The smallest police payoff in the history of Ghana

I’ll fulfill my promise and relate this story, which begins in the demented imagination of whatever traffic planner laid out the approach roads around the new Accra Mall. To get to the mall from the university (i.e., from the north), I have to take the exit for Tema, cross over the highway from which I have just exited, then take another exit for Tema rather than go straight toward Tema, double back and drive directly past the mall entrance, proceed to a roundabout circle and return on the other side of the road, and enter. In effect I have proceeded south, then west, then east, then west, then east again to the entrance.

But I must not try to exit where I entered—that puts me directly on the toll road eastward to Tema. I have to wend my way through the parking lot to another exit, drive down to the same roundabout but take a different unmarked exit to reach the northbound road back to the university. By the fifth or sixth time I could recognize all the turns I needed to make, most of the time. Fortunately, if I take a wrong turn and need to cross several lanes of traffic or back up in the wrong direction to a different road, and if I can signal my intentions with a wave of my hand, Ghanaian drivers are generally very obliging.

The very first time I drove to the mall I managed to find my way in eventually, and then made the mistake of exiting the same way. No problem, I thought: I’m heading for Tema but can just turn around at the first intersection. But there are no intersections. I was immediately on the toll road toward Tema, and there were no roundabouts or exits for about 8 km til I reached the toll booth.

I paid my toll—all of 50 pesewas ($0.35) and explained to the attendant that I was only trying to return to Legon from Shoprite. “Just ask the police officer behind the booth and he will open the gate for you,” she advised. I did just as she suggested, but the officer on duty was not quite ready to cooperate.

“I am sorry, sir, but only authorized police vehicles are permitted to pass here. You are in an ordinary saloon car, so I cannot permit you to pass.”

I explained my predicament, but he would not relent. “You must proceed to Tema and you can reverse your direction there.” That would be about 20 km of pointless driving. Was it not possible to make an exception?

“I am sorry, sir, but I cannot make an exception. But it is the weekend. Perhaps you have brought me something?”

I had in my hand the small coins that I had pulled from my pocket and had not needed for the toll—a grand total of 21 pesewas, or $0.15. I held my hand open.

“That is only 21 pesewas!” he told me, unnecessarily. Yes, I said, I know, I am sorry, but I have spent all my money at Shoprite already. So I will have to drive on to Tema.

“Oh, no, sir, that will not be necessary. Let me have your small small money. Please pass here, sir, and have a good day.”

I’ve told this story to several Ghanaian friends, and all agree that never in the history of modern Ghana has a policeman done a traveler a favor—let alone a European traveler—for so small an incentive. I’m glad to be able to contribute this small chapter to contemporary life in Ghana.

And now we are two . . . off to Cape Coast

I am delighted to convey the news that Susan arrived on Thursday to join me for (nearly all of) the remainder of my time in Ghana! Her flight from Philadelphia to New York and then to Ghana went smoothly, and she got through immigration and customs in record-setting time, less than half an hour—while I was immobilized in the morning traffic (and surrounded by vendors). She took a long nap Thursday morning and then came to IAS to meet the students.

She got no time to rest from her journey. At 6 am Friday we set out on a two-day field trip to the Central Region, to visit the coastal forts and the national park at Kakum and witness the Fetu Afahye festival that takes place in Cape Coast at this time each year, one of the biggest traditional celebrations in Ghana. It’s just as well that Susan isn’t on Ghana time yet.

I am writing this on the evening of our return. The trip went very well, with one unfortunate exception—two students victimized by pickpockets in the intense crush of humanity at the festival. One lost a small digital camera, the other a cell phone. A third felt a hand in his pocket (where he had nothing but toilet paper) and turned to face the thief as he slipped back into the crowd. Just a moment before these thefts happened a stranger had called me aside to say “Watch your pockets!” (probably because he recognized a thief at work nearby) and I had passed the warning along. By and large it was a very friendly and welcoming crowd, but I think thieves were lying in wait for tourists at a place where the procession of chiefs ended and the noise and bustle were at their highest. I’m not sure we will recommend visiting that festival again. I was eager for the chance to see and photography the colorful flags that symbolize the history and role of the seven asafo companies of Cape Coast, which are kept hidden in their shrines 364 days of the year. I saw three flags, but the bearers did not wave them high for all to see: they kept them mostly furled and used them simply as props in asking for money from bystanders.

A new opportunity this year arose from the recommendation of a friend, a dean at Portland State University, that we contact a Ghanaian PSU faculty member, Kofi Agorsah, and visit his archeological excavation at the oldest European settlement along the coast, Kormantse, about 30 km west of Cape Coast. He is working with another archeologist from Portland and a crew of 30 students from PSU, Cape Coast, and UG Legon. He invited us to stop at Fort William, a large British fort at Anomabu, between Kormantse and Cape Coast (and the location of some of the most spectacular posuban shrines that I have included in some of my photography exhibits from Ghana). There we were given a tour of the fort and a chance to talk with the students as they washed and brushed bags of artifacts, mostly pottery fragments, collected at the site. It was a fascinating visit, and Kofi invited us and the students to come back another time and swing a pick at the site with him. (Actually the principal tool of archeologists these days is not the pick but the toothbrush—that’s what everyone was using.) All the students stay in tents lined up on the battlements, overlooking the fishing harbor and the sea. Very picturesque!

After this “30 minute stop” detained us for more than two hours, we decided to stop only for lunch in Cape Coast and then visit the castle at Elmina, where we had an excellent guide to that beautiful and dreadful site. We went on to our lodgings for the night a bit west of Elmina at Brenu Beach Resort, where most of the students and I battled with tremendously powerful breakers in the warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea, then enjoyed a splendid buffet supper featuring local calamari, lobster (small rock lobster), and a huge cassava fish, perhaps 10 kg, that a local fisherman supplied for the kitchen that day. Saturday morning we did the canopy walk over the rainforest in Kakum National Park, which is always a highlight for the students (though Susan and I found that the price had quadrupled, and the quality of the guide service declined considerably, since 2005). It is a beautiful place, and one of the richest concentrations of wildlife in West Africa, with elephant, bongo, many species of duiker, giant forest hog, leopard, and pangolin, plus 300 species of birds. We heard lots of birds (none of them identified by the guide) but the only members of the animal kingdom we were able to see in the thick forest cover were butterflies and millipedes. We had a lovely lunch at Hans Cottage, an odd country lodge with a pond where huge crocodiles swim lazily about. We saw more birds there than in the forest: dozens of weaverbirds popping in and out of their nests, a kingfisher swooping down to fish in the water, and hornbills passing noisily overhead.

Then we went on to the festival. It was great fun to see the chiefs in their palanquins, preceded by dozens of women and young girls dancing their praises and followed by huge fontonfrom drums carried on the heads of young men so that the others walking behind them could beat out rhythms for the dancers. But I don’t think we have ever been in such a tightly packed crowd, or one half as noisy. And then the thefts put a damper on our spirits on the ride home.

Itinerant peddlers

In traditional village life the daily routine was broken from time to time by the arrival of a traveling merchant with a variety of goods to sell, carried by donkey cart or wheelbarrow or bicycle. Such a vendor plays a key role in one of Sembene Ousmane’s films (perhaps it’s Moolaade). Whatever necessities and luxuries could not be produced in the village—“Holland wax” printed yard goods, commercial soap, manufactured tools and hardware, shoes—would be put on display, to admire and even to purchase. No doubt even today there are thousands of villages where traveling peddlers provide most of the “import goods.” But these days they would have to compete with residents who travel to town for work, daily or weekly or monthly, and bring purchases home for their own families or others.

In Accra, a bustling city of something like three million (plus or minus a million, depending on who’s estimating), it sometimes seems as if there are as many shops as people: tiny booths made of corrugated metal or converted shipping containers that line the streets of many districts, wooden stalls by the hundreds in each of a dozen major markets in the city, all the way up to a gigantic South African-owned shopping mall with a Shoprite supermarket, a Game department store, a bookstore and cinema and a dozen more upscale merchants that went up about two years ago near the university—Ghana’s very first full-scale shopping mall. (The traffic pattern to enter and exit the mall is so convoluted that I suspect it might be quicker to walk the 2 or 3 km than to drive—and there’s another story attached to that I will save for later, the Smallest Police Payoff in the History of Ghana). Yet legions of itinerant peddlers still ply their trade.

Let me highlight two different groups. First, there is the swarm of hawkers who approach drivers while they wait for traffic at every intersection in the city that backs up during peak traffic times—in other words, nearly every main road. Always there are girls selling “pure water” sachets from a large basin balanced on their heads (small sealed plastic sacks of water for 10 or 20 pesewas, less than 15 cents US) and young men selling Fan Ice ice cream treats, also in sealed packets. These are usually carried in tall plastic-fronted wooden boxes balanced on their heads, with dry ice at the bottom to keep their goods from melting in Accra’s hot sun—one of the few things that men regularly carry and sell from atop their heads. Neither of these are out in large numbers, though, perhaps because the rainy season has persisted well into September, with comparatively cool temperatures. When the heat intensifies they will do more business.

At every intersection there are vendors of mobile phone top-up cards, which they hold out fan-like in every major brand and denomination. Others display CDs or DVDs, one arm holding up an elaborate display with titles visible, the other a stack of 50 or 100 more. Yesterday a boy no more than ten years old had three DVDs to sell, all American action movies, probably all pirated, He tapped them against my window again and again, convinced that he could wear down my resistance.

Usually there are a few young men whose upper bodies are festooned with “spares” (car parts) including steering wheel covers, seat covers, floor mats, compasses, windscreen wiper blades, ignition cables, and wiping cloths. And there is always a wide selection of plastic toys: windmills, battery-operated cars, knockoff video games, toy radios and mobile phones, dolls, and so forth.

Beyond these categories I never know what I will be on offer. Nearly always someone is selling shoes, juggling twenty or thirty pairs in both arms with more in a backpack or on his head. Just why anyone would ever buy a pair of shoes in the few minutes of being stuck in traffic is beyond me – should you stick one foot out the window to try them on? But if they were making no sales the boys would not be out selling every day. Often there are women with clothes to sell: dresses, blouses, men’s shirts, scarves. Others offer jewelry, cosmetics, and household and laundry cleaning products. Batteries are nearly always on offer, as well as small electrical appliances such as irons, toasters, electric kettles, and multiple outlets to plug them into.

And then there are the food vendors, with packets of groundnuts (peanuts), “sugar bread” buns, little fried dough pieces, meat pies, sliced pineapple, papaya chunks, and kenkey (a fermented cornmeal loaf) wrapped in banana leaves. A snack that is obviously very popular is hard-boiled eggs: women (always women) carry thirty or forty neatly arranged around the rim of a shallow tray on their heads, with a dish of seasoning in the middle. If you buy one for 30 pesewas, the vendor quickly shucks off the shell and seasons the egg—either with ground pepper or by slicing it in half and inserting a peppery sauce. And she uses a sandwich bag to avoid touching it, something now common for all the street vendors, even those who sell baked goods, and an advance in hygiene over practices of five years ago.

I nearly forgot newspapers—the only thing regularly sold on the street in US cities.

While sitting motionless for half an hour in this morning’s traffic just outside the university entrance I jotted down more examples, selecting only those who had just one product for sale. Here’s the list: Easy-Off aerosol oven cleaner, posters showing dress styles, soccer balls, pens (she had several hundred balanced on her head), socks (hundreds and hundreds of pairs, all men’s dress socks), Pringles, Mentos, and lint brushes. One young man jogged around the traffic with nothing to sell except a huge wall clock, three feet across. Another had two large framed prints of sentimental scenes from the American South.

Hawking in traffic is illegal, and very dangerous when the traffic gets moving. From time to time the municipal government announces a campaign to eradicate it and targets a few intersections where the hawkers are making pile-ups even worse. Police chase away anyone who defies the ban. This has some effect, but not the intended one; the hawkers just move a few blocks away.

On to a second category different from this perpetually moving flea market on the roads: the women (never men) who walk around the campus carrying fruit, baked goods, and toiletries in basins on their head, selling to students and staff. They congregate around a few buildings where large classes are held, sometimes sitting on the low walls with their goods beside them in groups of three or four. I passed such a group yesterday as I was walking from IAS back up toward Commonwealth. Just as I approached, all of the women took their basins in their arms and dashed away, crouching behind the wall or a parked car. A woman walking nearby chuckled with me at the spectacle and pointed to an approaching university patrol car: they are not licensed to sell on campus, she said, because they have no health certificates. This seems a little silly—are you really at risk if you buy your bananas from an unlicensed vendor? And the rule is mostly ignored by everyone, including these campus security officers who drove by without a second glance.

Just outside IAS on Wednesday Samuel Ntewusu got into conversation with a woman selling baked goods from a basin on her head, a baby strapped to her back. They spoke for several minutes about something—was she a relative, or someone with whom Samuel wanted to place an order for tomorrow? No, he explained after she thanked him and walked on: this was a vendor whom he had encountered a week earlier accompanied by a child of about seven as well as the baby. He called her aside, he said, and reprimanded her: why are you taking your child with you to sell when she should be in school? Children belong in school, not selling on the streets, so that they can learn well and be prepared for future employment.

So what was this conversation about, I asked? “She told me that her child is in primary school now and thanked me for my concern. And I told her that when I get some small money I will give some to her to help her pay for uniforms and transport.” (Free public primary education for all was implemented in the early 2000s, just before our first visit to Ghana; but buying uniforms is a financial burden for many families.)

Two aspects of this episode are unimaginable in the US, yet completely normal here in Ghana: first, someone being accosted by a complete stranger telling her to take better care of her child and heeding his advice; second, the stranger assuring her that he will provide some “small money” to help her. Samuel is one of the most generous people we know, constantly distributing money and school supplies and yams and bags of flour and rice to friends and relatives and acquaintances whenever we travel with him, even though he has hardly a pesewa more than he needs to support Diana and their two children. But in Ghanaian eyes this isn’t really generosity: it’s just what every sensible person would do, taken to a slightly higher level.

A visit to the chief of the "Calvin village"

From our first time coordinating Calvin’s Semester in Ghana, Susan and I have tried to integrate that program for students with the continuing Sister City partnership between Grand Rapids and the Ga District, one of the administrative districts of the greater Accra region. Indeed, our first two weeks in Ghana together in August 2004 were spent with a Sister City delegation of pastors and church leaders in August 2004, preceding the arrival of our first group of students.

But logistics were always a challenge. Organizing transport to the district offices at Amasaman, 15 km west of Legon, was time-consuming and expensive. Host family arrangements worked out well for some, poorly or not at all for others. We visited schools and made plans to return as volunteers, but then communication broke down or students’ plans changed. Each year we felt we had made only a small beginning at effective collaboration. There were some great moments such as planting a pineapple field in 2004 and harvesting it in 2005—see the photo featured on Calvin’s main Ghana program page, with Susan and the students holding up the shoots they are about to plant. Frank Amoakah has told me he plans to revive that tradition in 2010 and 2011. But the linkage was loose for a number of years.

In 2008 and 2009 activities were more frequent and better planned, I think, now involving the newly separated Ga West and Ga East districts. When the National Democratic Congress won the 2008 presidential election, new municipal chief executives were appointed in every district. John Kwao Sackey, our longtime friend and our houseguest on Kent Hills for seven months in 2003, was elevated from second-tier civil servant to MCE—“mayor” is the term most Ghanaians use—of Ga East. He seems to be doing a very good job, and he has asked his finance director, Joseph Kojo Ata-Baah, to work on building up the district’s collaboration with Calvin.

And when you give Joseph a task, he digs into it with both hands and both feet, and things start happening quickly. We first heard about his plans on the Calvin campus just a month ago at a lunch meeting that I organized for Joseph and his counterpart from Ga West at Calvin in August. Calvin’s president Gaylen Byker agreed to host Calvin faculty and Sister City planners to welcome these two visitors during their brief visit to Grand Rapids. It took no more than a few days after I arrived in Ghana for Joseph and John to get some new initiatives underway. The least expected, and most promising, is the designation of a “Calvin College village” in a remote corner of Ga East.

On Tuesday I drove up to the Ga East offices in Abokobe, a small town and a historic center of Presbyterianism about 10 km from Legon. (Susan and I had attended the 150^th anniversary celebration at the Zimmerman Memorial Church there in 2005.) John and Joseph informed me that we would make our first visit on Friday to the village of Adenkrebi in the northernmost section of Ga East, on lands traditionally held by the Akuapem people. In this "Calvin village," they said, there will be opportunities for our students to get to know families there, help in the clinic and the schools, participate in planning for water treatment projects, and the like. It's a village where John's wife Victoria, now working as a pastor of an independent church she founded, has been active in organizing a group of women to identify critical needs in the community. Preschool and kindergarten emerged as a top priority, and she and John are personally paying the salary of the teacher.

This is a small agricultural village in a remote location, accessible by a truly dreadful road that branches from the main Aburi road just as you reach the top of the ridge. There are only 700 inhabitants, mostly farmers. Electricity arrived only 7 months ago. But the chief and village elders, and the district administration, have ambitious plans for expanding the school, improving housing, installing a water pump (there is now only a hand pump at the village borehole), and more. They would like Calvin students to come back year after year to help out and observe the village's development.

We were told to be ready at 9 am Friday for transport in the Ga district minibus (which holds only 13, so I always need to carry 4 or 5 additional people in my car). It showed up at 10:40. There was a complicated explanation -- something about the first driver getting lost and returning to the office and another driver coming instead -- but the students weren't fazed; they had all brought books to read while waiting in the hostel lobby. I went upstairs to the cybercafé and sent a few emails (or more accurately sent one and watched several more vanish into the ether because the connection was so bad it kept timing out).

On arrival we were shown into a meeting room where several of the elders were waiting for us, men ranging from 50 to 80 in age so far as I could judge, and soon the chief joined them. He is very young for a traditional chief--not more than 35--and was enstooled less than a year ago. Unlike other chiefs the students have met, he played the traditional role assiduously, wrapped in the traditional twelve yards of brilliantly colored cloth. He did not speak except in whispers to his elders and his linguist and acknowledged our thanks and greetings with just a slight bow. Even when there was raucous laughter all around the room, he didn't break a smile. The most senior of the elders, named Kwame, did most of the talking, explaining the village's history and its current profile. The Ga arrived here about 300 years ago, but established such harmonious relation with the Akuapem that--while other groups were in continual battle--they were given land for permanent settlement.

The chief runs an electronic repair shop in Tema, I was told, and speaks English fluently. But he gave no sign of comprehending what I or others said until it was translated into Ga (mostly by Daniel Sackey, John and Victoria’s eldest son, a UG student), and he spoke only in Ga. When we asked how long he had sat on the stool, the elders passed around big enlargements of the coronation ceremony last September, including photos of Nii (a respectful term of address for a chief) sitting on the lap of the paramount chief to symbolize his loyalty and taking an oath while holding the handle of a sacred sword that he would not neglect the needs of his people. Another photo showed him on the shoulders of several other men on the day before the ceremony, men who—so we were told--had just given him a sound beating. The purpose is to remind him of his duty to punish anyone guilty of wrongdoing more severely than they had beaten him. Once he is enstooled, of course, no one would dare to strike him.

In the room with us were a couple of dozen women of all ages--those in Victoria's group, I think--and a few men who aren't elders. Another thirty or forty men and women and children listened at the doors and windows. Elder Kwame (who kept reaching across to shake my hand again and again, "Kwame to Kwame," using my Akan day name) told us he looks forward to Calvin's contributions to the village, including supplying wives for men of the village -- he himself would take two. (One student heard a later remark that I missed: he wants two young wives to assist the two older wives he has now.) He told the male students they should look around too and pick wives from the village. When we came back from a walk to see the church and the school Kwame began by asking (in Ga, then translated), "Are you all back safely? Are you up to your full number?" I replied that we were but that I would be making an especially careful count of the women when we got back on the bus.

We were supposed to visit a nursing college nearby and also trek out to a sacred rock and a tree that was cut down and then miraculously righted itself again, but these were put off for another visit. Basically our audience with chief and elders was the only event on the day's program, and it lasted nearly three hours. Just when I thought we were about finished, and stomachs were rumbling with hunger, the chief rose to make a brief speech directly to us, still in Ga, which was translated. It was brief and straightforward, a welcome and an assurance of his assistance as we find ways of working together in the future. Then he abruptly asked through his linguist whether I would like to offer a toast and signaled someone to bring in a liter of gin. The linguist first poured a tiny portion into a glass, drank most of it, and poured the rest on the ground--traditional duties of the linguist, the first to establish that it is not poisoned, the second to honor the village’s ancestors (or maybe just a generic sort of blessing, since he didn't recite any names).

Then the linguist handed me the bottle. Following instructions from Joseph, I poured some into the glass and offered it to Kwame. He downed it, poured the last few drops on the ground, and then spat a little from his mouth onto the ground. He instructed me to do the same. The spitting, he said, is a sign that it is good gin. (It wasn't.) And then -- all this was at my direction, they insisted, because the gin was the chief's gift to me -- the linguist offered portions to all the students and then to everyone else in attendance. Most of the men accepted, as did a few of the women. In the Calvin group, hardly anyone declined. Portions were tiny, and after about thirty people had imbibed the bottle was still half full. A little later, however, after we had stood outside conversing for a while, I noticed that "my" bottle of gin had been drained.

The toast and libation were not quite the end, however. The chief apologized for not having opened our meeting with prayer and for a student volunteer to offer a closing prayer. Megan Dickens raised her hand and was motioned to stand at the front to lead us in prayer. Afterward Kwame shook her hand, and then to our surprise directed her to shake the chief’s hand—something no one else had been permitted to do. And Megan said he gave her a warm “Thank you!” in English.

This is going to be a very interesting venture! I'm pleased with the eagerness of the students to return and roll up their sleeves to work with the residents, and there were some great moments as we mingled today--mothers lending their babies to Calvin students, men from the village walking hand in hand with guys from our group to homes or farms, old women setting up a rhythm by beating plastic bottles together and then leading the students in dancing. Language is going to be a challenge, since few of the older residents speak much English (or Twi, I suspect), but we can enlist the schoolchildren as translators.

When we were finally permitted to leave and go to a restaurant for lunch, it was past 4 pm. But nobody complained.