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.