Not a moment too soon...

“You’re lucky you’re leaving now,” a fellow professor in my department said to me the other day. The reason? I had asked her a question about the murkiness of the air outside.

                This is, I guess, sort of a follow-up to the previous blog post, which mentioned the bright red sunsets, and the pink dust that was swirled up into the air by passing vehicles.

                In the few days since I wrote that, things have visibly changed, and yesterday, it finally clicked with me: the air looked different. When I tried to imagine how to describe it, the best I could come up with was what it’s like when the very first wisps of fog start blowing in: you can’t actually see anything there, as you can later when you see the water particles and the dense mass of the fog; instead, you just have the impression of murkiness – you know, sort of like what some of us have when we realize that it’s time to put on the reading glasses.

                The air was just starting to look thick. Things 40 or 50 feet away were perfectly clear. A couple hundred feet away, there was this indistinct thickness. And in the distance – a thick haze like the pollution over Athens on a hot day.

                “Ah,” I said to myself. “The harmattan has definitely arrived.”

                This is a seasonal phenomenon in Ghana that nobody seems to like, natives and short-timers alike. It’s the name of a wind – a wind like the mistral, or the Chinook. This one originates in the Sahara, and blows south until it reaches, well, our flat, and then blows out to sea. It carries the finest possible dust with it; it picks up more dust from the dry earth everywhere; and it reverses the normal northerly wind direction that typically brings moist air in from the ocean. The result is hazy air, painfully chapped lips, hotter days. Not a lot to recommend it!   

                It is, they tell us, far more pronounced in northern Ghana, where the dust is thicker and the winds get stronger. Here, at least so far, the wind hasn’t been all that strong, although I have noticed more leaves blowing off trees and being tossed around.

                “As early as 1671 English adventurers spoke of it,” writes Allan A. Metcalf in a book I found on Google, “one of the few words of Twi [one of the local languages of the south of Ghana] that have entered the English vocabulary…. In 1845 the naturalist Charles Darwin saw the harmattan ‘raise clouds of dust high into the atmosphere.’"

                It will continue for who knows how long – probably until we return here in late January, maybe longer; with climate change seemingly affecting Africa particularly strongly, nobody really seems to know how these phenomena will act these days.

                So this is why my friend said I was lucky to be leaving. We just hope the dust hasn’t infiltrated EVERY corner of our flat by the time we return!

               

What season did you say it is?

                Theresa is already home in Seattle, but I still have a few more days in Accra, where, incidentally, it is currently 53 degrees warmer than it is back where she is. Or make that HOTTER. So the blog must go on!

                We have talked a lot about whether they do or don’t have what we think of as “seasons” here. The length of day never varies; the temperatures never cool down. There is supposedly a wet season and a dry season, although nobody really agrees on when each will start and end.

                But you do see changes in the vegetation – and one of them, in the past month, has been a number of trees on campus suddenly bursting into quite lovely bloom. The ones in the photo are typical – we pass these on the way to the swimming pool. We don’t have any idea what makes trees suddenly bloom when what we think of the triggers of springtime (thawing ground, longer days) simply don’t exist. Perhaps it is because it has been sooooo dry now for such a stretch, which people tell us will last until maybe next March. But it adds a nice visual highlight!

                The dry weather also means there is pink sandy dust everywhere, including in the air. The guy sitting in an open stall selling phone airtime over near the fruit and vegetable is now wearing a filter over his nose and mouth and protective glasses, because he’s right next to a busy dirt roadway. A more attractive result of the dust is that when the sun sets these days outside our kitchen window, it is a huge, enormous red ball – very spectacular.

                Meanwhile, in another topic I’m touching on because it is related to the natural world (can you tell that I’ve been teaching my journalism students about transitions?), here’s another odd sight on campus. Right near those colorful trees there’s a large football (soccer) field. Lately, it has been populated by two clumps of very big birds: loud, obnoxious black and white crows; and the slightly scary looking black vultures that also roost in tall trees on campus.

                Not quite sure what they’re doing there, but they definitely are hanging out in their two groups, sizing each other up a bit but mostly staying on their own. It almost makes you think that if you tossed a football out there, they’d move it down the field. Goodness knows they’re big enough to do it…

Butterflies, bats and beauty

The hike got a lot steeper than this!

Our car’s inaugural trip was to the Volta Region, a hilly area east of Lake Volta. We first went to a small town called Biakpa, near a monkey sanctuary, though we opted not to go see the monkeys. It was nice enough just to be in a high, relatively cool place and do some hiking. We walked up Mt. Gema, a knob above a beautiful little village called Amedzofe. Amedzofe is full of little houses painted all kinds of colors – bright pink, pastel green, yellow with blue inside veranda arches. The people were extremely friendly, and Bill and I spent a nice evening just wandering the town talking to everyone. We also hiked down into a valley to a waterfall – a hike that included a rappel down a rock wall. 

We met up with some friends on the Biakpa portion of the trip, then meandered on our own to see the big waterfall of Ghana, Wli Falls. We figured this would be anticlimactic for us, since at home there are so many high waterfalls, but of course everything is different here. For example, all along the trail we were accompanied by flitting colorful butterflies. Bill said, "It's like we are in a Disney movie," because the butterflies would fly just ahead of us on the path as if they were leading us to some magical place. When we got to the waterfall we thought we saw birds flitting in and out of it, but upon examination with the binoculars we realized the “birds” were huge bats. And then we realized that on the rock wall next to the waterfall there were hundreds – maybe thousands – of bats. They had big wingspans so we guessed they were fruit bats. Later that evening our host at the Waterfall Lodge told us the bats fly in big groups (what do you call a bunch of bats – it’s a “murder of crows,” for example, but bats?) to the fields to feast on fruit, including her pawpaws (papayas).

On one hike, to Tagbo Falls near the village of Liate Woti, the path was scented by plumeria trees. Our young guide Wisdom told us that the Ewe people (originally from “Togoland” – we could almost spit across the border to Togo we were so close) call the trees “forget-me-not trees” because wherever you see five plumeria trees together there is a cemetery. So we spent the rest of the trip watching for groves of plumeria, and suddenly saw cemeteries everywhere. 

Kente weaving is done in strips on a wooden loom.

On the trip we visited a village where men and women sit outside their huts doing intricate kente weaving; and a small factory where they make beautiful multicolored beads out of every kind of recycled glass imaginable – some pictures are on the web album, link to right.

Toes are an essential part of the process!

A good trip with a mix of culture and exercise – our favorite kind of vacation!

       

You don't buy a car here, you WORK for it

                Theresa mentioned in the last post the exciting news that we have finally purchased a car, a huge step forward on the freedom front – freedom to roam some of the beautiful Ghanaian countryside, and freedom from absolute dependence on tro-tros and taxis (much as we sometimes love them both) for every move in town.

                But the casual way she mentioned it MAY have made it sound like we wandered over to our local dealer, picked out a car, and drove away that afternoon.

                You don’t really think it was like that, do you?

                We learned a lot, for better and sometimes for worse, in that month-long process. There are car dealerships here, but as in the States, they are overpriced; and as with everything else commercial, there is a huge alternative “marketplace,” consisting of small operations with as few as one or two cars for sale along the side of the road to larger ones with parking lots full. Many of those vehicles – most, we think – aren’t owned by the person who runs the lot; he has them on consignment from the real owner, which of course complicates the bargaining.

                There is also a pretty good Internet car-trading site. We (especially T.) spent a lot of time on that, and we both went around with driver-friend Kwame and mechanic Gregory to look at maybe a half-dozen or more cars individually. In the end, we settled on one we found on a notice board in the U.S. Embassy, offered by a young woman who is being transferred to China and wisely doesn’t want her car there. It’s quite new, very low mileage – Gregory was drooling over it.

                But finding and settling on the car was the easy part. We not only had to get it registered – we’d been warned how challenging that would be – but we had to pay the Customs duty on it, since it had been imported as a diplomatic vehicle exempt from such things. And now the “fun” begins.

                I went with helper-facilitator-translator-driver Gabriel to the Customs office. We were met at the gate by two guys with badges around their necks; apparently it’s required that they accompany you into the labyrinth within as “fixers” and guides. (Can you hear the sound of “ka-ching” in the background?)

Supposedly this would be a straightforward process, since the Embassy had done all the paperwork establishing the car’s value and had received official approval and documentation of the fees due. But our very first stop was at an office where shaking of heads and knitting of eyebrows ensued. We only had one original signed copy of a certain form; we needed two. (This was the fault of the seller, but we didn’t know it at the time.) Worried, stern looks all around. Suggestions that we would have to leave and return once we had found the other form. Steam starting to rise from my ears.

And then – a Customs officer emerges from the building. One of the fixers points to him and says, he is willing to accept this single form. But you need to give him 20 cedis (roughly $15). The money changed hands; seemed like a tiny amount, considering the duty was more like 3,000 cedis.

But it DID make me smile, ruefully, as we proceeded to the very next office on our route, which had a sign next to its door (see accompanying photo). Hmm, I wondered. Was the 20 cedis a bribe? Was it just “appreciation,” as they like to say? Was I a criminal now?

This was the start of what turned out to be four nearly full days of navigating the bureaucracy – two days at Customs, and two more doing the vehicle registration. It was alternately maddening, hysterically funny, baffling, horrifying. I had Gabriel’s help through the Customs part; and we hired a guy whose business is to get people through the registration part. Evidently, while you CAN do that yourself, those who are on their own will wait the longest, while those with fixers – who understand the system and, presumably, have greased some wheels – get through more quickly.

In the end, I had made “appreciation” payments totaling roughly 60 cedis to: that first Customs officer; the two “guides”; the person at the official vehicle inspection station who actually inspected the car (after first paying the official FEE for the inspection, naturally); and the woman who picked up our paperwork from the guy who inspected the car. (As we left, the fixer pointed to a group of people sitting in the shade. They had not paid “appreciation,” he said. They had been sitting there for several hours and might not leave until the end of the day.) We had paid an unexpected, but apparently legal, fee of 300 cedis for the expediting firm that types in the official Customs paperwork; the cost of hiring Gabriel (and tipping him, which he richly deserved) for two long stints at Customs; and the cost of the guy who helped with the registration – well worth it, but that didn’t make it less aggravating. I had openly lost my temper once, resulting in alarmed looks and soothing gestures from the fixer and the officer in question alike (and also, I think, the results I was looking for).

The funniest part, I suppose, was at the very end. Theresa was with me for the fourth and final day of this trip through bureaucratic hell, and our final stop was a little area next to the registration office, where the fixer would attach our new plates. This turned out to be the Vehicle Accessories And Everything You Might Want Plus Many Things You Don’t Want marketplace. There were booths for insurance companies, and then, roaming around like schools of piranhas, guys selling it all: floor mats, wiper blades, key chains, seat covers, fancy hub caps, and on and on. Before I knew what was happening, one guy had nearly finished installing a new steering-wheel cover. Another guy had a can of spray paint ready to spiff up our tires, apparently.  Theresa bargained excellently and got us some floor mats, which we needed, but we mistakenly did NOT purchase a fire extinguisher, which we later learned is a required item here. It was a madhouse, but entertaining nonetheless.

At the end of this, exhausted but thrilled to have our car, we couldn’t help thinking: We have just had a tiny look inside what ordinary Ghanaians have to deal with in so many areas of their lives. Numerous people have told us how infuriating it is to go through things like the car-registration process, filled with its inefficiencies, byzantine procedures, and “appreciation” fees. They know about the waste of time and resources; and how much better off their people would be if all this would disappear.

They just don’t know how to make that happen – and without strong demands for it from the top, we don’t know how it will happen, either.

Yum, gravy

Pilgrims? No. Harvest? No. Family? Sadly, no. 

But turkey? Yes! While you were all tearing into your big birds, well, so were we. Of course Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Ghana by the locals, but it is by the ex-pats, of which there is a huge community. Our own gathering was thanks to the US Ambassador who invited a big group of ex-pats – mainly Peace Corps members – to his residence for turkey and all the trimmings. Yum, it really was great – lotsa gravy and even pumpkin pies,  sans the whipping cream. (Dairy is not big here.) There were 16 turkeys! The PC-ers dove into the beer and food line as if they were starving, but there was a little left for the likes of us!

Ambassador  Donald Teitelbaum at the turkey table

It was fun and a chance to meet interesting people. One young woman is in Kumasi studying childhood pneumonia, another woman is here with her 9-yr.-old daughter, also in Kumasi, doing research on street girls. And there are lots of other interesting projects going on.

Our tax dollars at work. Nice residence, a little different from our flat.

The ambassador’s residence is very nice, including a big collection of art from the National Gallery. He declined the opportunity to switch homes for a weekend, can’t imagine why. 

The next day we left on a trip in our CAR! That is something we are really thankful for – we have a small-but-strong Yaris and we gave it an inaugural voyage east of the Volta. More on that in the next post. We are also thankful for our friends and family, all of you who let us do this crazy thing that we do.

 

Little Abena (Tuesda) Saree-Su (after the person who managed the money to purchase it), our car ...