Akwaaba!

This past weekend I traveled 3 hours by bus West of Accra. It felt great to leave the commotion of Accra in favour of the far more relaxed tempo in the sun-soaked cities of Cape Coast and Elmina. I stayed in the kind of hotel that you wished the electricity didn’t work. The room, decaying as I slept, was overpriced at $7/night. I partied with 9 Irish 20-somethings who are teaching in Cape Coast and drowned myself in Star beer. The beaches in Cape Coast, unlike Accra where a coastline of sandy beach is reduced to tiny enclosures of designated swimming areas, are open to swimmers. No less dangerous than Accra, however, violent waves and an undertow that sucks you out to sea make swimming fairly risky. Regardless, better beaches are to be found further West and the highlight of Cape Coast and Elmina are its castles.

Elmina castle is the oldest standing European building in existence below the Sahara. Changing hands between the Portuguese, Dutch, and finally the British, both Elmina and Cape Coast Castles are infamous for their role in the Atlantic slave trade. Both castles are complete with dungeons, torture and rape rooms, as well as “doors of no return”. Hundreds of thousands of slaves passed through those doors only to die on board their ship to the New World or to reach shore and spend a life in chains. I toured the castle with a group of African Americans who seemed very shaken by the experience. The human and economic toll that slavery had on West Africa has left a legacy that lasts until today.

Back in Accra… The most important landmark in Accra is the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. Named after the first President of Ghana, “Circle” as it is generally known, is a huge roundabout around which countless vendors, “hawkers”, and street children with distended bellies spend their days. Tuesday night I went with Vincent, a friend of mine from my neighborhood, to one of the many limbs that germinate off of “Circle”. Vincent works from dawn until 2am at two different internet cafés, sleeps no more than a few hours a night, and is very fortunate to be self-sufficient compared to most of his friends and family. Walking North of “Circle”, Vincent guided me through a maze of identical stalls, shielded from the sun or rain by a cut of tin, into the bowels of Accra. Here rest hoards of migrant workers that have made the journey South from all directions. Accra is the biggest city in Ghana and as such is home to masses of migrant workers who have come from all of the country to find work. Sharing no more than a straw mat, rolled up shirts for pillows, entire families of people sleep side-by-side night-over-night for years. The poverty in the rural areas of Ghana lead many to believe that urban life could provide the kind of opportunity that has been so elusive in the villages. Families uproot, leaving behind perhaps centuries of village history and tradition, for the prospect (cue Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”) of a better life. More often than not, however, this hope is vanquished, and a life selling trinkets and living hand-to-mouth resumes.

A lack of opportunity is the brutal reality of a country, a continent, with barely such a thing as a middle class. Roughly 2% of Africa’s population can be considered middle class with Ghana positioned slightly above average. I’ve become friends with many people around my neighborhood who have freshly graduated from secondary school or college and struggle to find work at even the most basic levels. Even the very ambitious are burdened by an exhaustive bureaucracy that takes on average 138 days to start a business. Inflation is 12%/annum making Ghana less of a bargain than one might suspect. VSO provides a meager monthly allowance to its volunteers, and, while it takes creativity to stretch it past three weeks, it urges us to eat and travel by the most local means available. Invariably everyone cheats a little, flocks to Koala, a Western Supermarket teaming with Expats, and loads up on fresh cheese, meat, and bread.

15 new volunteers arrived this past week. Good folk, they’ll be scattered about the country working on disability and education projects. Tomorrow I’m off to the North of the country. First a 13 hour drive to Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region. I’ll spend about 4 days in Tamale interviewing 3 members of each of VSO’s, Action Aid’s, and IBIS West Africa’s staff. Then mid-week I’ll continue further North to Bolgatanga where I’ll be interviewing the local partners of these 3 organizations. I’m so excited to see the different climate, landscape, ethnic and language groups of the Northern Region, not to mention the crocodile ponds.

Hope all’s well. Be in touch soon.

Brian