29August2010

Well, yes, two weeks at my site is not enough time to claim much real success in cultural integration or to be able to claim that there really are opportunities here to actually help and ‘improve’ the community that can be grabbed by me over the course of the next two years!

But...it’s different here in Ghana, in West Africa. It’s different being a Peace Corps Volunteer...it ‘seems’ to mean much more than I remember from Romania. And it seems to be very different being an international aid worker here.

I think that is what we are or anyway what i want to be.

And, before i forget, i am much better trained for a role here than before and am taking a much broader approach to things and researching as much as possible too.

One aspect that shapes so much of things is that i am the only yevu/obroni (white person) in this rural setting in West Africa..and to some extent it is virtually assumed that i am a volunteer, working for an NGO. It surprises people when they see me..especially in some settings and activities....running every morning, helping the fishermen pulling on their ropes/nets, shopping in the market, and now tootling around on my bike...a rebuilt mountain bike a lot like my one sitting on MDI (a yevu on a bike!!! )..and it greatly surprises them if i tell them that i am here in Whuti for two years...mewo le Whuti fe eve!

In a sea of black faces, i stand out and that means too that in a small town..is it a small town or a village?(nominal population approx 8000 but so many people live and work in other cities that the average number sleeping in town each night must be considerably lower...but we’ll call it a town) ) ......since i’m still and perhaps always will be an object of curiousity, everybody knows what i do, where i go, what i eat, what i buy.. and they seem to tell each other too!

Of course, too, mine has been quite a public introduction to the community. The reception outside the library from the chiefs and elders of the community with music, dancing, and many speeches when i came here for my site visit seven weeks ago and then a formal introduction to the community last last Tuesday at the (outdoor) community meeting place...a square with big shade trees, etc.....more speeches; i’m offered to the community; the community accepts me; i accept their acceptance, etc.

I am the first Peace Corps Volunteer this community has ever had.

I don’t understand the role of the chiefs yet...and it will take some time.

At first i thought that chiefs were the head of tribes..like the Ashanti, Aka, Ewe...but now i think that yes, there is a tribal system but there is a clan or family system underneath that..and there are chiefs for each family. A family is quite big (he thinks..) and maybe everyone in a community like Whuti is ‘under’ the chief, Togbui...but for example there seem to be four or five people who are addressed/introduced to me as chiefs/Togbui’s but seem then to be in some kind of hierarchy. The person i recognise as Togbui here is clearly the community leader and takes the lead over all the other ‘chiefs’ at ceremonial occasions, and in meetings, etc. I often meet with him, despite the fact that he lives and works in Accra and only comes to Whuti when he is needed in his role for ceremonies, meetings, etc. BTW..in Accra, he is, apparently, an auto mechanic! (Very comic-book-like...by day an auto mechanic, by night a crime-fighting, community leading tribal chief!...made the more so by having seen him in his going to Accra outfit and many times here in his tribal regalia!)

He seems to wield power by virtue of his election...chiefs aren’t automatically taken from the eldest sons..but are found/chosen ..perhaps some time after the chief’s death... from the royal family, which explains perhaps why some chiefs are women.

How much power? Well he can’t raise money with taxes; perhaps he gets rents/use fees from tribal lands but whatever money he collects has to be plowed back into the community? And he doesn’t act as the town’s mayor or manage the town’s ‘administration’ and so monies from the district capital, Keta, don’t come to him as an operating budget. In fact, Whuti doesn’t seem to have any powers of its own..doesn’t in fact have any administration..and none of the buildings, etc that might be associated with such an identity.....like, for example, a bank, post office, town hall, licensing authority, telephone exchange ....exist in Whuti. Beyond a public toilet (one), one Primary School, one Junior Secondary that sits on the border of Whuti and neighbouring Srogbe, and a couple of churches (are they public buildings?) i can’t think of a single public building in Whuti at all! (.... i sometimes wonder why it exists but maybe that is mean and it has always existed and therefore...but when a place has no ability to raise money, no administrative entity, and no operating budget, one might wonder how it improves its lot in life...ah, maybe that’s where Peace Corps come in!)

My role here, at the highest levels, and consistent perhaps across PC and the community and in my own head, is to use my business skills and experience to generally help the community be more ‘successful’ (i.e. raise income levels) by aiding small businesses to get going, to expand, to be more efficient, etc...even to attract more business opportunities to the town..and in PC terms, to increase the town’s business capacity. (And, of course, micro-finance is one way that i see to help make this happen.) Nominally, of course, my role is to get the US-funded Whuti community library and internet cafe up and running (..and formally commissioned ) wherein the internet cafe’s revenues will make the whole operation self-sustaining. In this role, i am serving the community’s longer-term growth and improvement as/if the library becomes an integral part of the community’s education system and a magnet for surrounding communities‘ populations. Similarly, a robust internet cafe, as well as also being a magnet for the area and thus bringing in revenues to Whuti will dramatically improve the general business skills within the community..and theoretically, at least this should help build Whuti’s business capacity. It is a reasonably well-defined opportunity then and all players seem to be somewhat on the same page in recognising and supporting it...including me!

So how does an opportunity like this seem different in Ghana?

Well, i think it is different and hopefully easier to exploit because of Ghana’s history in the last 20-30 years (since the rich world started ‘helping’ Africa in a serious way..or at least with chunks of money) and because you don’t need a team-sheet to tell who the players are. I’ll explain.

I knew before coming here that there are/have been a lot of international agencies, governments, funds, NGO’s, non-NGO groups, and many, many individuals ‘working’ in Ghana and in West Africa for a long time and that because of its relative stability and ‘better’ reputation, Ghana has been the preferred West African aid country rather than any of its West African neighbours. To a large extent this is still true although perhaps there is always a flavour of the month aspect to aid focus and efforts.

Many aid organisations, like PC, for example, have long and ‘good‘ histories with Ghana. To remind, i am a member of the 49th consecutive PC annual intake to Ghana and Ghana was the very first country that ever received PCV’s (30 August 1961).

I suppose over time huge amounts of aid money and effort have come into Ghana from all the various sources...and i would never be able to comment on effectiveness, what might have happened if not, etc.

But it has created a climate, an awareness perhaps, that knows and recognises that aid organisations, their people, their signs, their vehicles, their exhortations are a part of the country’s current definition.

Being able to easily see this aspect of the country’s definition is what i mean by not needing a team-sheet. Much of who, if not what, this whole aid organisation is stands out because the people involved generally look different!....dah, they’re white!..and they hang out behind big signs that say who they are and drive around in 4WD vehicles etc ...OK, maybe that’s a bit unfair.... They are very easily identifiable ..and that means not just by me, but by everyone. Down here in the Keta district, i KNOW that every white person i see is an aid person of some description.

That means two things to me..so far.

It means that most communites and their people already have some experience of aid organisations and their people. Ghanaians do indeed seem a very welcoming and generally happy and smiling people, if one can generalise, and that means that one genuinely does feel welcomed and encouraged when one meets the people of a community. The impression from many people in this community, for example, is that i can help them in many ways and that they want my help and will work with me. My guess from everything that i’ve heard so far from PC and non-PC volunteers that i’ve met is that this is true across the country.

That of itself makes Ghana quite different for me and does indeed seem to provide real opportunity.

The other ‘thing’ that this aid organisation/people national ‘awareness’ means to me pertains to my ability to exploit this opportunity here. Again, i knew going in that my ability to actually help a community is going to partially depend on my ability to make contacts and work with other volunteers/aid organisations working in Ghana and particularly my area and this has already borne fruit and is off to a good start.

One can basically guarantee that every white person one sees in this area and every ‘yevu’ one hears about is an aid person..and i’ve stopped tro-tro’s and people out jogging tho not yet flagged down 4WD SUV’s to introduce myself and find out what people are doing here. It’s fun!

That is how i found a very promising Micro-Finance opportunity for Whuti. First, on my site visit here seven weeks ago, i stopped a young guy, a University of Washington student on a short-term assignment in the area, while he was jogging! I got particulars of his work and the US-backed organisation from him and then last Sunday coming back from a long beach walk and walking through the community where their work is based, i asked around as to where the yevu lives and eventually found his organisational successor at the MFI! And it is indeed a very promising partner for me and Whuti!

I look forward to many such serendipitous contacts!

Accra, of course, and especially the area, Osu, around the US Embassy, the Ambassadors’s Residence and the Peace Corps offices is awash with signs for/directions to aid organisations of all shapes and sizes..from USAID, and UNHCR to small NGO’s and to understand Ghana and to get as much help as possible for Whuti i will need to become familiar with Accra too.

Now, just in case, you all think that i’m being too optimistic, i have already noted many, many signs in the area of aid efforts in the past, all the way up to the Millennium Challenge and major Western government ‘investments’ ....and most seem to be only half-completed or abandoned. That is sobering...help and great ideas aren’t much use unless the results of such are self-sustaining (even profitable!) activities. I think i have to be very careful with this.

And to those who still wonder why i am doing this....there are many aspects of this PCV life in Africa that i clearly enjoy and could we honestly come up with a better, more interesting, more challenging way for me to spend the next two years of my life??

..and now that i’m done with this, it’s time (past time) to go out running and see if the fishermen need help!