The Big City, The Big Lessons, February 2007

Greetings from Accra, Ghana's capital city...

We (Amanda, Carrick and I)\ntravelled down here from Besease on Tuesday morning with an Amadiya Muslim\nfriend - Amanda and Carrick leave for Togo tomorrow and so I thought I would use the opportunity to get my onward visas and to do a few things in Accra that I had wanted to do. Accra feels much different from any other part of Ghana - the wealth here is so apparent in comparison to central / northern Ghana - mainly due to the development levels here being very high. I believe that this is true for much of Africa - the colonisers settled on the coasts of all the countries and developed these areas as they were comfortable and profitable (slave trading, exporting minerals etc) and it also meant that the colonisers did not have to travel far into the heart of the continent which proved very difficult due to the dense jungles, the tropical diseases and the less than welcoming indigenous peoples... Accra is like the best and worst of Ghana - luxury, wealth, development (to African standards of course - the open sewers are still on either side of the road and our 'hotel' does not have running water or glass windows) and the worst of poverty; people pushing carts to make money, desperate beggars, shanty towns and street children. Accra feels hard, it is hugely expensive in comparison to Besease and the people are less open, less friendly - people grab your arms everywhere, wanting to sell you things, wanting to steal from you. Being 'obroni' is so obvious, everywhere, there is never any anonymity. It's like wearing a giant neon sign on your forehead. We do our best to hide our obroni status and use twi as much as possible when speaking with Ghanaians. This seems to help enormously in avoiding being scammed - they laugh and the barriers seem to come away as soon as a few words of twi are injected into the transaction negotiations... I guess it shows more of a respect for their world and they must be used to dealing with so many ignorant and disrespectful foreigners (which there are plenty of in Accra")


Yesterday morning we rose early and, taking advantage of the luxury Accra offers, drank coffee at a coffee bar!! This was my first coffee in five weeks and wow... I had forgotten how much I love coffee!! It was bliss and we felt so decadent to sit down at a table in air-conditioned comfort and begin the day like Europeans! This small luxury was enjoyed but short lived and we met Romeo, a Liberian refugee friend of Chris Williams (thanks Chris!) who I had contacted a week previous - Romeo took us to the Liberian refugee camp about an hour outside of Accra - we had to take three different tro tros, at the station the 'mate' of the van yelled "Liberia, Liberia!!" - Romeo told us that they no longer say "refugee camp", it is now known simply as Liberia. I thought it was wonderful that the negative connotation had been removed. During the tro tro ride he told us about his life. He lived in Liberia with his family, attended school and had a relatively normal life in this progressive West-African nation until 1989 when the civil war began. The civil war began as a tribal clash which quickly escalated into full scale civil war between armed rebel groups -the fighting didn't reach Romeo's town until 1990. He was 7 years old. He remembers being at school, another normal day, when he heard gun shots and screaming in the street. There was chaos as people ran and the teachers and students fled from the school - he ran home to his family but when he arrived they were gone (he thinks they must have run to the school to find him). The streets were chaos, people were being shot, raped and killed, he didn't know what to do so he ran after a crowd of people fleeing from the town. He followed this crowd to the sea ports where a man looked after him and got him on board a ship of refugees being taken to Ghana. When the ship ported there was again huge confusion as thousands of people flooded the streets, panicked and in shock, this wee boy lost the man who was caring from him and in the frenzied crowd again found himself completely alone - seven years old and in a foreign country. The UN refugee agency took him to the refugee camp set up outside of Accra on barren land (where he was by no means the only child separated from his parents) and he has lived there since - for 17 years now. My eyes pricked with tears as he spoke, the pain of separation from his parents apparent in his face, his hope as he spoke of his belief that one day he will find them again, or one of his two siblings. I couldn't imagine how hard, how painful, how frightening life must have been for this small boy. And for thousands just like him - now all over the world.

As we drove and I digested this painful story we saw a man killed on the road outside of Accra. He was in his mid-twenties, a young, handsome boy - his crumpled body lying on the black asphalt, his head at an angle that confirmed his fate - a trail of blood running down his arm. People were running about yelling, frantic. I felt sick to my stomach - shocked - like I had been kicked in the throat. I have never seen a man killed before and it made death such a reality, such a painful, intense reality. I realised how every death is as shocking as this one before me. That every death in the civil war in Liberia, every death of every person everywhere, is as shocking and as gruesome. War, genocide, 'conflict', is often so arbitrary, so remote, so theoretical. We hear of it as a figure, often a figure with a trail of zeros, this figure is bounced around in books, in academic circles, in human rights groups - a million deaths, a hundred thousand killed, 'mass murder'. But there is no such thing. Mass killings do not happen but rather thousands of individual killings. Individual deaths. Every one of these people as important as the last. Every one of these people with beliefs, with fears, with dreams. Just like you and just like me. Just like this man whose contorted body lay before us on the road. My heart sat hard in my chest like a stone. I wanted to vomit, to scream. I put my head in my hands and wept. I wept for this man whose young life was so quickly taken from him before us, I wept for the man sitting next to me, I wept for all the people whose individual lives had been taken from them in mass killings everywhere, for all the refugees from all wars, for those who never escaped. It was a brutal, shocking morning.

We eventually arrived at the camp, although it is hardly a camp anymore, more like a village of its own. Years have passed since the UN tents stood tall, in their place now small concrete structures or wooden shacks. Little alleys lead all over this wee village, this mini-Liberia. Small shops, small attempts at business, at rebuilding lives, stand everywhere. Little chop bars (places that sell cheap food, usually rice and goat or fish stew) and market stalls selling shoes or vegetables or water. The ground is so dry, so dusty, covered in small pebbles. It feels like another country entirely and everyone, everywhere is Liberian. And everyone of these Liberians is a refugee, with equally as painful memories and stories as this brave man who led us around. The UNHCR had set up offices on the outside of the camp, they are organising a census of the camp and repatriation programme as the civil war has long ended and Liberia is now recognised as being 'safe'. Lines of people waited to see the officers - we looked at the notices informing of the programme - the UN will give each family a pack (including mosquito net, tarpaulin, cooking pan, kerosene) and US$5 for each person upon arrival in Monrovia (Liberia's capital). US$5... I asked Romeo if he wanted to be repatriated. He said "where would I go? My home is gone, I have no family, I have nowhere to go and there are no opportunities in Liberia. What would I do with $5? Buy dinner?". He is right. How can you build a life in a country with no support on $5? It was amazing to actually see the UN working though, for me they are so often just a theoretical organisation, something removed and arbitrary. It was amazing to see that this organisation actually exists and to see it in action. The WFP was also there and many small NGOs who have set up schools and other support structures, like counselling and mentoring for young people, violence support centres for women and HIV/AIDS clinics. The camp was an incredible experience, and a heartwarming one. It restored my faith in humanity, at the resilience of people, who will loose everything and rebuild their lives again, strive for education, for success, for spiritual awareness. We met a woman whose husband had been sent to the USA and now sends her money - she uses the money to set up a small business selling small grocery items and runs a micro-economic funding scheme for women to start their own small businesses in the camp. The refugees are technically not allowed to work in Ghana, but the government overlooks the economic community occurring in the camp. None of the refugees are given any money, I am not sure how the UN or the Ghanaian government expect them to survive, so as soon as anyone receives a small amount of money they try to set up a business venture within the camp, or build a shelter for themselves. For people like Romeo, with no family or support and no prospect of employment, life is hard. He lives on the goodwill of friends who allow him to sleep on their floor. He said when people started to build in the camp he worked making bricks from clay and with the profit he funded himself to attend a training school but he fell ill and had to stop making the bricks and attending school. His dream is to start a small business to earn enough money to finish his schooling - he wants to do marketing - and to find his family again. He is now 25.

Set up in the camp were huge notice boards lined with photos of children's faces. These are all faces of children who had become separated from their families and were in refugee camps in other parts of the world. Romeo said that somewhere in another part of the world his face is on one of these boards in the hope that someone in his family would one day see it and contact him. I guess the prospect that his family did not survive the rebel attack is not one that he will entertain. The hope, the will to survive, the ability to dream of a secure future was something that astounded me in him. I left him with some money and said I would keep in contact. I don't know what I can do to help these people, but as we drove away from this dusty and poverty stricken camp I felt deeply moved, deeply changed. The journey back to Accra was spent in silence.

We arrived back in Accra and made our way to the Togolese embassy to collect our onward visas (we managed to get a visa that caters for Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and the Ivory Coast) - it was an interesting experience in itself. The Togolese embassy official tried to bribe me at the desk, advising that I should give him an extra CFA5,000 as a 'gift'. I said "oh, is this the way it works in Togo?". He laughed and I refused to be bribed. I made sure I was given a receipt told him if I was asked for more money at the border I would have the border guards call him directly! He then asked me to marry him and kept us in his office for 45 minutes, not giving our passports back, and giving us a lecture on how women should be obedient to their husbands. Amanda and I were shocked. I told him he would hate being married to me as I would never be obedient. He laughed and said that he would get African medicine to make me obedient and I told him I was too strong for any medicine he could give me. If this is the embassy official I hate to think of the ordeal that awaits us at the border.

In the late afternoon we met Aleem again, the Amadiya Muslim friend who drove us to Accra. Aleem had organised us to meet the Amadiya Muslim Mission's chief in Accra. This man (Ameer Adams) is also the head of the Amadiya Community in Ghana. He has won many international peace awards and is apparently a very revered man, working as part of the reconciliation commission in Ghana. The Amadiya community is persecuted in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. It is a branch of Islam that is pacifist, their motto being "Love for all and hatred for none". They run schools and hospitals throughout the world - their goal is to serve humanity and practice tolerance and love. The Ameer welcomed us into his home and served us coconut milk, fresh tropical fruit and a herbal tea and talked to us about his work and his faith and his beliefs. He was an incredibly interesting man, and very funny - we were laughing and laughing! He was very kind-hearted and has challenged the Muslim community on many claims that are made about the Koran stating things like that 'infidels deserve death'. There was a case two years ago in Nigeria where a woman found guilty of adultery was sentenced in a Sharia court to be stoned to death. This man made a challenge in the Nigeria media for any Muslim to show him where in the Koran this was condoned. He was abused by many Muslims for daring to say this, but (unsurprisingly) no one could find anything in the Koran which condoned this woman's stoning. The community runs homeopathy centres near Besease so they have invited me to visit their hospitals and the homeopathy centre. Of course I agreed and really valued the opportunity to meet this man. Amanda and I decided not to raise the issue of the veil and womans' rights in Islam and in the Amadiya community as we didn't think it appropriate, but this is something we discussed afterward and said even though the Amadiya community disproved many commonly made negative claims about Islam we still didn't feel that women were truly equal here either.

Tomorrow I return to the orphanage and to my newly implemented roster... the home is feeling slightly more structured with this roster system but ensuring that the tasks are done every day is definitely easier said than done. It usually involves chasing them around the yard, shouting encouragement and guiding them through the work. It's an exhausting process and helping a 10 year old clean a boys' toilet when there is no running water is definitely not the most pleasant of volunteer tasks! Perhaps this is why it hasn't been done until now and I hope that the new system is upheld. Once the precedent is set and the routine established then the home will be a much cleaner and more structured environment. After the children finish their tasks I reward them with a bright sticker which they put on their forehead or earlobe and march off to play, proudly displaying their medal to their peers! This has proved a great way to encourage others to do their tasks. I think that the lack of water is the biggest impediment to their lives, fetching the water from the pipe is really hard work and it's amazing to see how they will conserve the water once fetched! One bucket of water will be used to wash all their clothes, then the dirty water will be used to wash their shoes, with the remainder being used to flush the toilet! The children work hard and are usually quite helpful - I often wonder how a child in the 'developed world' would react if made to walk to a well, manually pump up water and carry it home in buckets on their head every time they wanted to wash or drink or clean anything! Perhaps they would reconsider the amount of times they turn on a tap every day? Most of the children in the home are slim, their arms ripple with muscle from all the physical work - one of them kindly pointed out how my arms are "soft" - I laughed and said "yes, I don't fetch enough water!!".

There has been some disturbing events in Ghana recently. From talking with Aleem, who is the headmaster of a school run by the mission, he told us about a deworming programme in schools set up by UNICEF in partnership with the Ghanaian government. They have been deworming children in schools for the past week - so far 10 children have died and 37 have been hospitalised. I can't believe this could happen. Of course both organisations are desperately trying to cover up their tracks but it seems to me that this medicine hadn't been adequately tested before being released to these young children and their malnutritioned bodies couldn't handle the strength of the poison in the dewormer. It's an absolute tragedy. Aleem alerted all the schools and parents he could to tell the schools not to administer any drugs to the children. If this happened in a "developed" country it would be headline news - the companies would be held to account, prosecuted for negligence, the families would be compensated (but how can you compensate for the death of a child?!!?). Here, it's swept under the carpet.

I also have heard (through a congratulatory article in the Economist, my only source of international news!) that GM crops are now being released in Africa. A genetically modified maise crop is being planted in southern Africa. The article congratulated "African scientists" for this "new" technology and said that it hoped many more GM crops would be soon to follow. I was horrified and outraged. The article said that GM in Europe has been halted by "scared consumers" - more like INFORMED consumers who realised that the release of GM crops cannot be retracted once planted and if cross-contamination occurs then there is no stopping the process. Again, Africa is used as a testing ground for western science. GM is no African invention and its implementation here is little more than a mass experiment. There is no public forum to discuss this issue. The local farmers probably won't even realise what GM is and what the dangers are of its release. Food supply here is fragile enough without unleashing some short-sighted experiment onto the local plantations. I feel so powerless in the face of it; when I talk to Ghanaians about it most of them don't even know what genetific modification is and the lack of access to information or to the internet will ensure their continual ignorance of its potential dangers.

The third piece of disturbing information I have received relates to child slavery in Ghana - poverty stricken parents are selling their children to work on fishing boats, on plantations and in quarries. An NGO has counted hundreds of children working in slave conditions such as these now. I felt so shocked but then realised that child slavery actually exists here in many more less obvious forms - the small children who sell chewing gums and handkerchiefs through the windows of tro tros are also child slaves. They are kept from schools to make money for their parents, or for street child gangs. This problem is so entrenched that I don't know how it will be overcome. The trade is so apparent, but also so underground. The apathy of the Ghanaian government and the corruption of the police force will ensure that this trade and the abuse of these children is not a temporary problem but a permanent one. I'm sure that child labour and child slavery will also become even more apparent as we journey west into Togo and Benin, countries that suffer from even greater poverty than Ghana.