Gloom and Doom, November 2004

The Red Sox win the World Series, but George W. Bush gets re-elected. Life is just not fair. I have to apologize in advance for this “gloom and doom” update. I am just so crushed about the results of the U.S. Presidential election. What I want to know is what happened to the “liberal media”? If the U.S. media is so liberal, why didn’t they sway the American public to vote their way? Whatever. There are plenty of other things to make me feel sad these days. I’m not giving “Dubya” another second.

Here at the Embassy in Accra, we wait to see how the post-election period will shake out at work. The same guy still runs the federal agency I work for and he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. The big news is that the State Department will have a new boss soon, and I can’t be any sorrier to see Colin Powell go. I was actually really worried about him when he was appointed Secretary of State, but over time he became my favorite person in Bush’s cabinet. A little-known fact is how beloved Colin Powell is by State Department employees. Say what you want about his foreign policy choices, he is a great manager and people loved to work for him, something you could not say about many of his predecessors.

So we keep going until something changes. My office keeps trying to help West Africa trade its way out of poverty in a horrible business environment while agricultural prices stagnate. Meanwhile, my husband gets to help shape the Ghanaian government’s proposal for “Millennium Challenge Account” funds, which is a huge pot of U.S. government money designed to boost economic productivity and move Ghana towards middle-income status. Why the State Department (and not USAID) is taking the in-country lead on this large-scale economic development project is a long story, but ultimately it is just another contradiction of working for the U.S. government overseas. I’m continuously shocked at just how many government agencies duplicate efforts or work towards conflicting goals in the field. It’s annoying and inefficient as hell, but no one seems to wants to commit career suicide by mentioning it publicly. And what do I know about it anyway? Reforming bureaucracies, even one as professional as ours, can’t be easy work.

Things could be worse. We live next door to a country descending into hell. I am embarrassingly ignorant about the conflict, so I asked my boss who lived in Cote d’Ivoire about the conflict and its causes. She explained that it was a complex issue, but that it could best be explained by a combination of economic and ethnic factors. In sum, the country’s cocoa plantations were owned by Ivorians, and the majority of the laborers on these plantations were from poor neighboring countries in the Sahel. For generations, young people from Mali and Burkina Faso had come to Cote d’Ivoire as seasonal and eventually permanent workers. Although over time, many of these laborers had earned enough to purchase their own farms and were firmly established in the country, they and their Ivorian-born children were always considered “foreigners” or interlopers. The fact that these foreigners were also Muslim, in a country that was for the most part Christian, served to aggravate the divide. So when one when one of these so-called foreigners—who happened to be a former economist with the International Monetary Fund—ran for President a few years back, the incumbent started an ethnic purity campaign against him saying he was not really Ivorian and therefore could not run for President. At the time, cocoa prices were declining, so the country’s cocoa-dependent economy was suffering. The timing was such that people were inclined to listen to ethnic rantings and ravings—after all, someone had to be at fault for their economic woes—and the foreigners were attacked in the towns and villages where they lived. In retaliation, rebel groups emerged, backed by the "foreigners", in an attempt to change the status quo. Then another group in the East of the country (who think everyone else is crazy) started their own militia to protect what is theirs. On top of all of this is the French colonial structure that the Ivorians resent.

So these days the Ivorian government is fighting rebels in the north, and on the side they take pot shots at the French. Recently, government troops killed some French peacekeepers, so the French military retaliated by blowing up the Ivorian President’s airplane and helicopter. Then all hell broke loose when the local media erroneously reported that the French were trying to reestablish their colony. In short, it’s a mess. There is looting and shooting in the streets, the airport is closed to commercial flights, and people are being evacuated. The “Paris of West Africa”, and one of the region’s only economic anchors, is falling apart, something that does not bode well for the stability of the region. Having lived in, and next door to more than a few countries at war, I tend to worry about the consequences.

But surprisingly, the situation just a few hours’ drive away hasn’t affected security much in Accra, at least not yet. The only changes I can see are more cars with foreign license plates driving around the capital filled with the people who were lucky enough to escape in time. The other thing is that the hotels are booked and flights leaving Ghana are full. As far as my work is concerned, USAID hasn’t done much work in Cote d’Ivoire as of late because of U.S. government sanctions against this country. Mostly it is more of a hassle to travel to anywhere else in the region, since so many flights to Francophone Africa went through the hub of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s capital.

But as always in the Foreign Service, one country’s crisis is someone’s career opportunity. The workload for consular officers at embassies in the region just got a lot more interesting, and their supervisors are probably already drafting their awards for service in crisis. The consular officers here are working their share of extra hours, at the airport every night welcoming U.S. passengers on flights arriving from Cote d’Ivoire. The Italians, Germans and French militaries are flying our citizens out of Cote d’Ivoire to safety. The Brits are shaming us at the airport too, with cookies and croissants for their citizens coming off the planes. Be proud that your U.S. government consular representatives are only holding American flags—no tax dollars will be wasted on American refugees! Mostly what the consular folks say they do at the airport is run interference with the Ghanaians so they process on-the-spot visas for U.S. citizens for $20/person (a new agreement given the crisis) and make sure people have a place to stay, an onward flight, know where and how to make phone calls or access the internet, or get medical attention. They say it’s tiring, but interesting, and a nice change from sitting behind bulletproof glass and interviewing hundreds of people a day.

There are always people who try and take advantage of these crisis situations to get visas to the U.S. The Consular Officers were telling me how many of the Ivorians arriving in Ghana have children with them who are U.S. citizens. They claim to be the children’s caregivers, and are responsible for taking them to America. They say that the children’s parents are either in the U.S. working or stayed in Cote d’Ivoire to watch over their businesses. True stories or not, our laws don’t allow for visas to be given out to “accompanying adults” in these types of situations, so the American refugees are stuck in Ghana for a while until they figure something else out, or until the situation at home calms down and they can go back.

To add to all this local misery, last week my husband and I learned that an acquaintance of ours—Will, a young Marine we befriended when he was serving as a Marine Security Guard to the U.S. Embassy in Accra—was killed in the assault on Fallujah in Iraq. Less than a year ago we were partying and horsing around with him and the other Marines in the pool after the Marine Ball. I remember asking him and his colleagues what they thought about Iraq. He said it was what he signed up for. I guess that is why some people become Marines—they want to experience war. But I bet few of them actually think they are going to see their end in one of these wars. Or maybe somewhere in the back of their minds they think it might happen, but it’s a good way to go. I don’t know. But at eight months pregnant, my hormones are raging, and I ran in the bathroom at work and sobbed when I heard the news. He was 23. What makes me most sick is that “we” (the US Government) created this war that he died in. It didn't have to be this way, but it is. Here in Accra the Embassy held a memorial service for him and lowered the flag to half-mast. I couldn’t bring myself to go, but my husband went. He told me that it was a somber event, dignified and fitting for such a Marine. During the ceremony, many Embassy employees cried openly. I wonder if his family knows that.

So, we lick our wounds and life goes on. We can sit around and feel sorry for ourselves, or try and do something about what is crappy and wrong with the world. But I can’t stop myself from feeling cynical and sad. And I have to stop thinking about all this war and focus on the future. Starting in December, I’ll be spending three months in America to have a baby. When I come back to Ghana, I’ll be busy trying to raise this kid, train a nanny and deal with my full-time job. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for writing, let alone sleeping. So wish me luck, keep the faith and I’ll be in touch as soon as I can manage it.

Togo and Nigeria, October 2004

Apologies for not writing in a while. My workload with the U.S. government (USAID) is insanely busy and I feel like the last thing I want to do at night or on weekends is get on a computer again. Where did the myth come from that government workers don't work? It may be true in some environments, but it is definitely not true overseas. I finally understand what my husband has been going through for the last 14 years as an employee of the State Department. My job is very similar to his in terms of workload and pressure. In all the places I've worked (private sector, foundations, nonprofits) I have never had a job where the workload was so unpredictable, demanding, and unrelenting and at the same time, I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm accomplishing. Each day I go to the office and cross things off my list, while new things keep being added to the top of it. There is no relief either - my supervisors and colleagues are in the same, or worse situations. I feel like my goal of actually trying to help West Africa in the process is elusive - rather like digging a hole too close to the surf at the beach. It doesn't matter how hard or vigorously you dig - the waves just keep on coming, filling it up the hole, and you are right back to where you started.

I have also been preoccupied outside of work, given that I'm six months pregnant. Yes, we took the plunge, so to speak. I have no idea what to expect, and I'm in a bit of denial about the whole baby thing, so I'm just continuing as things are now, more or less on auto-pilot. I just returned from a bumpy drive for work through the Ghanaian/Togolese countryside, which the baby in my belly did not appreciate. I think this is going to be my last African road trip for a few months. I am very happy to be home in Accra.

Going to Togo always makes me realize how lucky we are to be living in Ghana. Expats who live there have an expression—“There’s no place like Lome.” Of course, that’s not true. Let’s be honest. There are many places like it here in West Africa and they are not exactly vacation spots either (Cotonou and Lagos immediately come to mind). Lomé is a Mecca of moto-filled streets lined with shacks, with thousands of people sitting around for lack of anything productive to do. The capital is on the water, malaria mosquitoes are everywhere, as are painted signs written in French saying, “Do not urinate here.” The ocean and palm tree-lined waterfront is the city’s most redeeming quality, but the beach is the community bathroom here as well, so you have to tread carefully on those early morning beach walks.

Most streets in the “nice” parts of the capital of Togo remain unpaved. The dirt roads are filled with huge potholes that are impossible to pass without a four-wheel drive vehicle. Just imagine what the poorer parts of the country are like. There is garbage everywhere, and stray dogs and animals roam the streets. I thought the countryside of Ghana was poor, but this is ridiculous. It is criminal that people are forced to live like this in this century.

It wasn’t always like this. In fact, only twenty years ago, Togo was in many ways, more developed than Ghana, with better roads, more businesses, and a more stable economy. Most of Togo’s problems stem from one man—Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo’s President. Eyadema is one of the last of his kind. He has been in power since 1967, thanks to intimidation, corruption and the ability to successfully manipulate the international community. And like many places in West Africa, the economy is in the tank here, with nowhere to go but down, mostly due to government mismanagement. Most legitimate entrepreneurial activity is squelched, so what is left is government-run, questionably legitmate and/or “under-the-table”. One of Lomé’s most thriving businesses is the used car market on the edge of town next to the port. I drove by to see one football-field-size parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence full of cars. This is where locals and expats alike go to buy cars, many of which have been shipped to Togo after being stolen in Europe. The used-car salesmen hang out in the lot under lean-to shacks. Haggling is necessary, and like most things in West Africa, foreigners will pay more.

Companies drill for oil off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea with the Togolese government’s blessing. Development types want to find something to help Togo develop economically, but as far as I can tell, the magic bullet is not going to be discovering oil, but rather a change of government. Every election, Eyadema gets magically re-elected with over 90% of the vote. His picture is everywhere—in hotels, restaurants, and businesses. Every official event opens with speakers acknowledging him and thanking him for his support. All this adoration for a morally-bankrupt public figure is so offensive to my American sensibilities I can’t stand it. I purposefully didn’t mention good old Eyadema in my speech here to press, government, the business community and other dignitaries at a women’s business conference, although every other speaker did. I figured I could hide behind cultural ignorance if I was called on it. Diplomacy be damned—I’m an American before I’m a government official.

I was also invited to give a talk to Peace Corps volunteers in Togo on career options in development. During the lunch afterwards I had a chance to chat with some of the volunteers to find out about their work and what was happening where they were living. One volunteer told me how in the village where she lives, the families arrange marriages for their girls to older men while they are still really young, like 11 or 12. Although this is against Togo’s laws, not many are enforced in Togo’s countryside. Also, as per this volunteer, many Togolese families consider it more honorable to arrange marriage of their girls than to send their girls to a boarding school where their teachers will sleep with them and get them pregnant or infected with HIV. Some villagers consider these “teachers” superior because they speak French and are educated, and therefore they defer to them and don’t feel powerful enough to denounce them. The village where this particular volunteer lives is considered the “end of the line” village where all the bad teachers and education supervisors are sent. With some of the families’ encouragement, this Peace Corps volunteer complained to the supervisors about the lascivious teachers, but nothing changed. I asked her how she keeps going, and she said she just does. She continues with her education campaign with the girls and their families, teaching them about their rights under the law, and the need to stay in school. But nothing changes. Talk about depressing.

One group has managed to overcome adversity to become economically successful in Togo—the Lebanese. As in Ghana, Lebanese who have been in West Africa for generations own many of Togo's more successful businesses. The African Lebanese tend to keep to themselves and most businesses remain family-owned and family-run. One foreigner I met in Lomé told me that there is a group of young, twenty-something Lebanese men living in Togo now who are not local. They work hard and make lots of money at the Lebanese companies they work for, and send all of their earnings, um, somewhere, but they are not investing in Togo. Some people worry they are financing terrorist activities in other parts of the world. Who knows what truth there is to that. If they were any other nationality, would we even suspect such a thing? And can we blame them for not investing in Togo? Would we?

I was also told that there is an abundance of female Peace Corps volunteers in Togo, due to a preponderance of female French speakers in the Peace Corps service overall, some of whom end up dating Lebanese men. One saying among the female volunteers is, “Date a Lebanese guy, get a cell phone.” Apparently some of the Lebanese guys give the female volunteers cell phones so they can reach them at any time. One story I heard was how a jealous Lebanese boyfriend took back the phone he had given to his volunteer girlfriend after a fight, and started dialing all the numbers saved in the phone to see who would answer. He ended up calling the U.S. Embassy’s Regional Security Officer (RSO), basically the Embassy’s head cop in charge of the security of all official Americans and Peace Corps volunteers in Togo. Bad move. The story I heard is that the RSO had a few words for the caller, something appropriate and along the lines of, “Touch her and I will come find you.”

In fairness to the U.S. government types worried about potential terrorist activities in West Africa, the volunteers also mentioned to me that conservative forms of Islam are spreading like wildfire in Togo’s countryside. The Saudis and Iranians are building mosques and schools, mostly teaching boys to read the Koran. The upside is that the schools and religious leaders frown on things like drinking and promiscuity. Whether we are comfortable with it or not, the imposition of religion is bringing some improvements to the villages. The villagers get more from the Islamic fundamentalists then they get from their own government and, as an added benefit, the teachers aren’t impregnating the girls.

So what is the U.S. government doing for Togo outside of providing Peace Corps volunteers and supporting women’s business conferences? Not much. My employer, the U.S. Agency for International Development, pulled out of Togo a few years ago during a wave of belt-tightening. Since then, my office (the regional office) has been providing some development assistance (e.g. HIV prevention programs, support of the West Africa gas pipeline through Togo, and Togo’s participation in regional trade activities), without being too supportive of an undemocratic government. It’s a tough call because although Togo certainly needs all the help it can get, due to local conditions, it is also the sort of place you can sink lots of money into and have very little to show for it, the sort of thing USAID is being asked to avoid by Congress and other more powerful agencies in Washington (that indidentally wouldn't mind the agency’s money). Maybe they have a point - USAID offices were in Togo providing assistance for almost 30 years. During my trip, I could not see one obvious remnant of its investment. Maybe we should all keep our fingers crossed for that oil.

There are two very nice things about Togo I have to report. First is the food— excellent. I ate the best croissants I’ve had in West Africa here. Lomé has some wonderful restaurants hidden throughout the city. I find the quality of food in restaurants in Togo much higher than in Ghana. I guess we have the French to thank for that. The other great thing about Togo is the people. They are extremely nice, in spite of the extremely difficult lives they lead. Even the taxi drivers in Togo were nice—not one tried to rip me off. Then again you would have to be pretty cold to rip off a pregnant lady.

What could be more uplifting than my stories about Togo? My trip to Nigeria, of course! But given the security situation in Nigeria, I actually have little to report. I never got out of my armored car and walked around, or left my hotel for anything outside of business meetings.

I flew to Nigeria with the economic development team from my office. Even though Nigeria is known to most of the world as the Mecca of financial scams, we suffered none, except for the official rip off at the “Sheraton” hotel at our stopover in Lagos. I think this Sheraton must be one of those hotels that was a legitimate Sheraton once, but had its charter revoked and was never reinstated. Regardless, I have never spent $250/night on a worse hotel. The check-in and checkout process was an interminable labyrinth. Multiple lines, long waits, many stamped pieces of paper and a $300 cash deposit (in dollars) were required before I could get a room key. Checking in took 45 minutes with five guys behind the counter. Prostitutes were everywhere. One of them was leaving her customer’s room in the morning and propositioned one of my work colleagues in the hall.

Lagos’ population is undetermined. Something like ten million people live in greater Lagos, but no one knows for sure. The sprawl, garbage and traffic are all the worst I have experienced anywhere in the world. And we only saw the edge of Lagos, from the airport to the hotel. Traveling on official government business after dark required us to be picked up in fully armored vehicles with an armored chase car. Airport taxis are apparently not an option – people often go missing from these. Yikes.

Nigeria has got to be one of the toughest places to govern in the world. It is a complex country with an extremely diverse population and colorful political history. Its states are more divided than the U.S., and many debate whether the central government has any real control over the provinces. Rule of law is sketchy at best, and corruption is endemic. Bribes on top of bribes. Thanks mostly to the oil industry, the environment is a disaster. Places in the interior tend to blow up in religious violence from time to time and the capital is famous for its city-paralyzing political protests.

Because of Nigeria’s oil wealth, nightmare or not, Nigeria is vital to the U.S. and to your life. The U.S. gets something like 10% of its oil from Nigeria now, and this will increase to around 25% in the next few years. You would think all that oil money would translate into economic development, but so far it hasn’t done much for the average Nigerian. The reasons are the same as they are in other resource-rich countries that can’t seem to figure out how to turn the profits of their extractive industries into benefits for the majority of their population—low capacity, weak governance, minimal security, corruption, religious extremists. But buying a hybrid car and using less gas isn’t going to help Nigeria—it might even make it worse. There are no easy answers in places like these.

Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, has a different feel to it from Lagos. It is a greener city with mountains in the background. As the administrative capital of an oil-rich country, government building, skyscrapers and construction abound. According to the expatriates living there, life in Abuja is extremely boring. I guess if given the choice, I’d take boring over the “excitement” of Lagos any day. I am grateful I don’t have to live there. As I mentioned when I started this email, it’s nice to be home in Ghana.

Money and Girls Gone Wild, May 2004

It’s Memorial Day weekend in Ghana and I’m at home alone. My husband has to spend the entire weekend chaperoning a high-level official from the Bush Administration who is visiting. Someone from the White House must be getting my Ghana updates. But seriously, Washington visitors have the worst reputation for ruining holidays and weekends for Embassy employees. For all of you who may go into public service one day: when you travel overseas with the U.S. government, go during the week, and avoid holidays. Please.

Before the weekend arrives I have to make sure I have enough cash to get me through it, as Ghana remains a cash-based economy. Almost all normal financial transactions here (groceries, market, paying staff, etc.) are cash only. Once the Embassy bank closes on Friday afternoon, there is no safe way to cash a check here from my U.S. bank account. There are cash machines located in the capital of Ghana, but the banks attached to them are ripe with financial fraud. Credit cards are accepted at many of the fancier restaurants, hotels and airlines here, but credit card fraud is endemic in Ghana so if you go this route, you take your chances.

If you were to come to town and use your bankcard to take out cash from a machine in Accra, there is a very good chance your account would be compromised or cleaned out. Last summer, an intern in my office dared to use the Barclay’s Bank cash machine in the Osu section of town to take out $50. A few days later, she was checking her account balance online at work and another $50 had been taken out of her account. She called her bank to report it, and the person on the line said she was happy to hear from her, as there had been multiple attempts to take out amounts over $3,000 from her account. The first $50 withdrawal was a test to see how much they could actually get their hands on. They didn’t know she was just a poor graduate student.

Credit card fraud is another huge problem for Ghana. The U.S. Embassy here advises all travelers to use cash for every transaction, even for big purchases at hotels, car-rental agencies and airlines. Very few vendors, if any, accept traveler’s checks. Credit card fraud typically doesn’t happen at the point of sale, but at the many transaction points afterwards. It's so bad that you can’t order and pay for things online anymore from Ghanaian cyber cafes. Most transactions don’t go through since the large majority of online sales generated from Ghana are fraudulent.

A few months ago, a cruise ship came to town full of Americans re-discovering their African roots. People on the cruise ship rolled off the boat on the coast by the hundreds with their plastic and travelers checks, ready to buy. But since they weren’t armed with cash, they didn’t end up buying much. What a loss for Ghana. Why the cruise organizers didn’t warn them about this, I have no idea. But maybe they did and no one listened. I know from experience this happens a lot with U.S. government travelers to Ghana. We warn them in advance with the "country clearance cables" about security issues to be sensitive to, what to bring to the country, and what not to do while in the country, but regardless of these warnings, inevitably someone shows up with no checks to cash at the Embassy's banks and only plastic, and then needs an Embassy employee to get them cash.

Antiquated banking and foreign exchange laws make it illegal to leave the country with more than the equivalent of 50 cents of local currency. It’s also not possible under current laws to transfer money out of Ghana, even though you can certainly bring it in. Apparently back during the Rawlings regime, anyone with a bank account was suspected of planning something bad, like a coup. The government also reportedly kept track of people’s bank accounts, especially those who had too much money. Sometimes the government would just expropriate the money and then kick the people out of the country. Not surprisingly, Ghanaians have a healthy distrust of the local financial system. Only an estimated 5% of Ghanaians have an account in a financial institution. Rawlings has been out of power for about four years, but Ghana remains a country without many savers, at least in the formal sense.

I often wonder how this country will ever accelerate its economic development with such an inefficient financial system. It’s an issue I think is critical to grow the economy, but I don’t have a lot of company in the development world. Others who work for Ghana’s development (including Ghanaians) are more interested in things like getting Ghana more money from the international community for budget support. Others think a reliable source of electricity would be more useful to Ghana in the long run, along with an improved telecom infrastructure. Then there is the need for better road transport and ports. Then there are the people who say what we really need to do is focus more on health and education, because without healthy and educated people, no economy can really grow. In the end, there is so much that needs attention, but only so much money and capacity to go around.

I am also starting to think that Western governments’ insistence on referring to Ghana as a West African “success story” compared to its neighbors is not helping Ghana in the long run. Our government tends to over-compliment Ghana’s government in official settings, saying it is doing all the “right things” (again, compared to its neighbors) to improve the country and its economic situation. Our intentions may be good, but when we do this, we are inevitably sending a message that all is great in Ghana. And if this is the case, why should Ghana's government do anything more to reform? Are we doing Ghana’s population any good by setting the results bar so low and expecting so little from their government? I think the people here deserve better. I say set the bar higher, demand results and be willing to pull our assistance if Ghana under-performs. But this opinion would be so unpopular with my agency I don’t even dare mention it publicly. One does not get ahead in the U.S. government by suggesting stricter standards and possibly less money for international assistance. And at the end of the day I know it is easier said than done, especially when there are politics to consider and basket-case countries next door. And we can't deny that Ghana is in far better shape than its neighbors (Togo, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, etc.)

I attended yet another mandatory training recently (your tax dollars at work!) with people working at USAID from all over the continent. As one of the ice-breaker exercises we were asked to identify our heroes. Lots of people mentioned Nelson Mandela, a few people said their parents, but notably a Nigerian participant said, “Bill Clinton.” I asked her why she felt that way, since it had been so long since I had heard anyone say anything nice about him. She said that she thought he was an excellent President, and she loved his foreign policies. “His policies helped so many people. He spoke so well, he was so smart—much smarter than the one now!” She also said that she suffered with him through his “difficult times” and that she didn’t think he did anything wrong, at least by Nigerian standards. It’s ironic how important the U.S. President is to the rest of the world, even if these days no one else’s president seems to matter to us. At least from what I can gather from watching the news these days, Americans seem to be more concerned about what is happening in the international hot spots. Given our country’s famously inwardly-focused reputation, I guess this is a start in the right direction.

Even though it doesn’t always seem like it from where I sit, deep down I know there are lots of Americans who care about what is happening in Africa. Many of them are here in Ghana, “doing good” during the day, and having a ball at night. Ghana’s many development challenges, and the fact that it is “Africa-light” (no war, no famine, no personal security nightmares) means there are loads of young, idealistic, twenty-something kids working here. Most work for non-governmental organizations, some are volunteers, and over a hundred are Peace Corps volunteers. A few weeks ago, these “Generation Y” kids held a raging bash in Accra complete with a female soup-wrestling event. I only saw photos, but it looked like something out of the movie "Old School". I guess the difference was that here the women kept their bikini tops on and just wrestled each other instead of men. Ok, I admit, initially I laughed at the photos, but afterwards I felt sorry for the girls. As a foreigner, after being here for a while you can feel so removed from the “real world”. I bet those girls never thought their less-than-idealistic adventures abroad would be documented and shared so widely. Development “Girls Gone Wild”--in Ghana!

Many American families working for the government bring their kids overseas to keep them away from the temptations in the U.S. (drinking, drugs, promiscuity, tight clothes, “urban values”). The fact is, no place is safe from these teen lures, and Africa may be worse in some ways than the U.S., given the higher standard of living many Americans enjoy living here. I heard through the grapevine that a high school student at the American school in Accra was recently busted for sending his parent’s driver out to purchase him weed. I also have heard that pot here is so cheap, American exchange students at the University of Legon put it on the grill in their dorms rather than waste the time rolling joints. Ah, Ghana. Never boring.

Time, Safaris and Crackhead Earth Day, April 2004

Ghanaians live by a different clock. In my experience, they are either annoyingly early for appointments, or insanely late. Neither will be accompanied by an apology or an explanation, and both seem to be perfectly acceptable. Few events start on time. Since nothing starts on time, no one shows up on time, so even if you wanted things to start on time, they couldn’t because no one would be there.

The other thing that I can’t get used to is all the cultural celebrating and commemorating that takes place accompanying activities in Ghana. No speech or concert or official event can take place without an hour of speeches beforehand from chiefs and politicians, singing from the children’s choir or dancing from the local dance troupe accompanied by drummers. An event without commemoration is simply not done. The first time all the dancers and drumming is mesmerizing. The second time is amazing. But by the third time, I have to admit it starts to become a bit repetitive for me. Now all I can do is focus on how inefficient it all is.

Stevie Wonder recently gave a benefit concert in Accra. This was a big deal since few Western musicians or bands make the trek to West Africa to play. The invitation explicitly stated that we had to be at the theater at 7:00 pm sharp as Stevie was going to perform first. Like sheep, we arrived at 6:45 pm. We stood in line outside until the doors opened at 7:30 pm. It took an hour for a few hundred people to get inside the theater. And then we waited for Stevie.

As part of our pre-Stevie entertainment, Tom & Jerry cartoons were playing without sound on the screens flanking the stage. They were playing the old, racist Tom & Jerry cartoons with the black “mammy” maid where you can only see her legs in the maid outfit. Thankfully the sound was turned off so we didn’t have to hear the soundtrack. I wondered, was this just good old pirating, or did Hanna and Barbera purposefully donate the entire, racist Tom & Jerry collection to Ghana as some sort of sick joke?

After about an hour of Tom & Jerry, at 8:30 pm an announcer told the crowd that Stevie was running late. Then the commemorating began. An excruciating hour passed with local musicians playing Stevie Wonder covers mixed in with praising the Lord.

Finally, at 9:30 pm, two and a-half hours after scheduled, Stevie Wonder finally showed up. The crowd went wild. Then, to our collective horror, Stevie was led from the stage into the audience to enjoy the commemorating with us. At about 10:00 pm, Stevie was led backstage and the organizers brought out more local singers. By 10:30 pm, the crowd started booing anyone who dared to come on stage. Even the normally very polite Ghanaians were screaming for Stevie. People started to leave. Finally, at 11:00 pm Stevie Wonder started his set and played until 12:45 pm. It was a school night so everyone was exhausted the next day, and those from work who had avoided the event were smug, saying they knew better than to attend what surely was going to be a WAWA (West Africa Wins Again) event.

I’ve heard my share of WAWA experiences these days. Remember the urban myth about someone finding a rat inside a Coke bottle? Well, my girlfriend found a thumb-looking white object in a Sprite bottle at the beach a few weeks ago. She thought it was a piece of ice, until the Sprite got warm in the noon sun, and the thumb-looking object just stayed there and bubbled away. She didn’t have the stomach to inspect the object and she wouldn’t allow the rest of us to do it either. So we gave the bottle back to the waiter at our beach resort and pointed out the object to him. He wasn’t even fazed. He just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He didn’t offer an apology, or even another soda in replacement. So maybe that rat in a coke bottle thing really did happen—in Ghana.

The Sprite experience paled in comparison to her most recent tragedy. One night I received a call on our answering machine from her husband saying, “Hello social sponsors. We are just calling to tell you our house blew up last night. I’m not kidding, it blew up.” We were their Embassy-appointed social sponsors, so they were letting us know they had moved. One night, they woke to a violent explosion that blew out all the windows on both floors of their house, along with the front and back doors. An entire wall in their kitchen collapsed. They had just received and unpacked their shipment of household effects a few weeks prior to the explosion, so they lost almost everything. The investigation following the event uncovered how a worker had crimped closed an escape valve to a hot water heater located in the kitchen of their house. The pressure built up over time and eventually the heater had to blow eventually. Luckily no one was in the kitchen when it happened or things could have been a lot more tragic. It was just one of those freak events that no one thinks will ever happen to him or her until it does. The Embassy has since sent workers to all the houses in the housing pool to ensure a similar event won't be repeated in another location.

In other WAWA news, my husband and I took a trip up to Mole National Park in Northern Ghana over Easter. Mole is the closest thing to a safari you will find in West Africa. It’s a twelve-hour drive to Mole from Accra, via some pretty nasty roads in the South, but once you get to the Northern, drier part of the country, you can comfortably cruise on the well-maintained, paved, two-laned highway. Mole Park’s motto is “Where people and animals live together”, and that could not be more true. Our first morning in Mole we woke up at sunrise to see the animals accompanied by a ranger guide. He had heard that an elephant was in the village next to the hotel so he took us there first.

In the village next to the Mole Hotel where the families of the park rangers live, an old elephant hangs out from time to time, walking around quietly eating leaves and cracking branches off trees. The rangers say he is an independent, older elephant. After munching a few branches, he goes to meet up with his elephant buddies at the water hole, and then goes off on his own again. We were able to get within fifteen feet from the elephant, and he was awesome to see. When my husband got a little too close to take a photo, the elephant sort of turned his head in our direction and the ranger took his rifle off his shoulder and told us to back away slowly. He said that when the elephant looks at you and lines up in front of you, he is thinking of charging. Meanwhile, I was hiding behind an adobe house a respectable 25 feet away hissing at my husband to not be the subject of the next “When Animals Attack” video.

In this same village, monkeys and baboons run amok. The village has declared it illegal to harm any of the animals, so the monkeys essentially run around unhindered, stealing food, getting into houses, grabbing what they can. The best view of the monkeys is at the garbage dump on the edge of the village, which, incidentally, is also the village bathroom. So our West African safari experience included witnessing a baboon and a child going to the bathroom side by side in a garbage dump. Sort of took the romance out of the safari for me.

Later that morning, we returned to the hotel for breakfast. While we were waiting for our food, a baboon approached the Mole Hotel pool area, jumped onto a table, and picked up a woman’s purse, who had taken a dip in the pool. After a moment of initial shock, everyone from my table stood up, pushing our chairs back loudly, hoping we would gain the courage to shoo the baboon away. The baboon heard the noise of the chairs, looked at us, and then dropped the purse and ran away. Our wise-aleck travel partner dubbed him the “ghetto baboon”. We ate our breakfast while another baboon ran around shrieking on the hotel roof, while another one took a crap on someone’s Landrover.

The actual walk through Mole Park was hot (easily 90 degrees) and dusty (during this time of year, it does not rain much anywhere in Ghana), but it was also quite amazing. We saw elephants walking around in their natural habitat, antelope, warthogs, and other sorts of deer-looking creatures. The end of the walk through the dusty bush culminated at the water hole, where all the animals got together to bathe. There were dozens of elephants in the water and alligators lining the shore. We just sat there in awe and snapped away pictures. But the morning walk was definitely the highlight of the trip. The animals weren't out in force in the afternoon when it was much hotter, and there is literally nothing to do at the hotel outside of the swimming pool, which our fellow travelers dubbed the "science experiment". You can take a shower (when the plumbing works) if you can get over the fact that you will shower in the yellowish water pumped from the water hole that the elephants bathe in. Our travel partner commented how her elephant pee shower was surprisingly refreshing. None of the rooms have air-conditioning and temperatures in springtime hover around 90 degrees in the shade. There is no power in Mole Park, but the hotel is lucky enough to have a generator and they keep it on during the day so you can nap with a fan. Unfortunately, the generator is turned off at night when the mosquitoes are out in force.

The service of the hotel is pretty shoddy, and it is the only hotel for miles. Even though we had made reservations in advance, when we arrived there were no rooms for us. The hotel’s message service (a guy with a motorcycle and a cell phone in the next town who takes reservations by phone and relays them to the hotel) hadn’t shared our latest itinerary with the hotel staff. After some time of expressing our sadness and regret, the hotel staff thankfully offered us the driver's room until another room opened up. Other unlucky travelers ended up on the floor of the bathrooms next to the hotel pool, or in tents next to the hotel. The food at the hotel restaurant is both slow in coming (we waited around two hours for each meal to arrive after we ordered) and mostly inedible (some could be described as vile). At least the beers were cold. Ok, so Mole is not anywhere near East or Southern Africa when it comes to safaris, but visiting is definitely an adventure.

My last WAWA experience to recount is another of my husband's. A few weeks ago, his work section organized an “Earth Day” event in Accra. The U.S. Embassy does a great deal of Muslim outreach work, to build and improve relations between the U.S. and the local Muslim community. As part of that work, his team contracted a local non-governmental organization (NGO) to put on the Earth Day event in a Muslim community within Accra. Historically, and somewhat paradoxically, many of the places suffering some of the most severe environmental degradation (like West Africa) are not exactly leading the pack on conservation. Here in Ghana, Earth Day isn't exactly one of Ghana's most popular holidays. In fact, most Ghanaians still get more excited about a good old ultra-capitalist trade fair before they can be bothered to celebrate Earth Day. So, the crowd at the Earth Day event was thin, and since the press were going to be showing up soon, the NGO’s staff went out in search of bodies to fill the chairs before the TV cameras showed up. A bunch of the “extras” looked and acted like they were on drugs. After a while, so many extras showed up that the event organizer ran out of chairs. When a truck showed up later hauling extra chairs, the crowd surged towards it and a riot practically broke out.

One of the “extras” basically created havoc at the Earth Day event. He started fistfights, kept trying to steal the music instruments and fuel-efficient stoves, and at the end of the event, jumped up on stage, grabbed the mike and began a “shout out” before he was politely led off stage. My husband's favorite anecdote of the event was that the drugged-out extra was wearing a pair of gold, wire-rimmed glasses with no lenses in them. Slightly depressed with the outcome of their Earth Day event, one of his work colleagues cynically renamed the event “Crackhead Earth Day”. Only in West Africa.

Government Work, March 2004

I got a job with the U.S. government here in Ghana. I signed up for long hours, a painful pay cut from my last full-time job, and the challenge of helping George W. Bush look good overseas. In other words, I was desperate.

The job working in the economic department for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s West Africa Office (USAID/WARP) was the best one I've come across in six months of actively looking. I’ve often wondered what goes on in the offices of USAID, and why the organization’s personnel always seem so guarded. I'm tired of hustling consulting gigs and filling the days with self-improvement activities. But will accepting this job make me tone down my off-hours, anti-Bush administration ranting and raving? I hope not. Just because you work for the U.S. Government does not mean you have to be silenced, right? Isn't that what democracy is all about? I assuage my hypocrisy (working for the government when I am very much against many of its policies) with the fact that I am just a temporary government employee on a one-year contract, with the opportunity to extend, one of the U.S. government’s many "Personal Services Contractors". I also like my friend’s take on working for the government under the Bush Administration; "Don’t think of it as working for this administration, think of it as working for your country”. I can live with that.

This new job means I have less time to do my Ghana updates, even though now I feel like I have more substantive information to include in them. Just this last week while I was sitting in my painfully long, government-mandated training on gender in trade and agriculture, I had plenty of time to daydream about the things I wanted to share with all of you.

I learned that in Ghana, both matrilineal and patrilineal societies function. The Asante (of the “Fabulous” Porcupine Warriors soccer team) are a matrilineal society, so when it comes to passing down land, houses or other forms of inheritance, the family will give everything to a woman. In the patrilineal societies, like those in the predominantly Muslim North of Ghana, inheritance goes to a man. In those societies, if a woman’s husband dies and she has no male heirs, she must give up her house and land. As per the trainers of my course, Muslim women can become destitute like this, so many quickly marry again, often to a relative of the husband. I’m not a fan of either system, but recognize that changing the status quo is a challenge when thousands of years of culture are at stake.

I also learned about how the rates of HIV infection in Ghana are low in comparison to other parts of Africa, and how transmission here is mostly through heterosexual contact. The trainer also mentioned how male schoolteachers are large culprits of passing HIV to female students in Ghana’s boarding schools (a holdover from English colonial days). And I found out how female circumcision (or female genital mutilation) for girls is banned in Ghana, but how the practice reportedly continues in the North, where people sometimes cross borders into Burkina Faso or the Ivory Coast to practice it.

The trainer also provided statistics of how women make up the vast majority of Ghana’s self-employed, and how very few, formally salaried workers in Ghana are women. Most self-employed women work in some form of agriculture, and they are critical to the agriculture-based economy of Ghana. Unlike in Latin America, women in Africa are heavily involved in many aspects of agriculture, from planting to harvesting. And African women tend to focus their efforts on traditional crops for consumption, not export. As such, many pro-export, agricultural development programs funded by governments like ours inadvertently target almost exclusively men. The trick is to figure out how to change this, again, no easy task in a traditional (and let's face it, a sexist) society.

Here is just one example of what I mean by my sexist comment. In my first week at work, I attended a workshop in Togo for representatives of agricultural traders from all over West Africa. Given that women dominate the agricultural sector in West Africa, how many women do you think were represented at the conference? I think two out of forty participants were women. The agency I work for now was funding the workshop. One day in a small group session, I walked into a room full of conference participants. One of them, before he sat down next to me, couldn’t resist making a crack in French to all the rest of the guys in the room, saying something about sitting next to the "lovely lady." Everyone laughed. I just smiled my “screw you” smile, and fantasized vindictively about how I wished I could make it possible so that none of the jerks in the room could ever get their hands on any more U.S. government money.

Throughout the conference, people were curious about who I was. One after another participant, including grantees of USAID (who often lead towards ingratiating themselves to representatives of the agency), kept on asking me about my background, my experience, my qualifications. I can’t remember the last time I had to quote my resumé so frequently. At first I thought it was a West African thing so I mentioned it to my new boss (who is male and incidentally younger than me) and he was surprised. No one had ever asked him about his qualifications. The whole experience brought back in force how lonely it can be to be a woman doing economic work overseas, but also made me realize how much more it must stink to be an African woman working in a traditional society. They must be questioned, underestimated, and talked down to constantly.

If you think too much about living or working in Africa, it can really bring you down. So I'm trying to milk the humor I see in everyday life here, of which there is a lot. I've been eyeing Kente cloth for months now, comparing patterns and prices between dealers. Kente is the beautiful, hand-woven fabric that is original to Ghana, the craft being centuries old. Each pattern has a different significance as do the colors, and Kente is still the preferred clothing for Ghanaian chiefs in traditional ceremonies. You can’t buy Kente in stores though; it is only available in markets and on the street, or via direct-purchase from weavers. Like carpets, the older the Kente, the more valuable. It is not cheap, and like for most things, “Obrunis” typically pay more. Rather than spend half a day fighting traffic to make it downtown to the market, I took a quick trip to the guy with a little, wooden, lean-to shack of Kente just a few blocks away from my house. I haggled him down to what I thought was an appropriate price for the number of Kente strips I was buying, something like $8 per strip. After we agreed on the price and I started taking out my money, he exclaimed, “I love Americans…TOO MUCH!” Damn, I thought, I overpaid. Then he followed with, “Bush…he is OK!” Seriously overpaid.

Road Trips, February 2004

After a few months, the frustrations of life in Ghana build up in me, to a point where I feel like I am going to explode. When I start becoming irrationally angry about things that normally don't upset me (the water runs out while I'm showering, the lights go out in the middle of a rented movie, the food I bought at the store is rotten, I find bugs in my cereal, etc.), I know it’s time to get out of town. Trips are good for re-setting my clock and putting my life in perspective. I always return with a full cup of patience, realizing how lucky I am to live this life, ready to give life in Ghana another chance. But vacation begets more vacation when you are in West Africa, as the preparation and travel themselves can inspire lessons in anger-management.

I am not alone in feeling this way. Rich Ghanaians and many expatriates disappear for months at a time at Christmas and again during the summer when school is out. I have never lived in a place where people take such long vacations. Most escape to the comforts of Europe or the U.S., but the more adventurous will take advantage of the time off to drive to neighboring countries of Togo or Benin, or North into Burkina Faso or Mali.

Road travel in West Africa requires careful planning and a sense of adventure. Gas stations, bathrooms, hotels and provisions are scarce on the road, so you have to pack a full cooler of food and drinks, and plan accordingly. Good timing is critical because driving at night is strongly discouraged for traffic safety reasons. And it is often hard to gauge how long it will take to drive certain distances, given the state of the roads. For being one of the most economically developed and politically stable countries in West Africa (and the recipient of millions of dollars of foreign assistance each year) Ghana’s roads are in surprisingly poor shape. I've only seen one four-lane highway in the country connecting Accra to the port of Tema, a distance of about 20 miles. The rest of the roads are two laned, and those from Accra to major cities on the coast may be paved, but they are so poorly maintained that their eroding sides drop dangerously and are full of car-eating potholes.

Highway driving in Ghana is not for the faint of heart. Car rental agencies prove my point—none rent vehicles without drivers. The sides of Ghana's highways are dotted with torched buses, 18-wheelers on their sides with their payloads scattered, and remnants of gory car crashes. The roads that are not paved are either dirt or gravel. All of Ghana's roads are poorly signed, so you have to have a decent map, or be willing to ask for directions often. On a recent trip to Togo and Benin, my husband and I were convoying across Southern Ghana to the border with Togo when all of a sudden the road just ended. There were no warning signs, no borders, no dividing line, just a storm of dust. Our convoy slowed down, but the oncoming traffic didn't. Every once in a while we would see the glimmer of headlights in the distance, our cue to immediately veer to the edge of the road to avoid getting smashed by a bus. Think of competing in the Paris-Dakar road race to get an idea of what the speeds and visibility are like. Frightening, but exciting.

The trip to Togo is pretty quick by West Africa standards. Without traffic and problems at the border, you can go from Accra to Lomé in roughly four hours. The main border between Ghana and Togo is on the ocean. It offers a great view of the rough surf where fishermen haul in their catch with long nets that reach from thin fishing canoes in the depths to the shore. The nets are heavy with fish, and require dozens of people to bring them in. I want to grab a lawn chair, a cold beer, and some shade to watch how exactly this fish hauling is done, but the combination of smell and noise inevitably draws you back to the actual border.

To say the coastal border of Aflao between Ghana and Togo is congested would be an understatement. It is a cacophony of buses spewing exhaust packed full of people, animals and luggage, with a constant stream of thousands of individuals walking alongside the vehicles with bundles on their heads, babies on their backs, or pushing carts full of goods to trade. As you approach the actual border gate, dozens of “facilitators” run alongside your car tapping your windows as an advertisement to choose them to help you cross the border.

Driving a car with diplomatic plates exempts me and my husband from ever fully appreciating how bad a West African border crossing can be. Border officials know diplomats don’t normally dish out bribes, but almost everyone else wanting to get across quickly (within a few hours or so) has to provide a “dash”, the local word for a bribe.

The Aflao border happens to fall on one of West Africa's main commercial routes, which is why it’s so busy, but some of the borders between Ghana, Togo and Benin are downright sleepy. On our convoy’s return trip from Benin, some of the borders consisted of no more than a piece of string tied across a dirt road, a small concrete house and two officials with notebooks and pens. No facilitators, no buses, maybe a few people walking across. At one such border, we gave the officials our passports, driver’s licenses, car registration, and then found some shade and waited next to the ubiquitous goats, chickens and the odd sheep. West African border agents aren't exactly known for their efficiency. After they painstakingly wrote down all our information into their notebooks, we jumped into our cars, crossed into no-man’s land (about fifty feet or so) and went through the same exercise on the other side of the border, with another set of border officials.

Flying out of Ghana is another adventure, starting with buying a plane ticket. Credit card fraud is common, so most airlines don't allow credit card purchases of tickets online from within Ghana. You have to go to the ticket office in Accra in person and pay for the tickets there. So that leaves two choices; risk having your card compromised to buy the ticket at the office, or pay in cash. There are 8-9,000 cedis to the U.S. Dollar, so paying in cash means lugging a bag-o-bills to the Al Italia or British Air or KLM office, praying you don't get robbed on the way in. The other issue about plane ticket purchase in Ghana is the sticker shock. Round trip flights within the region typically run around $600, and I never paid less than $750 to fly to Europe, and that was on a special fare from Al Italia. Fly Al Italia once from West Africa and you will quickly realize why it’s so cheap.

When my husband and I arrived at the airport for our "direct" Al Italia flight to Milan, we were told in fact, it was not a direct flight; it was stopping in Lagos, Nigeria. Something the people at the Al Italia ticket office neglected to mention before we purchased the ticket. "It is a direct flight!" The type of ticket we bought did not allow us to choose our seats before we arrived at the airport. It was just as well, since when we arrived to check in, we found out that the computer system was down in Lagos, so the flight to Italy was open seating. After taxing to the gate, when the doors of the bus opened to let passengers board the plane, my husband and I made a run for it among hundreds of West Africans who are a lot more used to pushing and shoving in daily life than we are. We grabbed the first window and aisle seat together and were giddily congratulating ourselves on our craftiness until we got to around 10,000 feet and my husband realized his seat was broken and wouldn't recline for the six hour night flight.

When we arrived at our final destination (Paris), our bags did not arrive with us. When we mentioned to the Al Italia ticket agent how strange it was to lose bags on such a dull series of flights, she replied, "Actually, it is quite normal." We had a formal event to attend that evening so I asked, "What am I supposed to wear?" She replied, "Well, it's Paris".

On the return trip, I arrived at the gate for the Milan-Lagos-Accra flight an hour before the flight to witness what looked like a mob of starving earthquake victims waiting for food and water in front of the gate for the flight, and boarding hadn’t even begun yet. I didn’t even try to find the end of the line; I just crossed the room in defeat and grabbed a spot on the floor by an empty gate. Then the airline changed the gate for the flight, and the new gate happened to be exactly where I was sitting. All of a sudden I was surrounded by hundreds of people, pushing and shoving and almost unable to breathe. The one line I had established by sheer luck to eventually board the plane turned into a hydra of lines with people shoving from behind and both sides. By the time the airline started boarding, I found myself around 100th in line. The Al Italia staff did absolutely nothing in an attempt to control the crowd. It was a perfect example of how many foreigners approach Africa. It’s a nightmare and a mess, why even try to change it?

Boarding the bus to taxi the passengers out to the plane was when the real fun began. The Al Italia staff started to strip people of their extra carry-on luggage. The plane ticket jacket included a clear warning that only one carry on bag was allowed on the flight, no exceptions. Our bus was held up for at least 30 minutes while West African after West African refused to give flight attendants their extra bags and get on the bus. The Al Italia people would say to each person, “You can only take one bag on the plane. Please put your other bags here and they will be checked.” Each passenger would give an empty stare, blink, and turn around to board the bus with all their bags. There was no miscommunication —everyone was speaking English. The interesting part was how incensed some passengers became. "No one told me this!”, and “I don’t accept this!” When I began to fantasize about what would happen if I screamed, “GIVE THEM THE GODDAMMED BAGS!,”one of the West African passengers came to my rescue. He yelled, “YOU SEE? THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T LIKE US! WE COME TO EUROPE AND ACT LIKE THIS!” Half the passengers nodded their heads and mumbled an audible and very West African, “uh-hummmm.”

I was delirious when the flight actually took off. I had just closed my eyes when I was awoken by the sound of a cell phone ringing. The Nigerian, male passenger in a seat across the aisle to my left calmly took the call. I started to glare at him when a flight attendant appeared and politely asked him to turn off his phone. Later, the same passenger made a call from his phone. The flight attendant returned and firmly said he had already told him once to turn off his phone, and now he had to turn it off permanently. The passenger then became belligerent and started yelling, “Don’t raise your voice to me!” “Don’t treat me like I am a child!” The flight attendant left to inform the captain and I began despairing the emergency landing in Morocco or Niger because this idiot couldn't control his cell phone use. While the flight attendant was away, another West African passenger behind the offending cell phone user said politely, "Why don't you please just turn off the phone?" which was met with another round of, “Who are you to talk to me?!?” “Do you know who I am?!?” I shook my head, closed my eyes and started planning my next vacation.

Christmas in Ghana, December 2006

It’s Christmas in Ghana, and the traffic is awful. After trips to neighboring Benin and Togo, I understand why. The shopping. The capital Accra is one of the best places in West Africa to shop for the holidays. Ghana is one of West Africa's most politically stable and predominantly Christian countries, so during the entire month of December the markets and stores are packed with people and stocked with goodies from all over the world. If you look hard enough, you can buy pretty much any Western food item you want here, as long as you can; a) find it, and b) pay for it. A box of Cheerios cereal will run you about $11, and a bag of Old El Paso Tortilla Chips will set you back around $10. You can find Veuve Clicquot champagne, Barilla pasta and French paté. If you don’t like the local meats you can buy the imported chickens, eggs and sausages from Italy, Brazil and Lebanon, all at twice the price of the local products. Ice cream, frozen berries, jasmine rice and curry sauce can be found at the South African chain store Woolworth’s.

A few weeks back on a Friday mid-morning, I tried to do the American thing and get into the Christmas spirit by doing some shopping at the local equivalent of Wal-Mart, called Orca. On the way to Orca, I was caught in a traffic jam surrounded by cars with license plates from Ghana’s neighbors of Cote d' Ivoire, Nigeria, Liberia and Togo. After 30 minutes of moving 30 feet, I took a detour and found myself stuck in another traffic jam for two more hours. On the verge of tears from road rage and after having multiple screaming matches with evil taxi and "tro tro" (rickety Ghanaian bus) drivers I drove home in defeat. Never did make it to the Orca.

The two, best-stocked grocery stores in Accra (Koala and Max Mart) are nightmares to shop at during the Christmas season. Parking is bad enough during the rest of the year, but at Christmas the only sane option is to shop during the week, and first thing in the morning to avoid the crowds. The stores' interiors aren't organized in any way I understand, and the aisles are extremely thin, so shopping basically involves a constant battle of metal carts with wealthy Ghanaians, fully-veiled women, foreigners, screaming kids, nannies/maids and the occasional Peace Corps volunteer or tourist. Lebanese-Ghanaians own these two grocery stores. The owners of these stores sit on elevated stands next to the exit, conspicuously monitoring the employees working at the cash registers, reminding me of a scene in A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge sits above his employees, suspiciously overseeing their work. Some of Ghana's Lebanese families have been in West Africa for generations, and many have never been to Lebanon. Some are Maronites, evidenced by the Maronite church located on Accra's main drag in Osu, but others are Muslim, which incidentally doesn’t stop them from stocking their stores full of tacky Christmas ornaments and blasting horribly amplified Christmas music over the loudspeakers.

The Christmas season is also a time of increased crime in Ghana. Accra is normally one of the safest places in the world for personal security, but Christmas seems to bring out the worst in everyone. Car-jackings, home invasions and purse snatchings all increase markedly over the holidays. I guess everyone, even criminals, wants to provide for their families on Christmas. So part of preparing for the holidays includes setting your house alarm, buying guard dogs, or making sure your houses' guard force is happy.

Everyone who works for foreigners in Ghana expects a little something extra at Christmas. The average gift for household employees is a few weeks’ salary up to a month’s wages, depending on their length of service. In addition to the house staff, my tennis coach and the ball boy who works with him got a little something from me this year. My tennis coach told me afterwards that of all his clients, I was the only foreigner to give a gift to the ball boy at Christmas. The ball boy is a tall, skinny kid who wears flip-flops and a Green Bay Packers football jersey with "Favre" on the back. I asked him if he knew who Brett Favre was, but he looked at me blankly. He doesn't speak much English. My tennis coach interpreted that for me, and the ball boy said he didn't know who Brett Farve was, or what American football was like either. I guess he is around 15-years old but looks 11. He is one of his family's only breadwinners. He doesn't go to school and I imagine he lives in a shack with no running water, no electricity and no phone. He runs around all afternoon every day in 90-degree heat and humid weather for expatriates who are too lazy to pick up their own tennis balls, and he makes around 50 cents an hour. Yes, we can pay for tennis lessons and imported wine, but there is no Christmas for ball boys! What is wrong with us? I understand the concept that sometimes there is so much poverty it can be overwhelming--you can't help everyone even if you tried and all that--but what about the people who are closest to us? What is it about Africa that blinds us to other people’s misery?

The other thing about the holidays in Ghana is that the famous Harmattan is finally here. For the longest time this Harmattan was like the boogeyman--something people scared me with and used to explain away all winter maladies. Harmattan is actually the wind carrying sand from the Sahara making it all the way to Ghana. The weather patterns were so strange this year, Harmattan was late and I started wondering if it would ever show. But one day I noticed a dust covering on our patio furniture. A few weeks later, I started having headaches and feeling sick in the afternoons. Then the sky became overcast with a white fog. Then I started sneezing and my eyes started watering. Now I have to rinse the car windshield before hitting the road.

I attended the "Latin Ladies" Christmas party this year. With a few exceptions, these are a group of women of Latin American descent who are "ladies who lunch", and are married to Ghanaians or foreign men who are working in Ghana. They get together to exchange books, speak Spanish, socialize and find out where you can buy the best stuff. I’ve been to a couple of these meetings, which are a nice escape. I get to speak Spanish (something extremely rare here), meet new women, and be transported out of Ghana for a few hours while we talk about Mexico, or Panama, Peru, or Cuba. This year, the Latin Ladies Christmas party was held at "A Casa Janela", the residence of the Brazilian Ambassador to Ghana. The house's interior looks like something out of In Style magazine. Lunch was served on the patio on china and crystal. We had delicious Brazilian wine, turkey and asparagus quiche. I had completely forgotten we were in Ghana until Santa showed up. Our hostess had one of her domestic staff (the fattest one) dress up in a Santa Suit and dance Samba for the crowd. My jaw dropped. I sat in my chair, melting deeper into the leather couch, imagining what my college and graduate school professors would say about my participation in this scene. I could hear them admonish me for being so stereotypically white in Africa, participating actively in the "Development Jet Set", people who go overseas to help, who instead live the high life and help no one. But then I stopped thinking about myself for a second, and took stock of the situation. Everyone else was laughing their heads off. Santa (who I found out later is from Mozambique) was having a blast. Could it really just be me thinking there is something wrong with this picture?

I mentioned this experience to a friend, who recounted a similar one to me. During a July Fourth celebration a few years back hosted by the U.S. Embassy, Americans cringed when the U.S. Ambassador asked the Ghanaian servers to wear fry-chef-looking red, white and blue hats. Then someone stumbled into the kitchen to witness the servers practically fist-fighting over the last few fry hats.

The Ghanaian waiters at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Accra (Noble House) also wear round hats with cues (braids) attached that fall down their backs. The Indian owner of the restaurant is an extremely friendly person and wonderfully accommodating to his customers, but I can't help feeling that asking his staff to wear these hats isn't very "noble" to me. If I worked there, I think I'd want to start another Worker’s Revolution. My friend pointed out to me that the Ghanaians don't seem to be complaining. I may be uncomfortable as hell, but maybe I just need to relax? I just can’t stop thinking that Ghana has a long way to go before employment and dignity go hand in hand.

I've been down this Christmas. I got used to spending Christmas with my family again in the U.S. It's just not the same celebrating the holidays when it’s 95 degrees outside and I'm so far from anything remotely familiar. One weekend day when I had a bad case of the holiday blues, my husband and I were stuck in yet another Christmas traffic jam in the touristy part of town called Osu. Someone knocked on the passenger window and I thought I was going to lose it. I swore and turned away from the window but my husband looked right at the knocker expecting to see a beggar, but instead seeing the guy who watched our car for us a while back when we went out to eat at a nearby restaurant. I was on crutches at the time due to an Ultimate Frisbee injury, and I remember when he escorted me from the car, he kept on apologizing to me like Ghanaians often do, saying "Sorry!", as if he were the wounded one. Anyway, the man was gesturing to my husband about the crutches and my ankle and wanted to know if I was better. Merry Christmas Ghana.

Heat, Phobia and Fabulous, October 2003

It is getting hot in Ghana. The temperature seems to go up about a degree each day. It’s about 90 degrees with 90% humidity now. People keep saying it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Oh well, better sun and heat than rain and sleet.

The political environment is also heating up. The Presidential election is a year away, and that means the government in Ghana is starting to do all the favors it can for friends and supporters so this political party (the New Patriotic Party, or NPP) can be assured reelection. As part of my work for a local consulting firm, I’m following the government’s plans to implement loan programs to help small and micro businesses. In my experience, when the government is running the show, these loan programs inevitably end up being giveaway programs for political gain. They can even end up hurting the same people they were designed to help. When the government’s forgivable loans are handed out in places where other banks and NGOs operate loan programs that expect their customers to pay, repayment for everyone can decline. When loans aren’t repaid, programs are shut down, and it’s the poor who lose. Anyway, this government is as interested as any to buy any vote it can. Every country has its “pork” and Ghana is no exception.

Another strategy to ensure another term in office here is to resist making difficult economic reforms. Apparently, one way to lose an election in West Africa is to raise prices on things that affect everyone, like gas or water or electricity, even though for the Ghanaians, the government’s subsidies on these items are sinking the economy at the same time they are trying to help people. The government spends millions of dollars a year paying the difference between the market prices for gas and utilities, and what consumers pay, all in money the government doesn’t have. So, Ghana’s government can choose to take its medicine now and cut these subsidies, taking the political heat that comes with this decision, or do this later when prices are higher, possibly creating a utility crisis. But it’s an election year, and pretty clear which road the government will take.

My husband says that the people he meets through work who hold the top government positions are smart and impressive, but they are reluctant to listen to the international community’s advice when it comes to the economy, and unafraid to admit it is due to political considerations. One official used the threat of a coup to explain why the government could never actually insist that the Army pay the electric bills for their bases. You have to admire their honesty. When would the U.S. administration be so transparent about the politics behind the decisions made in D.C.?

The current administration in Ghana is also becoming somewhat infamous for not agreeing to the terms of its contracts with U.S. companies and other foreign investors. One high profile case is unfolding now between the government and a U.S. aluminum company that helped finance the construction of the Volta River hydro-electric dam in Ghana—a masterpiece of technology that Jackie Kennedy famously visited in the 1960s. The deal was, the U.S. company could have access to the damn’s electricity at a low price for the next 50 years or so. Well, since the time when this deal was signed, Ghana’s population has at least doubled, demand for electricity has skyrocketed, and the water levels of the river that flows into the dam are declining, so the damn can’t work at full capacity anymore. Meanwhile, the aluminum company still wants cheap electricity prices laid out in the original contract, and Ghana’s government wants them to pay more, even if that means the company will leave Ghana, taking thousands of jobs, and the funding for the schools and hospitals the company built in the country for their workers with them. Fairness aside, when a country does not abide by the terms of an investor’s contract, other potential investors are scared off, and Ghana desperately needs (and its government says they want) more foreign investment to improve its development prospects. It’s just another example of how this government seems to be more focused on political short-term gain, even if it will lead to longer-term pain, for everyone. So for the next year, the politicians have one thing on their minds--winning the next election and keeping hold of power. Everything else comes second.

The President of Ghana and many in his government are from the Asante (pronounced Ashanti) tribe and Kumasi region of Ghana. The Asantes are proud people, and the rap they get from Ghanaians is that they consider themselves superior to all other tribes in Ghana. The Asante region’s soccer (or as they say locally, “football”) team has the best name of all the local teams as far as I’m concerned—the Porcupine Warriors. The Asante’s symbol is a porcupine, and an Akan proverb states that the porcupine’s quills represent warriors. The team’s motto is, “Kum apem a, apem beba”, meaning “kill 1,000 (warriors), and 1,000 more will come”. Accra’s soccer team, where the Ga tribe traditionally reigns, also has a great name—the Hearts of Oak. The Hearts of Oak was formed in 1910, and is the oldest soccer team in Ghana. These two teams battle it out a few times every season and the rivalry is akin to American baseball’s Yankees vs. Red Sox.

The Porcupine Warriors have a saying that their fans walk around town and chant on game days—“Fabulous!” (pronounced FAB’lous). The Hearts of Oak have their own chant—“Phobia!” (pronounced PHObya). The names for Ghana’s national soccer teams are pretty awesome too. The national men’s team is called the Black Stars (ostensibly after the black star on Ghana’s flag, representing Africa’s first independent state), the young men’s national team is the Black Starlets, and the women’s national team is nicknamed the Black Queens. In fact, West Africa is home to some of the best names in international football. Nigeria’s national team is the Super Eagles, and Senegal’s team is the Lions of Teranga. Lucky for Ghana, their football teams can “walk the walk” of their cool names - they do fairly well in international competitions.

Last night I had dinner at the house of a British-Ghanaian professional who works for the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. I met her at a business meeting and we clicked over our mutual depression of the state of Ghana’s microfinance industry. She invited me to dinner with a group of other female, young professionals who were mostly of Ghanaian descent. Four of us were consultants, and the other woman worked for CARE. Dinner conversation was similar to one I would have had with my girlfriends in the United States. We talked about politics, poverty, how their families want them to get married and have kids, and the Atkins diet (two of the women swore by it). Then we got on the subject of football. These women, none of whom as far as I could tell actually play soccer, started to get really excited about Fabulous and Phobia. Voices were raised, interspersed with hearty laughs about the strong opinions about football they all held. That night I also realized the extent of the cultural pressure some Ghanaian women are under from their families to marry and procreate. The career-minded hostess was lamenting how her family’s inheritance depended on her marrying and having a daughter. Talk about pressure.

Back to soccer. My husband was invited to attend a match between the Hearts of Oak and Porcupine Warriors here in Accra. It was held in a stadium where over a hundred people died in a stampede two years ago during another match between these two teams. Not knowing whether going to a game like this was a smart move for the ladies, I sat this one out and held my breath at home for two hours until it was over. Later my husband recounted his experience to me.

As expected, the stadium was packed and tensions were high. At one point during the game, a referee made a controversial call, and some of the players rushed the referee and started a fight. The crowds in the stands started throwing frozen water packets onto the field in protest. Then people in the stands started ripping the plastic seats from their foundations and throwing those onto the field. During the melee, a disembodied voice was yelling over the loudspeakers repeating, “Remember! We are peaceful people! We are each other’s brothers! The rule of law reigns supreme in Ghana!” Then the police came out in force and took care of the rabble-rousers with batons. No fatalities this time. Phobia!

In domestic news, yesterday I was working on our laptop when I heard my husband screaming obscenities from the kitchen. He had another encounter with insects that had infected our food supply, something that happens all too frequently here. While opening a box of microwave popcorn, it exploded in his face and dozens of maggots flew onto the front of his shirt. Yuck. Such is life on the equator. I have taken to filling my bowl of cereal with milk and waiting a few minutes before I dig in to see if bugs float to the surface. Now we store most of our food not in cans, but in plastic bags, airtight Tupperware, or in the freezer. Those little buggers are so busy munching on the food in our pantry that they are neglecting the vegetable garden in the back of our house! Thanks to our gardener Abdul, we already have a lettuce harvest after less than two months.

Accra is also home to one of the only bowling alleys in West Africa, which is Chinese-owned. Its staff will serve you cold beer and bad Chinese food while you bowl. You can stay as long as you want and play your own music on their sound system. Last weekend we were there until 3:00am getting pretty rowdy after drinking many Star Beers and blasting a friend’s AC/DC CD on the stereo system. The scoreboards at the bowling alley show bizarrely violent images depending on how well you bowl (a strike elicits a cartoon of a cruise missile hitting a boat – Kaboom!) and the bowling balls are all fluorescent colors of chartreuse, fuchsia, orange and lime green. There are always dozens of parked cars in the lot in front of the establishment, but few customers inside. I often wonder what other “business” goes on there (did I mention it is on the water?). The place is tacky as hell, but we love it.

Living in Africa for us is probably comparable to being a rich celebrity in the U.S. Although solidly middle-class by U.S. standards, most of us diplomats are embarrassingly rich compared to everyone else around us. We employ staff to help with our shopping, cooking, cleaning, gardening, laundry, and others will do house calls for clothes fittings, manicures and massages. We could run red lights and get away with it (my husband insists we say we don’t—and we don’t). We often get free upgrades on airlines, good tables at restaurants, our pictures in the local newspaper and our faces on TV. Everyone wants to be our friend. At first, it’s bizarre. Then you realize how privileged you are. Then you realize how dangerous this sort of lifestyle is. This is not how we live our lives back home, and we better remember that or we are going to be either seriously spoiled, or just horrible people, by the end of this tour.

A few weeks back my husband and I went to see a play put on by the International Players Group, a group of expatriates with the acting bug and apparently, a lot of time on their hands. The play being performed was British and titled, Dick Barton, Special Agent. Otherwise funny British humor was overshadowed by horrible acting and terrible singing. I had an embarrassing laughing fit during a song about drinking tea. Everyone was glaring at me. For a moment I was ten years old again being bad in church. Here we are in Africa with all the white people in a room together with nothing better to do than attempt to entertain each other? Very 1930s. So we escaped during intermission and went to an Irish Pub. We showed them how not to be disgusting ex-pats! Ha! If we were truly disgusting, we would have been drinking gin and tonics at a private club! Not beer in a Pub!

For my feel-good story this month, the best I can do is relate the details of a soccer match I played in last weekend. The Ghanaian Journalist Association vs. the U.S. Embassy Soccer co-ed soccer teams. Being good journalists and having the home court advantage, they trash-talked us in the papers the day before, about how they were going to teach us lessons in soccer we had never learned before, blah, blah, blah. The Americans started out the game on top with a few goals, only to find ourselves down 5-2 in the second half. I was daydreaming of the headlines in the paper the next day--“Ghanaians eat U.S. for lunch!”--when a 16-year-old kid on our team (son of a Colonel in the Defense Attache’s office) dribbled up the field after kickoff of the second half and scored. Five minutes later, he scored a second goal. Then, horror for the Ghanaians, a woman on our team scored another goal, ending the game in a diplomatically appropriate 5-5 tie. After the game, the journalists tried to recruit the women on our team to play with a women’s semi-pro team here. Fabulous!

Driving and the Creamy Inn, September 2003

The other day in the Osu section of Accra, I saw my favorite name for an ice-cream parlor, The Creamy Inn. My favorite local drink? Piss Cola. At any gas station you can pick up some Black Jeans Love Drink and Nigerian videos, such as God and the Prostitute (volumes I and II). Driving around town you will inevitably pass paintings on the side of the road advertising a painter’s services. My personal favorite grouping is paintings of U.N. Secretary General (and Ghanaian) Kofi Annan, Osama Bin Laden, Mike Tyson and George Bush. Tupac and P Diddy also seem to be local heroes, their likenesses depicted on sides of buildings all over the country. Ghana is so wacky to me, and its scenery so frequently inspires laughter. I have never driven around a city and laughed out loud as much as I have living here.

At our house, our telephone problems were recently sort of solved. We finally got a number assigned for our existing land phone line and had it turned on. It only took two months! This level of service is par for the course in places where the telecom infrastructure remains state-controlled and is in serious need of improvement. Now we just need someone from the government-owned phone company to come to our house to make all the phone jacks work, and turn on the ability to make international calls. Right now, we have one functional telephone and one phone jack, in a two-story, four-bedroom house. This is rather ironic given that this is taking place during President's Kufuor’s “Golden Age of Business” campaign, a much-publicized package of initiatives to improve the business environment in Ghana. I can only imagine what the business Dark Ages were like for companies who wanted phone lines or Internet service. But I'll leave my ranting and raving about Ghana's business environment for another update.

In local news, Ghana’s most popular TV show these days is “Big Brother Africa”, the local version of the worldwide reality TV show. It is actually kind of interesting since it’s the first time a television show has broadcast consistently with people in it from all parts of Africa. Just like in the U.S. version, the contestants are placed in a house with TV cameras and the objective is to be the last person standing and win $100,000. The audience (all of Africa) watches the show and the interactions between the contestants and then they call or text in from their cell phones and vote who they want to get kicked off. The Ghanaian contestant was kicked off early from the show, but that hasn’t stopped a local TV station from hosting a low-budget after-show where a host sits behind a desk and takes calls from people who call in with their opinions about how the show went and who should get kicked off. I guess low production costs and not much else going on in TV-land (other than Ghanaian and imported Latin American soap operas) makes reality TV and Africa a good match.

We, rather shamefully, joined the ranks of ex-pats living in Africa by our recent purchase of a huge, 1993 Landrover Defender. The car can hold nine people. It’s purple. It has no A/C, no radio, the lights don’t work very well, it has no power steering, and the engine is super loud. It sucks gas like nobody’s business. It’s basically a tank on wheels. It was repaired by the Senegalese husband of an Embassy employee and has subsequently been driven all over West Africa by its various owners. Its last known name was Smoochie, but I think it looks more like the Barneymobile. Buying this car was not my idea, but I have to admit it was cheap, and now at least we can get around on our own. I’ve grown tired of haggling over prices with taxi drivers to zoom around in unsafe vehicles, and relying on other people for rides after three months.

Driving in the purple monster around town is an adventure. First of all, street signs in Accra are rare and no one uses street names to describe where things are. Instead they say, “It’s down the street from the Easy Internet café, near the Labone coffee shop.” There are landmarks you can use to orient yourself or a taxi driver to where you want to go, but you have to choose the landmarks the Ghanaians would be familiar with. For example, one of my guards told me not to tell taxi drivers the street names of where I live, but to take me to “Kofi Baku” junction when I want to come home. Kofi Baku is a famous journalist in Ghana. “Everyone knows he lives near here.” There are maps of the city, but they aren’t accurate and no one uses them. I showed one to a taxi driver, and he glanced at it blankly, and then kept on turning it until he eventually handed it back to me with a sheepish grin on his face. They must not teach map reading in school here.

So, you have to know where you are going even if you take a taxi. And the only way to get to know the city is to drive around yourself and get lost and figure out how to get home, which I do pretty much every time I get in the car. Last Friday I found myself lost in a Muslim section of town during Friday prayers. I couldn’t have been any more conspicuous if I tried. In hindsight, not a very smart move. Anyway, the best thing about this car for city driving is when the traffic lights go out (which they do pretty frequently these days), intersections are basically a contest of whose car is largest and who cares less about hitting someone to cross. Our car always wins.

I am also ashamed to admit that we drive here even without having our Ghanaian driver’s licenses, or registered, diplomatic license plates. The Embassy’s staff is “working on this”, but like everything in Ghana, I've learned not to hold my breath when it comes to waiting for the Embassy to solve my problems. Not having diplomatic plates is the main reason why we didn’t take the car on a road trip this past three-day weekend. Traffic in Accra and all across Ghana is impaired by traffic stops by the Ghanaian police. However, if you have CD (corps diplomatique) plates, you keep on driving past these police stops. I hear the logic of stops is to deter robberies, but the only thing I can tell it does is cause traffic jams, and offers cops a chance to solicit bribes. In the short term, my (admittedly weak) justification for driving around town anyway is that one U.S. driver’s license, one international driver’s permit and my diplomatic card equal the equivalent of one Ghanaian driver’s license and properly registered plates. And if this doesn't work to get me out of trouble if the Ghanaian police stop me, I have been told that $5 in local currency will.

Driving here is pretty scary. Driving at night is not a safe option outside of the city. The problem is not personal security as much as people here don’t follow driving rules. Most don't respect speed limits, and many cars drive at night without lights. Passing on a curve is common practice. Drivers are always honking too, making me think I'm doing something wrong. I was at a traffic light recently and the light was red. Ten cars behind me began a symphony of honks trying to get me to run the red light. I'm realizing that A/C and a loud radio are essential tools for tuning out local drivers.

Another reason to have A/C in you car is so you can close your windows at traffic lights. It’s not to deter car-jackers like in some of our previous postings, but to avoid the people hawking goods at every single place where traffic slows down. A Ghanaian colleague who I otherwise respected explained to me very earnestly how in Ghana, these hawkers are just lazy people who don't want to work. Right. As if dodging traffic hawking goods to people in cars in the hot sun all day qualifies one as lazy. Anyway, the hawkers are everywhere, and are somewhat of a nuisance. If I tried, I think I could do all my shopping from a car in Accra if I wanted to. They sell everything from gum to newspapers, green apples to electronic equipment, baked goods, yogurt, water, clothes, flags, fish, and puppies.

Speaking of fish, in spite of being on the ocean and home to a robust fishing industry, you can’t buy fresh fish in grocery stores here. You have to buy fresh fish off the street, on the ocean, or from a broker. Buying shrimp and swordfish is an adventure, requiring knowing the right guy in the right stall down by the bathroom/ocean, or finding someone to come to your house to deliver you kilos of fish at a time. I was warned to be cautious of the brokers unless you want freezers full of fish. Once you buy fish from a broker, he will keep coming back (uninvited) to your house each week, hoping you will buy more fish. You can see him as either a scrappy entrepreneur, or a bit of a nuisance, depending on your point of view. All sorts of uncomfortable relationships develop between foreigners and Ghanaians based on how differently we see things. In this case, one man’s idea of good customer service is another’s idea of presumptuous behavior.

There is a saying people use here when living in West Africa gets to them—it's "WAWA", which stands for “West Africa Wins Again”. You can let everything get to you—the heat, the poverty, the contradictions, the differences, the inconveniences, the smells, the inequality, the waiting for change—or you can say “WAWA” and keep going for another few months. It's a useful defense mechanism, but at the same time, a bit of a cop out. It would be better to try and address cultural misunderstandings, try to change things to be more efficient, try to do something concrete and meaningful to spur Ghana’s economic development. But all of this is much easier said than done. Where do you start when so much needs attention? Thousands of people are working every day for Ghana’s economic development, and it is still one of the least developed countries in the world. Just the thought of doing something about Ghana’s problems inspires a certain amount of paralysis in me.

This is starting to get depressing, and I have to go to my ladies soccer game. So now for the “feel good” ending:

A few weekends ago, I went bike riding with some Americans and Europeans in a place in the mountains outside Accra called Aburi. A Swiss guy married to a Ghanaian woman lives up near the entrance of the botanical gardens in Aburi and manages an adventure biking business. The bikes are in good shape and the trails are challenging, especially when twenty kids are following you screaming “Obruni! Hello!” and grabbing the back of your bikes (Obruni means foreigner in the local language). About halfway into the four-hour ride we were riding up a mountain road flanked by sugarcane and pineapple fields. A truck full of workers riding on top of a load of pineapples passed us. The workers saw us and started yelling, “Obruni! Are you tired?” and laughing. Who else would be so silly as to ride bikes for fun on such a hot day? Then they threw some pineapples off the back of the truck for us to eat.

p.s. The Embassy Nurse let me switch malaria medicine. Doxycycline is my new favorite anti-malarial. No more nightmares and no more emotional breakdowns for me, well, not this month at least. Check it out if you want to visit.