Black, in Africa

(Click here to read the prequel on my trip to Africa.)

"So, how was it?"

It's the first question you ask someone when they go on a trip like the one I just completed in Ghana; it's a funny question, when you think about it...is the questioner trying to learn your perspective on the place, or is he/she looking for justification that you enjoyed your trip while setting the table for you to answer in the positive? Is the "it" the place, the trip, the flights, the food, the people, all of it, none of it? In passing, can you really ask someone "how was it?" when it comes to a trip to a developing third-world country? Not that I can compare my trip to this, but would I ask someone returning from the war "how was it?", as if they could possibly answer that question in twenty seconds, if they could even answer it at all?

I came to learn that the best way to ask the question of someone that goes on an adventure of any size--hardly would I call my trip to Ghana a "vacation", for reasons you will see below--is to ask it this way:

"Was your collective experience everything you thought it would be? [time permitting follow-on question] And if so/if not, why/why not?"

I went back to work last week and naturally, I had about 20 of these moments over the course of a hour where everyone was asking "how was it?", and I wasn't sure what to say, really--sure, these people are not my best friends, and they are just trying to be polite; I eventually decided to start answering the question this way for those that seemed only interested in hearing an affirmative answer:

"It was eye-opening."

or, the funny version of that answer, especially if you know anything about where I live now:

"It was like living in Bethesda...but, COMPLETELY different."

I went to Ghana for a number of reasons; over the course of my ten days there, the one thing that smacked me in the face every day was the constant realization that I have it so good here at home that I should always hedge my complaints with just how sweet I've got it right now. Meg asked me when I got back if the lessons sprouting from this would stick with me; I think that these will, which is different than how things normally work when you come back from a new place. Things stick for a little while then fade into the ether, but the kinds of things I witnessed in terms of poverty, friendship, happiness and family will never be shaken from my memory. Don't get me wrong--this trip had plenty of great laughs for me, and plenty of time with my friends Terry and Erin, and plenty of up moments...it's just that many of the trip's critical moments came in the light of hardships for the Ghanaian people and just how they overcame (or are overcoming) certain setbacks or realities.

(Note #1: My apologies in advance for the style of this essay--it's kind of a jumble of thoughts, but it was the best way for me to throw out talking points about the trip. And there aren't many pictures here because I didn't take many pictures; there were plenty of interesting things to see in Ghana, but at times, I felt it best just to soak it in, not snap dozens of photos. In other cases, I just didn't feel right taking pictures, to be honest...something about certain situations I was in led me to feel weird whipping out a camera.)

(Note #2: Erin, my buddy Terry's wife, has lived in Ghana for a variety of stints since 2000. Last year and this year, they did six-month stints while the two of them were doing research for Northwestern University on a few different topics, including studying the people of Ghana and HIV marketing awareness research. The sections labeled "Erin Says" are from her perspective and cover her random thoughts on living in Ghana.)

The crew: Terry, Kim and Erin

Black, in Africa

When I touched down at Kotoka International Airport in Ghana's capital city of Accra, a thought hit me when I walked out of the airport:

"There are a SHITLOAD of black people in Africa!"

Certainly, this is obvious to most people when it comes to Africa. But, I would imagine that if your only trip to Africa was to South Africa, you probably saw a decent number of white folks to go along with a smattering of other races, plus a lot of black people. (And, even though I've never flown into Johannesburg, I'm guessing that city is much more modern than anything I saw in Ghana.) In Ghana, the white population is so low that in many places during my trip, Terry, Erin and Erin's cousin Kim (who also came out for the trip during my itinerary) were the only white folks for miles. Sure, in both Accra and Kumasi (Ghana's second-largest city), there is a student/tourist/worker population of white folks that probably makes up one or two percent of the populace...but otherwise, there's black folks, black folks and black folks.

Even here in "Chocolate City" (Washington, DC for the uninitiated), there's a lot of black people, but by no means are we talking 98-99% Negro, like I had in Ghana...I'm telling you, it's a mix of very cool and very strange to be black-American and go to a place where all you see is you. In the U.S., I've been almost everywhere, and in many places, it's strange to be the only black guy. Wow, being black amongst a black population of this magnitude was almost a shock to the system. A great shock, mind you, but still, a shock.

$1.40, or $1.60?

So, the monetary unit in Ghana is the cedi; ¢10,000 (the cent sign is used in front of the number to denote cedis) was the rough equivalent of a dollar. To paint a picture of how much things normally cost:

Dinner plate (usually a hefty portion of meat & starch, plus a tiny smattering of either steamed/boiled/fried veggies or a salad): ¢20,000 - ¢50,000
Rides in public transportation within town: ¢3,000 (shared van) to ¢30,000 (30-minute cab ride)
Beer (longneck bottles of local stuff; longnecks are roughly double the size of an American longneck): ¢12,000
Internet access: ¢6000/hour
Dinner for four at a four-star hotel near the airport (two appetizers, four entrees, four alcoholic beverages): ¢370,000

From talking to Terry and Erin about how much the average Ghanaian makes in a year, it was hard to nail down a number, but generally, we came to agree that between $500 and $3,000/year (U.S. dollars) probably covers the majority of the Ghanaian people. In other words, the majority of people on this mailing list probably grossed more in their last paycheck than the average Ghanaian household makes in a calendar year. Tack on the fact that I was staying in shoestring accommodations throughout my stay in Ghana for ¢40-50,000/night, and it is easy to see how well one can live in Ghana on a U.S. income that exceeds even $35,000/year. While it was important to me to not become "that guy" when it came to overspending or flexing the muscle of the dollar versus the cedi, sometimes, you just couldn't help it, tipping where tips are generally not very large or buying up all four seats in a shared taxi, because the total of buying all four seats came to just $1.60 U.S. and I wanted a little extra comfort.

At times, though, it seemed ridiculous to the layman--there we were on the street with a taxi driver, arguing over what amounted to about twenty cents one day when hailing a cab. Terry wanted to pay the guy ¢140,000; the guy was deadset on charging us ¢160,000. Terry posed it to me--"Do you just want to do this, or get another cab?" Of course my first thought was "Dude, it's 20 cents!!!" but then I realized that when you're in Rome, blah blah blah, and I'm not about to get gouged on price because I'm a free-wheeling, gas-guzzling American, dammit! We do ¢140,000 or we freakin' walk!

Terry, scared

"100% Market"

Ghana works on a sort-of negotiable barter system, so in almost all cases (posted prices at restaurants and government buildings are normally set), you approach a payment situation as an attempt to agree on a price, haggling your way to your intended goal or offering goods in exchange for someone else's goods or service. Sometimes, you "win"--I wanted club soccer jerseys from a street vendor that I whittled down from ¢500,000 to ¢220,000--and sometimes, you "lose" and come out at a price that seems ridiculous given the merchandise. In rare cases, you find yourself in a situation where you could trade something for the goods or service you are negotiating. For some people, this would be a tiring way to buy products; for me, this was a fun way to learn the intricacies of commerce from the street perspective in Ghana.

What was also fun was the fact that damn near everywhere you went, people were trying to sell something, in part because it's not exactly like you've got grocery stores and Target all over the place. You're riding in a cab, the driver is sometimes dodging guys selling everything from cuff links to oranges to water to button-down shirts to ice cream to chickens (usually already dead). Your bus stops to get gas, the bus gets rushed by a dozen people hawking snacks or trinkets or newspapers. Our tour guide finished our tour at one of the castles on the coast, and he literally walked the tour group to two different gift shops in the castle before letting folks leave. There would be random stands in the middle of nowhere to buy cell phone service from one of the handful of major carriers in Ghana. And, thankfully, you were never too far from a place to buy Fanta. I thought about this, and I guess in many ways, all places are nearly 100% market now, thanks to online shopping or access to retail establishments of varying sizes or traditional markets scattered about. But the proactive style of selling in Ghana--sometimes, folks can really be in your face to try and get you to buy things--as opposed to the slightly-more-passive approach here in the States was the key for me.

Almost everyone in this picture is selling something. No, I'm not kidding.

Poverty / Attitude

Here in Bethesda, aka "The Ivory Tower", everyone's got everything they could ever need and more. I live across the freakin' street from a megamall, four restaurants, a car dealership, the local post office, a bank and a county park. There are justifiably rich people within a stone's throw of my location. The Marriott corporate headquarters are a 15-minute walk from my front door. The next county over has so many million-dollar homes it would take a full day to count them all. If I ran the numbers, there's probably more money in my zip code than in all of Ghana.

Imagine, then, getting off the plane and going through a few villages that have nary a power outlet, a large number of homes in select regions without running water (certainly no running hot water), women who walk miles each day just to go to market, laundry done using washboards and clotheslines, unpaved roads throughout the country. (And, remember--I was visiting the more modernized, developed half of Ghana; the "north country" in Ghana is apparently more tribal, less developed and decidedly more poor.) Thanks to random blackouts throughout Ghana at the time of my visit, even in more organized cities, power was hit-or-miss; we didn't have power for parts of four of my ten days in Africa. For the first four days of my visit (to Accra and then Kumasi), a number of children spent time tugging on my arm begging for anything you would give them...a number of people that I saw on the curbside seemed to have some advanced stages of polio and were also amongst the needy. In high-80° heat, it's hot during the day...but, save for an occasional visit to a nicer hotel or restaurant while in a city, I was without AC for probably 98% of the time during my trip, and the temperature holds well at night so it was really hot after dark. You add the heat to the threat of insects (which seemed to appear in urban areas only after nightfall), and there's plenty of reason to complain for someone who comes from my U.S. environment and/or upbringing.

But, what if you never knew any better? Because despite areas as poor as any I have ever seen, it's just such a cool thing to see people so happy that to a Westerner appear to have so little. I'm telling you, I'm never going to forget the day I saw this little boy running home from school with a friend, both boys in school uniform, big smiles on their faces, happy at something but it didn't really matter to me what that something was, possibly going home to a place that was nothing more than a hut or a shack, to eat a meal that someone slaved over for a few hours after spending their day walking to market, buying the ingredients fresh (because they couldn't be refrigerated, because what refrigerator could this particular family have?), and walking home...there's not going to be a DVD player at home showing the kids' favorite Disney/Pixar flick, there's possibly going to be darkness thanks to a blackout, stories told over a fire, no instant messaging to friends all over the world, no ESPN, no Game Boy. One of my co-workers asked me "what do these folks DO when they get home at night?" and at first, I wasn't sure how to react. There's no Dave & Buster's around the corner; sure, there's bars and clubs in the cities, but generally, after dark, things are too far away from most of the villages to hit in the course of an evening. That leaves you with hang time with your community, and then bedtime, because Ghanaians get up at the absolute crack of dawn to knock out house/yardwork before it gets blazing hot.

The Shitter

We did travel around Ghana for the middle six days of my trip; I give Terry and especially Erin credit for not letting me indulge myself in staying at top-flight accommodations where I could have spent like $30/night for a swank room because it was important for me to live the life (as much as it was possible) of what a shoestring budget traveler might spend on rooms. For two nights, we stayed at Big Milly's Backyard, about an hour west of Accra; it was a beachfront accommodation where I paid $4/night for a share in a small room. This place was cool, with live music, good people and an Englishwoman who started the camp about 13 years ago. It also featured ZERO running water. I had never taken a bucket shower before, so that was interesting...however, certainly the trip's low point took place after dinner on the first night at BMB, when I learned how to take a dump with a bowl and no running water.

You ever done a self-flush? Wow, wow, wow. So, the power goes out about 6 PM on our first night at BMB; we're doing flashlights, and it's dark, and it's hot, and I had something that slightly disagreed with me at dinner. I'm off and running to the outhouse (that's right--wood shack and a toilet bowl and a door, friends), and I've got to throw down stat with no light in a shack that smells like shit...because it's a fucking shitter. But, I do it, because I have to, and when I'm done, I need to walk outside, fill up a bucket with some water from three buckets of sea water (I THINK it was from the sea, anyway), and pour that into the bowl to facilitate a "flush" to clear out the bowl. It takes four of these "flushes" to eradicate the evidence from the bowl, and all the while, I'm holding my flashlight in my mouth so that I can see, aiming squarely at the bowl while I dump bucket after bucket down the hatch. Oh, and I can't breath, because the smell is just rough. Wow...that was harrowing. So were the second and third time I visited the bowl that weekend.

History

Ghana, which was first raided/settled by I think the Portuguese, then the Swedes briefly, then the Dutch, then the Brits, was made independent from England in 1957, so Ghana in its current iteration isn't even 50 years old yet. The population is roughly 20 million peeps, English is the main language (as one of only a handful of English-speaking cultures in West Africa), and malaria and yellow fever are probably your most dangerous adversaries. (Adult HIV numbers tend to be lower here than in other African countries; something like 3% of the adult population has it, as opposed to other places in Africa that range from 20-30%.) Ghana is the rough size equivalent of Oregon. As a tourist destination, Ghana is a little short of what you might consider world-renowned hotspots--the slave castles that dot the coastline are probably the closest things to sights worth photographing, from a postcard perspective--but the natural landscape is quite handsome and lush with green, at least in the sections I got to see for myself.

Kwame Nkrumah was one of the locals most responsible for helping the country gain its independence almost 50 years ago, and talking points celebrating his effect on Ghanaian life are prevalent through the urban areas I got to visit. It was weird seeing a place that is so old and rich with history (especially around tribal conflict and slave decimation/removal) be so relatively new, in the scheme of things. Certainly, my visits to both Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle were tough to stomach; the tour done at Elmina was excellent, most notably because we had a great tour guide but the power of the place is undeniable.

You're being guided through the female slave quarters and your tour guide leads with "in this room, females who had been led on foot from northern parts of the country all the way to the coast were kept with ample nourishment and the prospect of being hauled off on slave ships, which were boarded through here. Oh, and by the way, as the female slaves were brought into the slave quarters, white officers would routinely pick out one or two of the more attractive female slaves to rape; after finishing up, subordinates of these officers would clean up the raped slaves only to have their way with them as well before putting them back into the slave population."

Wow, wow! Hearing these stories was tough enough; standing in the place where this all went down two or three hundred years ago made it even tougher. The Ghanaian who led our tour talked about how Americans (black, white, you name it) typically go through the slave quarters and immediately break down into tears. No doubt I can see why; being black and going to Africa and seeing a people that lost so many of its citizens to slavery was, well, a big fucking deal.

The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum

Sunglasses

An easy way to pick out the fact that I was an outsider, despite the fact that I was black like everybody else? I wear prescription sunglasses in almost anything resembling sunlight, so while I strolled around all day in shades, I could count on two hands the number of locals I saw all trip that had shades on. Fucking NOBODY wears sunglasses in Ghana. Sure, I'd be used to direct sunlight too if I grew up and spent all of my time outdoors, but still, it's odd that these people have picked up a number of Western trends around dress but haven't adopted wearing faux expensive shades.

(Strange irony: TONS of street vendors were hawking shades to locals during my trip. Not even tourists, mind you--hawking shades to other Ghanaians, who clearly aren't going to start wearing shades any time soon. I couldn't figure out why anyone would attempt to sell shades to a people that so utterly disdain the use of protective eyewear.)

Sleeping (Heat)

I don't sleep much here in the States--in bed by 1 or 2 AM, up by 7 AM is the normal routine--but in Ghana, I barely slept at all. I didn't have a problem with time adjustment...it was just really tough falling asleep when your body is covered in sweat. You get used to it after a while, I would guess, but in my ten-day stay there wasn't much time to get adjusted to the heat at night and it left me kind of a mess by the time the trip was over.

Now, the heat is one part of it--the noise is another. See, I'm used to getting up early when I'm on holiday but Ghanaians get up at like 4:30 or 5 in the morning to start their daily routine (yardwork is easier in 75° heat than 90° heat, I'm guessing). That, and the fucking roosters and chickens like to wake up early and discuss their visit to the clubs the night before, talking (squawking) so loud that on at least three of my nights there, I swore to kick one of the muthafuckas when I did walk outside of my room. Sure, that would have crossed any number of politically-correct lines in the States, but in Ghana, nobody would have even noticed if I punted one of those bastards out of play. Whew, I was heated over some poultry!!!

Rooster to Justin: "Good day, sir!"

Erin Says (1):

On the continent Ghana enjoys a reputation for hospitality. Everywhere else in West Africa I have traveled, when I tell people I live in Ghana they reply "those Ghanaians, they are so friendly!" The first time I tried finding something on my own in Ghana I soon found myself escorted by several friendly Ghanaians who walked me nearly a mile out of their way to show me my destination in person. To an outsider Ghanaians are also amusingly quirky. Cakes are elaborately decorated with beautiful frosting, but the inside cake itself is unimportant to the point of tastelessness. Ghanaians famously lack punctuality, but if you greet someone right around the noon hour, they will actually look at their watch to determine whether it is 11:58 ("good morning") or 12:03 ("good afternoon"). Charismatic churches held outside in plastic chairs under multiple, patched tents enjoin members to raise money for building an actual church building, all the while blasting music from a several thousand dollar speaker set as tall and wide as the Bear's offensive line.

Some days I'm left feeling Ghana exists in some swirling vortex of Murphy's Law. Or at least a very special element of Murphy's law that seems to pervert otherwise normal processes of supply and demand. The trick is, in Ghana everything is mobile. Vendors of everything from pineapples to puppies roam the streets with wheel barrows or carting their wares on their head. The effect is that when you don't want something seven or eight people appear outside your car window trying to sell it to you with shouts of "yes PK [gum]! yeeeeeaaaasss PK" and when you say no to that PK seller another will materialize to take his place, in case you have somehow changed your mind. But without fail, if you have bad breath from some garlic-y lunch you won't find a single PK seller when you are desperate for one. Even in grocery stores if you find something you like you had better hoard it because there is no telling how long it will stay on the shelves or if it will ever be back again. This, perhaps as much as anything else, has made Ghanaians a very patient people. In spite of frustrations that would send your average American housewife into hysterics, most Ghanaians maintain an even and optimistic outlook on life. They have little, but what little they have, they share. This is the secret to welfare provision in Ghana, but also prevents the accumulation of capital that might help build enterprise. Whatever one has is immediately redistributed to all of those friends and family members who are in need. And in Ghana most people are just barely getting by. In the same vein, if you are seen eating by someone who is not eating, you are expected to 'invite' them to join you. Often this is ceremonial, but it is not rare for the invited to take you up on your offer. Thus I find myself breaking off a hunk of bread or a piece of banana to give to a total stranger. Your food is not [only] your own, and personal space shrinks to the exact boundaries of your skin and no further. Humanity presses in around you, whether in the narrow market paths or crammed 25 into a minivan, pressed skin to skin with each other, clambering awkwardly over a 200-pound woman to exit at your bus stop."

The cutest kid you'll ever meet, with Erin, Auntie Becky and Kim

Garbage

You're probably used to seeing a garbage truck roll through your town every so often; you're also probably used to seeing, you know, the occasional trash can or recycling bin floating around where you can dispose of your unwanted goods.

After spending the first couple of days in Ghana finishing up a food product and then hunting everywhere from a proper trash receptacle, I found myself quickly adopting the Ghanaian standard when it came to trash removal--throw it in the freakin' gutter. Gutters in Ghana--depending on the neighborhood--had the distinction of appearing much like curbsides in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, complete with a flow of trash that rivaled the trash compactor sequence from "Star Wars" (exaggeration, sure, but the imagery is great, you must agree). People don't recycle many of the things we recycle here--in fact, it seemed like bottles get recycled, and that's really about it. Trash often gets heaped up in piles in villages and set aflame, which can either smell really good or...well, not as good.

A couple of times, I saw Terry finish something up and just chuck the remains into a pile off to the side of a road; it took some getting used to, but littering is the right thing to do if everyone else is doing it, I guess.

"Kwame, Will You Marry Me?"

Although I only received four wedding proposals from prospective Ghanaian women (I thought this number would be much higher, especially when whipping out large piles of cedis to pay for meals, goods or services), it was cool meeting so many genuinely nice ladies while on the trip. One day, while walking through the big open-air market in Kumasi, it was fun running through the tight quarters of the market while talking with a few of the locals who were interested to know where I was from and if I already had a beautiful woman at home to call my own. Quite flattering, yes, but for me, it was just cool to talk to some women that had so little agenda you couldn't even really call it an agenda, even if some of these African lovelies wouldn't have minded coming back with me should an invitation be put out there. (Co-workers wondered: did I bring back any African princesses? My response--I would have, if they wanted to pay for their own plane ticket.)

I'm dating someone now so I can honestly say that I wasn't looking anyway, but even when I booked this ticket there was one mantra put out there early on--absolutely, positively, no sex in Africa. I don't care if the HIV rate is low there; if I've got to get $500 worth of shots just to immunize myself against disease and viruses in Africa, and the Bloodmobile folks say that if I've been in Africa anytime ever that I can't donate blood, my jimmy is staying in my fucking pants.

(The Kwame bit comes from the fact that men in Ghana are oftentimes named for the day of the week on which they were born; I honestly couldn't remember what Mom told me my birthday of the week was way back when, so I copped that it was Saturday...which means that my real name might be Kwame. So, there you have it.)

Sack

So, you can't drink the tap water in Ghana. That's true for tourists, but that's also true for the locals; consuming water out of the tap in Africa is a bad idea. You can boil your own tap water and store it in a fridge or icebox if you've got one; this also means that unless you boil the water yourself, you can't have drinks with ice cubes in them, so that means no whiskey when you are out at the club unless you like your shit warm.

You do water two ways when you're out and about--bottled water, in bottles that are normally as large as 1.5 liters, and sack water, which is filtered water in small plastic pouches about the size of your hand. Drinking water out of a sack is kind of weird at first, but after you get used to sucking water out of a sack, it actually becomes kind of fun. I only did it a few times because I liked the large bottles of water instead (you pound the hell out of water when all you do in a day is sweat), but more importantly, it made me realize how sweet it is to occasionally drink water from the tap back here in the States.

Justin fights with a sack for sustenance

Gay=Illegal

How's this for ass-backwards: in Ghana, the gay population isn't just suppressed, it's been deemed a crime by its government. As much as this makes me angry, this isn't my home country, so while on holiday, I'll play by the rules. However, it's cool in Ghana for men--friends, normally, or young men who are related by blood--to hold hands as they go from place to place. In fact, man-on-man contact just seems very normal in Ghana, as I found in receiving numerous long handshakes (with the occasional linger effect, which I'm cool with) or big hugs from guys I had just met. I found in a couple of cases that men preferred dancing with other guys over having women anywhere nearby. Grinding with women, in the two places where I was dancing on one night in Kokrobite (Big Milly's), was non-existent. But guys hangin' all over me was par for the course.

Ghana, you confuse me so...

Ghanaian Diet

As always, I was excited to taste the food of Ghana and I was not disappointed, even if I was never wholly overwhelmed. Ghanaians do a lot of meat and starch meals for lunch and dinner, so most of my meals were a mix of either chicken, mutton (that's sheep, in case you've never chowed on some minced mutton!), beef, or goat meat paired with either steamed, fried or jollof (spicy, with meat cooked in) rice. It was recommended to me that I avoid salad while in Ghana, so if veggies were on the plate, they were fried and they were sparse. I had local dishes like fufu (a doughy concoction submerged in a light soup with goat meat) and red-red (spicy beyond compare, this was made for me my last full day in town and was paired with fried plantains), which were good, but again, memorable mostly for the pain that could be inflicted on those with weaker stomachs. Portion size in Ghana is generally much smaller than what I am used to here in the States.

Breakfast was a mixed bag. I did the Ghanaian donuts a couple of times because, dammit, who doesn't love fried dough? Erin and Terry did porridge, fruit, pastries, or just juice, depending on the day; breakfast was most certainly a small meal in my brief stay, for sure. The food overall was okay, with occasional greatness achieved whenever we went to a restaurant that Erin and/or Terry had visited a few times or when we had locals do the cooking for us. All I'm saying is that nothing made me forget about a thick, juicy steak back home.

Jollof rice, veggies, kenkey, Milo, you name it, it's Africa, baby!

"I Can't Feel My Fucking Knees!"

Tro-tros are the best way to get around in Ghana; they're cheap, they go most everywhere you want to go, and typically, there are a ton of them always bouncing around.

But, what are tro-tros, exactly? Imagine a modern-day church van, with seating for roughly 10 adults. Now, take those seats out and put enough small seats inside for about 20 adults. Then, make sure the van is 20-30 years old and imported from a country that doesn't make good automobiles. And, remember that your primary customer, Joe Q. Ghanaian, is only about 5'9", so you can work with some tight spaces. Don't forget that when you are riding in a tro-tro on dirt roads, you can expect to be bouncing all over the place, ESPECIALLY if you are sitting in the back. Presto--you've got yourself a tro-tro.

Being 6'1", taking a tro-tro was always a major problem for me because getting in and out of them was like rolling myself up into a ball in order to get seated; once in, my knees would already be up against the seat in front of me, and when you are prepping for a 30-minute ride in these conditions (don't forget, it's still blazing hot outside), you are already a little PO'ed. I took quickly to the idea that I could buy out the entire row of seats that I was in for a minimal amount of cash, so that's how I made it in those puppies...but, I could see why Ghanaians that don't have the money to do this would have just sucked it up and gotten used to it right away.

Poverty / Comparison

I have spoken to many people here about the conditions in Ghana and some of them have tried to inform me that "you know, we have poor and homeless people here, too." I can't argue with that, but you have to understand that poor there is MUCH worse off than poor here. The infrastructure around assistance for the poor, from rehabilitation opportunities to shelters to soup kitchens to the ability to dig out of a financial rut to any number of factors, is a TON better in the U.S. than it is in Ghana.

One of the major thoughts that carried me through this trip, the whole damn-I've-got-it-good bit, made me realize that even for the middle class of Ghana, that guy's got to hustle to support a family of four, and even then, he's bagging two grand a year. The middle class in Ghana is, in the scheme of things, relatively poor, so you know that the poor there are REALLY freakin' destitute from a cash support perspective. Yep, you can live on the cheap in Ghana, but something tells me that the majority of Ghanaians aren't saving well enough to be sitting on a pile of cash or investing their, I don't know, beads and kente cloth revenues into a 401(k), if you catch my drift...wealth building seems difficult for the majority of people there, or at least, much harder than it would be for a comparable middle-class worker here if they were diligent enough to save some cash for a rainy day.

The cost of things outside of Ghana means that the home-based monetary unit for Ghanaians is nearly worthless in other countries; I wondered how many Ghanaians were able to travel outside of their own country. Most Americans that make $50,000 in a year could easily afford to go to Ghana by themselves, especially if they made this trip their only big vacation this year. I dropped $2,400 for everything--shots, pills, visa, plane ticket, $30/day budget in Ghana, gifts for family, supplies for my trip--and if you can stomach 30 hours of flight time back and forth (my layover was in Frankfurt), it would be cake since the dollar carries some weight here. But, going the other way, I don't know how a Ghanaian could swing a flight plus ten days of expenses here in D.C.; that might be damn near their whole annual income!

But, the Ghanaian gets by, which is why I like the people there...you just get the sense that it might be a "don't worry, be happy" feeling for the average citizen and I'm taking as much of that feeling as possible to bottle it and bring it back to the good citizens of the U.S.A. My buddy Chuck called me "Captain Perspective" recently; lately, I have still been on the soapbox whenever people reel on about mundane troubles because I still haven't come back to the Ivory Tower reality of my situation.

You almost can't believe a kid can be this happy...actually, you can.

Erin Says (2):

Ghanaians casually litter, but it is hard to blame them as there are something like eight public garbage cans in the entire country. Yet each morning by 5:30 women and girls across the country are out sweeping the dirt in front of their homes or storefronts carefully manicuring the dirt into semi-circular arcs like some Zen garden. People have no cultivated sense of phone etiquette and will answer a call at any time, whether in a meeting or not. Likewise, casual acquaintances will not hesitate to call at 6AM on a Saturday morning. For all the inefficiencies of Ghana, those who have traveled more widely in Africa marvel at how well things work here. They actually have street lights. They have a post office where people wait for stamps. It makes me look with more wonder at things I take for granted at home: it is pretty incredible that I can ship something from amazon.com and never worry that some postal clerk's girlfriend will actually be receiving my mother's present.

Christianity pervades almost everything. Before beginning an intercity bus or tro-tro ride invariably someone will stand and pray for a safe journey. I am sitting in an internet cafe where gospel music plays 24 hours a day. I just left a secondary school where JESUS was scrawled in chalk on the board among algebraic calculations. How very postmodern: God in math. Religion is also omnipresent in the newspapers, which have a reporting style that is more "People" than "New York Times." Every few weeks a new issue is cast as a religious moral issue in letters to the editor (Fox News perhaps studying tactics here?). Yet for all the blasting of homosexuals (it is officially illegal here) infidelity is fairly rampant and accepted here. A young newlywed expectant father recently told me he was so proud of how mature his young wife was. Over dinner she told him that when he eventually cheated he could always come home to her no matter what he did.

Economic competition is very different from the US. Rather than compete on price, most commodities compete in quantity. You will therefore go to the market to buy ¢5000 of tomatoes, but you will search out the market woman who will give you a few more tomatoes. And even this quantity competition is not straightforward. Generally most people in the same area will give you the same starting quantity for your 5000, then you begin the friendly teasing and pleading to convince them to "dash" you a little more. Each time this ritual is repeated. 7 bananas for 5000 cedis, but here, I go dash you two more. Even the Ghanaian restaurant in Chicago works the same. There are no prices on the menu...everything is $8, you just get different amounts of food depending on how expensive the dish is to prepare.

Ghana does not have the big ticket items that attract tourists to East Africa. No real safaris or plush Roosevelt accommodations. Rather most of the tourism relies on cultural and historic tourism. Yet for me the great joys of Ghana are small things that seem to be stuck in the cracks between touring. I love the market, the sense of life stripped of pretense pressing in all around you. I never realized how sterilized the US was until surrounded by the smells of work and sweat and food everywhere. I love the grace of women who navigate rocky paths with a baby tied at their back and a tray of eggs balanced on their head. I love that when my friend got sick in a remote mountain village someone took her into her small house, gave her a straw palate on the floor, and sent someone for filtered water to give to her. That after the rains passed I danced with the village kids in the puddles and then drew stick figures in the mud trying to learn the local words for various things. I love that on a taxi ride you can get the taxi to hold forth on everything from the state of the economy to the political environment. Although I hate the inefficiency, I love that people always have time for each other. Although it sometimes frustrates me, I love the slower pace of life that allows for more thought and more conversation.

Ghana--Great

Man, as exhausted as I was after doing almost 24 hours of traveling to get back to the spot here in Bethesda, I was pretty jazzed about my trip and what it means for me to have this new perspective. First, the people that I came in contact with were great; they taught me things without doing anything but being themselves. Even if I didn't do a lot of "sightseeing" or take a lot of pictures, Ghana had a strong effect on me; I still think that my tro-tro ride from Cape Coast back to Accra near the end of my trip was the best part, because there I am sitting in the back of this shitty church van, having bought two seats for additional "comfort", and I'm sitting next to this three or four-year-old little girl who falls asleep in my lap with this big grin on her face while eating a snack. The scenery outside was Africa--the road was mostly paved, but occasionally, not paved at all. The roadsides had a variety of small villages, people balancing their goods on their heads (still don't know how I didn't see a single person even lose their balance with things on their heads, given the size of some of their loads), guys wearing long-sleeve French-cuff shifts and black jeans and nice shoes while walking from place to place, kids wearing next-to-nothing while running around their home, on occasion with no roof and certainly not much in the way of amenities as I am used to.

I had my iPod in (besides my Game Boy, the only real creature comfort I decided I couldn't live without during my trip), blasting something hip-hop or dance-related, when the battery died. I slipped the 'Pod in my bag and just looked out the window for two hours. I could feel myself soaking it in, Ghana...what makes a place like this feel so far away? Well, for one, it really IS far away; the lifestyle is different enough that whenever I compare it to the U.S., I say that it's like apples and horses. It's not like it's fruit to fruit; it's fruit to something so different it doesn't invite a comparison at all. It's like The Matrix, right? I could try to explain it to you--and, the notes above probably only scratch the surface, in the scheme of things--but until you see it for yourself, you really don't have any idea what it's like, especially now that you're used to one lifestyle for the last 30 or 40 years. Having traveled a little, going to other places in Europe was a cakewalk; save for the language, many things looked and felt not unlike a day in the States. But, in Africa, it was truly a "flip the script" situation...like any other third-world country, I'll bet, but if you've never been to one before, wow, it's something to behold.

Would I do it again? Not in Ghana. I have nothing against Ghana now, but I have a long list of places to see and while I might come back to Africa, I have a few other places I want to hit first. I certainly would do the developing country thing again, and probably sooner than later...I believe that later in life, I won't have the same kind of adventurous spirit to live off the land as a budget traveler. Plus, I dropped big cash for these shots, so I should probably go somewhere that will take advantage of my immunizations for typhoid, malaria, etc.

If you had read this far, thanks! Hopefully you can take something from this little ditty and appreciate the hand you have been dealt...and, hopefully, a couple of you will roll the dice and make a trip like this one soon.

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

Air conditioning: Opening Weekend
Auntie Becky's cooking: Opening Weekend
"Redermshun Song": Opening Weekend
Ghanaian movies: Opening Weekend
That first hot shower after coming home: Opening Weekend

bellview--whole lotta zoomin'

Black, in Africa