Yesterday, I had an extremely eventful day that, to a large degree, embodied my experience in Ghana. Let me break it down by phase:
1. Morning Office Work
I woke-up yesterday around 8:00 a.m., and, by 9:00 a.m., I was chipping away at some revisions on a MS Word Document. Office work like this has been a surprisingly prominent feature of my job here. I expected to be spending the majority of my time in rural parts of Ghana visiting cocoa farms, but, because of delays with the research, we’ve spent the bulk of our time in Accra working in our home which doubles as an office. This can be a bit tedious at times, but being in Accra allows me to focus more on my baseball work.
2. A Trip to the Immigration Office
After completing my office work, I took a trip to the Immigration Officer to check on the status of Noah’s application for a Visa extension. Noah couldn’t go because he sprained his ankle playing basketball the other night.
Trips to immigration are always a bit of an adventure because of the potential for immigration officials to ask for bribes before returning your passport to you. Several of my colleagues have had to go to the immigration office multiple times and been taken into side rooms and asked for bribes.
Yesterday, the woman at the desk just handed me Noah’s passport. Though this outcome, of course, is preferable to being taken into a side room and asked for a bribe, I find it a bit disturbing that immigration officials don’t even check for a photo ID when giving back peoples’ passports.
At any rate, this is just one of many times that I’ve seen the Ghanaian Govt. operate at less than top capacity.
3. The Market
From immigration, I ventured to the largest open air market in West Africa. My mission was to buy fifteen radios to use during our survey. We are going to ask our interviewers to test whether they get radio reception in different areas of the country to try to get a sense of the news sources to which farmers might have access.
Visiting the market was an absolutely outstanding experience, and I certainly now regret not taking my camera. In many ways, it resembles what I expected to find in Africa: densely populated streets, people balancing all sorts of things on their heads, and fairly abject poverty (I saw lots of people sleeping in dark alleys on cardboard).
The other thing that struck me about the market is that I realized how remarkable the broader economy is in Ghana. To illustrate this, I think it is helpful first to consider the contrasting situation in the United States. Back at home, if one needs to buy radios, one likely either has or can easily obtain the information needed to make the purchase: you go to Radio Shack, do a few Google searches, or check in the phone book if necessary.
In Ghana, on the other hand, Noah had spent weeks trying to find reasonably priced radios to no avail. So, on Friday, when leaving immigration, I told my taxi driver that I wanted to go to the market and needed to buy radios. The driver said, “Oh, I know a guy.” I replied, “Well, I need 15.” He calmly said, “It’s cool. It’s wholesale.”
Sure enough, after getting dropped off and following the instructor’s instructions for weaving through the market, I found a shop in a dark alley with tons of radios. The clerk, a Ghanaian woman who had lived in Britain and worked for several multinational firms, tested each of the devices for me, and I was on my way.
What this experience demonstrates to me is that, if you live in Ghana long enough, you’re likely to accumulate the information you need to navigate the economy. In contrast, for relative newbies like me, it can exceptionally difficult to obtain the goods and services that you are seeking. The implications for and parallels to foreign investment are, of course, significant.
4. Lunch at the Novotel
From the market, I jumped in a taxi (I literally jumped in as the driver was about to be overtaken by oncoming traffic) and went to the Novotel for lunch. It’s quite a contrast to end up in a luxury business hotel after navigating a gargantuan market teeming with dark alleys, hawkers selling anything from rats to Nikes, and people living in abject poverty. Heck, I sat down next to some Japanese business people and enjoyed a California chicken sandwich with french fries and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
This rapid transition and lunch is a microcosm of how I’ve really gotten a taste of what it is like to live as an elite in one of Africa’s most stable countries. As I’ve noted in previous posts, I’ve been living in a house with a pool, go to a grocery store that sells sliced deli meat, and even have access to a gym with elliptical machines.
I have mixed feelings about being in such a comfortable setting. On the one hand, it diminishes the adventure element of the trip (I thought I would be spending most of my time traveling to remote villages only accessible by motorcycle or canoe). On the other hand, I really enjoy being able to transition from something that is more emblematic of the rest of Africa (e.g. the market) to something that reminds me of the comforts of home.
4. Soccer
After returning home and doing a couple more hours of work, I participated in the soccer match that happens around the corner from my house nearly every day.
There were quite a few people there, so we split into teams of 4 and played golden goal matches that were settled by PK’s if no one had scored within the first 8 minutes. My team lost its first match, and a young Ghanaian man immediately singled me out and taunted me, “We scored you. We scored you.” He pointed at me and cackled.
That was all I needed to experience to have a fire lit under my you know what. My team sat the next match, won our next game on penalties, and then had a rematch against the taunter’s team. The first time I was guarding this man, I gave him a less than friendly but legal shoulder check (OK, I pushed him, but I didn’t hear a whistle). Then, a couple minutes later I settled a ball in front of the goal and calmly deposited it. I immediately turned to my heckler, smiled, and hollered, “Who got scored on now?” We had a good laugh about it, and, in the end, I think it was all in the spirit of friendly competition.
This is certainly not the first time a sports match has grown contentious here.
5. Fire
Finally, while my colleagues and I were sitting on our porch last night, we noticed smoke and flames just beyond the wall of our compound. Joe and I ran around the corner, and we found a fairly large brush fire.
These sorts of controlled blazes are actually pretty common here because people burn trash all of the time. The disturbing parts of this blaze were that a) it was right next to our home and b) it was just below a tree that is inside the walls of our compound and nearly touches our house. I argued pretty aggressively with a neighbor who had started the fire, and I think we have an agreement not to start fires under the tree next to our house anymore. We’ll see.
Frankly, this is one of many experiences I’ve here that are simultaneously frightening, entertaining, and completely unpredictable.
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At any rate, yesterday was one of many eventful days this summer, and, recapitulating it made for a long post, I hope it helped to give you a sense of what a typical day is like for me here.
In other news, my time in Ghana is really winding down. I fly back to the States this coming Friday (August 28th). Between now and then, I have one more day of work (on Monday) and will then spend a few days doing meetings for baseball. Earlier today, I had my last baseball practice with the kids, and, this afternoon, I’ll play in a final softball game. More on baseball later.
