Nickles, Dimes, More Guns, and Football

Guns in Ghana: Part II

The first time I wrote about guns in Ghana, I used sort of an irreverent tone because it was unthinkable that, in this peaceful country with super friendly citizens, people are making and stockpiling small arms for some future tribal conflict. I was wrong. In fact, it’s a very real problem, and parts of Ghana are armed to the teeth. Whether or not everyone starts fighting is anyone’s guess, but the problem of small arms is real and it needs to be addressed. And so, to prove what a big problem small arms are in Ghana, I went to another meeting, this one sponsored by people who believe in stricter gun control. It was also attended by come heavy hitters from Ghana's security services, and some well respected Members of Parliament. It was interesting to see that the traits of bureaucrats and politicians are a pretty consistent across cultures.

The meeting was sponsored by a group called the Ghana Action Network on Small Arms (“GHANSA”) which is a branch of the West Africa Action Network on Small Arms (“WAANSA”), although they seem to share all the same staff and resources. Again, I was the official note taker. However, I’m also a known constitution writer, so I’m part of a small group charged with writing GHANSA’s constitution. Writing constitutions is like riding a bicycle: once you learn, you never forget. Or so I hope. . .

Small arms are things like shot guns, assault rifles, pistols. Basically, any weapon that can be operated by one person. Kofi Annan, the former U.N. Secretary General and perhaps the most famous Ghanaian in the world, has called small arms “Africa’s weapon of mass destruction.” That might sound like a little bit of an exaggeration since small arms are, by definition, rather small. However, when you look at the impact that small arms have on countries, think Sierra Leon and Liberia and Sudan and Somalia and Rwanda, among others, you realize that small arms really can destroy a country.

Tragically, most countries in West Africa, Ghana included, are rife with small arms. The gun problem is not new to West Africa; anthropologically, tribes have a cast of warriors whose job it was to defend the tribes, and those people, at least for the last few hundred years, had guns. Guns were also used for some ritual purposes. Likewise, West Africa has always had its share of wars, but these were small wars and rarely threatened the cohesion of a country (or colony). In the last 20 years or so, partially due to Eastern European countries selling off their cold war arsenals to the highest bidder and partially because Russia needed some cash, guns have flooded into West Africa. Sometimes, and often in Ghana, the guns are domestically produced by skilled blacksmiths. (The blacksmiths, by the way, are trying to legalize the production of small arms in Ghana, which, as I posted awhile ago, is one of the dumbest ideas, ever). In any event, however the guns got here, tribes all over West Africa have pretty substantial arsenals. With all those guns around, someone is bound to start a fight, and when they do, as in the case of the aforementioned countries, the conflict spreads and literally swallows the country whole.

One of the things I learned at this meeting is that, in the West, we tend to think about these conflicts as about oil or diamonds or some weird geological struggle against militant Islam or communism or whatever. Those might be the reasons why no one tries to stop the conflict, and it might be the reason why some people keep it going, but its rarely the cause. Look at it this way: the Africans who fight those wars are not fighting for oil or diamonds or Islam or communism. The tribes fight because, if they don’t, the other tribe will get their lands and they will end as up refugees or worse. However, since most people in the west don’t know a Ewe from a Fante (two of Ghana’s 50+ tribes) its best we think of the conflict in terms we understand, namely oil and diamonds and geopolitics. Otherwise, most Westerns would care even less. However, westerns are still responsible for the destructive nature of these tribal conflicts: the guns that have made these conflicts so destructive are manufactured (and sometimes distributed) by western countries (and Russia and Eastern European countries).

Most West African countries don’t have the capacity to deal with issues of tribal conflicts and guns. They just wait for a conflict to erupt and hope that it does not swallow the country. In only a few countries, Ghana being one, “Civil Society Organizations” and government (with the help of volunteers like me (maybe)) have reached the point where they can actually do something to prevent these inevitable conflicts. “Peace building” is a big field in the NGO world, and, although I was only recently told this, its actually the main mission of the Development Institute, the organization I’m volunteering with. Who knew? Disarmament is only one part of peace building. A lot of the work has to do with detecting potential conflicts and resolving them before they get violent. Addressing issues like the use of child soldiers, resettlement of refugees and empowerment of women rights are also part of peace building.

Most of the meeting was dedicated to educating interested organizations about the Economic Cooperation Organization of West Africa (“ECOWAS”) Covenant on Small Arms and Light Weapons, Their Ammunition and Other Related Material (“The Convention”). The Convention requires West African countries to adopt stricter gun control laws, and monitors arms procurements by governments in the sub-region. Its been adopted by ECOWAS, and now it needs to be adopted by at least nine member states. There needs to be some lobbying to get that happen because countries are not excited about changing their gun laws and are giving up a little bit of sovereignty to a multi-lateral organization. (Sound familiar?). It’s a well written convention and most of the people at the meeting were on the ball, so I think ratification (at least by Ghana) is likely.

By the way, there is also an international treaty on small arms, called the Arms Trade Treaty, which is currently being debated in the U.N. Its similar to the various treaties that govern nuclear proliferation, and puts in place a monitoring regime to control the flow of small arms around the world. Unfortunately, the countries who sit on the Security Council and have the final say on the adoption of the ATT, Russia, France, Britain, China and the good old U.S.A., happen to be the largest small arms producers in the world. Unless their domestic producers can be convinced that the ATT will not put a dent in their bottom line, U.N. action on small arms is not likely.

The other result of the proliferation of small arms is crime, or, as the Ghanaian say “armed robberies.” Crime featured prominently in the discussion. In Accra, in fact, crime is more a priority than tribal conflicts: like any large city, Accra a mix of different people, most of whom have put there ethnic loyalties aside. Its also where a lot of the attendees of the meeting live, and many had been the victim of crimes, recently. Types of violent crime that were unheard of in Ghana 20 years ago, namely highway robbery (setting up road blocks and robbing passing cars) and home invasions, are becoming routine in some parts of Ghana.

So what are the police doing about it? Well, not much. A police superintendent addressed the meeting. After telling people what they already new (that crime is out of control in some areas) he explained the limitation of the police’s ability to combat crime. And the limitations are pretty all encompassing: intelligence, competency, and logistics. Is there anything they are doing right? Nope. In fact, the police are part of the crime problem. For one, police corruption is so bad that some police officers actually rent their weapons out to criminals to commit crime. Second, no one will give the police any information about crime since the police are as likely to tell the criminals who is informing on them as to investigate the tip. Most people who had been victims of crime stated that the police were totally uninterested in helping them, let alone investigating the crime.

Actually, the police are out looking for armed robbers. Really, they are. I can attest to that, personally. Two weeks ago, my friend was pulled over. I was in the car. The police officers who pulled us over (actually, they just blocked the road and commanded us to get out of the car) explained that they were searching for armed robbers. After a thorough search of the car, they did not find any guns or evidence that we were, indeed, armed robbers. What they did discover was that my friend did not have a driver’s license (its still unclear to me if he forgot his license at home, or simply does not have one). He also did not have a fire extinguisher in the car, as every car in Ghana is apparently required to have. Whatever the infraction, its beside the point: we could have been driving around with a trunk full of cocaine. See, the police were not actually looking to prevent crime. Rather, they were looking for a bribe. His lack of a license (and fire extinguisher) cost him $30, which he paid on the spot.

I was asked by one of the participants at the meeting why nice homes in America are not surrounded by high walls, as they are in Ghana. I explained that, although we have crime in America, most people trust the police to do something about it and don’t feel the need to fortify their home (although some do). What the meeting taught me is that honest policing is an important part of crime fighting: if people don’t trust the police, and the police force is not honest, then you will never solve the crime problem because people won’t work with the police and police officers will spend all their time looking for bribes rather than fighting crime. Ghana is a long way from having an honest police force and is a long way from solving its crime problem. However, there are a lot of good people in Ghana who can make a difference. Unfortunately, at the moment, they are not police officers.

Dime Store Monetary Policy

Still on the topic of crime, someone is stealing my money here in Ghana. But its not a Ghanaian. No, its by my own government. George Bush and the Republicans are making my time in Ghana 10% more expensive.

How? It works like this: because of the irresponsible tax cuts and a pointless war (both brought to you by the Republicans with the help of some less than principled Democrats), America has a tremendous budget deficit (the difference between what the government takes in and what it spends). A responsible administration (i.e. one not headed by a half wit) would close the budget deficit by raising taxes or cutting spending (one way to cut spending is by not spending $1 trillion on a pointless war). Unfortunately, the Bush administration takes a third approach to closing the budget deficit: borrow borrow borrow.

Bush’s “borrow and spend” policy is, in reality, called the “weak dollar policy.” Its a pretty simple policy: keep spending, keep borrowing and, because there is no fiscal discipline, no one has any confidence that American assets are worth anything, and stays away from them, including dollars. If the government wants a strong dollar, low taxes and lots of spending (wants it all!), it needs to raise interest rates on government bonds. Unfortunately, raising interest rates slows economic growth. For a few reasons, it is out of the question at the moment. So our government keeps spending and borrowing at low interest rates and the value of the dollar keeps dropping. Granted, no one except foreign investors and Americans who travel abroad give a damn about the value of the dollar. But have some compassion: it costs me 10% more to get drunk in Accra while discussing this administration’s sorry excuse of monetary policy with gloating foreigners. On the other hand, if the value of the dollar continues to drop, maybe some Chinese engineer will take pity on me and buy me a beer.

Sorry, I had to vent.

Update

This past week has been pretty exciting. Wednesday I went to the finals of a “Four Nation Tournament” featuring the Ghana national team. The game was a lot of fun, and the stadium is not that big, so every seat is a good one. There were more people standing outside the stadium (it was a big party) than inside the stadium because tickets were priced at a whopping $10 each (you get two matches for that price: the first place match and the second place match). Ghana took first place, although I was later told that there would have been a riot if Ghana did not win, since they are a lot better than Benin, the team that took second place. Anyhow, here are two pictures:

Note that they don’t serve beer in the stadium, which makes it the only place in Ghana where beer is not readily available.

On Thursday, while everyone at home was eating a Thanksgiving dinner, I went for Chinese food. Then I played some trivia at one of the expat bars. Friday I went to a play at the National Theater, which was pretty good. The play was sponsored by the Ministry of Health and was free. Before the play, the Minster of Health, or someone who represented him (it was unclear), gave a speech about healthy living and the importance of preventive medicine. The play itself was a retelling of a Ghanaian legend in which a woman loses her arm and is mercifully given a new arm (by a sea serpent). Seems to me that losing an arm and then miraculously getting a replacement arm has nothing to do with preventive medicine (its actually the opposite), but no one else, least of all the Minister of Health, was bothered. Also I finally got my passport back on Friday, although I had to go to the Immigration Service twice in the same day to make that happen.

Saturday night I was at Korokobite Beach, and I’m happy to say that, five weeks later, the party is still going strong. There were even a few of the same people from five weeks ago, and it looks like they never left their bar stool in the intervening five weeks. Go figure. I also met some interesting people who I’ll probably see again this week in Accra.

Unfortunately, my trip is winding down, just when I was really getting into the swing of things (note- if you are going to move somewhere and try to make friends, stay for more than 10 weeks). I return to the states in three short weeks and I plan to travel to the north of Ghana for the last week. I’ll be in Accra this weekend, and I’ve lined up a few fun events, including cooking dinner at my house with a friend or two, something that’s completely foreign to me since I don’t cook in Brooklyn. Always a new experience. . .

In any event, if anyone has any requests for souvenirs, or some other Ghanaian/African novelty they can’t find in New York, let me know and I’ll see if I can get my hands on it. Ceremonial stools? Drums? Kente cloth? Masks? I’m taking orders! Let me know.

Food Blog

One reader asked me to write a little about what I’m eating here in Accra. Yes mom, they have food in Ghana, lots of it, and some of it is quite good. Its also Thanksgiving this week, so I’m told, so food is on everyone’s mind.

Ghanaian food is simple and filling. The base for most dishes is a doughy stuff made with either maze (corn) and cassava or plantain and cassava. Cassava, which I don’t think is too popular outside Africa, is a root vegetable. In West Africa, out side of large cities, you can’t go more than a few meters without running into a Cassava plant: they are everywhere. The yam and cassava is called “fofou” and the maze and cassava is called “baku.” The fofou or baku is served in a tasty soupy sauce: sometimes the soup is made with peanuts, sometimes with snails (that type is a weird green color) and often with a spicy tomato based soup. Its usually served with meat or fish. The fish is a small fried fish (although you can also get smoked fish). It’s a whole fish (or, if the fish was big, half the fish) served with the bones. I’ve gotten pretty good at filleting the fish, although it’s a pretty annoying process. Other popular meats are goat and chicken. Goat is too chewy for my taste, and it’s a real fight to get it off the bone. Crabs are also popular with some dishes, but I can never find the meat in the crab, so I end up just tearing the thing apart, which many Ghanaians find pretty amusing but does nothing to get me fed.

In any event, all the dishes look very very tasty when they’re boiling in large pots. Unfortunately for me (and most westerns), those traditional dishes are eaten with the hands, and as temping as they look in the pot, when it arrives on the table and you need to stick your hand in to eat, it loses a lot of its appeal. However, the Ghanaians love it. Elsie, the office assistant, usually joins me for lunch and gets fofou. Here is a picture of her eating fofou with goat meat. She is washing her hands before the meal:

I was told that you can get any of those soupy dishes served over rice. That’s wishful thinking. In reality, sometimes they will give you rice, sometimes not. There are also dishes that are rice based. For example, rice and its palava sauce, which is a spinach type vegetable mixed with palm oil and salted fish among other ingredients. There is also something called “gravy” which is just a spicy tomato sauce served over rice. Anything that can be served with rice can also be served with boiled yams. So here is my lunch of boiled yams, palava sauce, and a fried fish:

One dish without rice, yams, baku or fofou is called “red-red.” Its plantains and beans in some type of sauce and its really filling although it tends to be very oily. Its usually served with fried plantains, to complement the plantains in the red-red, I guess. You can also just get an order of fried plantains, but to Ghanaians that’s sort of like ordering mash potatoes and nothing else. Pretty much everything is spicy, which I like. If you don’t like spice, you’re in trouble. Also, you don’t drink water during the meal, only after.

The above dishes are available in “chop shops” and “catering services.” In Accra and other big cities, there are Indian, Chinese and Lebanese restaurants, owned by natives of those countries, respectively. At most of those places, the food is pretty good, even by New York standards. I’ve had really good Indian, Chinese and Lebanese meals. In Accra are also two or three pubs that serve burgers and other pub food, some of which is also pretty good. Those places do a brisk business serving comfort food to westerners. Outside Accra, anyone looking for Chinese food, Indian food or western food eats at a hotel’s restaurant. Sometimes the food is good, sometimes its barely edible, and, as has happened a few times, sometimes its just plain not available.

In Accra and everywhere, there is a lot of “fast food” around. I’m not talking about Taco Bell or MacDonald’s. Fast food is usually fried chicken with fried rice or jallof rice. Jallof rice is spicy fried rice with out the vegetables that are in the fried rice. The fast food always comes with small salad, topped with ketchup and mayonnaise. Its not advisable to eat the salad until you have been here for a while and are used to the various micro bodes in the water. I also can’t stand having ketchup and mayo on my salad, so I try to ask for no salad, a request which is sometimes understood, and which sometimes is interpreted as meaning I want EXTRA salad with EXTRA mayo and ketchup.

Some of the fast food places are stand alone, but most are associated with the local “spots” (bars) where you can bring your fried chicken and fried rice and eat while you drink. Every “spot” will also have a guy barbecuing meat skewers and hot dogs served on sticks, doused in chilly pepper, which, as far as I can tell, is the only cow meat around. Unfortunately, the beef skewers tend to be full of grizzle. After a few beers, no one seems to mind the grizzle, which is probably why those guys are always grilling by the local “spots.”

Booze, by the way, is in abundance around here. In fact, there are probably more bars (“spots”) in Accra than there are in New York, and people also set up mini bars on street corners, in parks, even on highway medians. If there are any regulations on serving alcohol, they are not immediately apparent. In addition to beer, the “spots” serve these god awful herbal drinks and “bitters.” Herbal drinks and bitters are the type of thing that only a hard core alcoholic or frat boy would even think about drinking. I’m not sure why, but any liquor, even the international brands, somehow taste different and leave you a little quezzy. Only at the fanciest places can you get imported stuff up to international standards—which we take for granted in New York. In terms of beer, the only recognizable brand is Guinness, which is brewed in Ghana. The big local beer brands are “Star,” “Club,” “Stone” and “Castle.” None of it is bad, but its also not very good. What it is is cheep: a large beer is usually a dollar. Amstel, Heineken and another Dutch beer called “Guilder” also have a small presence. Amstel and Heineken are very expensive, so most people stick to the local stuff and “Guilder.” People seem to drink beer at all hours—when I walk to the bus (“tro tro”) at 7:30am, there are people sitting at spots drinking a beer. Maybe I’m missing something, but beer seems like a perfectly fine breakfast drink.

Accra also has a really health club scene, with lots of drinking and a good amount of drugs. I’ve gone to three clubs: not bad places, but the music is usually really loud and there are a lot of good looking local ladies who may or may not be prostitutes. These women are aggressive, which might be a cultural thing, or might be that they are really really into white guys. I don’t know, but I’m not interested in finding out whether they are or are not prostitutes, especially because I try not to carry much cash on me, I can’t use an ATM here, and I can’t imagine that Ghanaian pimps are very pleasant people. (Yes, yes: having sex with prostitutes is also immoral and unhealthy). The one place that did not have any prostitutes was all Lebanese people and assorted foreigners; I liked it, but it felt a little strange to come all the way to West Africa to repeat an experience I could have in NYC any night of the week. There is also lots of live music, and when I can figure out where and when the events are (not an easy task) I try to go. Those shows are great and its usually free or like $1.

Back to the food: there are really no Ghanaian desserts. There are some cookies made with plantains that are really dry and taste like bad butter cookies. People eat a lot of locally made frozen yogurt and ice cream, served by boys with bikes and bells. Also, although not strictly dessert, fresh fruit is pretty abundant. Tons of women walk around the city selling fresh fruit from trays on their head. Its pretty impressive:

I forget what that lady had (it looks like she had nuts or dry fruit), but most of the “market women” have a head full of pineapples, tangerines, papaya, watermelon, bananas. (As a general rule, as long as it has skin, its ok to eat). I wish I had more pictures of market ladies with their goods on top of their heads, because it’s a pretty common sight around here. But, as you might expect, the ladies get very pissy when you take their picture, even if you pay or buy something. I refrain both out of respect and because a lot of those ladies can probably kick my ass. Another picture:

When not buying things off of women’s heads, there are a few western style supermarkets I can go to, which are pretty good. They stock brands from all over the world since there customer base is from everywhere. So the hummus is the same as you find in Beirut, the sausage is what you find in Frankfurt, the pasta sauce is from Rome and the Betty Lee cake mix is what you would find in Atlanta. There are also supermarkets that specialize in Indian and Chinese goods. Its all pretty expensive (the American products are about twice the price), and since I’m here for only 10 weeks, there is no reason for me to spend much time at those places. However, one supermarket is owned by Lebanese people, so they have awesome olives, which I enjoy.

These supermarkets are not for average Ghanaians. For the time being, most Ghanaians shop at outdoor markets. These are pretty exciting places, but I find that shopping there is not a pleasant experience. First, a lot of the stuff looks very unappetizing- how many goat legs and smoked fish do I really need? Also, there is no refrigeration for the fish or meat. (I never really thought about it, but I assume that we go to great lengths to refrigerate fish for some important reasons. Those reasons are lost on the Ghanaians, I guess). Another problem that bothers me, but no one else, is that all the vendors (food, dry goods, and clothing) have pretty much the same thing. How do you decide who to buy from? Yes, economists, I know that one of the ways to determine who to buy from is price (who ever is the lowest). But that creates another problem because to get the best price, you have to bargain. I like to bargain as much as the next guy, but bargaining over every little thing is trying. And finally, its usually hot as hell in these markets. Here is Elsie at the market (although she confided that she prefers the supermarket):

I think I’ll buy some souvenirs at the markets and some boiled peanuts, since I can’t get those at the supermarket for some reason, but I think I’ll stick to the supermarkets to the extent I need to buy any real food or cleaning supplies. However, I’m aware that the “supermarketfication” of Africa threatens to put all these market women out of business, and that is going to cause a lot of pain.

Now, a word about prices. My lunch is always $1.60 and a nickel for “pure water.” The fast food will cost you about $2, but its less out side Accra. The fruit is between 20 cents and 60 cents because the lady who carries the stuff around on her head will charge you whatever she thinks you can pay. (I know I’m being ripped off, but I don’t mind. The only thing that gets on my nerves is the “change game” where they say “no change, buy another!” How many pineapples do I need, lady?) Large beers cost a dollar, a shot of the herbal liquor (if you dare) is like 40 cents. A beef skewer is 30- 50 cents. At a chop shop or a canteen, you can eat and drink yourself into a stupor for no more than $4 dollars, and that’s high because this is Accra. The Indian, Chinese, and Lebanese restaurants and the western style pubs charge international prices. At any of those places (except some very cheap Chinese places), a meal, with a beer (or two) will cost about $12.

To put some of these prices in perspective, many professional/middle class Ghanaians make about $400 per month ($4,800 per year). I don’t know how the taxes work, so I don’t know if that is before or after taxes. Nevertheless, it’s a good salary here: the per capita GNP is $380 per year, or a little over a dollar a day. So spending $12 on a meal is extravagant. There are a few lessons from this: first, you can see why people are so interested in coming to America and Europe to work menial jobs that pay $300 a week and, conversely, why a meal and drinks at a bar in the U.S. costs $25. Second, if you’re a westerner looking to make some good money and don’t mind a few disreputable types hanging around and having to bribe a few dozen officials, pick an African capital and open a pub serving western food. It’s a gold mine, as far as I can tell. Third, despite being a New Yorker, I now regard that $6 chicken tikka masala and a $2 nan bread as an expensive treat. But hey, I’m a New Yorker who is volunteering for 10 weeks.

At one of those expat pubs (one of the gold mines) there is a weekly trivia game, and last week my team won. The prize was $30 toward our tab. The non-prize is that when you win, you have to prepare the quiz for the following week. So I have to meet with my team to come up with some questions. We each have to put together a round, I think. I had some ideas that revolved around American pop culture, but I was advised not to make it “too American” because people get pissed. So my idea is a round where you have to match up the bad guy with the film he was featured in. I know for a fact that bad guys are a literal rouges gallery of international super villains, so there is no way I can be accused of being “too American.” I’ll show them non-American!

Otherwise, last weekend I was in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. I met a German friend who lives in the area, and we went around. It was fun, Kumasi is a nice town, but nothing to write home about (literally in this case). It’s the historic capital of the Ashanti empire, so there is lots of history. Unfortunately, the British burned the entire city down in 1874, so any structures of historical significance are long gone. There is a military museum in Kumasi but all it has are some dusty pictures and guns captured by the Ghanaian military in various campaigns, like when they served as peace keepers in Rwanda and the Congo. Also, as part of the British army, Ghanaian forces helped drive the Germans out of their African possessions during World War One, and the Italians out of Ethiopia in World War Two, so there are lots of old Italian and German guns on display. It really should be called the “museum of used guns.”

Otherwise, all is well. The World Bank is recommending an investigation of the landfill project I worked on, which is a small win for the people of the community. It also seems like the landfill part of the project was so badly bungled by the AMA and local bank people that the whole thing might be scrapped, which is a total win for the community, if it happens.

Today I went to another conference on guns. It was really interesting—these are the people who want stricter gun laws, and they have the support of the government, so a few important ministers and members of parliament showed up. Since they don’t like guns, I learned a lot about ethnic conflicts and crime in Ghana, the two things that guns exacerbate, and things that these guys really wanted to talk about for that reason. I’ll report all about it in my next blog. Finally, there is a big soccer game on Wednesday and I’m going to try to get a ticket and go. It’s the finals of an small international tournament, and Ghana is playing Benin. Hope I can get a ticket- the tickets are not sold out, but also not available. I don’t know what that means. I think I’m going to the beach again this weekend, my first time in a month. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Aid Effectiveness and My Weekend

The conference in the Volta region turned out to be about “Aid Effectiveness.” Unfortunately, there was no particular need for a lawyer at the conference- no disputes to mediate, no constitutions to write, no advice to be given. So I made my self useful by taking copious notes of the conference, and, at the request of Ken, the director of the Development Institute and my boss, I’ll produce a full report. Seeing as no one else was taking notes, the report will be pretty useful.

I also learned a lot about the complex and multi-faceted field of “aid effectiveness” and, since I’ve been meaning to reflect on my usefulness (and, to the extent I can, the usefulness of all the good intentioned volunteers, aid workers, engineers and the like), I’ll take this opportunity to do so.

First things first. Aid effectiveness is the quasi- scientific study of how the money and knowledge that the developed world sends to the undeveloped is actually used. There are treatises dedicated to it, and huge NGOs that do nothing but study it. Basically, in order to understand if aid is having any effect, there need to be what are called “indicators.” For example, a popular indicator is patronage. Is anyone using the new latrine that was donated by some Dutch NGO? It gets a lot more completed than that since many of the indicators deal with “harmonization”—whether the money is going into creating a system of, say land titling, that is compatible with tribal customs, etc. I don’t pretend to understand it beyond the basics, and neither did most of the people at the meeting.

Nowadays, the big thing in the aid effectiveness world is the “Third High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness,” to be held right here in Ghana in September 2008. The purposes of the meeting is, among other things, to refine the current indicators of aid effectiveness. The “Second High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness” (but I don’t it was called that) was held in Paris in 2005. At the Second High Level Meeting, donors, NGOs, government ministers, and representatives of local organizations, the world over, agreed on a set of indicators of aid effectiveness. Unfortunately, these indicators turned out to work really well for the donors and the NGOs, but not so well for the local organizations in the developed world charged with putting the aid to good use. The indicators need to be revised to take into account the concerns of the local organizations. I suppose that’s why the meeting was moved from the City of Lights (Paris) to the City of Open Sewers (Accra).

In preparation for the meeting, countries all over the world are holding there own mini meetings (perhaps they are called “low level meetings?”) to determine what kind of indicators they want to see. The meeting I attended was one of those meetings- each region in Ghana is coming up with its own indicators, and there will be a national conference in March 2008 to decide which indicators to present to the Third High Level Meeting. The meeting on Friday was the regional meeting for the Volta region. The whole thing is sort of meta: it was a meeting to evaluate the effectives of the indicators of effectiveness.

At the meeting, people came up with all sorts of great indicators, which mainly came down to local ownership and control of the project. In other words, a project will be judged to be effective if it controlled by the local people, rather than by an NGO or government agency working at behest of a donor country. Its easy to see why—when people feel ownership in a project, they are more likely to maintain it and the project is more likely to conform to local needs. There were lots of stories of enclosed markets built in a way that offended one group of people (location, hours, etc) and stories of textile production projects which had the perverse effect of drawing the kids away from school to work in the factory, etc. And the toilets that the NGOs build usually go unused for one reason or another. (Everyone has a toilet problem!) Local control would probably avoid all those problems. The elephant in the room, that only a few brave souls breached, is the fact that, when local people control too much, things get delayed, pockets get lined, and, most annoyingly, priorities get switched. For example, it was pretty clear that gender issues, which are super important to donors and NGOs, rank fairly low on the list of local priorities. Ditto for environmental issues. I don’t know how it will all sort out, but next September I’ll be reading the far end of the international section of the Times to see. I’m pretty sure it won’t be on the front page (but more on that, later).

In any event, issues of aid effectiveness are important to most volunteers in Ghana. We have all taken some time out of our otherwise busy lives to come here and help. Its obviously on the mind of the professional aid workers too, since, for the most part, they are a pretty talented group who could be doing something useful in their home countries if they were not here. So the question is, are we actually doing any good? Well, it depends how you look at it. Its true that many volunteers do very little (a lot are “gap” year students from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa, among other places, who have very few skills in the first place) and some probably make things worse by misbehaving or doing shoddy work. However, I think that most volunteers work really, really, hard and make a difference: teachers and nurses are trained, English and science is taught, schools and eco tourism sites are built, constitutions and reports are written. (shout out to ME!) And that work is good and important.

However, even assuming the hundreds of volunteers and aid workers in this country are doing nothing (which is far far from the truth) I’m of the opinion that ineffective assistance is better than no assistance at all, although reasonable people can disagree. At least being here recognizes the fundamental inequities of the world, even assuming we are not doing much to bridge those inequities. And, if all the aid workers and volunteers can do something productive for the people of Ghana, that is just icing on the cake. Of course, “being there” is not a formal measure of aid effectiveness but, in my opinion, its an important one. Especially when the developed world simply ignores, and often exploits, Africa’s poverty.

But the deeper question is why? Why bother? What is it about poverty in the developing world that should demand our attention? Poverty is certainly not as pressing a concern as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and, lately, global warming. And, for that matter, developed countries have plenty of their own problems to address. Until we can come with a compelling reason to care, people won’t.

But there are a few reasons to care. I’m not a religious person, but the bible certainly has a lot to say about helping the needy. Likewise, I don’t often think of things in moral terms (probably because I’m so hedonistic) but helping those less fortunate is morally correct. Some people even suggest that altruism is in our genes:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710/generosity-and-evolution/

For me, however, the more compelling reason is a philosophical one (although, with apologies to the philosophers who might be reading this, I can’t name the actual philosophers who thought this up, if any): we can’t really talk about freedom, justice, faith in science, the wonders of art and creativity if we can’t meet people’s basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, peace). Everything we take for granted, civil society, scientific progress, live theater, etc., become nothing more than a temporary luxury of people who have too much, and not the real state of human affairs. The real state of human affairs is sleeping in a slum in Accra, without air conditioning (or running water, for that matter). (70% of the people in Accra live in slums, and, world wide, 1 billion people live in urban slums in developing countries). Its all very theoretical when written in a blog but, when you see it for yourself, the poverty in places like Ghana (and Ghana is by far not the poorest place in Africa) is an affront to our basic values (freedom, equality, faith in science, etc).

Look at it this way: the guy in the slum is not coming to share his way of life with us, and most people don’t want it. But we can share ours with him, without much cost, and we should. Otherwise, the only difference between the slum dweller and the New York co-op owner is purely materialistic, and that’s deeply upsetting from a philosophical standpoint. Philosophically, the most important difference should be that you care about him, but he has too many things to worry about to think about you. Without that key distinction—using our prosperity to help others—everything we have achieved is meaningless and fleeting.

Another problem with not helping is that it raises the specter that prosperity is actually an evil and should be shunned. It works like this: maybe, just maybe, our prosperity is built off their misery. Seen that way, prosperity, progress, etc. is malevolent because the prosperity of the few leads to the suffering of the many, and that is just plain wrong no matter how you look it at. As we go about our lives in the developed world, we know that is not the case, it is not a zero sum game, and prosperity can be shared by all. But it’s only wishful thinking unless we take the time to actually make it so.

Yes, yes, I know: there are poor people in the developed world, and rich people in the developing world, so nothing is as simple as it seems. In fact, just today the World Bank came out with a study that showed that African economies are growing at a rate of about 5% per year, and more in African countries with oil, since oil is super expensive these days. The U.S. economy, in contrast, grows about 3% per year. However, in African countries, gains are not broad based and concentrate in the few. Thus, even with the gains, many Africans still remain very poor. Also, my analysis is sound because the framework for aid effectives is the same whether its intra or inter country (e.g. rich Ghanaians to poor Ghanaians, etc) and even at 5% a year, Africa has a lot of catching up to do.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about sending over a boat load of Sony Playstations or opening up lots of fast food joints (which they have lots of here, anyhow). What I mean is training people in the developing world on farming techniques, sanitation, family planning, education, developing a land market (shout out to me, again), funding programs that developed good government and civil society in developing countries, etc. etc. etc. I’m also talking about developing trade polices that help Africa, instead of the current ones that have the opposite effect. Debt relief is also key (African countries spend a lot servicing their foreign debt). Or at least try to do all those things. And we are back to where we began: volunteering is important and what all the under employed volunteers in Ghana and other places are doing makes a difference, in small way.

So while we are “sharing our way of life” we might as well have some fun, right? I think so! I spent this weekend in the Volta region, hiking. A guy I work with set me up with a friend of his to show me around. Here is a picture of Henry and I:

Henry took me around on his motor cycle, and zipping around the back roads of the Volta region on a motorcycle was a good time. Saturday, I climbed the highest mountain in Ghana, Mt. Afadjato. That’s the mountain behind Henry and me. Its not all that high, 885 meters, but the climb is intense owing to the lack of a switchback. You basically go right up the mountain. But I made it up to the top:

Sunday I went to the Wli Falls. It’s the highest waterfall in West Africa and its one of the better developed tourism sites in the Volta region. I took a two hour hike to the upper falls (and two hours back). The upper falls were pretty spectacular. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a waterfall so high. Again, the hike was grueling but my guide was wearing flip flops, so I really had no excuse not to make it. And I did. Another picture:

In other news, I’ve moved. I’ve left the beautiful single star “Hotel Grisfarm.” I’m now boarding in a guest house on the border of Osu and another neighborhood. It’s a much better set up because I have my own kitchen and a small sitting area. Its not a hotel, so I don’t have to talk to the receptionist every time I come in and out, which I hated. The Hotel Grisfarm also had a "security guard" who carried a baseball bat, which always made me uneasy. The security guard asked me for “gift” a few times, which I resented (I never did give him anything). I don’t need to deal with him anymore, either. I actually like the location of the new place better because its not on a dark back road, like the Grisfarm was.

The place was a mess when I agreed to take it (it looks like the last person moved out, a while ago, and no one bothered to cleaning since then), but I saw a bed and a floor and I trusted the landlady to put the place together in time for my arrival. She did, except there is no hot water. I forgot to ask. Oops. Its far from luxurious, but its comfortable enough. AJWS representative, not the incompetent Douglas, but another one, found the place, and I’m thankful.

I’ll be in Accra for the next four weeks or so, with only weekend trips. Apparently, no one will be in the office on Friday, so I plan to take the day off and go to Kumasi for the weekend, which is the second largest city in Ghana and has lots of history. At work, I’m writing an Alternative Dispute Resolution manual for the resolution of community disputes, which is pretty interesting, but nothing anyone wants to read about. So, aside from my trip to Kumasi, I’ll try to blog about my daily life here. Look for those entries in the next week or so.

Elmina, Cape Coast, Karkum Park

Civil Society Coalition on Land ("CICOL") Conference

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to a one and a half day conference, but staying in a semi-fancy hotel for three full nights and almost four days. That was a miscommunication. Apparently, it’s the style in Ghana to only put half of the activities on the agenda, and make the rest up as you go along. So that’s what we did- an agenda with one and a half days worth of activities turned into a three day conference. As with any conference, there were some people who were actively engaged in the proceedings and others who there for the swimming pool and elaborate meals. Being the one of only two lawyers at the conference (the other was a Ghanaian law professor who, from what I gather, teaches criminal law), I was recruited to write the organization’s constitution. Or rather rewrite the organizations constitution—someone had put together a first draft, although no one knew who. In the end, we wrote a first rate constitution (if I may say so myself) that incorporated all the concerns and needs of the various organizations. It’s a “bundle of compromises” but I hope a workable one. Whether or not its actually followed is any one's guess, but the amendment procedure is easy enough that it can be reworked with little effort. At one point in the conference, I found myself giving a presentation on my vision of how the organization was supposed to work. Here is a picture:

It was a really rewarding experience and I hope I was helpful.

Slave Castles

One of Ghana’s few tourism attractions are the Slave Castles/Slave Forts, built by European powers from the late 15th Century through the 18th Century, which dot the Ghanaian coast. They were used for a variety of purposes, but most notoriously, they were where slaves were collected and imprisoned before being shipped off. The forts are actually quite nice buildings, and are far more substantial and grandiose than almost anything around them. Here is a picture of the fort at Cape Coast (“Cape Coast Castle”):

I visited two of the forts this weekend, one at Elmina (the oldest one in Ghana, originally built in 1463- 29 years before Columbus hit up the Americas) and the other at Cape Coast. Both had tours, which are sort of compulsory for anyone visiting Ghana (especially since the rooms in the forts are not really marked). Both forts are very interesting architecturally, and contain a mix of Portuguese, Dutch and English buildings. A lot of important European history was determined in those forts, not to mention a lot of Ghanaian history. The tour tells you almost nothing about that. Rather, it concentrates on the horrific conditions which the slaves were kept in before their transport to America. They were awful, and, after taking the tour, you can't (thanks Hahn!) disagree that that getting sold into slavery really, really sucks. Unfortunately, the tours are long on emotion and short on facts, which is a pity, since there is so much more to say about the colonial system that began (economic and political), for all intents and purposes, in those forts.

Here is a picture of me in at the fort in Elmina, and below it, a picture of the tour. That is one of the slave dungeons behind the guide:

Cape Coast Castle has a small museum (it’s a little underused- the guards were watching a soccer game on one of the TVs that plays some type of interpretive movie). The museum does a pretty good job of placing the slave trade in context, and concentrates on the two million Africans who were transported directly to the British Colonies, part of which were later the United States, between the early 1600s and 1808. For law and history people, in 1808 the United States banned the importation of slaves (Article 1, Section 9 of the United States Constitution did not allow Congress to ban the importation of slaves before 1808).

The exhibit explains the triangular trading system that existed at the time, under which guns were shipped to Africa and were given to certain favored tribes, on credit. The credit was repaid with slaves, captured by the tribes using the guns. I assume the tribes also benefited from the overall conquest of their neighbors and were not just capturing slaves to get more guns to capture more slaves, since that makes little sense. The slaves were transported to the Americas (the majority went to Brazil and the Caribbean, not to the United States) to work in the cotton and sugar plantations, among other places. That cotton and sugar was then shipped back to Europe and provided the raw materials for the industrial revolution, which allowed European powers to conquer the world. Since all Africa got was guns in exchange for its slaves, while Europe got raw materials and industrialization, its easy to see that Africa got the raw end of that deal. A lot of Africans believe that they are also on the raw end of the current economic system, which has western (and now Chinese) companies extracting resources, producing finished goods, and selling those goods back to Africa (I know, its allot more complicated than that, but you get the idea). In addition, western governments support corrupt African governments with guns. Those governments, now well armed and ensconced, allow the sweetheart deals which strip Africa of its resources but provide no benefit to Africans. That’s the problem. The solution is a good deal harder to figure out.

Kakum Park

Kakum National Park is about an hour north of Cape Coast. The park’s biggest attraction is a "canopy walk" which is more of an amusement park ride than a nature experience. There was no attempt at all to talk about the flora below our feet, and no animals to speak of. Here is a picture of me on the walk:

There were dozens of people on the canopy walk, but only me and two American women went on a hike in the park after. You have to take a guide with you, and the guides are paid by the hour, ($4 for the first, $2 for each additional hour, per person) so no guide would take us for more than one hour, since they are incentivized to do as many one hour tours as possible. That was annoying, because the hike was pretty cool- its a tropical rain forest, teeming with life, although the large mammals stay safely away from the hiking paths (we saw some monkeys, but they scattered too quickly to take a picture). The guide was very interested in talking about all the uses of the trees- he made it very clear that but for the park and its revenue, he would be happy to chop down the trees, plant something nice, and go hunting from time to time. I guess he was going to sell the forest one way or another. Its understandable- Ghana is a poor country, and anything that can be used or sold generally is, especially if it is owned in common, as rain forests tend to be. Economists identify this as the problems of the "commons." Thus, beach=toilet, tree=canoe and endanger species=dinner. Hey, its free! I'm happy to spend $15 for a few hours in the park, and give the local people some income. But in the long run, true conservation is going to require a change of mindset, and that’s hard.

After the hike, I went to lunch at this guest house near the park and nearly tripped over this alligator. Careful!

Saturday night I went to a party at the University of Cape Coast, said to be Ghana's best, hosted by some people I met at the beach a few weeks ago. A good time- the campus is nice and the people were too.

On another note, my 30 day visa expired and I officially became an illegal immigrant in Ghana. Anxious not to run afoul of Ghanaian law, on November 6 (yesterday) I went to the Ghana Immigration Department to extend my visa. I was accused of being one day late in the extension (well, I was actually two days late because October has 31 days, but I was not about to tell them that) and, due to my delinquency, had to pay an unspecified "fine." I negotiated the "fine" from 30 dollars to 10 dollars. The helpful "assistant auditor" insisted on keeping my passport so he could personally process the extension which he explained, usually takes two weeks, but he can do it in a week. I'm sure that means I am going to have to pay another "fine" when I pick up my passport, lest it get lost. Seeing as there is no problem with Americans coming in and taking jobs from Ghanaians and, for that matter, I’m a freaking volunteer, this whole system is set up for the simple purpose of making some government minister very rich. I should not complain: U.S. immigration authorities don't treat Ghanaians with expired visas very well, no matter how important their work is to the overall economy. Seen that way, I was illegally in Ghana for one day, and a $10 dollar fine and some future bribe to get back my passport is getting off easy.

This weekend I’ll be in the Volta region, in the far east of the country. I have a meeting in the town of Ho, the capital of the Volta region, on Friday, and then I will spend the weekend in the area. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing at the Ho meeting, but I hope its as rewarding as the CICOL conference (where I also had no idea what I would be doing). As for the weekend, one of the guys I work with has set me up with a friend of his from the area, and he offered to take me on a few hikes. Hope that works out. I’ll report back next week.