Off to Court

This week I went into the field for The Statesman Newspaper. It was pretty cool. We(co-worker Gilbert and I) went to Ghana's Fast Track High Court. We also walked around the court grounds to catch a glimpse of some of their other courts. We saw the Commerce Court, Supreme Court, a Circuit Court, and some others. Accra is the capital of Ghana and thus the home of their Judiciary. The vast majority of the nations lawyers and judges and courts are in this city. So I basically was able to see where most decisions are made.

The case we were there to write about was concerning 23 Liberian refugees that were detained by Ghanaian police. The police never allowed them to be tried for their offenses or talk to lawyers. Only one of them had spoken to anyone since being arrested 1-2 months ago and a group of lawyers was arguing that the police needed to allow the refugees to seek legal council.

We arrived a little late and missed the trial, but the judge ruled in favor of the refugees. We gathered our information from a group of reporters who had been to the case and all huddled around each other to discus their notes.

An interesting thing about their court system is that are still completely basing it off of the British system... right down to those powder white wigs. There are seasons designated for wigs and gowns and some where you don't need them. In the ones where you do need to wear the costumes, those who don't are legally considered naked and risk being held in contempt.

I think that's crazy. But oh well. If they like tradition...

Volta Region

Hello Again,

Another week, another story. This week was pretty good. I wrote my first piece at the newspaper and CIEE group took trips. We split up into two groups (a big group of 30+ and a small group of 20). The big group went to the Central region, Cape Coast(third largest city in Ghana), Elmina Castle(an old slave trading post and fort Europeans used), and the Slave River(the place slaves being sold into the external trade went to take one last wash before being shipped to the Americas). My group was the smaller one. We went to the Volta Region, where we visited West Africa’s highest water fall, a mona monkey sanctuary, and I attempted to go on a really cool hike(more on that later).

The piece I wrote was an editorial about Ghana’s police mishandling evidence. The police had confiscated large amounts of cocaine from a bust in 2007. Then, in a recent internal investigation, they found a crate was missing. Plus in another crate, bags of cocaine were replaced by with bags of flour. It was a nice article to write, I enjoyed it. But sadly it wasn’t published. They say it was too short for what they were looking for and thus lacked details. The next day I saw they had a similar editorial that was clearly not written by me. Not used, but it still felt good to do something. Yesterday, I wrote another article, this one was about an insurance agency that was moving their head quarters. I have no idea if I did a good job on this article, so we’ll see if it gets published. Either way, I ‘m heading down the path towards becoming a real journalist. So, that’s cool.

On to my weekend trip…. It was a good one, a little rushed for my taste, yet the sights were still interesting. Our group hopped onto a bus at 6 am to travel to the part of the Ghana that lies to the east of the large man-made lake north of Accra. Our first destination took us on a 30 minute hike to a really beautiful waterfall. We swam around in it for a while and took a bunch of pictures. I tried to take some pictures of the bats, after I upload them, we’ll see if any came out well. Ghana has a lot of bats, these ones where living on the cliff side that the water was rushing down. I also took some pictures from inside the fall, which is really cool since I had bought this waterproof camera bag before the trip and finally had the chance to use it. The pool below the fall wasn’t very deep but it was cool and mist in the air was fantastic. It was a very hot day and we needed to cool off.

In Ghana, March is the peak of the dry season. It gets hotter and hotter, until I’m dripping uncontrollably with sweat everywhere I go, regardless of what I do. Then, just when its about to become unmanageably hot, clouds roll over head and the rainy season starts. Well, this weekend we got to experience those super hot days right and it was crazy. My shirt was soaking all weekend and I never really did anything to deserve it. Even thinking made me sweat. So I loved the chance to float around in some nice cool water (actually it was quite cold). Then, after the last person stepped out of the water, our CIEE organizer began herd us away to lunch. The meal was good. I enjoyed my first real French fries, since arrival and they also had a great salad. Ghanaians don’t really do the whole ‘vegetable’ thing (their meals consist of carbs, sauce and meat), so whenever our group gets together for an event everyone goes crazy over at the salad bowl.

After chow, it was off to the monkeys. This part of the trip was a little like a bubble. It kept inflating into a better and better experience… and suddenly it popped and vanished into thin air. I say this because we set off on another hike through the jungle. 5 minutes in, we encountered our first pod of monas. Setting out I was afraid we might not see them, because our guide told us they mainly come out during dusk and dawn (we were there at 4pm). But, there they were. And then they became really comfortable with us and crawled closer and closer (which I didn’t think would happen at all). Next thing I know, I’m reaching my arm out and feeding them bananas. Sweet stuff. I think nearly everyone in the group gave at least one banana to a monkey and if one holds on to the fruit firmly, the monkeys will peel it in your hand then either break off pieces or just do a face plant and gobble it up. I thought we would continue hiking around the area, checking out other groups of monkeys, but that didn’t happen. As soon as we ran out of bananas, our guides took us right back to the bus, so 15 minutes after we entered the sanctuary, we were gone. That sucked. But now I have nice, new monkey sanctuary t-shirt and pictures with African Monkeys. So how could I be sad? (sarcasm = we were such tools)

When we arrived at the hotel, I was tired. So I unpacked, ate and went to bed in front of the warm glowing stare of cable tv. The hotel had some 50 channels. To be fair, half of them were blacked, so we really only had 25. Then, to be honest those 25 channels were just rebroadcasts of the first 4 or 5 channels over and over again. Haha. Seriously. If you channel surfed the airwaves, you’d find one of the same five shows happening on which ever channel you stopped. Example: you could watch MSNBC Africa on channel 4, 6,7, 12,15, 21, 27, 36, etc. Well, I thought it was funny. I awoke in the morning and went for swim. Growing up on a swim team ha sort of ruined the whole pool experience. People just stand there, partially submerged and splash around. I don’t get it. When I go to a pool, the only way I can enjoy myself is if I’m swimming laps, teaching others how to properly swim (because that just rewarding) or maybe playing a variation of Water polo. Nothing else really does it for me. So, when my group hit the pool the night before, I hit the hay. I thought, if I were to wake up early enough, the pool would be empty, and I could get in a really good swim. I swam for about an hour and a half. Then at the end some girl joined me and started talking to me because she had mistook me for someone participating in the same program she was. In the course of our conversation, she recommended that I use my free time to go hiking at a mountain that’s just down the road. It sounded like a great idea and yesterday’s rushed monkey excursion, left me wanting for more. So, during breakfast I recruited some friends and we set off.

Our first problem was that I couldn’t remember the name of the mountain. We asked one of the hotel workers and he told us if we took a taxi to the village named Ho, we would be able to get there without problems. Easy enough; we continued on. The first taxi we stopped knew Ho, so while we were driving there we attempted to find out where the tourist information center was (my pool mate had told me to look for it). We zigzagged town and eventually found a sign for the ‘tourist board’… close enough. Only problem was that we hadn’t thought through our trip enough to realize that we were looking for an office on a Sunday morning. It was closed and the security guards weren’t any help. We found another taxi driver. This one knew the mountain and told us he could get us there for “two five”. We hopped in and were on our way. The taxi driver asked us if we wanted him to stay while we hiked. Because he told us that it would be easy to find another taxi at the base of the mountain, we told him he didn’t need to. Logistic problem number 2: we believed the driver, but really he was just driving us into a situation, where we would have to use him if we wanted to return. Then, 5-10 minutes into the drive the pavement disappeared and was replaced by a bumpy dirt road. Similarly, our taxi’s speed disappeared and was replaced by that of a brisk walk. 20 minutes into it and the mountain didn’t look any closer. We began scheduling our time, trying to figure out just how much hiking we could get in before our bus back at the hotel needed to leave. That was our next logistics failure. I thought we were leaving at 1pm, my friends informed me we were to check out at noon. One less hour for our fun adventure. Plus there was all the time it was taking to get there… so by the time we had arrived at our destination, it looked like we’d only have 20 minutes to walk around, before we needed to head back. We asked the driver if he could just wait for us while we explored the village for twenty minutes. This meant renegotiation of our bill. We told him we’d give him another ‘two five’ to drive us back(in addition to the ‘two five’ for the first half of the trip) and then an extra two cedi for him to wait the 20 minutes for us. At this point we were encountered with logistical problem number 4: lost in translation. Our driver had meant 25 cedi when he told us ‘two five’. We thought he meant 2 cedi, 50 peswas($2.50). So now we were screwed. We had told the man we’d pay him 70 cedi for the round trip, when we thought we would pay him 7 cedi. (by the way, Ghana just redenominated their currency in January, so price confusion is common) There was no way we could pay him 70 cedi, which was far too much and we didn’t even have that kind of money on us. We were trying to argue with him over the price, but he was holding all the chips, since (judging by the size of the village) we could see that there was no way we were going to find another taxi to drive us home. And at the same time we were trying to explain to our guide that we wouldn’t have enough time to go on the hike. Then… out of nowhere… an American woman shows up. She tells us she’s been living in the village for 7 years and her arrival adds one last peculiarity to the mix. Her and her friends join our fight against the taxi driver. Everyone agrees that he is expecting a ridiculously high price. For 70 cedi, we could easily charter a taxi to bring us all the way to Accra and back. (when I eventually returned home, I told my brother how much the taxi driver wanted to charge me, and his response was “where was he going to drive you to? America?) The locals in the village told us they normally pay 1 cedi each for a taxi ride from Ho. By that price, our offer of 15 cedi was twice what he should be paid and the guy still wouldn’t accept it. Eventually, with the help of the townspeople, we brought the price down to a disgruntled 20 cedi, said goodbye to our new village friends and were on our way

The whole event led me to a greater appreciation of meters. They’re great. When it comes to price of the trip, there’s no arguing, no bargaining; you just look up at the meter and pay whatever is on its display. If it has counted to high number, you pay a high price. If its number is low, so is your bill. It’s that simple. Beautifull, really.

Back to Awisa

We(my host family) went back to Awisa this weekend. That's the village we traveled to for the funeral. It looks like they go there a lot. I already know of the next trip they'll make. It will be in three weeks for a one year anniversary of an uncles death. This week's trip was more celebratory, though. It was for Easter and the confirmation of three of my brothers(Bediako, Omega and Kwame).

It started on Thursday. We wanted to be there for as long as possible, so Rihanna and I skipped our afternoon classes. I still had to go to my internship. We had a staff meeting and I did some typing for the business editor. Because of those things, I returned home a bit late. I was agonizing about my tardiness on the tro-tro ride home. Plus, it was a swelteringly hot ride of the stop and go nature, which didn't help in the least.

I guess this is a good time to discuss an aspect of Ghana that is unique to the country... in Ghana, you can buy anything you want on the street. They sell everything on the street(other than pharmaceuticals, although I'm sure you can find herbal remedies and illicit drugs). So much of their economy is street based, that it is actually harder to find objects in brick and mortar establishments. This is important because it allows you to do some shopping while your stuck in traffic. Need a new dress shirt? No problem, roll down your window and start bartering with the man standing at the intersection. Thirsty? Why pull into a convenient store(or Quick-E-Mart) when there are women(and some times young girls) carrying baskets filled with ice cold water walking between the cars. I hadn't ever partaken in this street economy, I wanted to get a feel for their prices before I bought anything. They always try to rip off obrunies, with high prices. Well, today I was hot. I was thirsty. I was hungry. And my water bottle only had warm water in it. So I looked around between the cars and found a man selling ice cream. I bought FanIce(that's the vanilla flavor) and it was divine. It was so good. It hit the spot perfectly. So much so that I stopped worrying about being late.

Which was good because when I finally arrived, my family was sitting around watching Pirates of the Caribbean. That wasn't at all what I was expecting. They told me that my brother Micky had been diagnosed with malaria and was at the hospital on an IV drip. They postponed the trip to the next morning. No problem, I sat down and ate lunch. Your probably reading this thinking that its horrible, I should be more concerned for Micky. But its cool. Malaria in Ghana is like the flu in the US. Everyone gets it. Typically once or twice a year. They go to the doctor, get some medication and are sent on their way. Most people heal in about 3 days.

So the next day we headed out.

We spent most of the weekend swimming. I guess I should mention that Easter is a national holiday and the University canceled classes on Friday and Monday to allow students to go home and visit their families. We swam three out of the four days we were there. I've been teaching my brothers to swim and they've gotten pretty good. The only things their missing are endurance and confidence. Both of which go hand in hand. They didn't improve too much this weekend because the pool we went to operates as more of a party in the water then an actual pool. Most Ghanaians can't swim, so I think they use the pool as nothing more than an excuse to hang out with friends and a way to stay cool. There was loud music and dancing(in and out of the pool). Then in the midst of it all was me teaching lesson. It wasn't too hard to do so the first two times we went. But on the third day, the place was packed. You really couldn't move without running into someone. That is everywhere except for the deep end and when I was tired of teaching people, that's where I hung out. I taught a lot. Teaching your siblings is one thing, but others kept coming over for lessons and my brothers kept finding friends who they thought needed to learn a thing or two. I was glad to help, I think basic knowledge of swimming skills is necessary for everyday life. But on Monday, I totally burned out. I had taught at least something to about 1/5 of the pool and everywhere I looked was someone looking up at me to critique their stroke or show me the next step and since the pool was so hopelessly full(as to be impossible for me to effectively show them anything useful), I just stopped all together.

I guess it didn't help that I had almost been robbed and was a bit perturbed at the time. It happened when Rihana(obruni sister) walked away to meet up with some brothers who had arrived late. Well, it was her job to look after our stuff and when Bernard(youngest brother), told me that she wasn't around, I rushed over to our stuff to make sure everything was still there. Everything of mine was, save for my cell phone. I searched all over and when she returned with our brothers, they helped out. Eventually(like 15-20 minutes later), I accepted the loss and dove back in the pool(at least the water has never betrayed my trust). While I was swimming my brothers found some boy outside of the pool who had 'found' my phone. We don't know if he was the one who took it or if we were just really lucky and he found it after it had fallen out of my pocket. Either way i ended up paying him a $1 out of gratitude(and because my bro's said they boy had insisted on a reward). 'Boo' to that.

The rest of the weekend.....

we had to awake at 3:30 am to go get my brothers confirmed on Sunday. I don't know if this was because of Easter Sunday and the rest of the day as booked with services... or they just do all their confirmations really early. who knows.

Service was alright. There was a lot of dancing and I wore a traditional wrap, so that was fun. But they didn't speak in English and it lasted 3 hours... so that was bad.

I'm really tired of typing and must be going home so i guess I'll have to cut this short. My sister just told me I have to go.


peace and love -tamu

Wrote My First Piece

Today I was asked to write a piece by Cynthia, one of the writers on staff. She was reading an article on My Joy Online about police mishandling contraband. She told me to research the story and write an editorial about it.

Turns out that the Ghanaian police department has been having a pretty decent sized problem with 'misplacing' large quantities of confiscated cocaine. There was a recent internal audit looking into an old investigation that found several bags of cocaine missing from one of their crates; several other bags had been replaced by flour; and on top of all of that, they couldn't even find an entire crate of cocaine.

I'm thinking that someone in the police department must be taking these drugs and selling it back into the streets, fueling the very crime and social destruction that they are supposed to be fighting. That's what I wrote my price about.

Sadly, the editorial I wrote never got published. When I checked the editorial page the next day, I saw a piece about police mishandling cocaine, but it didn't look the way I remembered. It didn't even look like it could have been a result of being ripped to shreds and rewritten by the paper's editors.

I was nervous since I'd never worked at a paper before, never written anything for a paper and I wasn't even a journalism major. So, I asked Cynthia what she thought of my piece. She said it was well written, that was a relief. What it lacked, though, was depth in analysis. It was then that I realized how tough it was for journalist on foreign assignments. Here I was writing a piece about what I thought was an isolated event, and it turns out that it was an institutional problem. I thought I had done my research about the subject, but I guess I had just scratched the surface.

From this day on, I decided to start each day off by scouring the previous day's news.

A Conversation on Dependency Theory

4:17 AM Vicky: baby!! mwah

4:18 AM me: hey love

Vicky: how has your morning been so far besides stiff waking up?

4:19 AM me: class was good

4:20 AM we(i) got a ton of handouts to read

and you know how i love my reading

its rare to have things to read here because resources are so low

so i'm quite happy

4:21 AM and us international students get special treatment when it comes to those sorts of things(which is nice for me) probably so the school can get good PR

4:24 AM Vicky: hehe ah yes I know your first - reading material. That is good! I bet that made your day! oh special treatment for obruni's. Yeah no doubt..it actually does help their PR

I mean I know u're first LOVE - your reading material...oh and what are the readings about?

4:25 AM me: your my first love

but the readings are about history of ghana

Vicky: aww baby!!

mwah!!!

me: and then a couple of others on more widespread african history

4:26 AM Vicky: ooo i see...u are going to be an expert on everything when u get back. Have you been reading a lot apart from class?

4:27 AM me: 'ive read some

but the only place to get books is the library and i always forget to bring my ID card

4:28 AM i really only get onto campus on Mondays

so its a small window of opportunity

4:29 AM Vicky: oh i see

4:31 AM me: but, i should also get a lot of great readings from my development studies class, because that's one is run through CIEE

4:32 AM and they can print plenty of copies without killing their budget

there was one i read last week(from that class)

4:33 AM it was so good

it was about dependency theory

Vicky: ooo do explain...

me: which i had learned about before (the general 'how the west underdevelops the rest of the world' sort of stuff)

4:34 AM but it was just so diffreent to read about it while i'm here

Vicky: oh i see..is it because you saw exactly what they were talking a bout in the reading?

me: because for everything they wrote about, i could think of real life examples proving that it was all true

yep

4:35 AM Vicky: oh yeah..wow..that must have been an emotional read

how do u feel about dependency theory generally?

me: it was crazy just how true it was

4:36 AM well i think that what africa's experiencing right now is due in part to dependency and in part to bad governance

they did have some horrible leaders

4:37 AM Vicky: yeah

true

4:38 AM I think most problems with places like Africa is double - folded like u said

4:39 AM its because of its infrastructure. It seems easy to infiltrate, mess up and weaken

4:43 AM me: the was that the article was teaching it, they were showing that the way the global economic structure is set up, the only time the developing world is developing is in reflection of expansion made in the rich countries

so they do move upwards but only to the extent that we allow them to facilitate our expansion

4:44 AM Vicky: hmm i see

me: and did you know that Ghana has no factories?

4:45 AM they don't actually make anything

other then hand crafts

Vicky: no...

are u serious?

wow..thats no good

4:46 AM me: in order to receive foreign aid they have to aggree to spend it on on things like roads, shopping centers, offices, housing, education

and never investing into their economic infrastructure unless other wise told so

4:47 AM they have to send all their unprocessed goods to the places we tell them to

Vicky: that is horrible! its like all a ploy to keep them dependent

4:48 AM me: then after we're finished manufacturing/processing... we ship it back to them and sell them the finished products

so ghana has to import everything

Vicky: omg...omg...that is so upsetting

4:49 AM wow..I mean u hear of these things..but it has never been broken down to me the way u just h ave

me: and the port here is gigantic

its like the size of a city

and out on the coast line all you see is cargo ships waiting to enter

4:50 AM and of course finished goods cost a lot more than raw materials

so we make a huge profit

4:51 AM keeping us rich and them poor

4:52 AM Vicky: :(

we need to get into politics so we can help change this

4:53 AM me: plus they have to work so hard to make enough raw materials to sell to us, so that they can afford the finished products

4:54 AM but the good side is that they have tons of the goods that are necessary to survive

4:55 AM so they won't starve or anything

the country produces so much food and such that its ridiculously cheap to live here

4:56 AM but if you want any of the finished goods(like a tv or a car or computer) you have to save up money for a really long time

Vicky: boo...

4:57 AM it's just so wrong. we already owe them so much

and yet we continue taking from them...

don't we get that enough damage has already been done

4:58 AM people and labor land resources like anything else..can eventually be depleted...

and then what will we do...?

5:00 AM me: i don't think people will ever be depleted

there are always ways to make labor more efficient

5:01 AM with proper technology one person can increase in efficiency indeffinitly

5:02 AM and as long as we are able to find countries to sell the excess goods to... then the system will prosper

Vicky: boo

5:03 AM me: add to that the trend of disposability (where people replace functioning things so that they can have something slightly better) and you'll never run out of paying customers

5:05 AM Vicky: sigh, u're right. The africans should just refuse to go by the system and develop their own economies. These people have been exploiting them the same way since the begining. We learned about it. this is exactly what happened and what lead up to the slave trade

but yeah I know they need someone to trade with and I know they need cash and and credit but can't Africa as a whole do that within themselves?

5:06 AM just like they did in the tran-saharan trade

me: they can as long as they don't want any complex goods

5:07 AM Vicky: i mean not every aspect of Africa was very very colonized and suffered from imperialism. there has to be enough wealthy to get them to our level . It just has to be distributed better

me: it takes a lot of money to set up a factory, especially if you want it to be efficient enough to compete with established firms

5:08 AM because if they start building things and selling them amongst them selves

someone is going to figure out that they can buy the chinese version of it for half the price and sell it in africa to their compatriates at a nice profit

5:09 AM or if that doesn't happen then everyone has to deal with huge inflation

and they won't be ableto afford anything

Vicky: boo...!

5:10 AM thats why I think all of us should move back there and contribute out wealth, labor and mind to everything there...of us blacks I mean

then they could tax us and everything

me: but since jobs pay so little

Vicky: its ok..we will just have to live off of much less for a time

me: very few want to be here

5:11 AM all the educated in ghana(and most poor places) move to the western world to make their moeny

same thing happens in Jamaica and Dominica

5:12 AM Vicky: :(

5:13 AM Vicky: people just need to have more pride. They need to get educated and come back to help where they've come from

5:25 AM me: i'm totally cool with moving out here
but i have to get a western style pay grade in order to pay off my student loans.
but once thats done, i'd love to help out

and move to a developing country

Vicky: :)

I would too

5:26 AM specifically Africa and or a spanish speaking country

but def western Africa

me: or a spanish african country... like madagascar?

Vicky: :)

oooo

me: i love that place

5:27 AM Vicky: yeah

that would be two dreams wrapped up in none

*one

why do u love that place?

me: i don't know if the people there actualy speak spanish or if that died when they stopped being a colony

they have great wild life

that's why i love it

5:28 AM Vicky: oh hehe...oh west coasters

me: its a very natural, unpoluted country

Vicky: u can take a person out of Portland but you can't take Portland out of someone

hehe

5:31 AM me: of course