"This is Africa". This simple phrase has become a mantra. Things seem strange? Illogical? Did three cockroaches just bust out of the sphygmomanometer? Well, this is Africa. That's all there is to it. Just relax, go with the flow and chances are you'll make it out all right.
Ghana, where do I start? It's the country as close to the "middle" of the world you can possibly get. about 6 degrees north and straddling the Prime Meridian. Ran by the British until 1957, when Ghana declared independence, the first colony in Africa to do so. The severence with Britain was relatively painless (The Brits have a talent for knowing when to get the hell out of dodge). As such, you can find traces of Britain around, the occasional bust of Queen Victoria, large Indian minority, very good chips, so on and so forth.
Ghanaians are a friendly people, as the Ministry of Tourism loves to state. This is a mixed blessing, as on one hand it's nice to be treated with courtesy by strangers, you rapidly realize that everyone has an agenda. Ghanaians are a mercantile people as well, and a cracker like myseld appears as a giant sack of money with a healthy dose of liberal guilt. Everyone wants something from you, and due to the "culture of friendliness" if you rebuff them, apparently that makes you the bad guy. The worst are the Rastas, who approach speaking a contrived patois, an accent apparently acquired from listening to too much Bob Marley. They immediately try to get you to give them some kind of personal information, phone number, address, email etc... And if you politely state no, then suddenly you change from being their brotha and you become a "damned Babylonian". The fact that Haile Selassie owned slaves has become a great source of amusement for me.
This double faced nature is really only prevalent in Accra and some of the more touristy areas. I'm staying in a town in the Greater Accra area called Teshi; and in Teshi there is a feeling of people being honestly happy to see you. Teshi is a case of the population of a city outstripping it's ability to provide for them. The roads are unpaved, pothole riddled affairs, there's electricity, but no water system, sewer system, or trash disposal. Water is trucked in by private companies to be kept in communally owned cisterns. Goats, chickens, and sheep browse throught the streets looking for food. Yet everyone seems happy. They are living their lives and enjoying them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Trey Dude,
Hope all is going well in the Heart of Africa (please note I did not say Heart of Darkness -- have you read that one yet?). Your blogs give a graphic picture of life in a medial compound. Sounds a bit like some things I saw in South Africa, though there was certainly a much larger first-world component to the cityscape in places like Johannesburg and Capetown. I never made it to Ghana, but we do have a sales rep focusing that particular country (though he is based in Lagos). And as they used to say in old Rome: Noli blatti permittere te terere (don't let the cockroaches wear you down). Cheers, Kevin
Post a Comment