Fear and Loathing in West Africa

Okay, in case you think that our time and our transition into Africa have been all pineapples and beach huts, this rant will be a bit of a tell-all exposé. Let me provide a disclaimer by saying that we do, honestly and truly, love Ghana. Having said this, my pampered, sanitized, delicate, punctual, efficient, orderly, anally-retentive sensibilities have been tested, here in Africa. I had thought about calling this posting "Ten Things I Hate about Ghana" but I don't think there are ten things, and "hate" is too strong a word for something written with my tongue planted firmly in my pretentious, sucky, stereotyping cheek.

Humidity sucks. I knew that I would not like this as I have been to Florida, and I have tried to acclimatize by resisting AC as much as possible, so I keep telling myself that I'll get used to it. Fat chance. When I walk outside it is as though I have wrapped my lips around a humidifier--only hotter and wetter. As I write this, my mind is wandering to the next love poem I will write to the air conditioners in my life. I will spare you some of the damp and gory details of my new life in a humidor, but I am constantly reminded of something I would say to a friend in school when we would get sweaty--I think I could star in The Shining. Then, it was playful overstatement and now it is but the opposite. A few minutes in the African sauna and I am surrounded by hippopotamus as I have formed my own watering hole.

Reading about "Ghanaian Time" did not prepare me for its reality. As an accomplished multi-tasker, I am deeply troubled by the general sense that if I get one thing done, it has been a good day. If someone says they will meet me in the morning, it means I will see them at roughly one o'clock the following day (To their credit, most people will call mid-afternoon to postpone the meeting to the following day). The answer to "When will it happen?" is inevitably "tomorrow" or "Saturday" but these are not commitments, they are merely attempts not to disappoint you because the Ghanaians don't like conflict. Of course, given the choice between conflict and doing what has been agreed to, they ultimately choose conflict, so it is a losing war of attrition for me, most of the time.

I need a hobby. The kind of hobby that would sustain me through traffic jams that are overtaken by hobbled, three-legged lizards. Knitting? Toothpick-whittling? Wrist-slitting? These and so many possibilities have sprung to mind as I have wiled away many hours in the ten minute drive to work that has become a bumper to bumper crawl in the midday heat. There is an election on the horizon in Ghana and I have become a fervent campaigner. My slogan? Vote for roads. I did think about investing in a motorcycle, as I see them whipping in and out of traffic all the livelong day. When I mused about this out loud one day, our driver, Douglas, explained that it would not be a good idea because there is no law against knocking a motorcyclist off of their bike. This may or may not be true, but I am staying in the car. Ghanaians are generous, hard-working, kind, God-abiding people, but when they enter a car, a beast overtakes them that morph the average driver into a pedestrian-mowing, bumper-mashing, horn-blasting maniac. There are few exceptions from what I have seen. Vote for roads, or the country will fall to the rage that is traffic.

I have a special power and I don't want it. My mutant ability is that I can make prices go higher with the colour of my skin. My new superhero name is Obroni Man because "obroni" (a.ka. white person) is what people shout at me to get me to come over and see what I've done to their prices. The real problem is (and it is about as superficial a problem as I can muster) that there is no middle class in Ghana. There are the "have lots" and the "have nots" and nothing (except us!) in between. The only imaginable socioeconomic possibility for someone of my hue, is that I sleep on a diamond encrusted mattress stuffed with Ghana Cedis and I wipe my a...er, my nose, with hund'ed dolla' bills (y'all). While a resident of Ghana generally has the shrewd negotiating skills to bargain for a fair price, and--to be bluntly honest--the suntan to be given the benefit of the doubt, I have neither. I am thinking of working on a Canadian-Ghanaian dictionary (hmmm...hobby?) and I have jotted down synonyms for obroni: moneybags, sucker, golden pockets, ATM.


Capitalism gives me nightmares. I'm sure the sellers (pictured above in the ever-growing shadow of the Accra Mall) have similar nightmares. Accra is bursting with people and development but the city has neither the systems in place to deal with it, nor the regulations to make it sustainable, and goodness knows that the last thing the planet needs--despite what Wal-Mart and Oprah would want us to believe--is another continent filled with hyper-consumers. I choose to call out Wal-Mart and Oprah intentionally, as the Shoprite at the Accra Mall bears a striking resemblance to the corporate giant (falling prices mean I can buy South African bananas for less than I can buy from local market sellers...hmmm), and "O" magazine is offered to me by street vendors on daily basis. All those shiny, happy environmental niceties that are pumped into our leaden heads during commercial breaks (Toyotas turning our city streets into putting greens--in and of themselves oh-so-good for the environment--before our hopeful, lusting eyes) have been shot from the skies in favour of the open season that is the African market. Please sir, may I be excused...my planet's full.

And for a short closing list, I will leave you with a few peeves and grumbles to serve as honourable mentions, that surely would have been added if blogs were as eternal as Accra traffic, or if my family had been given their due: morning "trickle" showers; afternoon football in the blistering heat; dodgy internet, power outtages and all infrastructure in general; vendors in traffic (except when they're selling what we want--oh, aren't we spoiled?!); corruption; insects and lizards in general (while some of us actually like lizards, others of us--who are named Carmilla--live in a constant state of high alert, fearing that gappy-mouthed lizards will rain from the sky at any moment).