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.