Ghana! A Travel Journal of Ghana and West Africa

I came out of our hotel yesterday right as the last wails of the call to prayer drifted from atop the countless minarets that dot Ouagadougou and the crescent moon hung brilliantly just beyond the reach of the afterglow of the fading remnants of dusk. The air had a hint of Saharan dust to it, just enough to add some seasoning to the sunset and a familiar spice to the breeze. It feels good to be going up north, towards the desert. I can feel it pulling me and as we get closer, as the jungles and forests of Ghana drop away to the scrub bush and plains of the northern lands I sense an anticipation rising in me like my body knows its going home.

Its kind of an odd thing to be feeling as I have never in my life stepped foot (nor even heard of for that matter) the countries I’m going to. But oh well, I’m sure I’m merely romanticising.

It's strqnge to be off of camp and I’m not entirely sure what my take on the whole experience is yet. It’s a lot of information to sort through. I know that I do not, for one minute, regret having come this sumer as what I took away from the experience is invaluable. The people I met, especially on the other international volunteers and the locals on the Wat/San team were great, to say the least. Thrown together in such an environment was a great way to get close to some great people quickly. The flip side of this of course is that they leave as quickly as they come. Back in Tamale Malcolm and I parted ways with Renee and Kalie. I know Ill see Kalie again as she’ll be in Peth this Christmas and I’m sure Kendra and I (or at least I) will be dying for some under 50 years olds to hang out with (as hip as you guys are mom and dad…). But who knows when Ill bump into Renee again. Hopefully soon, and after the little Cairo rendezvous in Accra, I can confidently hold out some hope that this will be true.

However, the value of what I have back to the Liberians is debatable; I can’t shake the feeling that we were essentially glorified tourists on camp. That, however, is for a separate posting. For now is time to scour this dusty place for some breakfast. Ouagadougou, contrary to the guidebook’s description, is proving a finicky place for food. Far from “overflowing with patisserie and sidewalk cafes from where you can watch the city pass you by” we have managed, in two days time, to find one shanty café infested with flies (which, by now, we hardly even notice) and one patisserie, if you could call a barren concrete room with baguettes laying on one corner that. Kayla, do you remember where you stayed and where those pastries are that you were raving about? That would be awesome if you could pass that along!

Ok the entries ,;ight stqrt getting alot shorter fro, now on. I forgot that besides french cuisine the francohpone countries also come supplied with french keyboards, zhich, if you've never tries to use them, are a co,plete pain in the ass!

Right now we are in the dusty, yet bustling captial city staying a room zith running water and even A:C!!! what luxoury!! Im not sure what are planqs are fro,m here as the Malian e,bassy is closed until monday so we have to postopone our plans to heead up to Mali and Dogon country until at least tuesday. Im not sure how we're going to keep occupied until tuesday as we've been here a day and al,ost exausted our list of 'to do' activities, it seems there is a reason you don't see Ouagadougou posters next to Paris ones in travel agents offices!

Hopefully for next tid,e ill be able to use malcoms laptop to type up updates and then just upload the, so you guys will actuqlly be able to read it;

Oh i just got your email qunt susie, very frustrating to read that article you forarded. Its also interesting that God seems to have precious little to say about the wars in Liberia, Seirra Leon, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire. I guess he was to busy protecting the chosen ones from the heathen infidels (some of who happen to be good friends of mine). oops didn't ,mean to get bitter, i'm in no position to. Its time to retire to my airconditioned room

CBW decided to make all this last week on camp a holiday until July 31st so I decided to take off early on my quick tour of West Africa (I think they did it to try and get rid of us early so we would stop making a stink about the whole car affair- which is still unresolved). Mom and dad, you'll be happy to know that another volunteer, Malcom decided to come with me so I wont be alone.

Right now we're in this small provicial feeling town of Bologatanga, about 50km from the Burkina Faso border. The ride up here was a 15 hour bus trip from hell on an old full sized bus crammed with as many people as humanly possible, and then some. They even jerry-rigged extra fold-down seats into the asles just to make sure we wouldn't be too comfy on the ride. It wouldn't have been so bad if the roads weren't fashioned after a cattle guard. The driver seemed to think that if he went faster over the rough parts it would make it better...my butt begs to differ. So tomorrow marks the last day in Ghana for a while. We're not exactly sure where we're headed, but for now aiming for Timbuctou, though, not suprisingly, its supposed to be a bit pain to get to.

For now I'm lookign foward to seeing Burkina, a country that I didn't even knew existed until last year. The guide book's introduction description, however, is far from encouraging:

"Few countries are as unlucky as Burkina Faso. It is a despratly, and famously poor, with an almost total lack of raw materials or natural resources. And although it shares its landlocked predicament with Niger and Mali, unlike them it lacks direct access to the important trans-Saharan routes."

Alothough I'm going to miss Ghana and espeically the people, I am looking forward to the Burkinabe cuisine, which like Togolese, reaps the benifits of being a former french colony. I'm not a big fan of the chop shop's fufu, bantu or goat soaps that seem to be the norm Ghanaian street food. Plus, when roaches and other unidentified critters are running all over the table and plates, as was the case at the last chop shop, it really does little for my appetite.

But for now, as my time is running out and this keyboard is pissing me off, I think we are going to retire to our $2 hotel room (which is really nice acutally) and enjoy a good nights sleep before dealing with the hassle of tomorrows border crossing (always seems to be a pain in the ass in most african countries) and bush taxi haggling (in french at that). With luck we will make it to the captial, Ouagadougou (try saying that one 3 times fast) by tomorrow night.

miss everyone and hope everythings going great to you all

It's running into the last week here of my time on camp and tension among the volunteers are running high. It's a combination of living in such close proximity to each other with almost no privacy and the whole car scandal. The car deal is a real slap in the face; for me it’s a physical manifestation of my uselessness here. I guess I can tell the whole story now because we've already spilled the beans to GVN. But first a little background on how everything works around camp.

I am placed by the organization GVN with a local NGO here in camp. Almost all of the money the local organization gets comes from program fees paid by the volunteers who are place by GVN. This local NGO is headed up by a Liberian refugee who we shall call Rob, and let me tell you, this Rob is a real piece of work. He's rather short with a protruding belly, formed from years of gluttony, and a joyless half smile perpetually plastered on his face. Further, he is generally not a pleasant character, to put in mildly. Right before I arrived the volunteers in the other house heard him essentially raping his wife (he lives right next to them) but there was little recourse the volunteers could take besides knocking on his door (which they did and he stopped, but then the next day he called a meeting and tried to make the volunteers come out to be the bad guys). He basically runs the NGO here, what he says, goes. So whenever I talk about the local NGO and its decisions I am, in essence, talking about Rob.

Last year a bunch of volunteers made some rather sizable donations (on top of the mandatory donation that’s included in the fees we paid to come here) to go towards a salary increase for the employees of the organization (I think I already mentioned that they currently get a paltry $17US a month). However, when the time came to give the raise Rob claimed that there wasn't any money available in the NGO's bank account.

The volunteers pressured Rob as to where all the money had gone to but to no avail. Then, one afternoon Rob drives down through camp in a Toyota minivan with the organizations name painted on it. The volunteers, of course, went ballistic, called the head of GVN in New Zealand who then flew in to threaten Rob with pulling out. The volunteers decided to keep GVN in place but decided that a GVN representative would be stationed in camp along with the regular volunteers to make sure no more of this blatant corruption continued.

So then this last June the GVN rep. left and no one replaced her, meaning their were only volunteers here like before the car scandal. Except that these volunteers (yours truly included) had no idea about the car scandal because anyone who knew about it had already rotated out, and Rob was none to keen to fill us in on the issue. So around June the volunteers were pushing for a salary increase for the employees, but Bob refused claiming insufficient funding (sound familiar??). So, two weeks later Rob heads off to Togo to "perform maintenance" on the car. A week later he rolls up in a nice barely used Land Rover! And those are expensive cars! Supposedly the car is to be used to scout out new prospects for opening up operations in Liberia, a ludicrous notion considering they can't even get their act together here, let alone trying to expand to the international level.

So while the hard working employees of his organization go hungry trying to feed themselves and their families on the pathetic salary he pays them, Rob refuses to increase their wage, lies to us, and then uses our money (and money from numerous other generous donors) to buy himself a new car!

Now it looks like we're going to be faced with a though decision on whether or not to pull GVN out. It's not the volunteers decision to make by GVN will place a lot of value on our recommendation. If GVN pulls out the local org. will be basically shut down, and most of the people working for it will be out of a job. But the idea of staying and feeding more money into Rob's coffers just makes my skin crawl. I mean how bad do you have to be to steal money for malnourished, sick refugees! It's nauseating...

Some days it really hits me, the gulf that divides me from everyone here. Its easy to forget, as your joking with them, laughing with them or having a beer with them after a long day, that you share histories so wildly different as to make you wonder how you ended up sitting at the same table enjoying a cold Star beer in the middle of Ghana.

Other times it smacks you in the face leaving you reeling and wondering how you can possibly bridge the gap. Take, for example, my IT class. During the PowerPoint section the class learned how to add sound effects to the slide transitions. One student added a machine gun sound which, when blasted through the computer speakers, caused everyone in the room to duck wildly in such a knee jerk response that it could only have been instilled in them the hard way. One moment I'm joking around with the teacher, Alfred, about the finer points of Brittney Spears’ figure and the next moment he's ducking from the ghosts in his past while I'm left counting my blessings that my first thought on hearing it is that the speakers have too much treble.

Or how about the micro-loan lady. Working on a salary of $17US a month she has to feed herself, her family, and several orphaned children she takes in. Then, because providence thought she had it too well, she comes down with not just malaria, no- that wouldn’t be enough, but typhoid fever as well. Already malnourished she now has to find money for treatment while still looking after her burgeoning family.

I can’t pretend to understand how they must feel. I have an escape; I’m leaving in another 2 weeks, but for them this is life not some summer project.

Just an update for everyone. I'm heading into the 3'rd week of the second month, only 2 weeks to go in the program before i head off up north. It's been kinda a rough week for the international volunteers. One went to the hospital in Accra last weekend with malaria then came back, thought she was over it, but headed back into Accra on Thursday. Hopefully its just Malaria and not something more complicated. Two other's think they might have malaria but haven't gotten any test done yet so their not sure. I, however am still alive kicking with not so much as a common cold to complain about.

We found out on Monday that the administrative staff of our organization took off for Togo to buy a car (apparently their cheaper there). I'm going to wait until I'm done with the program to write in detail about that though so I'm free to give my true thoughts (which are none too kind; I have some very choice words about the administration here). They're still not back yet and I wonder who's money they're spending for the hotel rooms and the lavish meals I'm sure they're taking. Plus the rest of the organization in inhibited because we can't access any of you funds since the financial guy is off gallivanting around on our penny. But yeah, I don't want to get too worked up about that now, more on this later...

I finally got to meet the director of one of the departments I'm in, the IT guy, he's been out with jaundice until now. My knowledge of diseases has exploded dramatically since I've been here. Don't worry mom and dad though- most these can be easily treated, the problem arises mainly when you can't afford the basic treatment.

Oh I just checked my email....congragulations Mike and Kim!!! I look forward to having another one in the familly, hopefully I'll be around to see this one before she gets too old!

It's amazing how much of a difference a border can make. This weekend some guys from camp and I took a quick trip into Togo, ostensibly to renew our entry stamp to allow us to stay in Ghana for another 60 days; but I really wanted to see another west African country if only for 2 days.


Lomé, the capital of Togo has such a different feel than Accra, its loud, bustling, dirty- in other words, Egypt! I loved it. Plus since it's an old French colony, the food is fantastic. We didn't have time to do much, just some touristy crap like the voodoo market. It was interesting but had all the authenticity of a third-world Hollywood.

Unfortunately, although Togo is considerably poorer than Ghana (they had a cholera outbreak there right before we went- but I guess we had one of those outbreaks on camp earlier in the year so that’s not saying much!) it is defiantly more expensive owing to the strength of their currency, the CFA (Central Franc Afrique or something like that) which is the same that Burkina Faso and Mali use. This means I might have to reconsider my travel plans for August (I have been planning on heading up that direction). I also realized that the extent of my French skills leave much to be desired, an important aspect to consider when it’s hard enough avoid getting ripped off when I speak the same language, let alone having a language barrier added to the fray.

Togo made me appreciate some parts of Ghana that had passed me by. For one, people here are simply outstandingly friendly! Of course some people try and rip me off and there are buglers and criminals, but for the most part I am greeted by genuine ivory tooth smiles where ever I go. After only a month here I’ve lost most the edge that I learned in Egypt. I’ve dropped the shield that I used to put up whenever someone offered to walk me to the bus station or the tro-tro stop as I wondered around looking lost and confused. The hassle of Togo reminded me how easy I have it here, but makes me wonder about the wisdom of trying to go north. I’ve heard up there, especially Mali, is notorious for the hassle

I wish I could get pictures on here because I have some nice shots from this waterfall we stopped at called Wli (pronounced Vwli). Supposedly the tallest in West Africa they were truly impressive. On the way back we stopped in a monkey sanctuary set up by some Peace Corps volunteers. Its set in this rural African village composed almost entirely of mud huts or palm branch houses. Set that backdrop against feeding bananas to monkeys out of our hands as the sun sets behind some palm trees lazily frolicking in the slight tropical breeze while women with baskets on their heads amble down the red dirt road with wild monkeys scattering at their feet, and you have an idea of what it was like. It fulfilled every stereotype of African life that I’ve ever read! Needless to say it was great. Further, their looking for some more Peace Corps volunteers…..hmmm!

So overall it was a great weekend. It’s too bad that Kiran, another volunteer from June had to leave, it feels like I’ve known her for years. July is defiantly going to be lacking without her presence on camp. She actually purchased a ticket for me to fly to Budapest (where she’s gonna be living this year) to see her for spring break!!

Kendra, sounds like Ashville is awesome! Ok I guess I give you permission to move down there- but not until after I graduate!

Ok I have a some emails that I haven’t read cause the internet is taking forever, but I’m working on it. So if I haven’t replied it’s just cause I haven’t been able to open your email yet- I really do love reading them and hearing from everyone and I will reply eventually I promise!

Seeing as how I'm American, and I'm in Ghana right now, I figured, logically, I must celebrate Canada Day! My Egypt friend Kayla is Canadian and invited me, Kiran and Jared (from the camp and no mom that's NOT Kiran, Jared and I!) to a Canada Day celebration at the High Commissioner’s (basically the same thing as anAmbassador as far as I can tell) House here in Accra. What she failed to tell me was that this would be a classy celebration. So when I showed up at her house before hand in shorts and a T-shirt Kayla’s mom (who works at the High Commission) took one look at me as said 'no no, you’re not going like that'

Her mom was very nice though and lent me a button up shirt to wear. Now, I'm not complaining at all because it was very gracious for her to take us, but the shirt she gave looked like it was straight out of a priest’s wardrobe, and combined with the shorts and tennis shoes I was also wearing made for a very comical outfit.

We show up at the high commissioners house, which is crawling with ambassadors and diplomats and such from all over the world all dressed in nice pressed suits. I stroll in this outfit, all scruffy from living at camp, and line up behind everyone in suits to shake the commissioner’s hand, as he does to everyone who came. He comes to me and as he reaches out to shake my hand and takes a steps back and, very obviously, looks me up and down with a ‘who the hell let this guy in’ kind of look on his face. I felt VERY out of place!

Later that night we met up with this Egyptian guy we had met earlier in the Lebanese part of Accra. And so started one of my weirdest nights so far in Ghana! We went out to a club that he’s friend owned, which turned out to be a strip club. Strip clubs I think are sketchy places in America, but this place took the word sketch to a whole new level. The guy was sweet, in a creepy, sleazy kind of way (I took a picture of him that I’ll post when I get that chance, he looks like the stereotype of a pimp- the silk shirt, the sunglasses-at-night, and everything), he was just SO eager to impress us with how rich and all he was. But we decided to get out after the strippers showed up!

On a completely different note, I’m halfway through my time at the camp now. We have a new batch of volunteers coming in and all the June people are leaving. Its amazing how fast the time goes and how little work I’ve gotten done so far! Two months is not going to be nearly enough time to settle in and do half the things I had wanted to. I know understand why the peace corps is a 2 year program- and I’m sure even that is cutting it close!

Ok running out of internet time. I’m going to Togo (the country just to the east of us) this next weekend so I might not be able to get online for a bit- just so no one worries! I’m excited though, I’ll finally get to try and practice some French!

I had a great talk with my Egypt friend Maria the other day when she came to visit the refugee camp for a night. It was one of those 'why are we here?' kinda talks. This is what we came to conclude:

Everyone wants to be a superhero. On some secret level everyone dreams of saving the world, or maybe not that extreme, but at least everyone wants to be a somebody, no one wants to be a nobody. Back in the states I'm just you average broke college kid who drinks a little too much some weekends (err, ok maybe on some weekdays too...), but I'm basically a nobody. This isn't a reflection of a low self-esteem or anything, but merely a statement of fact; I'm low on the totem pole over there.

But here in Africa I'm a somebody. At the IT center full grown men look up to me and come to me with their problems. Almost anywhere I go people treat me with respect and deference, people come to me with their problems filled with unwavering confidence in my abilities to solve anything. I get the full red carpet treatment.

Yet it feels cheap on some (many) levels. I didn't earn this respect and treatment; it’s ascribed to me based on my skin color and my nationality, but not on my achievements. These refugees, many of who have been through far more than I will probably ever have to go through in my life, completely defer to me sometimes. It’s embarrassing when, even though I’ve never taken an IT course in my life, here at the IT center, the teacher I work with who has taken many IT courses and is an amazing teacher, is convinced that whatever I say is absolute law. I feel like I've been granted Papal Infallibility with out my asking.

The other day I went out with the water and sanitation crew to do some insecticide spraying, but I didn’t actually do anything. It’s a two man job and there were four of us, two locals and two international volunteers. The internationals were essentially just tagging along watching the others do the work. It was frustrating because we knew that we could be put to work somewhere else much more effectively, somewhere where we could actually work. When I got back I asked the other international volunteers what the point of us tagging along is and they said it’s basically because we are white. By bringing along two white boys the spraying crew was improving their credibility, people are more likely to trust us and let us into there house to spray. I’m essentially the Liberian Vanna White: just stand there and look pretty!

I feel like the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, except I flew in on a plane instead of a balloon. To quote The Wizard from the song “Wonderful” in Wicked the Musical soundtrack:
“Won-der-ful
They called me Won-der-ful
So I said Wonderful
If you insist”

Coming here we’re told by everyone how wonderful we are to be doing what we’re doing and what a sacrifice we’ve made and such, so after a while you begin to think: wonderful? If you insist!

I just keep waiting for someone to look behind the curtain…