Ada Foah and the Plastic Bags

A couple weekends ago, I took a quick trip out of the city, thanks to my Ghana-savvy, car-owning friends, who generously let me tag along on their excursion to Ada Foah, where we stayed at a peaceful beach resort-cum-campsite. We were on the skinniest strip of beach at the Volta river estuary, ocean on one side and river on the other. It’s a beautiful place, reachable only by boat, perfect for relaxing with a good book on a hammock strung between palm trees.



Our accommodations were modest: a simple hut with a bed, mosquito net, chair, desk, lone bare lightbulb and the sandy beach for the floor. My hosts packed a picnic to last two days, and we (they) borrowed the hotel barbeque to cook dinner on the beach. It was peaceful, relaxing and simple enough to allow us to shield ourselves from the guilt of seeing small children working while we lounged. That is, until we saw the younger girl sucking the juice from the discarded rind while the older one deftly carved the pineapples and scolded her sister. Like many places in the developing world, the discrepancies between tourists and the local communities that partially rely on them are striking.



On the river side of the hotel, we breakfasted feet away from the calmly lapping water. On the ocean side, the sand stretched across vast expanses, reaching up to meet the sky and then sloping down to a sharp crest separating beach from ocean. It was so empty. At night, I felt utterly isolated sitting under the brilliant stars with creamy moonlit sand extending as far as I could see. After living in New York, you forget how empty parts of the world can be.



The moment I arrived, I was ready to dive in the ocean. I walked across the never-ending beach with barely contained excitement, until I peered over the sandy crest that held me above the water:



Trash. And more trash. Trash upon trash. The strip of plastic bags testing my desire to swim is the only thing to mar the stunning landscape. (Needless to say, the maze of plastic waste didn’t hold me back; it’s undeniable, however, that black plastic bags are not as pleasant to brush against in the water as seaweed.) A local teenager who appointed himself my tour guide told me that it was all from Accra, but I doubt the local community is exactly employing perfect waste management systems... I asked him why no one cleaned it, and he told me it was just because it was a weekend. I looked skeptically at the dense layer of plastic and pointed out that it looked like more than a weekend’s worth of trash. “Oh, well this part maybe the ocean will take it away.”



How long do you wait to see if the ocean is going to take away your trash before you start doing it yourself? We were charged a slight toll on our way to Ada, which we were assured would go towards cleaning the beach, but I have a hard time believing that my measly 3 cedis will really make a substantial dent in the fields of plastic. Of course, the trash problem isn’t limited to Ada: Accra’s reeking open gutters (into which you’re likely to see at least one man peeing every day—staring at the obruni the whole while) are also lined with drowning plastic wrappers and discarded juice boxes. I remember Gulu, Uganda, where there were heaps of garbage along the road, but where my host family barely bought anything with packaging that couldn’t be reused for years.



In Rwanda, plastic bags are outlawed. You actually get fined if you’re caught bringing a plastic bag into the country. It may sound like a small thing, but this is an incredible feat in the Ghanaian context. Here there is an obsession with plastic bags. You can’t buy anything without receiving at least one plastic bag, or “rubber”, and if (God forbid) the little shop should run out of the appropriate size of bag, the cashier will look at you apologetically and offer a bigger one to compensate. Often, your single purchase will be wrapped in not one but two bags, or each individual item will merit its own separate bag (all of which will go inside another, larger bag). The other main culprit is the ubiquitous water sachet, a cheap, popular alternative to water bottles. They are, in fact, quite handy, and my new housemate and I bought three huge packages of them to forestall our running water crisis: city water has been cut off to my neighborhood, and purchasing water to fill our tanks is a very short-term solution. Are they more wasteful than plastic water bottles? I don’t know, but their wrappers are everywhere, and because people drink them on the go, it’s considered perfectly acceptable to simply throw them on the ground or in the gutter when you’ve finished.



So how do you create incentives to eliminate the plastic bags? Surely the production of these things doesn’t turn such a huge profit that there could be a “plastic bag lobby,” right? And the Rwandan example demonstrates that the bags are far from necessary, despite their overuse. I suppose the American example is a more appropriate point of comparison, and even there it will be a long time before the last plastic bag is handed over a counter. But how can Ghana be encouraged to at least start the process? When will people look at the beautiful beaches of Ada and say not, “What a shame” or “It’s not fair that Accra’s trash comes here,” but rather, “We need to change our own lives and the way things run on a bigger scale”? I’ve heard of some projects that recycle bottles, but I’d be interested to learn of other programs to start dealing with this problem.

In the meantime, I enjoyed a small early birthday party on Saturday with my new housemate and Saleh, who made delicious Sudanese tea and bought me a lovely birthday cake at what is apparently the best bakery in Accra. I’m a lucky girl.

Where is 37? And other stories of being almost-there

One of my students submitted a draft of an as-yet rather directionless essay about getting directions in Ghana: the necessity of relying on others to navigate a world sans street signs and the likelihood that the instructions received will lead to the wrong place. The story this student told in the essay could have been any of the planned excursions I’ve made in the past couple of weeks, when I’ve set out to get to Point A and ended up at not-quite-Point A.

It started with a trip to the Accra Mall, which I had initially had no interest in going to, especially so soon after arriving in Ghana, but I figured it was probably the only place where I might find something to help with the 95% humidity rate in my bedroom and attendant mildew issues. Moving to Accra has been a very comfortable experience, in part because the social stratification between obrunis and locals is much less polarized than the mzungu-local divide in East Africa. Not only is the obruni population of Accra (especially the area where I live) pretty big, there are also a lot more wealthy Ghanaians than there were wealthy nationals in other countries I’ve been to. The market for places comparable to what I’m used to in the US is therefore fairly large, and a trip to the mall only emphasized that point.

Nevertheless, Accra is an African city, and that meant that after I’d finished my search of the expansive mall filled with hip Ghanaian teenagers and possibly the world’s highest cell-phone-per-capita rate, it was time to figure out the tro-tro system. Everyone had told me that 37 station was the main hub, and the point of connection between the mall and home. I had even gotten detailed instructions on where the first tro-tro would drop me and where the second would be waiting. How hard could it be? I sat on the tro-tro heading for 37 and waited for it to pull into a big station: that’s how I would know it was time to get off. Except we never did pull into a station, or not before I got a sneaking suspicion we’d passed 37 and saw a sign indicating that my neighborhood was to the left and the tro-tro’s final destination was ahead. I hopped off the tro-tro and walked to the left until I reached familiar ground. And so the mystical 37 eluded me.

On my way back, I walked through the edge of my neighborhood, as though I needed a reminder that I’m in Ghana, not America. While the main street of Osu is obruni-central, with roadside stalls clearly targeted at tourists and many of Accra’s most Western restaurants (including the gelateria I frequent and the newly opened KFC), this part is completely different. Poorly paved roads lined with cheaply constructed one-storey compounds and people selling Ghanaian food and daily necessities, and talking, laughing, singing, children running in and out of the compound yards… there is a palpable atmosphere of community, a sense that I’ve wandered into a neverending block party.

I began to get that feeling that people were staring at me, or that there was something going on that I didn’t understand. A woman tried to call my attention, but we shared no common language. Young teenagers ran up from behind. A steady stream of people moved in the same direction as me, as though something was pulling us forward. I assumed it was one of the Ghanaian funerals, where they set up a tent in the middle of an intersection for most of the day and hold a long open ceremony. An explosion goes off, the streets are more and more crowded, loud music ahead and why is everyone wearing yellow? I’ve walked into a political rally, perhaps? A company’s promotion? Why are people shooting fake guns in the air all around me? I duck down a side street to order a kebab with a disappointingly high intestine-to-meat ratio. It turns out I’d just wandered through a Ga festival celebrating agricultural successes and the end of a historical famine—something I wouldn’t have encountered mere blocks away in Obruni Land: maybe these worlds aren’t so integrated after all. Maybe I’m just stuck in my comfort zone.

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The following weekend I set out to walk to Makolo market, which seemed surprisingly small when I (thought I had) arrived. It was still fairly early on Sunday, as I’d escaped my apartment shortly after the neighboring church’s lengthy and enthusiastic service began. Nothing makes me miss living next to mosques in Dar es Salaam as much as that church’s terrible speakers and the speaking in tongues… especially on those rare nights, such as last night, when I can just make out the call to prayer from a distant mosque before Friday night service begins.

The entrance to the market was bustling, and the first stalls were filled with women selling cleaning supplies, cooking utensils, vegetables, groundnut paste, shoes, clothes and other essentials. But as I wandered further down the line, I saw empty stalls, stalls with laundry and other personal belongings, and stalls where people were sleeping and living. The farther I went, the less sure I was whether this was a commercial workplace or a residential community. I felt that I was intruding on a world I wasn’t supposed to see, the private underbelly of a usually public space.

After finding two bags to replace the one I’ve officially worn to shreds, and wandering through the parts of the market that were slowly stirring to life amid scattered debris left over from the week, I walked home, feeling quite pleased with myself for successfully exploring the famous Makolo market. It was only when I looked at a map to measure the length of my walk (over 6 miles) that I realized I hadn’t actually made it to Makolo market: I’d been in a station a mere block away from Makolo market! No wonder it seemed so small! And I’d been so close…

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Later that evening I decided to try my luck with the tro-tros again. Perhaps this time I would figure out where 37 was, finally. I smushed into the van headed for “Circle” (the center of Accra) with several laughing women with their children, all in their best traditional dresses. When I got off, I followed a woman into a shaded, enclosed market, winding along narrow lanes between stalls. Peering beyond the snaking pathways of busy stalls, I saw that the others were deserted: a lazy Sunday in the cool, quiet market. I emerged into brilliant sunlight, crowds of people trying to cross a busy street, more and more vendors, and an elevated footbridge crawling with busy commuters and the beggars and sellers hoping to win their patronage. It’s thrilling, vibrant, foreign.

When I thought I’d walked through most of the loosely connected center, sprawled messily across several traffic-stalled intersections, I set about trying to find another tro-tro to take me somewhere, anywhere.

Tro-tro mate: “Obruni! Hello! Where are you going?”
Me: “Um, I’m not sure”
Mate (with a look of concern for the lost obruni) “But where are you trying to get to?”
Me: “Oh, anywhere. I don’t really have a specific place in mind.”
Mate: “No, no, no, listen, white lady – what place are you going to?”

To be destination-less is a hard thing to explain to people trying to help you find your way. Especially when you’re trying hard not to laugh at your interlocutor’s consternation. Finally I jumped on a tro-tro, enjoying the adrenaline rush of having no clue where it was going. I piled off with the other passengers at Achimota station, where rows of mostly-empty tro-tros were lit by the golden light of the afternoon sun. Time to head home, I thought, or failing that to 37.

“How do I get to Osu?” I asked a nearby tro-tro mate.
“Ah hmm… you go take teyseyn car,” he gestured ahead. I hoped that “teyseyn” didn’t mean “taxi,” since I was determined to do this by tro-tro.
“How do I get to Osu?” I asked the next guy, a couple rows down.
“Osu? Take tesseh” (vague arm motion).
“Uh hmm, how about 37?”
He rolled his eyes, looked at me with pity and said “Ok, come with me, I go take you tayssen”
“Oh!! You mean thirty-seven!” I felt like an idiot.

I got on the tro-tro, where a passenger assured me I could finally get to this magical 37, and the mate continuously called out “Teyseyn! Teyseyn! Last stop teyseyn!” (which, I must admit, was starting to sound more and more like “thirty-seven” the more I listened). I was excited: this can’t go wrong.

Twenty minutes later, we reached a stop along a road and the passengers told me I’d arrived.

“This is 37?”
“Yes, yes, get off here.”

As the suspiciously still full tro-tro rushed on, someone leaned out to say, “Go there!” pointing ahead. I walked towards the entrance to something… a dusty clearing where some tro-tros were being washed and taxi drivers languished under a tree. Definitely not 37. I walked until I began to think I must be in the wrong place, and decide to seize the opportunity to ask for directions from two leering, bling-draped men who were clearly about to bother me for my number.

“Oh hmm… 37 station? That’s very far.” A glance between them and a slimy smile. “Would you like us to take you? We can take you.”

OH HELL NO. I’ve seen that movie before. Fortunately, a slow-walking group of older men and women passed and I launched myself into their group. Finally, I made it to 37.^[*] I took in the smells of gasoline, Ghanaian food and kelewele, the delicious spiced fried plantain chips, before locating my tro-tro back home.

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And so the adventures go: haltingly, with excitement, frustration, detours and helpful or less-than-helpful advice from others. Life, like Accra, has few signposts. Directionlessness can be difficult and seemingly unproductive, and it can be exhilarating but confusing to others. I’m stumbling through, clumsily, asking for directions but still not quite sure if I’ll make it there or almost-there. Either way, we try to see the wonder in whatever route we take.

^[*] If you’re wondering, like I was, why I was dropped a mile and a quarter away from where the 37-bound tro-tro claimed to be going and how I was ever supposed to have found it on my own, it turns out that I was supposed to wait where the tro-tro had dropped me to get another one that would go directly there. False advertising!

Adventures in Visa Acquisition

Work has recently shifted away from teaching the students who will be taking their standardized tests this year to helping last year’s students get their visas to go off to college. I’m not sad at all to be teaching less: it’s felt like a constant battle to convince the students that I’m much more strict than I actually am (my inclination is not to care if they don’t come to study hall, for instance, as long as they get their work done. And I want to believe that the students are motivated enough to put effort into class, but realistically the motivation is coming from the parents at this point). There were some memorable classes though, like when I gave out an interesting article on the perception and the mind, and our debate almost felt like a college class, or like when class was disrupted by stray cats having sex on the roof (we think).

So on the one hand, I’m inclined to embrace the next task. On the other hand, dealing with immigration officials has got to be one of the most frustrating, thankless tasks. Most of the students got appointments that are very close to the day they’re supposed to start school, so many applied for emergency appointments before I arrived in Ghana—all were rejected.

One student came in to ask if we could try again, so I opened his online profile. “No appointment scheduled.” What?!? Saleh tells me this is normal, give it some time and the appointment will come back. A couple hours later, there’s no change. I shoot off an email through the “Provide Feedback” link and am told to call a phone number.

Woman: “That appointment was cancelled.”
Me: “What? What do you mean ‘cancelled’?”
Woman: “The appointment is cancelled. You must reschedule. The next available date is in October.”
Me: “That’s not acceptable. That date is too late. We did not cancel this appointment.”
Woman: “Please, there’s nothing you can do.”

The poor kid is sitting next to me, looking like he’s about to cry as I try to phrase my responses so that he doesn’t know just how bad things are getting. Then his mother comes in, the look of death on her face. I call the appointment-scheduling people again, and yell on the phone to no avail (but with the hope that the mother will see that I am actually doing everything I can).

The next morning, we start at it again. I send of another email, and again am told that visa enquiries are only handled through the phone. I call the embassy, only to discover that Consular has an explicit policy of never answering the phones. Ever. Under any circumstances. The phone menu is hermetically sealed to prevent anyone from talking to a human being once you hear “Welcome to Consular.” I call the main embassy directory back and speak to the people routing calls:

Me: “Hi, I’m calling because I am having a problem with a visa appointme—”
Automated voice: “Welcome to Consular.”

Me: “Hi, I really need to speak with a person regarding a problem with my visa. You see the thing is I scheduled an appoint—”
Automated voice: “Welcome to Consular.”

Me: “Hi, no one is answering at Consular, but I have a problem with my visa appoi—”
Automated voice: “Welcome to Consular.”

Me: “DO NOT TRANSFER ME TO CONSULAR.”

Eventually I figured out how to keep the call-routers on the phone long enough for them to explain that no one in the Consulate office answers the phone. As though they are physically incapable of picking up a receiver.

Call router: “You should send an email. We don’t handle these issues by phone.”
Me: “Ok, I did that. The email said that I should call.”
Call router: “Please, Consular doesn’t take calls. You need to send an email.”
Me: “But I did that! The email does. not. work.”
Call router: “Please, there’s nothing I can do.”

We made contact with a woman who works in the embassy, who told us that a number of emergency appointments had recently been made available to undergraduate students, leading my boss to believe that we could simply reschedule a student’s appointment for one of these newly available dates. At the very least, we reckoned, rescheduling the appointment would allow us to request an emergency appointment again. We started on a student whose appointment date was so late that he risked deferring to the Spring semester. MISTAKE. In order to reschedule, you have to cancel the existing appointment, and those new appointments are only available to those who were approved for an emergency appointment. Our student’s interview was rescheduled for October, no emergency requests permitted.

The next morning, we tried to contact the people behind the appointment schedules via an online chat, which was actually much more successful than I anticipated (or so we thought…). Rolande informs us that the best option is to pay the visa fee again ($140) so that we can re-apply for an emergency appointment.

Me: Ok, so that will work if I repay?
Rolande: If you repay you will have a new emergency slot available to submit a new request.
Me: I have been in touch with someone at the embassy who told me that I should not have to pay again.
Rolande: Please, the system has been changed and it does not work like that anymore.

We send the student out to get money from his parents and pay the visa fee again. We are all sure that this will work. The student is back within the hour, and we get back on the chat to let Dovene know. Dovene assures us that the request is being processed, they are working on our student’s account and passing the request up to their superiors for approval to grant us the opportunity to reapply for an emergency visa appointment. There is a four-hour wait period, so I turn to the teaching I had scheduled for the day.

I return four and a half hours after the payment was made, and see, to my dismay, that the “request emergency appointment” button has not yet appeared. Back to the chat.

Me: I have been speaking with people on the chat today, because I need to schedule an emergency appointment. I have already been denied, but I was told that if I paid the fee again, I could re-apply
Rolande: Mr. Student, I do sincerely apologize for the information I am about to give you.
[Long pause]
Rolande: Please, the possibility to reapply for a new emergency visa is no longer available.

Um. What?!

Me: What do you mean?
Rolande: I do sincerely apologize, the Embassy is no more granting emergency slots. The decision has changed. It is now one emergency per applicant no matter how many time the applicant has applied.

Now wait just a minute. There is NO WAY you told us just hours ago that the solution was to pay extra, and now you’ve just changed your mind.

Me: When did this happen?
Rolande: I do apologize about an hour ago.

WHAT? WAIT. WHAT! WHAT THE. AAAAAAUURRGHHHHH!

Me: But I made the payment before the change went into effect.
Rolande: Yes, however, the system has been upgraded already. Right now, it is no more possible for us to work with the old procedure. I do apologize Mr. Student, we here only abide to decisions and procedures.

Well if that isn’t the greatest statement of bureaucracy I’ve ever heard.

Rolande: It is our inner concern to help you.

Oh, I could tell. So thanks, American embassy. I already can’t wait to dump this mess on the person who replaces me next year. Not only are the lists of required and supporting documents ridiculously long and involved, this whole byzantine system seems to change by the minute—because God forbid any “undeserving” applicants make their way through the system for the privilege of paying tens of thousands of dollars to live in a country that is doing its best to drive all who aren't rich, white Christian males into poverty.


(Both of these students’ visa issues have since been resolved, through no work of my own.)

Lomé, Togo

This post is long-overdue, but between work, new friends and a bout of food poisoning, I’ve had remarkably little time to write. Last weekend I went to Lomé, the capital of Ghana’s neighboring country, Togo, with my roommate and two other friends. (Unfortunately, I was totally dumb and left the battery of my camera charging in Accra! Some pictures here courtesy of a travel-mate). As a supplement, I was reading (at Zach’s fantastic suggestion) Charles Piot’s Nostalgia for the Future, a surprisingly readable anthropological work about Togo and West Africa in general. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about West Africa, Togolese history, Pentacostal churches, shifting perceptions of witchcraft/sorcery over time, the US visa lottery or development NGOs.

Piot connects these various threads, arguing that the performative nature of the former dictatorship’s hold on power (staging coups d’états to maintain a state of emergency, for instance) has been echoed in the dramatic personal connections with God performed in Pentacostal churches, the fake identities performed by those trying to obtain a visa to the US through the lottery, the imagined magical performances of witches and the self-portrayal as needy in order to capture the interest of an NGO. Each of these performances is an act of conjury that attempts to generate something of value out of nothing—reflecting, Piot argues, the influx of cheap disposable goods that entered the country after the Cold War and the accompanying culture of accumulation.

Such performances are also related to rumor and the problematic nature of truth. Following Walter Benjamin, Piot writes that the return of death (due to a drastically weakened economy after foreign governments cut aid at the end of the Cold War) has brought a need to tell stories. “Death demands explication—and here elicits competing stories… but far from stabilizing meaning and bringing closure, storytelling produces its own excess—more stories, more versions of the same story, more ambiguity in any story’s ‘true’ meaning.” Under such circumstances, supernatural explanations involving witchcraft seem less irrational.

He writes that Togo is a country that is rejecting its past: trying to move away from the history of dictatorship, increasingly joining a new religion that very actively demonizes traditions of old, eschewing local familial bonds in favor of direct contact with distant, global communities. This rejection of the past creates an anticipation, a longing or nostalgia for the future, as well as an imaginary of exile.

What do you mean, “an imaginary of exile”? Apparently, there were more green card visa lottery applications per capita in Togo in 2003 than in any other African country, and ten times as many as in neighboring Benin. People devote their lives and large sums of money to attempts to leave their home nation. When local ceremony no longer provides entertainment, satellite TV and the internet connect one to the spectacles of distant places. I remarked, as we entered into the country, that even the location of the capital suggested this desire to leave. Situated directly over the border, a short walk past a heap of trash (welcome to Togo!) and along the coast, the capital is about as close to Ghana as possible without being out of the country (it also seems, from the map, that most roads enter the city from the Ghanaian side, rather than the Togolese side).

The city felt, in places, like a ghost town, the set of some post-apocalyptic movie. We wandered down empty, unpaved streets, in the middle of the road, and wondered where everyone was. Gorgeous colonial mansions facing the ocean left to crumble, abandoned, make you almost want to buy one to fix up—it could be a dream home, easily. I’ve noticed that both Accra and Lomé feel less dense, less city-like than Dar es Salaam or Kampala (although most of my observations here should be taken with a grain of salt, since I so far haven’t explored either of these West African cities as much as the East African ones).


Wandering through the capital near our hostel:






We did find people, later: we watched large groups of people working together to pull in fishing nets from the ocean, as we made our way along a beach that was too beautiful to be as empty as it was. (The ocean breeze also makes for *perfect* weather!) At night we walked down a street lined with outdoor bars blasting music that Piot tells me may have been preaching the word of Jesus. If so, that didn’t stop anyone from drinking, or members of large family gatherings from periodically standing up to dance. Vendors wove through the tables, selling cigarettes, condoms, clothes—just about anything. Another busy site of human activity was the “grand marché,” which we passed through twice, once on Sunday morning and once on our way to the fetish market.

The fetish market is Lomé’s biggest tourist attraction: a market full of items apparently used in traditional, non-Christian worship. The market might not quite be a gimmick—we did see one traditional healer arrive and immediately be swarmed by vendors hissing to attract his attention—but it certainly seems to rely on the tourist trade. As soon as we entered, we were told to pay an entrance fee and offered a guide. For an additional fee, we could take pictures, and it was explained that most of the items on display were for tourists, and didn’t yet have any power (the magic that makes them powerful was done elsewhere).

Piot explains that the “charismatic Christians” (meaning those belonging to Pentacostal churches) blame such traditional beliefs for all evils, including a lack of development. Rather than hybridizing the religion, as colonial churches did, charismatics condemn all activities involving spirits (but nevertheless believe in their existence and efficacy).

We wandered through a rather deserted patch of dusty earth, past tables stacked with the dried heads (and various other body parts) of monkeys, dogs, lions, antelopes, horses, elephants, and others, all laced with the smell of death and preservative that called the Murambi genocide memorial to mind. Our tour-guide explained that most of these body parts would be ground up into powder that you would wash your body with in order to achieve the desired effect. Many of the other objects were things that had once had a function (as money, as a writing utensil, etc) but due to improving technology, had been repurposed for magical use, as though anything that belongs to the era of tradition now belongs to the murky realm of magic.


Fetish market:



Once we’d seen our fill of dead animals, we were brought into a back room, where various charms were explained to us, from the flat, round object that would enhance memory if you used it to draw a cross on your forehead and then tucked it under your pillow to the stick whose smell apparently functions as a natural Viagra. There was also a trinket called “Tell Me Yes,” which, if used correctly, was supposed to make your romantic interest agree with you on everything (as long as s/he was the first person you saw afterwards). Interesting that people have told stories of trying to capture love with magic for centuries, all around the world…

Much of what we saw in the fetish market and what I read about witchcraft in Piot reminded me of the fairy tales we read in Magic class last spring. At the time, we talked about how those stories came out of the dire conditions of the time they were written in, as people developed ways to talk about poverty and death. Similarly, Piot writes, “Witchcraft narratives are very much discourses about hard realities—about unequal access and the failures of European development, about the il/legitimate constitution of political authority, about the temptations of illicit wealth production. They are concise, albeit allegorical ways of trying to understand shifts in power’s operation in today’s world.”

The witches that live in Togo are not shopping for dried monkey heads at the fetish market. They’re capturing victims to sell in exchange for money and the accumulation of goods and advanced technology. They represent the ability to make something out of nothing, the goal that those who are nostalgic for the future are reaching for.



Oh, and we also went to an art gallery holding the collection of West African art gathered by a wealthy Swiss anthropologist, who even negotiated the return from Portugal of some rare art from Benin. Beautiful art, shown to us by a construction worker in a work shirt and dirty overalls, who had no issues with us touching things (or, um, putting them on our heads…):

Preparation

When I was at home just before leaving for Ghana, I spent some time going through old stuff that had accumulated in my room. Seriously, I had saved every Valentine from my fourth grade classmates, including one with a (very well-preserved) candy heart still taped to it. Time for some pruning.

One of the gems I found was my “Livre de Memoires de 2B,” a totally adorable construction paper book compiled by my 2nd grade class when I moved to the US, in which each student had drawn a picture and written a “goodbye” sentence. Apparently, almost every single one of them was going to miss me “because you are always prepared for show and tell.” What kind of 2nd graders care how prepared their classmates are?! Thinking back, I do remember long Sunday afternoons with my mother, carefully planning each show-and-tell and checking each word in my French-English dictionary. (Thanks, Mom – you made me memorable.)

I like to be prepared, to strategize. I get by on my work ethic more than quick thinking, and I want to plan my thoughts before speaking rather than fumble with ideas out loud (it was recently explained to me that this is what people mean when they tell me, “You think a lot” – which actually happens more often than one would expect, believe it or not). So you can imagine my momentary distress when I arrived to teach my very first class—which I had prepared on the writing section of the (for me) completely unfamiliar TOEFL exam—and my students told me that the only section they felt they hadn’t covered was actually the speaking section. Okay, no problem, I can teach that for two hours…! (deep breaths)

It turned out to be a totally great class. In fact, it was much better than my afternoon SAT Critical Reading class, in which we were all drooping a little bit, and for which I had a neatly structured plan with pre-selected examples and everything. Sure, the speaking class was a little disorganized, but everyone was engaged and we talked through topics ranging from corporal punishment (all were against) to government censorship (half for, half against).

I’ve been really enjoying getting to know the students. Today was especially gratifying because I met with most of them individually to talk about their application essays and plans for college. Not to pick favorites, but so far there are a couple of students I’m especially looking forward to helping, including a girl who I would love to see at Barnard, and a boy who is an intense reader and loves to use his grandiose vocabulary and collection of pre-fabricated phrases (“the maelstrom of time”) as much as possible, even if incorrectly. He’s a little awkward and risks sounding emo at times, but it’s endearing – he’s a smart kid.

Unplanned classes give me more flexibility to hear their opinions,^[*] and ask them questions I’m thinking through myself. This morning, we were talking about structuring essays and going through some examples. I asked them whether it was better to plan and prepare, or to try things as you go, expecting that diligent students in the process of preparing for standardized tests would be in favor of preparation, but to my surprise they all agreed that plans never work out. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised: this is Africa, after all, and I’ve certainly learned the necessity of having a go-with-the-flow attitude here.

Though I’m sure it was only a Larium-induced coincidence, I dreamt of my 2nd grade class the night after my impromptu, off-the-cuff teaching experience. In my dream, I went back to visit my elementary school and Mrs. Treble was remarkably still there, still remembered me and my “Livre de Memoires” (dream logic). She asked if she should make me another one before I left for Ghana, and I refused, laughing. Time to grow a little, to push myself out of the comfort of always being the one who needs to prepare… at least in some cases.

^[*]
Obviously, this isn’t rocket science, or at all revolutionary in the world of teaching – in fact, one of my favorite things in college was when professors would begin class with a totally open-ended solicitation for comments. But knowing it as a student and putting it into practice as a teacher have so far been two very different things.

Welcome to Ghana

Ghana welcomes those who come with goodwill.
Ghana does not welcome paedophiles or other social deviants.

So read the sign on the other side of the immigration barrier, behind an officer who, I noticed too late, seemed to be taking particular pleasure in questioning, documenting and lecturing at length each person who came to his window. Why hadn’t I moved into the other line when I’d had a chance? I watched the look of condescension on his face as he argued with a man ahead of me, and prepared for battle: I hadn’t been able to produce a precise address or a telephone number for the organization I’m working for, so I was pretty sure I was going to be labeled a socially deviant meddling immigrant obruni (white person) and denied entrance. Maybe it wasn’t too late to switch to the line behind that friendly-looking officer?

Of course, when I approached, he flashed a bright smile and asked if I was going to come visit him in Ghana. Um, yeah sure! Oh great – smile, stamp, stamp, fingerprints, picture – and I was welcomed to Ghana, goodwill and all.

At the airport, I met Saleh, a very friendly Sudanese-Ghanaian civil engineer who has been covering the gap between the departure of the organization’s previous education fellow and my arrival. A word on why I’m in Ghana: I’m working as the Education Fellow for an organization that helps African students apply to American universities. Over the course of the year, I’ll be running standardized test preparation, helping students select the universities to which they’ll apply, and managing their applications.

Saleh brought me to the apartment I’ll be living in for the next year, and it is beautiful. I’m up on the third floor, which, in a country with few tall buildings, is high enough to get a delightful breeze through the North- and West-facing windows (though I’ve been told that this breeze is a bit of a fluke, and will soon be gone once the dry season begins). There’s a balcony facing North with a bench and table, a large (orange colored!) living room/dining room, and a decent-sized and well-equipped kitchen. We just have to deal with the trash heap outside the building entrance, which apparently the trash collectors have decided to ignore, and the lack of running water due to an empty water tank. Otherwise, it’s amazing.


The living room/dining room.


The view from my room down the hall.
(Ok, these pictures are taking forever to upload, you'll just have to take my word for it)

The apartment is located in Osu, just off of Oxford St, one of the main streets in Accra and a popular tourist area. I haven’t spent much time exploring yet, but hope to do so today. Last night, I met most of the staff at a West African restaurant—oh, and lest you thought I’d escape posho/ugali, I have already discovered the Ghanaian version called gari (or ebe if you’re ordering a Nigerian dish, as I did last night). Richard, one of the organization co-founders, requested that the restaurant switch from the very short CD of American songs playing on repeat to some Ghanaian music, and they promptly began to play music from Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon… basically everywhere but Ghana. Richard laughed and said, “Ah, here in Ghana we have to squeeze the culture out!” Sure enough, the jazz concert we went to after dinner featured an obruni saxophonist, and I heard of plans to open a KFC—the first chain restaurant in Accra. But listening to the church service next door, already well into its third hour at least, I’d be loath to jump to the conclusion that Accra’s development has somehow suppressed its culture.

So far, Accra has been more like East Africa than I expected (and I feel well prepared, having mastered key skills like the appropriate use of “Eh!” and “Ah!” to communicate surprise, joy, disappointment, displeasure, etc.) That smoky smell pervades, and our neighbor’s rooster is fast becoming a real nuisance. Most familiar is the excitement of adventure: time to go exploring.