Everywhere is War

My alarm jerked me out of bed this morning at 5:45 Accra time. In order to beat some of the very horrible city traffic, we had breakfast and left for Cape Coast by 6:30. Something about the bus rides make me uncontrollably sleepy, almost like I have a concussion, so I was in an out for most of the ride.

Cape Coast is truly a beautiful city, and based only on the superficial environment, I prefer it over Accra.

 

Elmina Castle was built in the 17th century by Portuguese traders as an economic control center. It then became the largest slave dungeon, processing center, and example of Hell on Earth in West Africa. The Dutch took control of it for a while and were even bigger bastards to the natives than were the Portuguese.

Upon walking into the fort, the first thing that drew my attention was the church in the middle of the square. “Even the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose,” wrote Shakespeare.

After a brief introduction from our tour guide, we moved into the Female Slave Dungeon. 400 women were held in bondage against their will with only enough food and water to survive – and plenty of times not even that amount. The floors here were never washed, and the odor of human feces, menstrual blood, and sweat hung in the air. I imagine the only places on Earth that could feel so tainted are Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The Female Dungeon was located almost directly under the Governor’s Chambers, and he had the privilege of being able to call the women to order in the square, pick any one of them, and rape her. If the woman did not submit willingly, she would be sent to the Condemned Cell, where non-compliant Africans would starve or suffocate to death.

Condemned Cell. No food, no water, no air, only death.

The Point of No Return was the last major part of our visit. This was the door through which Africans would be loaded onto ships to be taken across the world and used as slave labor. The portal seems small, but given that all the slaves passing through here had been mostly starving for months, it served its purpose.

Atop the Fort, there was really a very beautiful view of the city. It stunned me that the people here could enjoy the beach with such a stark reminder of humanity’s potential to be horrible looming constantly in the background. It’s almost as if someone set up a soccer field next to the killing fields of Cambodia.

 

Throughout the open areas of the Fort, small birds were flying about. I thought for a moment these were the spirits of former slaves, who had been forcibly ripped from their homelands and stripped of all humanity and dignity, returning to the last place they considered home to display their freedom in death and reincarnation.

Exhausted

Today was a light day, with a lecture focusing on the sociology of Malaria and then a site visit to the Noguchi Institute, which was named after a Japanese doctor who came here to study Yellow Fever and died of it. It was donated by Japan, and every piece of equipment in the lab carried a “Japan: Official Development Assistance” sticker to advertise the fact.

Some in the group have been craving Western food, so we stopped at the Accra Mall, which was clearly built to Western tastes. We had pizza which made Dominoes look like Mama Lombardi’s, and it made me a little homesick for food and friends. Personally, I want to eat as much Ghanaian food as I can while I’m here, because I think it’s incredibly spicy and delicious. More importantly, it’s actually food, as opposed to all of the food-like substances we inevitably wind up eating back home.

Fully and completely exhausted. The slum really did take a toll. The rest of the night will be spent writing and relaxing with the group, because tomorrow we go to Cape Coast and the Slave Dungeon there, which I’m sure will be just as emotionally taxing as Ussertown was. I can't stop thinking about the 9-year-old girl who spends her days carrying 40lbs of water on her head or the 70-year old stroke victim who's husband left her for the United States and took their daughter with him, leaving her in a shantytown sweatbox with only her sister and extended family to care for her.

Empty as a Pocket

We just took a walking tour of a slum near Jonestown, in downtown Accra near the coast. I feel as if I’ve aged ten years in only two hours. Everything I’ve been studying for the past three years has just come alive in the most unimaginable sense. It’s amazing how few tears I saw – laughter was abound. I suppose that’s the culture and the coping mechanism at work. Kids were playing soccer, ping-pong, and foosball, and they showed off karate moves and gave us high-fives when we gave them some biscuits we purchased for them.

The atmosphere was hot at times and cool at others, the living spaces where people sleep (for those that are fortunate enough to sleep indoors) have no ventilation and few comforts of any kind. The people we met were sociable, warm, and welcoming. I talked to a girl who was waiting for her parents support to be able to afford college. She wanted to study Journalism. It made me feel horrible for abandoning that former dream of mine, if only because switching my field of interest was so easy to do. Because of the family I was born to and the place I happened to be born, I can do anything I set my mind to do. The people I met in the slum were all full of potential and dreams, but only lacked the capital needed to achieve them.

There is more to be said about today’s trip, but I’ve only just returned, and wanted to write some immediate reactions. I’m going to need much more time to process the sights, sounds, and smells of walking around an urban slum in the developing world.

Volta Region Day 2: You Could Just Be a Camel

We’re finally back in Accra after spending the weekend in the Volta region on the country’s eastern border with Togo. Last night’s digs were somewhat less than five-star, as our toilet gradually fell apart as the night went on and the room smelled inexplicably of must and urine.

This morning we had a chance conversation with a Ghanaian who told me his friends call him Kabila, because of his resemblance to the President of the DRC. He asked us our opinions of American culture, and more specifically, why we thought America was so powerful. I really had no good answer for the second one aside from military hegemony and economic superpower status. We talked of Ghanaian politics, and the consensus here is that, much like in the United States, there is too much apathy in the population. People don’t know their rights and don’t make demands of their government to deliver on the promises made during election season.

I told him that my biggest concern for Ghana after spending a few days here is sanitation. Not only the roadside toilets, but the refuse burning and the littering. I think it’s accepted only because there really is a lack of a well-developed garbage processing infrastructure here. Well-placed receptacles are few and far between and litter reigns. Not only does this detract from the immense tropical beauty of the country, it poses a very serious human health risk. Before coming here, I really didn’t expect this to strike me as emotionally as it has.

Other emotional moments have largely revolved around babies. Many women carry small children in a sort of backpack/satchel designed for this purpose, and the girls in our group tend to fawn over how cute they are, and they are cute indeed. However, my thoughts usually turn to the future of these children. They’re not going to be toted along by their mothers for long, and the Child Mortality Rate here is still far too high. Life expectancy is rising, but too slowly.

Finally, it seems nobody here is impatient or lazy. Things happen and delays occur, but there doesn’t seem to be the rage you’ll find on the streets of New York. I’ve always hated people that get outraged when a shop sells Pepsi but not Coke, and experiencing a culture like this is going to make that even harder to deal with when I get back home. Economically, everybody is producing and selling something. Small shops flank all the major roads, and women will come up to cars, busses, and taxis in traffic looking to sell anything from souvenirs to live crabs. Despite relative economic poverty here, everyone is trying to improve their lot. It’s very encouraging for the nation as a whole.

From our one-night hotel in Volta, we traveled to Volta Dam, and had lunch at a hotel which provided quite a beautiful overview of the Dam and the Lake. Hawks and Vultures flew overhead, enjoying the thermals provided by the intense heat and sunlight. I finally tried Guinness Malta, which is a non-alcoholic Malt beverage that tastes very smooth and very heavy.

At Volta Dam

Volta Region Day 1: Throw Your Cedi in the Air!

A 2.5hr drive to the Volta Region was an experience all in itself. The distance from the capitol city and the quality of roads are directly related, as we got closer to our destination and farther from the city, we were navigating mud/clay/dirt paths littered with potholes and small ravine-like water damages. Speedbumps are very common as highways pass through villages, and they’re much, much more violent than back home. One particularly nasty one lifted me out of my seat and the ceiling of our bus whapped me pretty good upside the head. I felt the blow more in my neck than anywhere else, then promptly moved to an open seat where the belt actually worked. We stopped at the side of the road to walk into the bush a bit to use the Ghanaian bathroom, as they say.

At the Monkey Sanctuary, we bought some bananas and our guide made a kissing-like noise that attracted a large group of Roli monkeys. To feed them, we held the fruit firmly and they would skittishly approach, peel the banana themselves, take a bit of the food inside, then scamper off. This was about eighty times more fun than any zoo I’ve been to before.

 

Another 45-minute drive over unimproved roads and very beautiful mountainous terrain put us a 45-minute hike away from Wii Falls, the tallest waterfall in West Africa. The trek through the rainforest was certainly a sweaty one, but it was absolutely worth the trip.

Up in the air were hundreds, if not thousands, of fruit bats. I couldn’t get a good picture of them, but I did get a great one of this – an American proposed to his girlfriend at the base of the falls. She said yes. Which is good, because if she said otherwise, that would be a pretty shitty 45 minute walk back. This scene made me pretty pensive all the way back to base, where I bought the most delicious fresh mango I’ve ever had. I ate it with my knife, which was pretty much all kinds of badass.

Another hour or so put us at our temporary digs for the night. Tomorrow we get lunch at Volta Dam overlooking the Lake, then drive back to Accra.

Plant Medicine; Get Up, Stand Up

I type this from Hotel Freedom in the Volta Region. We’re sitting all together outside under a canopy in fan, Ghanaian Hiplife is playing from the bar speakers, and it’s a very relaxing scene after a day of being in the bus and hiking around. We’re really starting to come together as a group, and I’m glad of it. The room that Mo and I are sharing tonight? Not quite as great. I’m gonna need a beer or two before I can sleep peacefully tonight, but I think I’m tired enough that it won’t be too much of an issue.

Yesterday featured a lecture on medicines derived from Plants, then took a tour of a facility working on just that process as part of the Ministry of Health. In-between was lunch at the University, where I had Red-Red, which is a tomato and chili pepper sauce with black-eyed peas, served with chicken on the bone. I may have already mentioned it, but it’s delicious. I’m going to miss the food quite a bit. My major thought on plant medicine was worry that a large Western pharma company like Pfizer could come in and rape the land, while patenting their product back home and reaping major profits at the expense of the Ghanaian people and ecology.

We took a guided tour of the Aburi Botanical Garden, which served as a very peaceful and meditative oasis in the midst of poverty, sort of an inverted Central Park. I enjoyed it greatly, and for the same reasons I love Central – very calming, very relaxing, and you forget everything else around you while you’re there. We played in an old helicopter, smelled plenty of different spices, and touched a tree planted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Rockin’ them high socks, bein’ a cool kid

 

Dinner was at Chez Afrique, where the live band played Bob Marley tunes and Paul Simon/Ladysmith songs. A few rounds were had and group bonding occurred. We hung around our hotel a bit, then got around 4 hours of sleep before our weekend trip to the Volta Region.

Like Wearing a Raincoat in the Shower

I finally slept like a normal human being last night. Mohammad tried to wake me twice, but I didn’t roll out of bed until just in time for our 7:30 breakfast.

Our morning adventure was a bus tour of the University of Ghana. It’s the country’s major Uni, and has more or less any department you could think of. Tertiary education here is nearly fully subsidized by the state, but all graduates are required to do a year of national service following graduation. I think the Obama administration is pushing for a similar program in the United States, and I think it would be a great idea, but  it would be very hard to implement without increasing government subsidization of college costs.

Dept. of Political Science. ‘Sup?!

The University has some elevation to it, and we were able to get out and grab a few pictures above the northern part of Accra.

 

After the tour was our first morning lecture on the topic of the Ghanaian health care system from Dr. Kofi Ohene-Konadu of the University of Ghana. He discussed the history of healthcare in Ghana as well as the major diseases and causes of those diseases that Ghanaians face. He recognized the connection between education and health care, while also acknowledging that a great number of people live in ignorance and simply don’t understand the risks associated with certain lifestyle choices. While Ghana has a comparatively low HIV/AIDS infection rate, he addressed this as a major problem, reporting that some men compare sex with a condom to a shower while wearing a raincoat or eating toffee with the wrapper still on.

Malaria was also a major issue, and the most interesting idea here was that of a “mosquito police,” which Malaysia uses to enforce laws which require citizens to pay careful attention to preventing mosquito breeding spots to form.

From 1985 – 2003, Ghana’s health care system was “Cash and Carry,” wherein patients at a regular hospital had to pay before being seen by doctors. This resulted in a number of Ghanaians sticking to traditional medicines (roots, leaves, etc) or not seeking treatment at all, and was replaced with a basic system of universal coverage which all Ghanaians pay for with an annual tax.

Lunch was at Chez Afrique, and I had chicken with fried plantains and Red-Red, which is a sauce based on black-eyed peas, which were Furgilicious.

On the bus ride to our second lecture of the day, we noticed garbage burning on the side of the road. There doesn’t seem to be anything like a city dump, so much of the trash probably gets disposed of in this way, contributing to environmental hazards here.

The second lecture was on the Bretton Woods institutions and the social welfare cost of conditionalities, something much more up my alley. Our professor was from the University’s Sociology department, and clearly fell on the left side of the aisle. I talked with him a while at the end about the Ghanaian view of the Bank and the Fund and he told me they have both largely been discredited. I don’t know if I fully believe that, because Ghana is widely portrayed as a very good student of the BWIs. However, we both agreed that Ghana, which stands to soon start making quite a bit of money from oil, stands to benefit from lessons learned in nearby Nigeria.

After coming back to our hotel, a few blocks of a walk to a busier street netted me a yardage of cloth and a Black Stars football jersey from sidewalk vendors. Bargaining and haggling is going to take some time to get used to, and I feel bad doing it, but it’s expected here. Another picture I took serves a second example of income disparity.

Just because you own a Mercedes S-Class ‘Get Out of the Way, Poor People” doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a roadside mango

A quick lightning storm just passed overhead, so we ran out to stand in the rain and experience a coastal African lightning storm first-hand. It died down by the time we got outside, but some of the lightning was impressive.

If you can’t tell from the monotony of this post, I’m exhausted. The plan for tonight is to write a little bit more, do some laundry, then pass out hard. Tomorrow we’ve got a morning lecture followed by a site visit about an hour north of the city.