TEBlog

I might easily have been forgiven for assuming that all the cab drivers in Ghana support Barack Obama when trying to flag down a ride on the streets of Accra last week. I guess they took one look at my hair (braids) and outfit (let’s call it backpacker chic), and reckoned that yelling “Go ’Bama” would ensure that I’d pay more than the 2 or 3 cedis it should cost to get from Oxford Street to Labada Beach.

But this blog post is about my first visit to West Africa, rather than “what Obama can do for Africa” and why I believe this to be bit of a sophism. And while I’d like to join the fray, this post doesn’t reflect much on the issues of racial identity politics that surface when you’re mistaken for ‘other’, though it occurred to me, while reading Fisher’s Race (2007) this week, that it’s true: race matters.

Ghana is often cited as one of the friendliest African cities. A friend jokingly told me how Ghanaians are so polite that they’d even prefix an insult with (an obsequious) “please sir”. At the time I laughed, but later I realised that perhaps I could explain this using the theoretical prism Fanon (1961) provides: and better understood his argument that white colonialism imposed an existentially false and degrading existence upon its black victims, to the extent that it forced their conformity to its distorted values. Ghana was the first African country to receive independence in 1957 (from the British), which begs the question, why was my first impression of Accra that of one big sprawling slum? I experienced mild ‘culture shock’ at the fact that nothing seemed to work as it should: water came out of the tap, but only if you were lucky. People were always late, restaurant service was bad and the food, even worse; and I’ve never seen so much trash in public spaces.

Walter Rodney wrote about how Europe under-developed Africa, and at first I was inclined to agree that colonialism and neo-colonialism, together with foreign aid and foreign ownership of the means of production, had resulted in what appears to be a lack of basic services and the development of a dual economy. The famous bustling markets are over-crowded with everything on sale from trotters to suitcases, but at Koala supermarket you can buy oreos and liquifruit, at a price of course.

Ghana is the 2nd largest producer of gold on the continent (in fact the word Ghana means King of Gold), but perhaps it is the series of coups after Nkrumah’s rule that led to the population not having a strong sense of ownership in their country after independence. Like in South Africa, India and other colonial nations, civil disobedience started out as a form of political protest, but then later became normalised e.g. public urination or excessive littering etc. Or perhaps, it is a combination of both things. After all, thousands of acres of productive farmlands have been ceded to transnational mining interests, with modern ‘open-pit’ gold mining stripping away productive agricultural land and contaminating rivers, severely affecting fishing communities.

But economics aside, I tried to stay away from the touristy Oxford Street and walked as much as I could. I read the local newspapers and was intrigued to find a thriving culture of A1 colour posters, a version of the tabloid press aimed at illiterate members of society, but providing news as well as social commentary and satire via pictures only. I sat on the beach in the rain and watched fierce Atlantic waves form the backdrop to local soccer games (August is the coldest month, with minimum temps around 27 degrees); I bought jollof rice and fried plaintains from roadside vendors and quenched my thirst with coconut water; and I drank palm wine in rural eastern Ghana, where I also learned about the role that local community radio station, Radio Ada, plays in the promotion of local culture and commerce. The business reporter goes to the market and broadcasts prices of available goods on the radio. “Now the men believe us”, said one woman. “They hear the prices on the radio and they hear what’s available, and they know we’re not lying when sometimes we get low prices or come back home with the fish”.

I swayed to highlife music at Chez Afrique near East Legon, and the next morning I waited for two hours while Kwame (not his real name) began the laborious process of burning CDs of highlife and hiplife music from the computer in his video rental store. This seemed to be the only way of buying local music, though hundreds of DVDs of the latest American movies and sitcoms were freely available on the street, high quality pirates imported from Nigeria.

Ghana was crazy, sad and beautiful. And somehow, all I can remember is sitting on a plastic chair in the market, watching the world go by and sipping a tepid coke, and thinking to myself, “you’re home”.