Ghana: The Scent of Asia and Musk of Obama

My first thought when I arrived in Ghana was, "This place smells like Asia." I can't really explain why. Maybe it's the tree-covered sidewalks with open drainage ditches that reminds me of China. Maybe it's all the wonderful street food and the culture of eating out that makes a quick bite on the road a cheap and tasty option. Maybe it's the insane Accra traffic that's resulted in traffic jams unseen to me since Bangladesh (I thought Africans don't own cars?!).

Accra (pop. ~4 million) is the bustling economic and political capital of the country nestled in the armpit of Africa. In the World Bank's latest "Doing Business" report that looks at the ease of doing business, Ghana ranked behind only Kenya, Tunisia, Botswana, South Africa, and Mauritius within Africa. Possibly as evidence, there are six cell phone companies competing here, easily the most I've seen in Africa, and even Asia. Driving around you can see construction sites of towers and office buildings going up that bring me back to India and China. The locals, as the country director of the NGO I'm volunteering with explained, carry a "sense of arrogance". But it's a good arrogance, something you don't see too often in Africa. They don't want pity. I've been trying to collect flags in each country I travel. Mozambique was a pretty hard find, as was Zimbabwe, but you'd have to be legless to not trip over a "Black Star" flag here. They are proud to be Ghanian.

And if Africa is the land of Obamarama, then Ghana is ground zero of this stars and stripes lovefest. Typically, in a tro-tro (the local minibus transport I take around), hanging on the rear view mirror is a Black Star flag and an American flag air freshener. Or, there will be an American flag on the dash with a big Obama face over the background of stripes, exactly like this one. It doesn't stop there, of course - lines of products have been released. I was pretty amazed when I drove past this the other day. The love for Obama stems primarily from his visit to the country just over a year ago, and the President's African roots.

Then there's the friendliness of the people. From my travels there seems to be two things that are almost universally the same across countries (at least poor countries). The first is that when locals are trying to sum up a country, they talk about how the X people are "very social". This isn't really unique to a country. The second thing is that X people are very friendly. I haven't been to a country yet where I didn't think the people were friendly. But here is where Ghana stands out - like in Bangladesh, random Ghanaians have actually sent me messages on CouchSurfing asking me to visit them. This has happened in no other country than Bangladesh for me.

So what am I actually doing here? I'm spending about a month and a half with TechnoServe helping them with a proposal for a project that will potentially work with rural farmers in norther Ghana. While I'm not at liberty to say much more than that, I can say it has been really challenging and extremely interesting to learn about different approaches to agriculture and eradicating rural poverty. And, in the meantime I'm learning about different aspects and approaches of poverty and poverty alleviation unrelated to my work, and of course sampling some of the best that Obama has to offer.

The Haves and Have Nots of the World Cup

Two nights in the wonderful 5-star Lagos, Nigeria airport terminal and a week in South Africa later, I'm now in Ghana. Horrible visa complications prevented me from ever boarding in Lagos, and I endured a two-day Tom Hanks-like festival during which I was patted down enough times by security for it to be considered a mild form of sexual harassment. By the end of it I knew not only which crackers were the best bang for the buck or where to find free internet, but also how to sculpt my McDonald's-French-fries-greasy hair into different works of art.

To make a long story short, they kicked me back to South Africa, almost unwillingly. At one point there were threats to send me back home. I went immediately toPretoria to get things sorted out, and was able to stay two nights with an Afrikaans couple. The first night there was a braai (like a BBQ) at their neighbor's, an extremely nice native South African

couple who were best friends to my white hosts. This was indicative of the composition of the rest of the guests. Considering that even in the US de facto segregation is alive and well, it was inspiring to see this in a country which has emerged from apartheid less than 20 years ago. Of course, with this diverse group of individuals, I had some extremely stimulating conversations about race, politics, and poverty.

With a few days to kill until my flight, I tried to make the best of bad situation and grabbed my vuvuzela and headed to Durban for the Spain/Germany game. The beach-front city was exploding with energy, and I can't honestly say I focused too much on poverty over those two days. The game experience was amazin

g, even if the play wasn't too inspiring. One interesting thing is that vuvuzelas aren't as annoying in person as on TV - there's no constant buzz. Instead, there are single blows and coordinated chants - all jumbled up it just sounds like a buzz on TV.

On my last day I headed back toJourg to catch my flight, and with time to kill I went to Soweto to check on my friends. I had no one's phone number, so I just popped into the Motsoaledi neighborhood. At first it seemed a hero's welcome. Everyone still knew me. Even people I couldn't remember. They asked, "Are you looking for Siphiwe?" But it wasn't that positive. Not much had changed for Siphiwe. World Cup hadn't brought as much tourism to him as planned. He had stopped going to church but said he would soon, now that the Cup was finished. I popped in to see Sandy - the welcome was warm, but I didn't stay for long. While I was there she talked, between taking pinches of snuff, about how the World Cup really hadn't helped her shebeen much at all. Then I went to see to Nessie's bar and, of course,

found Patricia and everyone else. I don't think they ever expected to see me back. Again, I saw that nothing much had changed, except Junior quitting his restaurant job and becoming unemployed because he thought it was too much work for too little pay.

In just a matter of days I saw the best and brightest of South Africa on display for all the foreigners like myself, while just next door in Motsoaledi things are going nowhere fast. What will be the legacy of this World Cup? Will it bring more attention to the plight that the majority of South Africans find themselves in, even whites? Will the government use revenue and goodwill of the world earned from a Cup well-run to improve access to opportunities for people like Siphiwe? Or will it be just another big glamorous sporting event for "haves" like myself? I shudder to think of the likelihood of each.

The Taking of Summerhill: A Story of Race, Injustice, and Corruption

“’Look, if you’re going to take the farm, and that’s inevitably what’s going to happen, you can have the second farm.’ And they [the Zimbabwean government] said, ‘Well that’s not enough.’ So, they said, ‘We’ll take some of your main farm,’ which was Summerhill.”

In an office in Harare, I listened to Myles Hall explain how the Zimbabwean government had first taken his second farm and then the first piece of the Summerhill farm that I visited a few days later.

This was only the beginning. Eventually they took more. Myles explains this in the clip below his encounter with Kindness Paradza.

The ironic thing is that Kindness' surname, Paradza, means "to break up/destroy". Myles just laughs about the whole situation. From there Myles and his family moved into his parents' home on the last remaining piece of Summerhill. Nomhle Mliswa had been trying to get the last of his farm. During the course of over a month in 2007, Myles' workers stood their ground to security guards and their large dogs - partly out of loyalty and partly because they hadn't been paid for that month - to protect the farm. They guarded in 12-hour shifts at the gate. As the niece of Zanu-PF henchman Didymus Mutasa, Mliswa finally made it happen.

Said Myles, “And while I was in town one day she moved into my house and I never got back in again. That was on the 20^th of September, 2007.” But even then his workers didn't leave. Now on the outside of the gate, they stayed to make sure no equipment was stolen.

For close to a month I traveled the country talking to farmers and workers, and this is only a sliver of what I found. I could write an entire separate blog on the stories of injustice and brutality toward (and sometimes killings of) farmers, their workers, and especially farm animals. And it's still going on. Once, when trying to travel to a farm in Chipinge, my host told me we couldn't go because there were fresh attacks. Only later did I see this news report. Farmers and their workers have an amazing memory of how the events unfolded for themselves, and a disturbingly sharp recollection of exact dates, kind of like how you remember exactly what you were doing on 9/11.

But this isn't just about the white farmers, many of whom have seen their entire life savings dry up in the government's inflationary blunders and lost their livelihoods. It's also about the millions of people they employed directly and indirectly. John Mbewe, after losing his job at Myles' farm, came to community farmer Dave Fortecue (a friend of Myles) with no options. "It was July 28th," he recalls. "When I started working with Dave, there was a big problem for me...I was left with only two buckets of maize," and "I use two buckets of maize per month with my family.” Once down to his last month of food, John is now succeeding with Dave's help. But it's not that way for all the former workers. Shaddai Kumiti, who herds what's left of Myles' cattle, explains in the video.

And what is happening with this land now? Not much. Many of the farmers who took over, with their political or big business jobs, live in Harare. Farmers and their workers derisively call them "cell phone farmers". Shaddai and Clever Kudenga talk about what's been going on at Nomhle Mliswa's farm and Paradza's farm. (note: when they talk about Nomsa, they're referring to Nomhle)

It's a sad state government officials have driven Zimbabwe into. What was labeled on paper as taking back the land for the common black natives has instead turned out to be an all-you-can-grab land buffet for government officials and their kin. With new policies and corruption happening all the time, no one can really plan for the future. And when you can't plan, it's hard, or maybe more accurately - silly - to invest, which is the main way to get a country to grow. With the incredible brain drain happening (I recently sat on a flight next to an Egyptian ear and throat doctor, who is now the only one in all of southern Zimbabwe), it's tempting to think that if things don't turn around soon it could be all but over for Zim. But, as one farmer explained to me, "It's never too late."

Mountains and Oceans after a Year’s Travel

I recently gave up a chance to hike Kilimanjaro. I have the money and I was only a bus ride away. Tight timing and friends in Ghana were the deciding factors, but I could have still probably worked it out. What I’ve come to accept – as if to steal a hackneyed adage from “Into the Wild” – is that happiness is only real when shared. For me, enjoyment comes best when an experience is shared with someone. Kilimanjaro will wait.

But, traveling alone does have one huge benefit – it allows you to learn for yourself. For me, it has allowed me to – as I explained before – better understand myself and, as naïve as this sounds, the meaning of this whole life thing. I don’t claim to completely understand either, but I know I’m closer than when I started.

I suppose that it’s somewhat odd that I’m talking about life on the one-year anniversary of launching off first class to Bangladesh, since my project is on poverty and development. Take a look at my proposal and you’ll find nothing about fluffy things like self-realization or the meaning of life. That’s not to say I’m not fulfilling my goals set forth in my proposal – I’ve done amazing things and have learned more about development and the challenges to overcoming poverty than I imagined. But I think when the wonderful people at Vanderbilt set up this fellowship, they probably had an idea that there would be this added benefit.

During the past year I’ve experienced extraordinary highs (none drug-related, just to be clear) – an early run through the crisp mist of rural China; meeting some of the leaders in social business arena; sleeping in one of the oldest slums in South Africa; getting one final rickshaw ride from Anis; poking around Zimbabwe to get information about the brutality toward farmers and their workers, without getting the government’s wrath myself.

And I’ve experienced extreme lows – lonely, depressing nights in the hotel room; occasional feelings that I’m not achieving my objectives; getting robbed $2,000 shortly before tripping and injuring myself on a run (stupid potholes Zimbabwe government never fixes…); two plus days in the non-air conditioned Lagos, Nigeria airport where by the end of it, my hair was so greasy I could sculpt it; wondering if without deadlines, I really have lost all my discipline.

One of the most depressing things has also been one of the most important – something I can’t get out of my head. Everywhere I go I see people going through the motions: 9-5 job working for someone, make enough money to pay the bills, have a few kids, relax on the weekend, repeat ad nauseum for years, then retire and die, usually pretty close to where they were born. Nothing very extraordinary, so it seems. I see it in every country I go to. Two things come out of this for me. First, I’m not trying to be condescending. Extraordinary, I think, is a self-defined word in the sense that I'm talking about it. Rather, I’m concerned that a life which falls below my personal expectations could happen to me. An average life scares me, and it seems like it can happen so easily.

The second thing is that logically, there seems like there has to be something more than this routine the majority of us are boxed into. I’ve spent a lot of time with Christian farmers, and so you know how their perspective goes (our time here on earth is a testing ground). I hope and plan to spend some substantial time thinking, talking, and reading about this issue.

As I move into the second year of my fellowship – no, I don’t know when I’m coming home – I already have things I want to explore upon my return, many new friends to reunite with in the States and abroad, and plenty more experiences on deck for the rest of Africa and South America.

Seeing Victoria Falls from another Perspective

A trip to Zimbabwe would not be complete with a stop in Vic Falls. I settled into Shoestrings Backpackers with a couple guys I met on the bus. I can’t seem to totally recall Niagra, but the sheer spray from these falls soaked me to the bone. Then there was the sunset cruise on the Zambezi River, where we saw elephants, hippos, and crocodiles, and obviously jumping on one of the highest bungees in the world (which was petrifying and amazing at the same time). Multiple people told me about detached retinas resulting from jumping, but I say it was a retina well worth it.

During my wait to hitchhike to the next destination, a skinny young guy named Stanely struck up a conversation with me. We talked for a bit and he said he wanted to show me his art, but I had to wait for a ride. He went home into the bush, and never came back withthe promised art. So as I had been waiting for over an hour with the sun beginning to set, I decided to try to find him. Walking into the abyss of the bush made me feel a bit like Kevin Costner in a corn field. I followed random paths for about 75 meters of thick bush. Then suddenly it cleared, with an entire colorless community of gray cinder block homes in front of me.

Why I did I walk in after this guy, who was probably no different than the myriad of hawkers on the street? I did it partly because I wanted to see his art, but mostly because I wanted to see what life was like over here. I’ve come to realize that I care pretty little about the tallest building, wildlife parks, old temples, etc. I certainly would never give up my Great Wall or Taj Mahal experience, but you don’t understand a country and its people on guided tours or viewing monuments. Give me a cup of coffee with local or a couple nights stay in the slums any day of the week. Anyway, after clumsily asking around for a guy named Stanely, two round, jolly women helped me out. Word got out that a white guy was looking for Stanely, and it wasn’t long before he found me.

Within in half an hour I had two offersof places stay, and decided on Stanely. I was ushered into his three-room home that was only slightly bigger than my room back home. As I sifted through his keychain art (he carved some out of cow bone from beef his family had eaten), we chatted about himself. He was a Rasta (he must have lit up close to 10 times during my stay), and sells his art at a local market, though he is trying to learn Spanish so he can become a tour guide. The house was his uncle’s, a war veteran who received it free, and most of the houses in the community were free as part of a vote-getting strategy. Stanely would be attending a meeting the next day to sign his name for his house. Married to his wife Philani, he has a 19-month-old baby named Patience (last pic), who was busy wearing more food than she was eating. I don’t blame her – it was some of the nastiest okra I’ve ever had.

After dinner we walked around town looking for the two jolly women I owed a drink for helping me. The community was eerily quiet for a Saturday night. Before this fellowship, I thought the rural areas and slums were full of activity, and people were toiling to make every penny. The pace of life is very slow, not because they are all lazy, but because they don’t have many options. Stanely summed it up the next day when I asked what his plans were for the day. “I have no program. Moving is money.”

Shortly after we went to bed, I heard clapping, whistling, and yelling. From the other room I heard Stanely whisper something like, “There’s an elephant.” The full-grown male elephant was less than 50 feet away from the house, eating a neighbor’s bushes. Some of the neighbors were trying to scare it away and/or agitate it. Stanely said they usually come at night, and this is when they’re most dangerous. I grabbed my camera and ran after the elephant as it walked down the street chowing on bushes. Elephants are an enemy of the locals – they destroy houses, eat crops, and in some cases kill people. I eventually got within 30 feet of the elephant, but once it turned and faced me, I ran pretty quickly in the other direction with all the other locals.

My perception of the poor is a summation of all the people I’ve read about and, most importantly, met. Stanely adds another piece. I wonder about some of his reasoning: That he has no money saved for the Spanish classes, which he needs to get ahead; this is because he’s not earning enough currently to cover his family; but he has enough to pay for marijuana. If you were backed up into that position, would you give up those types up habits and do everything to get ahead? Or does everyone have his/her breaking point or weaknesses? More likely, I think, it’s impossible for me to conceptualize this because I haven’t grown up in the same context as him, where success probably isn’t expected and life is just about getting from one day to the next.

Ostriches, Farming, and the Education Magic Bullet in the Poverty Fight

After Mutare, I crammed into a bus and headed to Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe. I spent the weekend (before last) in the city center, which was surreal. The whole town was essentially empty, the streets were par for the course in Zimbabwe nowadays – badly potholed (Q: How do you tell a drunk Zimbabwean?, A: He drives straight), and there was no power for the majority of the day, which got eerie after nightfall. It felt like traveling back in time or into a zombie movie, or both.

On Monday I was finally able to get in touch with Peter Cunningham, whose name is one of the most recognizable in Zimbabwe for his family’s vast farming enterprises. My stay with the Cunninghams turned out to be interesting for more reasons than just my investigation into the land seizures of Zimbabwean farmers. Peter and his family are very strong in their Christian faith, so this was a great opportunity to bounce some thoughts off him and do some deep thinking about religion.

More importantly for this post, however, what I found interesting is how the Cunninghams are pushing education that has applicability rather than a typical elementary NGO school. Peter and his family are involved in large amounts of agriculture, poultry, and ostrich farming, which was fascinating to say the least. I also got to visit their tannery (80% of their hides go to the US, used mainly in boots). In addition to these business endeavors, they have also started two social organizations, one of which I visited called Ebenezer Agricultural Training Centre. At Ebenzer, which has been running for three years, students undergo a 2-year program in which they learn sustainable, efficient farming (for example, how to use different fertilizers, like ant hill). Each student gets three small plots where they plant things like cabbage, potatoes, and onions, to be sold on the local market as part of the business component of their curriculum. This is paired with class “room” learning (as the picture shows, Ebenezer purposely keeps the conditions very basic).

I think in at least one other post I’ve talked about how I feel education is one ofthe keys to combating poverty. As someone who has been schooled for 19 of my 23 years of existence, I’ll admit that this is probably a biased view. But it wasn’t until recently when I was reading “The Elusive Quest for Growth” by economist William Easterly that I had to revaluate this belief. The book is a pretty dry read and never fails to put me – someone who majored in econ and is interested in poverty – to sleep, but it has some good information. Calling out the World Bank and other organizations who trumpet for universal education, he explains the facts are that there is no relationship between growth in years of schooling and personal income growth, and that actually “world average growth decreased from the 1960s to the 1990s [the time of the education explosion] despite the increase in education levels.”

What Easterly is getting at, and what I think Ebenzer understands, is that there needs to be an incentive to invest in the future. What’s the point of investing in your education if the knowledge gained has no chance of being utilized? As Easterly puts it, “Creating people with high skill in countries where the only profitable activity is lobbying the government for favors is not a formula for success. Creating skills where there exists no technology to use them is not going to foster economic growth.”

Here in Zimbabwe, corruption is rifeand many if not most of the opportunities to use high levels of education have dried up, as most of the expatriates will attest. You will only invest in your education/future if you have a chance of using that education. The country still runs on agriculture (and maybe increasingly so, as industry has sadly left or shut down), and so Ebenzer’s education is very applicable for the young rural farmers who attend. It seems to me that education is a very good thing, but only under the right conditions. More things have to happen than just the education magic bullet.

How Zimbabwe Created the Biggest Dollar Store Ever

I knew Zimbabwe’s inflation rate was high. I’d seen the bar on graphs breaking off the page in The Economist reports. I knew that the hyperinflation had caused prices to change very often. And I also knew that this had caused them to move to the dollar. But I never really thought deeply about it all.

It didn’t really hit me until I was in the Spar grocery store. I wanted to buy a $1.25 bottle of shampoo. I handed the cashier two dollars. She asked, “Do you have 75 cents?” After I said no and she explained she had no change, she said, “What am I supposed to do?” To me this was the most bizarre question.

“Haven’t you run into this problem before? What is everyone else doing?” I asked. “They are using notes.” Then I saw these paper slips, essentially IOUs, with Spar’s logo – I guess that works because people buy groceries often. I went around asking other cashiers whether they had change. Nope. Apparently bills have made it into the country, but coins have not. As a result, the bills get used a lot – just touching them makes you want to wash your hands. A local farmer named Danielle said she and her six friends did an experiment – they put a little black cross on a dollar, and within six weeks they had all at one point had it in their possession. I’m sure the locals are happy to get their hands on my crisp newbies.

Then I started noticing things. The majority of items were one dollar, never less. You could buy 10 pens, a whole sack of apples, two yogurts, etc. On my trip to Bulawayo, I turned to barter. I traded a half a loaf of bread for three bananas, which I used for my peanut butter and banana sandwich. The situation is bit better here in the second largest city Bulawayo, which seems to have more South African rand in circulation. You can give someone dollars and get rand coins as change, like I did two nights ago for my meal over the UK/USA World Cup game. You might find prices in rand right next to dollar prices (pic 3). Apparently, at Victoria Falls, because of the tourists they are using rand, dollars, Zambian kwacha, pounds, and euros. Perhaps the funniest thing is that the Zimbabwean dollar is still the national currency.

How did they get to this point? I’ll save you the history lesson, but basically the Zanu-PF government headed by Robert Mugabe has decreed economic (e.g. printing money) and political policies (e.g. land seizures) in order to maintain power. It started in 2000 and reached its worst in 2007-2008. Some of the guys at the bar recounted how they would come in with plastic bags of money to buy a few drinks (though they couldn’t get beer, only spirits). My friend Dave said he would go into the TM grocery store, and the entire place would be empty save a couple shelves. Bread was a very rare find. When you could find it, you were talking billions or trillions of dollars (see pic 4…that one cent bill is apparently the lowest denomination bill ever made in the world). People eventually turned to the black market – everything everyone was doing was illegal. I asked Natalie, who had lived in Mutare the majority of her life, how she survived when prices were so high and earnings so low, as she had explained to me. “You don’t want to know,” she said laughing. There was plenty of government tampering along the way, of course. Dave explained that he found rice packaged in 10kg sacks that read, “A gift to the people of Zimbabwe from your friends in India.” The intended aid food had been intercepted by the government at the border and was being sold for $50. Those who had a car would go across the border of Mozambique or South Africa with four people or so (200kg quota of food per person), and buy food for several months.

The stores still look empty to me, but everyone says it’s much better now. Moffat, a store owner I talked to, said his entire stock was wiped out when Mugabe ordered a price cut of 50% in mid-July 2007. People ransacked his store. “In 10 minutes, everything was gone.” He’s still recovering. I noticed that the shelves in the back of his store were about 15 feet from the wall because of lack of stock. People still live in fear – they say that they can’t plan for the future when you don’t know if Mugabe will wake up and create or remove a regulation. And, as a result, the country’s population has fallen by 25% as the educated and capable flee. It’s a sad predicament the country once known as “the breadbasket of Africa” is in.