*Circle refers to the transport heading towards Kwame
Nkrumah Circle, the major transport nucleus of Accra
**37 refers to the tro-tro’s heading towards the “Number 37
Military Hospital”.
However, the products one wants to potentially purchase are
not necessarily grouped in categories. Walking down the potholed tar trail
toward say, ‘37’, one can step over shirts spread over a sheet in the middle of
the road (to me moved when vehicles hoot to pass), glance over to the sugar can
sellers, blink and then there is a woman selling chillies and hard boiled eggs.
On the other side a man with cellphone accessories and hairdryers. And pegs.
And then more clothes, this time socks and men’s suit jackets, around the
corner from the woman who had piled soap and ointment onto a table in front of
her. I bought 2 smart skirts which I can wear for work; one black and knee
length and one black and white and high-waisted. Our fantastic metro-homosexual
friend came to join us, and I bought collard shirts to go along with it. We
then ran around missioning for a black shirt for my South African, black
clothes was the main purpose of this expedition but things in Ghana seem to be
that everything is on offer, except the
things you really need at that moment.
Getting home exhausted, it was good to sit and catch up with
the housemates after a seemingly long period of absence (from our week away)
but everyone was dying. We had one heart-burn, one vomiter, a diarrhoea or two,
a slight fever, and many mosquito bites.
Saturday morning would have been a day for waking up late
and having a long and leisurely breakfast. However, it was not. We had been
invited to the funeral of the brother of the lady who cooks for us all, he was
in his 20’s when he died. He is her little brother, she is 27ish and it was due
to illness. People tried not to cry, funerals here are supposed to be
celebrations of peoples lives. Some people have parties with drinking and
dancing (my boss, the high profile lawyer even said to me ‘oh I hope you get to
go to a funeral during your time in Ghana). But this was a funeral as I know
them to be, with sadness seeping out from under the lids. I didn’t know the
system with conduct and condolences, but human instinct, wrong or right took
the lead; with hugging holding blessing wishing.
After the funeral, 3 of us; me, my South African, and the
medical student from Ohio, set off on a mission to Kasoa, where I had planned
to meet a woman with whom I’ve been in correspondence but never actually met.
Her brother and her and a brother in law were planning to start up an NGO for
Health and Education for children under five, and we had offered to help out.
She was younger than I expected, and we were certainly younger than she
expected, although I’m not sure they worked out exacly how young we really
were. Unfortunatly that had had the impression that we were experts in things
like Human Rights, Education and Health and whilst we each had a great passion
(respectively) for these things; we had expected THEM to be experts, and to
tell us what they want from us, what kind of general labour we could do for
them. Neither party had a plan; what I’m beginning to learn is that there are
so many good hearted people in Ghana, with high hopes and dreams of starting
organisations and projects that help people, but they don’t know where to
begin. And this both scares and inspires me; echoing my personal plans in a
nerve-racking manner. Both the organisation I’m in the program with (under the Director I keep referencing) and now,
these pure-hearted people in a rural neighbourhood outside of Accra. We planned
to keep in touch, but until they know what they want, we can’t really help
them, as much as we would like to. They want us to provide a network of
volunteers, start-up advice, legal and business tips. I’d hoped that they had
that, and that we can do the ground work. However, the meeting was hopefully
not the end of our correspondence; the woman is so lovely and invited me to come
visit her home, stay with her one day. I hope we can help, somehow.
Monday, I went to the Human Rights court, to the Registry,
to the court to see the Court Clerk, to the documents office. It was really
exciting because before that little adventure I had heard of none of the
above-mentioned things. I’m learned that Human Rights interns do a lot of
missioning to the far-out and complicated places, that the lawyers are too
qualified to do. Which works great with me. It involved meeting all the people,
wearing posh suits, and making politie demands. But for me it involved seeing
the people who are ‘qualified’ enough to make decisions on other people’s
lives, seeing how they are as humans. And how these decisions are made. And seeing
how the papers get lost along the way. And how life-affecting cases are
adjourned, and people remain in prison, for months, years without even being
found guilty or not.
On Tuesday I missioned to the Immigration Office, although
this was personal- I needed to extend my visa that the incompetent Embassy in
South Africa had issued me. And here I learned the power of power-dressing.
High-waisted skirts and well-ironed shirts, got me through the process at 5x
the speed of my attempts in South Africa. A bussines-man even sat next to me
and discussed things like the slowness of the system, and how if ‘they can do
it in the UK, why cant they do it here’ and I was like ‘ehh uhh I’m actually
kinda impressed with this’.
See, just because I pretend to walk the walk, I cannot forge
the talk-the talk.
Wednesday was back in the human rights court.
On Thursday I missioned, with 2 of my colleagues, also both
(unrelatedly), Refugee people(!) to 3 different national news and media
centres, each more official than the next -for research on a project of spousal
murders. It seems like we’ll need to
return with identity documents, letters of invitation, and the incentive to
read through all newspapers of the last 2 years….
But it was fun trying to find these places, with no address,
or knowledge about which tro-tro to
take, where. People here are so willing
to help. They will walk you to the ends of the earth if you’re lost enough, and
then offer to pay your return trip to Mars. (Except for some of course, whom
point you to the wrong solar system before demanding a fee. But so far these
earthlings are in the minority.)
On Friday I went to the Refugee Board, it involved 6 tro-tros altogether. The biggest of
missions, although not unpleasant. These things are pleasant enough if you can
be patient and relaxed. I’ve been practising. However, once I was there, it was really
scary. I guess I want prepared, and they gave me all this information that I hadn’t
been told of before, basically about how the client is wrong and they are
right, and I said what I had come to say but I was shaken. They threatened me,
they said “oh, well we should really report him to immigration to be deported” and
I tried to be brave, but I was petrified. I left without saying goodbye.
That night we went to fetch our dresses for the wedding from
the weird little town we had them made. On the way back me and the American social-justice-and-dance
housemate stopped at a gas-station store. I bought a bottle of wine for Shabbat
and chocolate. We didn’t end up doing Shabbat, which brought about the usual unbearable
nostalgia, and soon woke up at 4.30 for the adventure of the weekend…
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