A productive day
Living in the US spoils you in many ways. I wasn’t a stranger to this concept before coming to Ghana, and perhaps that’s part of why I haven’t had any sort of meltdown here. The United States has something like 5% of the world population and uses 25% of its resources. We live very unsustainable lives. Because I like statistics, let me drop another: even after adjusting for inflation, we spend 30x as much on durable goods as we did in 1930. But the differences between African life and that of the US go beyond just Xboxes, iPhones, and washing machines.
I was thinking to myself how [in the US] if you woke up and suddenly your water didn’t work, or your electricity was off, it would be incumbent upon you to call to alert the appropriate utility authority that their service was having problems. At least where I grew up, where we had occasional electrical outages from storms, and this was the primary way the electrical company knew where to go and fix its lines; people would call to say “hey, my service stopped.”
In Ghana, at least here in Cape Coast, it seems to be much different. People here have a much more laissez faire attitude about things. The water is off? It will come back on eventually. That sort of attitude is nearly ubiquitous here, in my observation. And mostly this is how I get through life anyway, accepting any series of setbacks with the knowledge that it cannot continue forever; so today when I got up to shower and the water didn’t work, I thought to myself “oh well, no shower today,” and put my pants back on.
It’s not so much that the water (or electricity, or whatever) will randomly not work here that amuses me. And not so much that I can’t cope with it. It’s mostly how one’s state of mind changes. I wouldn’t exactly flip out in the United States if my water was randomly off, but I would definitely respond with more urgency than here.
Although, in a way this leads me to wonder if expectation begets performance. That is, because the water will fail frequently, and everyone just seems to take it in stride, does that mean that the persons responsible for providing water service to Cape Coast don’t feel that providing uninterrupted service is the standard they need strive for? In the States people have a certain expectation, and if water service to a city, or even a portion of the city, was failing every few days for long periods, surely various utility company executives would find themselves answering some tough questions.
I suspect the answer is that there are bigger problems to deal with, as well as that keeping the water going in Seattle, with Seattle’s infrastructure and budget, is somewhat easier than in, say, Cape Coast. As to the former, it’s not that heart disease doesn’t exist here either (I think it’s currently the sixth or seventh leading cause of death in Ghana according to the WHO), but public health officials are more concerned with malaria, HIV, and so on.
It might seem somewhat prescient that I chose today to write this particular post, as when we got home from our morning meeting at a local school (more on that later), the electrical power had joined the water in its state of presumably temporary non-existence.
“This is Africa,” people say — or just TIA, according to [up and coming Somali artist] K’naan. And, because TIA, I am now writing this post in a text document, as my Internet connection (which is cellular) is also out (although the power is now back on, so one out of three is functioning for now!). (UPDATE: several hours after I wrote this I can, for the moment, get a weak Internet signal … still no water)
I don’t accept “TIA,” however. I mean, I accept that is an easy way to characterize problems you may encounter here; problems that seem foreign to Westerners, but I don’t think “this is Africa,” is a reason not to try and fix them either. It’s an explanation, perhaps, but not a resolution.
So, now that we’ve sailed through my verbosity about water and electricity and Internet access, let us get on to the events of the day. Miranda and I got up at 6 and prepped our gear to head out to film. I had a breakfast of delicious oatmeal that Miranda cooked (she sourced 4 days worth of oats and powdered milk for the both of us for $3CEDI from a local shop) and then got ready to go.
We met with the headmaster of the oldest elementary school in Ghana today, who is a rather affable fellow. The school is beautiful in a rustic sort of way, sitting right on the ocean just a stone’s throw away from Cape Castle. He got what we were doing and seemed quite proud of Ghana’s accomplishments in public health. We interviewed him, shot some b-roll of the school, and then headed into two random classrooms.
For me, this was perhaps the most impressive part. The first classroom was a group of 8-year-olds. Bear in mind that before today the headmaster didn’t know us, and didn’t know about our project (we met him through their football coach), so I am confident there was no “prepping” on the students’ part. He asked the kids what they knew of measles, and I was nearly floored by the number of immediate and correct answers. “It’s airborne!” “You get covered in spots!” And so on. I didn’t hear one incorrect answer. He also asked the kids to iterate the ‘six deadly diseases’ and eventually the class got them all.
The second class was a group of 14-year-olds, and although they weren’t as knowledgable about measles (we will head back and give them a short presentation tomorrow), they did know all of the other major killers of kids under five. Even more impressive was that as we walked in, the English teacher was instructing them as to relative pronouns. Basically I think the kids here are getting more technical instruction in both disease and English than most kids in the US. They also have daily Fante classes, which was something I was excited to hear.
With regard to Fante, I was happy to hear that the local language is being preserved not solely by individual families and persons, but in an institutionalized way. I see so much structural violence sometimes that I am occasionally caught off-guard when I see the opposite.
We thanked both classes in Fante (much to their delight) and took our leave. For the record, in Twi to say thanks you say “meh-daaah-see,” and in Fante it’s “meh-duh-waaah-see.”
Today, it seemed, was going to be very productive, as we’d already shot a lot of good footage and it wasn’t even noon. We grabbed lunch and then headed to the imigration office.
People here are so helpful, and I am glad for that, as so many places we need to go do not exist on Google maps, and navigating to them is based on landmarks or just some sort of collective instinctual knowledge about their locations. Luckily, in Ghana, there is always someone who will see you looking befuddled and ask where you need to go. A gentleman pointed us to the proper floor and corner of building, and we headed to immigration.
As we climbed the stairs I realized two things. First, I haven’t seen an elevator in Ghana until today. Second, I haven’t been on the second floor of a building in Ghana until today. I have climbed a LOT of big hills while wearing my inappropriately large Arc’teryx pack, but I’ve yet to climb stairs.
We met with two immigration officers who tried to help us but weren’t sure of our situation and sent us on to their boss. He was quite bemused by our situation (we need to go to NY, to the UN, for a ceremony, for just a couple of days). You see, going back to our home country will invalidate our visa, requiring issuance of a second visa. So he suggested we get another one issued there, in NY. Except that happens in DC (which as you may know, but he didn’t, isn’t all that near NY). And it takes a week. He seemed surprised to hear there is no Ghanaian embassy in NY, and that even in DC it wasn’t instant turnaround for visa service. And with that he sort of handed our stuff back and said, “well what do you want to do?” Hah. No, what do YOU want to do? Because I would like a visa and you’re the guy in the cool looking uniform. Anyway, he basically then recommended we go to Accra. So tomorrow, post-measles-presentation, we will head to Accra to sort out visa stuff and also to try and use our presence in the capital city to arrange some meetings with various agencies and NGOs.
I feel like this post should end any moment now, but it just keeps going. After immigration, we bought some AWESOME artwork for one of our donors. I really hope he likes it. It’s from a local artist whose style is like nothing else I have seen here (or elsewhere) — I first spotted it after going to a place that Dom recommended and after talking it over Miranda and I decided the artwork was within our budget, and that this was “it.”
We then hit the local tailor by our house to see about having me something better than ‘cargo pants and a merino t-shirt’ to wear when I am at the UN. Unfortunately I wasn’t really in love with the stuff he was making, so I will just hope that the pants and shirt(s) I have at my parents’ place (which they will send to NY) will work, else I’ll buy something in NY.
Lastly we called on a local woman who runs a non-profit juice/cafe type place. We bumped into an Irish woman near Abura the other week who asked us what we were doing in Cape, she and I got to talking, and she invited us to drop in on the NGO she is volunteering at. We went there today for some fresh pineapple (their power was out too so that was the best they could do — it was delicious) and had some good conversation. The cafe donates all its proceeds to a school that it supports for children in an impoverished area, and it sounds like a really good project to include in the film. We are already running into so many different and inspiring places and people it’s going to be hard (but completely worth the challenge) to get them all into the film.
I think I use this blog as a way to post some of my observations and even some of my complaints, perhaps without characterizing enough of the good things we see. So basically I want to say today that I feel incredibly lucky to be in Ghana, and incredibly inspired by the good nature and hospitality of those around me, irrespective of their skin color or first language.
