yeah” I mutter. So much for being on holiday. At least I might not have malaria.  

Ghana 9. All Protocol Observed

I’m in the News Editor’s office, discussing how to fund three days of live coverage from Ghana’s presidential ‘primaries’. As usual at The Network we have a starting budget of zero. There’s a sudden silence as the senior news team pauses to digest what I’ve just said. Maybe I’ve overstepped cultural boundaries this time.

“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.

Ghana 8. Football Vest

You know something, somewhere, has gone horribly wrong when you start wearing vests again. As a child, the coming of winter was marked by my mother sowing me into my underwear until spring came around. I thought I had left those thermal-clad days behind until I found myself needing to look smart in a tropical climate.

Out here men wear vests not to stay warm but to soak up sweat. There’s no point in leaving for work in your best threads if by the time you reach the office you’re damper than a paedophile in a nursery. Thus now each morning I don my singlet, my slacks and my best nylon shirt before shuffling out into the blazing heat to join the Ghanaian rat race.

This will be my fifth week as head of production for The Network, one of the big three terrestrial TV stations here in Ghana. Back in the mists of the New Year while Louisa was doing battle with Malaria, I met a South African man who works for the channel. With freelance work thin on the ground, when he mentioned that they were looking for a new head of production I jumped at the opportunity.

I then sat around waiting for over a month while the senior management procrastinated, postponed and put off giving me a contract in accordance with the Ghanaian management maxim “why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?” Just when I had decided that this job was never going to happen, I was told to start on Monday.

My wardrobe since arriving in Ghana has consisted mainly of a handful of limp t-shirts and several pairs of shorts that would look dirty even on location with Time Team. I was suddenly faced with the need to smarten up for work in a way I’ve never needed to even in the UK. Thankfully Ghana is the Mecca of the second-hand clothing world. Every year thousands of tonnes of used clothes make their way from the West to the shores of Africa where they are re-tailored by armies of seamstresses into new garments.

Cantamento Market in central Accra is a rabbit warren of second-hand clothing stalls that stretches for miles. Six shirts, two pairs of trousers and some creaky black leather shoes later and I was set to become Mr. Middle Management.

In the UK the head of production is usually a benevolent god-like figure who drifts around the channel giving his blessing to new productions and gently intervening where a programme is going belly-up. Here in Ghana, Head of Production might be more accurately entitled Head Master, as overseeing productions here is equivalent to corralling twelve-year-olds during a field-trip to a sugar factory.

On Friday I returned to the office from a meeting to find crew wandering aimlessly around the main entrance when they should have left for a shoot in town an hour previously. Despite them knowing exactly when and where they were supposed to be filming, no one had issued an order to depart, so there they stayed. The week before last the entire news department managed to lock themselves out of the news studio thirty minutes before the lunchtime bulletin because someone lost the studio key.

It’s not all Carry-On Camera; the news department have won several awards for one of their current affairs programmes, and we are the only station in West Africa providing live sports coverage to Super Sport and, on occasion, even the BBC.

Perhaps the biggest irony in this whole affair is the fact that I’m in charge of Ghana’s premier sports channel when I don’t know the offside rule from my elbow. If you thought Britain was football obsessed, you should come to Ghana, where even the most cholera-infested slum* will have signboards advertising the next Chelsea-Arsenal fixture. And in the midst of this here am I, with a greater interest in Belgian tax law than in the Great Game.

That said, the process of providing live coverage of anything here makes for an interesting challenge, regardless of what’s going on in front of the lens. Other than the state broadcaster we are the only network here to have an outside broadcast van, which coughs and splutters its way between the nation’s sporting arenas. With Ghana’s road network bumpier than the Middle East peace process it’s a miracle that it makes it to most locations without the satellite dish falling off the roof.

The scale of the matches we cover varies massively. One of the first FA Cup fixtures I tagged along for had goats grazing on the side of the pitch. In contrast, a couple of weeks ago we had to resort to sign language in order to communicate amidst the din at Accra’s Ohene Djan stadium when two of the biggest Premier League teams were playing a grudge match.

By far the biggest sporting event of the last few weeks was the England-Ghana friendly played in the UK at Wembley Stadium. For a country enviously obsessed with its old colonial master’s Premier League, after Britain’s appalling World Cup performance this was seen as an opportunity for David to give Goliath a really good kicking.

The Network was picking up a live feed from the UK by satellite, and after our own pre-match studio debate here we switched to the live coverage. The studio team immediately downed tools and fought for space in front of various TV monitors to watch the kick-off. We were twenty minutes into the first half when suddenly all the lights went out and everything in the main control room of the nation’s third biggest TV network switched itself off.

Power cuts here are common enough that anyone who can afford it has a generator. While various back-up battery systems kicked in I dashed outside in the dark to our generator to see why it wasn’t yet belching into life. Illuminated by a couple of mobile phones, several technicians were kissing their teeth in frustration as a stack of car batteries failed to produce enough charge to jump-start the engine. Eventually another battery with some charge left in it was found under a bush by the front gate, and the oily monster was shocked into action.

Back in the control room everyone had crowded around the few consoles still being powered by the back-up batteries. The main concern was not that we had briefly ceased broadcasting, but that we might have missed a goal. As the rest of the equipment flickered back into life the general mood of mild anxiety caused by this technical hiccup dissipated. The volume level rose accordingly as Ghanaian discussion of live football settled in at a cruising level of 120 decibels. Relieved, I looked down at the rings of sweat emanating from my armpits, alone on my otherwise dry torso, and once again marvelled at the absorbent power of my vest.

*This is not an exaggeration. We currently have an outbreak of cholera in Accra. Which is nice.

Ghana 7. Mormons & Malaria

The sign on the door of Louisa’s hospital ward read:

To minimise the inconvenience of noise making to others, praying with patients on the ward should be done silently

This doesn’t fill you with confidence in Ghana’s medical system when your nearest and dearest is lying half comatose in a hospital bed, hooked up to a quinine drip fighting severe malaria.

In Ghana every headache or fever is assumed to be malaria until proven otherwise, which is a pretty sensible position to take in a tropical country filled with mosquitoes. I had two blood smears over Christmas and New Year that both came back negative while I spent several days in bed fighting off some virus or other.

The severity of malaria cases is ranked 1 (weak) to 4 (dead in a week). Louisa’s not only came back positive but a 3+ at that. Thus began the unpleasant business of finding a hospital to check her in to (a taxi ride away with a stop for her to vomit on route) and starting the bureaucratic wheels turning with our insurance company back in the UK.

The whole experience was made a lot easier by the reassuring presence of our flatmate Dr. Ben, an American hospital doctor doing part of his rotation in Ghana. While I did battle with the insurance company (thank god for cheap calls to the UK) Ben diplomatically gave the medical staff a pop quiz with questions such as “should her eyeballs be rolling back in her skull like that?” and so forth.

In all fairness, Nyaho Medical Centre – the hospital where we ended up – turned out to be one of the better ones in Accra. The place was comparable to many British NHS hospitals (make of that what you will), and once they moved the infant with suspected typhoid down the ward Louisa had a room all to herself. I set up camp next to her and no one took issue with me sleeping in one of the spare beds.

So there we stayed for four days with Louisa being pumped full of quinine and fluids via an IV, getting up to wee every half hour and then collapsing back into bed. Unfortunately the side effects of the quinine are as unpleasant as the malaria itself; amongst other things Louisa developed acute tinnitus rendering her deaf as a post, unable to hear anything that the doctors or nurses were saying to her, let alone talk to her worried parents on the phone.

Having recovered sufficiently but still weak as a kitten, Louisa was discharged with a bag of quinine tablets and instructions to return for further blood tests later in the week. Unfortunately, only days after her return home, I had to leave her in the care of friends to go off on a sound recording job for a week.

We had been contacted several weeks previously by an American producer-director who phoned us from an Angolan oilrig saying that he was coming to Ghana to shoot Mormons and could we sound record for him? Louisa was lined up to do this, but with her convalescing at home I had to go in her place.

The American turned out to be an interesting mixture of LA-based Hollywood TV type and down-to-earth devout Mormon, which were most definitely the ying and yang of his personality and no mistake. He’s in the midst of making a promotional DVD for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or COJCOLDS for short, an acronym they seem curiously unwilling to adopt), depicting Mormon congregations around the world and explaining some of their theological beliefs.

Now, all I knew about Mormonism at the beginning of the week was that Mormons tend to dress like IT technicians, and that at some point previously they practised polygamy (probably as recompense for the terrible uniforms). Hoping to bear witness to at least one polyester-clad group sex ritual during the week, I was disappointed to find that the multiple wives thing went out over a century ago (although it still plays havoc with their image) and that they’re really no more devoutly nuts than the next Christian faction claiming to preach the One True Faith.

Moreover, other than several spotty American missionaries doing their religious equivalent of a gap year, all the Mormons we met were Ghanaian – a determinant of character that outweighs religious influence like a transvestite in a knitting circle. For the fact that everyone in Ghana believes in god in some shape or form (“Washed in the Blood of Christ Hair Salon” anyone?), Ghana’s Mormons just read a slightly different religious text to the rest and then get on with the usual pan-Ghanaian concerns of being loud, gregarious and a bit disorganised.

Okay, so there are a few aspects of their beliefs that put Mormons at loggerheads with other branches of Christianity. For instance, they believe that their founder, a 19^th century American called Joseph Smith, was visited by God and by Jesus who instilled in him the divine right to preach their gospel, lost since the death of Jesus’ original apostles in Biblical times.

In contrast, the Catholic Church lays claim to unbroken papal lineage from St. Peter, who was appointed divine leader of the church by Jesus himself. For Joseph Smith, trumpeting an alternative claim to having divine right to preach the gospel was like telling the biggest bully in the playground that he smells of poo. Accordingly, Mormons have historically been shaken down for their lunch money on a regular basis.

Ghana is pretty easy come, easy go where religion is concerned. Everyone professes to be devoutly something – usually Christian or Muslim – but finds room in their beliefs for a bit of traditional African spiritualism at the same time. It’s a bit like enthusing about Bjork’s latest album at parties, then going home and listening to the Best of the Carpenters – you’ve had it a lot longer and the words are easier to remember.

We spent much of the week filming at the Yamoranza church in Cape Coast. One member of the congregation, Ebenezer - a middle aged pharmacist with a gammy leg – talked in detail about how the church was built. A neighbouring family had to be persuaded with a cow and sum of money to move their sacred altar rock as it was right where the new driveway was going to be.

Nothing unusual there; however, he went on to say that the family’s god Akatakyiwa (pronounced “Akatichiwa”) takes the form of a dog and thus no dogs have been permitted in the village for generations. One night many years ago he woke up needing a leak. As he relieved himself into the gutter outside his shop, across the road in the darkness he saw the biggest dog he’s ever set eyes on. He stared at it and it stared back at him before melting into the darkness.

On a muggy Sunday morning, standing on the steps outside the Mormon Church he attends at least once a week, Ebenezer maintained with blithe sincerity that the dog he had encountered had been none other than Akatakyiwa. He pointed out the small shack next to the church where the family’s altar rock now resides. Then, with a “God bless” by way of farewell, he ambled awkwardly off, dragging his bad leg behind him.

Louisa was only prayed over once while in hospital (by another patient’s visitor who thoughtfully included her in her very vocal prayers, sign or no sign), but God nonetheless came to her though an IV drip and a secondary course of tablets. This morning, a further blood smear declared her finally free of the malaria parasite and once again fit for human consumption. It’s a weight off both of our shoulders; this evening we will offer up a coconut to our sacred chicken before putting a few coins in the local church collection box - just to keep everyone happy.

Ghana 6. Life & Death

Hans’ Cottage is a hotel and restaurant with a difference – it has a boating lake. Full of crocodiles. Hiring a pedalo has never been more fraught with danger; we watched from the safety of the bank as a group of Ghanaians paddled gently around the oversized pond, several pairs of reptilian eyes following them from surface of the water.

Having just come from petting one of the larger specimens that was sunning itself on the bank, I felt no need to prove my bravery / stupidity further. The croc in question seemed oblivious to the crowd of nervous visitors who were taking it in turns to dart forward and have their photo taken while gingerly placing a hand on its tail.

Waiting my turn, I was equally frightened of the hatchet-faced matriarch who was policing the show, armed with a stick and a plate of meat scraps in case the main attraction should begin to show an unprofessional interest in the customers.

We had stopped at Hans Cottage on our way back from visiting Kakum National Park, an area of semi-rainforest sporting a network of treetop rope bridges that lays claim to being Ghana’s top tourist attraction. Ghana being, well…Ghana, this is equivalent to being crowned Miss Swindon. What little wildlife survives in the forest keeps well away from the aerial walkway, although the views out over the canopy are impressive.

This is a good thing, as the alternative is looking down. 40m above ground level is not the best place to realise that the narrow, swaying walkway on which you’re standing is constructed out of aluminium ladders with planks of wood bolted across the rungs. Our guide reassured us that they replace all the suspending ropes every six months. I didn’t feel like asking when maintenance was next due.

We were staying in Cape Coast, a small town about four hours West of Accra best known for its grisly monument to the slave trade. Like many of the old colonial forts dotted along Ghana’s coast, Cape Coast castle was a prison for thousands of Ghanaian slaves before they were herded from the underground dungeons through passages in the cliff face to the slave ships moored below.

We hurried uneasily after our Ghanaian guide as he explained that the floor of the still-fetid men’s dungeon through which we were walking remains an inch thick in compacted human excrement, the slaves having been forced to eat, sleep and shit where they stood, packed in their hundreds into the sweltering, cramped gloom. Suffice to say that many died there before ever reaching the ships.

While we felt sombre and guilty the Ghanaians in our group chatted and squealed with delighted horror at the near total darkness. “It’s the African-American visitors who are most visibly affected.” said our guide. “Most have come to Ghana for the first time to retrace their roots.” At the Door of No Return, beyond which the slave ships once waited, lay a pile of funeral wreaths, left by those whose ancestors had once passed through here and, unlike many, had survived the journey to the New World.

This grim colonial legacy means that Ghana is possibly the only place in the world where being wrongly identified as being American rather than British isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That said, 99.9% of the Ghanaians we’ve met don’t seem to bare anything close to a grudge about their colonial history. It seems to be a real effort for Ghanaians to stay sombre about anything for long.

As we took a taxi along the coast road to nearby Elmina we passed a convoy of cars travelling in the opposite direction; horns blared and people hung out of the windows. “Funeral” said our driver cheerfully, leaning on his horn and adding to the din.

Ghanaian funerals frequently outstrip weddings for the expense lavished upon them. Just as parents in the West will spend vast sums on their children’s weddings, so Ghanaian families will get themselves into considerable debt in order to lay on, for no better phrase, the funeral of a lifetime for their parents. Funerals will attract hundreds of people and often last several days, typically beginning on a Thursday with the lying-in-state. This is strategically planned to allow the vocal outpouring of grief to morph, over Friday and Saturday, into a massive party. Come Sunday everyone staggers to church rather the worse for wear.

I regret to say that all this is learned second-hand and that we are yet to be invited to a Ghanaian funeral. Just as we might tell a visitor to Britain that they simply must experience Soho on a Friday night, so Ghanaians often tell us, with a rare hedonistic glint in their eyes, that we have to go to a funeral while we’re here.

Statistically our chances are fairly good. Despite being highly developed for West Africa, average life expectancy in Ghana is still pretty low at 57 years. A high mortality rate combined with a culture of lavish funerals has generated a profitable funeral industry with some unusual entrepreneurial opportunities. The cost of a funeral can be significantly reduced by the financial contributions customarily made by guests. If however both you and your expected guests are poor, then you have a bit of a problem.

One solution is to employ a funeral-broker of a peculiarly Ghanaian type. Usually a well-connected man, the broker will use his social sway to turn an unremarkable passing into the social event of the month. Wealthy guests beget wealthy guests who not only up the ante of your funeral with their presence, but also help pay for something grander than you could have afforded by yourself through their generous donations. The broker takes a cut from the donations and everyone goes home happy. Except the deceased, who’s six feet under by this point.

Crocodile petting aside, our brushes with death in Ghana have thus far been limited to a few hair-raising tro-tro journeys conducted at break-neck speeds along rutted dirt roads. In a bid to live life more on the edge, last week I made that most ill fated of observations that “amazingly neither of us has really been ill since we’ve been here…” Cue a 3am bowl movement that measured on the Richter scale followed by all the other symptoms of malaria. We accordingly spent the morning at the local hospital, where I joined the ‘malaria-test-while-u-wait’ cue. Other than the used blood-test needles going into an open tissue box, the whole place was pretty sanitary and 45 minutes later (unbelievably fast for anything in Ghana) my thankfully negative test result was handed to me on a slip of paper.

Whatever flu-type bug or food poisoning I was having instead of malaria went as fast as it had come, which was good because we were being interviewed at dawn the following day for Ghanaian breakfast television. We had met Parlos the programme’s producer at a high-life concert he was covering several months before, and during a more recent chance encounter he said that he had a daily business slot to fill and would we like to take part?

After a 5am start and an hour-long tro-tro ride we arrived at Net2TV on the outskirts of town, where we were shepherded to the top floor of a large and seemingly empty office building. Here we were ushered through a door into the comparative clamour of the gallery, adjacent to the studio, from where the live broadcast was being stage-managed.

Just before 8am I was fitted with a radio mic and was led into the studio. Louisa had opted out of taking part on the grounds that my ego was enough for one sofa. The presenter was cued and as we beamed live into the homes and chop-bars of sleep-befuddled Ghanaians I launched into a witty and erudite account of our emigration to Ghana.  Thirty seconds in, Parlos the producer walked on to the set in front of the camera, stopping me short.

“I’m afraid our transmitter’s just died and the whole station has gone off air. We’re not likely to get it fixed before the next programme’s due to start. Any chance you could come back and do this again at the same time next week?”

I should have known that I was in a more reliable situation when playing with that crocodile. “Of course” I said, wishing that I were still in bed. But then this is life on the edge, Ghana style. Time for another Lemsip.

PS: I was going to write about the weird world of Christmas in Ghana, but my train of thought got diverted. I’ll do it in the next instalment. In the mean time, the Ghanaian Signage of the Month Award for December 2010 goes to a car window sticker I saw the other day that read:

Caution! I drive like you do.

which in Ghana is about as threatening as it gets. Happy Christmas one and all!

Ghana 5. Opinion

Since arriving in Ghana two months ago the initial onslaught of unfavourable comparisons to life in Britain has gradually paled into normality. Accra no longer appears to be the surface of the moon, looking instead more like Bradford with a few additional open sewers. The roads are still terrible and it’s still hotter than hell; we’ve just got vaguely used to it.

Sweating is a Ghanaian national pastime that I picked up pretty fast and now excel at. On the roads street hawkers walk between the frequently gridlocked traffic selling face flannels and handkerchiefs intended for mopping your brow. If you think the British are boring when talking about the weather, try having the same conversation in Ghana:

“It’s hot today, isn’t it.”

“Yup, really hot”

“Even hotter than yesterday.”

“Definitely. Really hot.”

This is possibly one reason why conversation with Ghanaians often turns quickly to politics – there’s simply nothing more to be said on the weather front.

When it comes to politics Ghanaians don’t necessarily want to discuss taxation and civil liberties. Ghana’s politicians are its Z-list celebrities. They are Ghana’s former Big Brother contestants, obligingly providing the tabloids with a constant stream of lurid stories usually involving sex, drugs or (preferably) both.

One Canadian journalist working here complains that, in contrast to much of Africa, there’s too much freedom of the press in Ghana. Libel laws are rarely enforced and so the tabloids simply print what they want. As all the newspapers - tabloid and broadsheet - are owned or funded by one of the main political parties, you can usually guess who the villains in each are going to be.

A common conclusion to any political conversation here, regardless of allegiance, is that a) all politicians are crooks, and b) being a political crook is an admirably lucrative business that can set you up for life, should you play your cards right.

Oliver worked in IT in the States for several years before settling back in Accra. A successful Ghanaian businessman, he now runs an upmarket coffee shop catering to rich Ghanaians and ex-pats. His menu is exorbitantly over-priced, but his opinions are on the house.

Like most Ghanaians, he venerates Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957. Oliver argues that in developmental terms Ghana is only ten years old – the period when Nkrumah was in power, until he was forced into exile by a military coup in 1966. Nkrumah worked for the good of Ghana, building the country’s first hydroelectric dam, expanding its education system and revolutionising the transport network.

Since then, Oliver argues, every subsequent politician has neglected Ghana in favour of furthering their own offshore bank accounts, and Ghana’s development has remained stagnant.

You only have to stand amidst the high-rise banks of central Accra, or visit the bustling shopping mall on the city’s outskirts to suspect that this isn’t quite true. In the same vein, while Nkrumah instigated some landmark developments within Africa, he also left Ghana in severe debt and imprisoned thousands of political opponents during his reign.

In Britain, delivering an opinion on even the smallest question of right and wrong usually requires a cup of tea and a sit-down first. In Ghana, it seems that everybody comes equipped with an unshakable, ready-to-serve moral standpoint that can nonetheless be tweaked as necessary to suit any occasion.

On the way to work this morning, our tro-tro driver leaned out of his window to yell angrily at the taxi next to us. The taxi was straddling the inside lane, thoughtlessly preventing our driver from overtaking the near-stationary traffic by driving up the hard shoulder.

Right of way here is entirely subjective. During rush-hour, crossroads become vehicular Mexican stand-offs, with four cars all trying to turn right at the same time and no one backing down. Imagine the last scene from Reservoir Dogs with added street hawkers trying to sell the participants phone cards.

Our status as obrunis – foreigners – puts us at a tactical disadvantage when it comes to weighing into Ghanaian arguments about the state of the nation. During several different conversations I’ve made the mistake of complementing Ghana as a model democracy within Africa. This has earned me the kind of indulgent smiles usually reserved for Downs Syndrome debating competitions.  

“Our democracy isn’t like your democracy” said Senyo, a combative TV producer we met in a bar a few weeks back. “Here, it doesn’t work and we don’t gain anything from it. It just helps us to secure foreign aid. How can you applaud a democracy where illiterate masses vote depending on how dark a candidate’s skin is?”

I think you can only be despondent about democracy if you are lucky enough to have it in the first place. Nonetheless, like Senyo, others amongst Ghana’s intelligentsia who we’ve chatted with are frequently dismissive of this, West Africa’s poster-boy political system. This is of course according to the ‘only Jews can tell Jewish jokes’ rule – you are only permitted to criticise your own. Woe betide any obruni who takes issue with Ghana.

A few weekends ago we drove up to Aburi, a small hilltop town just outside Accra where the city’s wealthy elite have their country retreats. We’d been invited to go there by Henry, a Ghanaian software developer who made his fortune through computerised cash-registers. Henry’s house in Aburi is a lavish safari lodge on stilts, reached by a near vertical dirt track that almost justifies his giant orange Porsche 4x4. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s extremely funny, Henry would be a bit of a cock.

As we lounged around on his raised terrace looking down on Accra and the sea beyond, Henry held forth about what he sees as the West’s love-hate relationship with Africa.

He had recently attended a trade conference at which a British delegate had criticised the BBC for perpetuating a ‘war, AIDS and corruption’ image of Africa that is scaring businesses away from investing in Ghana. This speaker was followed by a second Brit who emphasised the benefit to Ghana of maintaining its trade relations with Britain and not rushing into the ever-widening arms of China.

When it came to Henry’s turn to speak he raised the issue that if our national media is hell bent on scaring off potential investors in Ghana, then who is Britain to say a word when Ghana decides to go to bed with China? It’s the diplomatic equivalent of slagging off your ex to anyone who will listen but then getting into a stink when you find out they’re dating someone else.

I think Henry has a valid point. Ghana is not Conrad’s ‘heart of darkness’. It has WiFi for goodness sake. It’s a shame then that he followed this story with another rib-tickler about him and his mate scamming a Swiss company for a work contract, a business trip and a suitcase full of Rolexes. As often seems to be the case here, when others are the corrupting influence its injustice, but when you’re the corrupting influence it’s just…Ghana. That’s my opinion anyway.

PS: I have been neglecting to revel in the eccentricity of Ghana’s business names. To this end, the first Shop Name of the Week Award goes to:

“Sow in Sorrow Reap in Joy

Welding Spraying & Fitting”

In a similar vein, there seems to be a trend for taxis and tro-tros to sport cryptic slogans across their rear windows. Thus the first Window Slogan of the Week Award goes to the frankly mysterious:

“Still Batman”

Brilliant.

Ghana 4. Work

Okay, so this entry is somewhat overdue. I’ve actually started writing it on several occasions over the past few weeks, but it seems to have been interrupted by the time consuming banalities of Ghanaian daily life. Take clothes washing for example: in a tropical climate the most you can hope for out of a pair of boxer shorts is two days. Like most people here we don’t have a washing machine, so at least once a week I find myself head down, scrubbing gussets and t-shirts in a bucket of water that was already vaguely brown when it came out of the tap.

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.