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!