Last Chance to Be…

Sunday 24th December 2006

Before I start I should answer the question posed last time around. Why are oranges so called? They are not called oranges because they are orange. This is news to me. In fact it opens a wider question of which came first, orange the colour or orange the fruit. I have no idea. Anyway, oranges are called oranges because the FLESH is orange. Oranges, I have since found out, are in fact green.

So as you know by virtue of the fact I managed to update this site the last time around, I found a half decent Internet café. It’s in a place called Aflao, on the border with Togo.

Aflao is a chaotic place about an hour away. The border into Togo is right in the town itself. As a consequence the place is teeming with all sorts of illicit trade that border towns in Africa seem to have. Black market money changing seems to be the major industry. Most people in Aflao presumed I was a rich Javu and not a voluntary worker and so I got hassled,  a lot.

At one point I had about ten children following me, pointing at their mouths, asking for food or money for food. Every now and then a money trader would threaten them with a stick or a stone and they would run away. Unfortunately, they didn’t do this to save me from feeling awful, but so they could have exclusivity on the hassling stakes. At one point two men actually started arguing about who shouted Javu at me first, therefore giving them some right to hassle me to change up some dollars.

You live and learn and I learnt this. When you arrive in Aflao don’t go into the first shop you see and buy a cold Tango. The Tango may have cost 6000 Cedis, about 30p, but to a homeless Ghanaian this is a small fortune. As a comparison, Pure Water, the equivalent to a small carton of Volvic in the UK, costs 200 Cedis. I had spent about 30 times the going rate for a cold drink and then proceeded to tell the kids I had no money, yeah right.

Every day I am reminded of a very cruel irony caused by the originally good intentioned charity workers in Africa. A while ago Louis Theroux’s dad wrote a book about Africa. (I forget the name and being without Google makes life tough.) The book explains, or at least illustrates, one of the biggest problems facing development, the good intentions of the past.

By providing ‘free’ aid in various forms a lot of damage has been done in Africa’s past. Charity is everywhere here. Driving to Aflao for example, it seems like every other building is a mission or charity or object of some sort. In the village here alone there are at least four projects going on.

The result of all this, or the result of a lot of this, is that a high percentage of people say to me ‘Javu give me money’ or similar all the time. Everybody thinks I am rich. Most people think if they befriend me, they will be saved. In a shop the other day when I said I didn’t have the money to buy a TV the shop assistant looked at me as if to say ‘But you’re white you could buy this shop if you wanted to!’

Another time a few days ago the Police pulled over the Tro Tro I was in. Normally they do this to ask for a bribe from the driver but on this occasion it was to ask why there was a Javu in the vehicle. Javus, I am told, can all afford to buy their own cars, so the Police were curious. I had to explain that I live and work here on a Ghanaian wage so Tro Tro is the only way to travel for me. They huffed at this and let us on our way. After we pulled away the guy in the seat next to me asked me to explain the real reason I was on a Tro Tro. Harumph.

So back to the cruel irony thing. In order to change this perception of Javus, charities are now behaving differently. VSO themselves have been guilty of this in the past and I would like to think that most if not all NGOs and charities recognise this problem and have been addressing it for some time. VSO is now about ‘Sharing Skills, Changing Lives,’ and tries to make its work sustainable.

When the kids come up to me in Aflao putting their hands to their lips and I have enough to feed them all for a week as change in my pocket all I want to do is help them. Not giving them money is the cruellest but best way of doing it.

Just now, as I was watching a football match between the village and the campus, one of the boys walked off the pitch, came over to me and very aggressively insisted I buy them all drinks from an entrepreneur who had turned up with ice creams in a cool box. I told him I wasn’t in his country to buy things for him. My reply was cold and harsh. His reaction was angry but fortunately in Ewe so I couldn’t understand him.

I don’t want to justify why I am here to anybody, but for those reading this thinking what is it you are doing, then just to clarify…..I am here to provide opportunity through education, not ice cream.

So the cruel irony for me is that every day here people ask me for money and every day I say no.  For anybody that has read Mr Theroux’s book and question whether or not how prevalent this problem actually is, I would say it is a massive problem at least here in this part of Ghana. Twelve paragraphs to explain why I am a tight wad for the good of Africa is excessive. Sorry.

Oh yeah, you know those yellow banana things? Well they are green too. I need to check out a theory but I did notice that in fact all fruit is green in its native state. Let me think, Mangos, Water Melon, Limes, Apples, Coconuts, Paw Paw, Bananas, Custard Apples, Oranges - all green. Hmm I just remembered there is a mango here called a yellow mango because it’s yellow, must be an exception.

Mangos are a curiosity here for me as they come in so many different shapes and sizes. So far I must have eaten about 5 different varieties of mango. Just recently I have been treated to giant green mangos which taste absolutely incredible.

A NATIVE FOOD I LIKE

Yes I did it. I found a native food which is not a fruit that I actually like and doesn’t have a burnt taste like most things here. The item in question is a biscuit that you buy at lorry stations (lorry = tro tro = bus/coach). As they are not imported and made locally they are affordable and delicious. They cost about 10p for a massive pack of them. Although I still pine Hobnobs, they are a fine substitute.

I have found a few other local foods I like but I can’t always get them, the finest of which is plantain chips, which taste just like crisps but without all the crap that crisps have in them. They are fried in peanut oil. I have no idea what the nutritional value of peanut oil is, I guess the same as peanuts? (vegetable fat? Protein? Who knows)

THE MYSTERY TURDS

When I come back from dinner in the evening or wake up in the morning I go through the same routine. This involves checking all the nooks, crannies and behind the gas canister for frogs and snakes or worse, giant cockroaches. Most times I just see the hind legs of a fleeing gecko. Occasionally I find gecko poo. Both of these are fine by me.

For the last few days, however, the same routine has revealed some larger boulders of excrement. Sometimes it doesn’t require much finding at all as it sits proudly under my dining table. Today I promised myself I would have a thorough search and find the source.

As I have kept stuff off the floor and have few possessions it didn’t take long to find the frog who had moved into the space at the back of the fridge. I say frog, I think it might be some kind of giant toad. I say this due to the size of its faeces.

After a second Benny Hill moment involving me, a toad and a broom, I finally got the thing out of my house and came to the stark realisation that Snakebuster ™ had failed. Tragic. I will have to work on an improved version. At least it wasn’t snake turd.

EDIT: I think Snakebuster is working after all, but that this toad slipped in when I opened the door at some point.

After all the excitement I celebrated Christmas by having a party. This involved breaking the media rationing and watching a film and an episode of the Mighty Boosh. I am watching my films in alphabetical order and this was the first one I had allowed myself, 8 Mile. I remember thinking the last time I watched it that it was ‘good’, whatever that meant at the time I don’t know. Much later and 3000 miles away, it was awesome. Pure escapism and thoroughly enjoyable.

The Mighty Boosh was recommended to me and I am so glad I bought all sixteen episodes with me. The first one was class although incredibly trippy which is not what you want when you’re on Larium. I shall have to remember to watch them on Fridays as this is 6 days away from Larium Saturday.

OHAWU ROAD

After a month of being here I am doing quite well on the audio book rationing. I would be lost without them. I am currently about half way through Snow Crash by Neal Stevenson. The book takes place in America in the future, in a suburb called Oahu. The main road in the book, mentioned frequently, is Oahu Road. This is one crazy coincidence as I found out that the mud road does have a name after all, Ohawu Road. Nuts Huh?

CHRISTMAS DAY.

Happy Xmas etc. Feels great to be away from all the commercial crap in the UK. So much wasted money and resources on bits of useless plastic. In other ways it doesn’t feel so great. I am on my own pretty much most of the time while the school is on a break and I know my family are all together eating good food.

Do me a favour, next time you eat some good food, make sure you enjoy it. By good food I don’t mean Tesco Finest or Caviar. Good food by my new level of standards is what I would call normal food a few months ago.

Let’s imagine by some miracle, you could buy cheese and onion crisps here. If you could, the potato would be cheap and bruised. They would be stale. The flavouring would be non-existent or would not taste like cheese and onion. If you were really lucky, they would even be edible. So next time you tuck into your packet of Walkers, savour every bite.

This isn’t a slight on Ghanaians either, just the way it is here. Manufacturing is stifled by corruption and poverty. Imports suffer the same fate.

This morning I went for a walk to savour the Christmas spirit. As I walked past the mobile phone reception area I got a bunch of comedy text messages from a friend. Cheers. I was laughing away when some kid on a bicycle approached. It was the same kid from the day before at the football match who had spewed verbal abuse at me for not giving him money for ice cream. He was carrying a half dead chicken.

He told me his name was Pele and he wanted to be my friend. I mumbled ok at which point he said great and he would visit me later. Errrr no. I am really getting to be useless at this. I told him I was too busy for visitors and that he didn’t want to be my friend yesterday so why was today different. At this point I clearly deeply offended him and he cycled off, his chicken uttering its few last clucks as he did so. Happy Christmas to you too.

I wish I had taken up the offer to go to the beach with the other VSOs. Although, today one of the staff here has said he will take me off into the bush to go and see some real Africa instead. We will see what happens.

FLIPPIN ‘ECK

So this afternoon I met up with one of the students who is still here for Xmas as he lives down the road. He had promised to show me around the backstreets of Ohawu Road so we went off on our bicycles.

To say that cycling around with an empty stomach on Christmas Day in blazing heat, down a mud road in the middle of African felt odd would be underselling it.

What an incredible experience. We cycled around going to various villages. Most were celebrating Christmas by dancing around some drummers. None were expecting me to turn up.

When I did ‘bowl in’ on my cycle everything went nuts. Immediately, I was surrounded by children. All of them came running up to me and just stared and smiled at me. The parents were also surprised but refrained from running up to touch me. Mostly they just smiled and laughed at their kids.

Because of the school being run by an Italian Catholics, the kids were calling me ‘Father’ and ‘Ciao’ and seemingly thought I was going to heal them or save them or something. Tragically, I lacked the Ewe to tell them I was ‘just a guy.’

In the first village I would guess there were maybe ten families so that’s about thirty or so kids, or, to make the maths easier, three holding onto each finger, shouting ‘father’ and ‘Ciao’ at me and smiling. Isaah, my guide, and I looked at each other and laughed loads at the sheer insanity of it. It’s not often a stranger walks into town round here, even less often a white one. When they do I gather the kids don’t get as much attention as I gave them, so chaos ensued.

As much as I tried to tell myself this was all an over reaction, I am just here to teach a few kids how to use computers, to the villagers this was a real event.

The same hilarity followed in the next few villages and I promised them all I would come back with my camera next week. I also said I would bring a present but I haven’t thought of what yet.

The further you go up Ohawu Road, the more beautiful Africa gets. You leave behind the piles of rubbish and the burning fields (I haven’t mentioned those yet have I) and see some amazing scenes. As I tend to go out and about between 4-6pm, you always get a stunning sunset of one sort or another too. On the way back I saw something else in the bush that you don’t see in the villages or towns in Ghana, a public toilet! Yes that’s right, they may piss everywhere in the towns, but the bush is civilised.

Saturday 30th December 2006

HAPPY NEW YEAR

It’s nearly 2007. Nothing much has happened in the last few days. I saw Pele in the village this morning and he waved. I waved back by just raising my palm an inch or so. A few seconds later Pele called over to me and waved again, this time he was tugging the shirt sleeves of his friends to make sure they were looking. I am starting to learn that some people want to be my friend not to ‘visit me’ but so they can somehow elevate their status by being seen with me. Status and respect are serious nouns round these parts.

I have been working on my lesson plans for the last few days. Being productive in extreme weather is tough. Most people seem impressed with how I cope with the weather. We will see how I cope when I have to stand up in front of a class and talk for several hours a day.

I loaned my portable hard drive to somebody the other day. Among other things, it has 41 films and the complete Alan Partridge collection on it. He managed to watch the whole lot in a matter of days. I am spacing them out over two years!

I received a parcel today, just a test from my mum, and nothing had been stolen from it (as far as I know) and I didn’t have to go to Aflao to bribe a customs officer to give it to me. Awesome.

NEW YEARS DAY

So tomorrow I plan to go to the local shite net café, which means you get to read my waffle but you miss out on the pictures I took today. I went off on another bush trip. This time the expedition was led by a crazy alcoholic who just plied me with drink the whole day. I tried to explain about dehydration and such but he was having none of it. So I cycled like 15k in blistering heat, ate nothing, sweated loads, consumed very little water and drunk too much alcohol. Joy. I had to draw a fine line between being insistent and being rude and eventually got some food and water. I got back three hours ago and am still recovering.

I took a few pics, nothing special but did get a really good one of a guy showing me how he distils palm wine. If the shite café lets me, I will upload it.

For my sins, I am starting to ignore the bad and enjoy the good. I am sure things will swing the other way soon but for now am quite happy here. Even small villages in the African bush throw up surprises now and then.

For example, the local spot (bar) doesn’t sell much but I did find out it has a stock of UHT milk. This is pure luxury to me. My only other source up until now had been a six-hour death-defying round trip to Accra and now it’s a 10 minute cycle ride away. Mint. Mixed with the Oats that I have now located I get to have porridge in the morning made with FULL FAT UHT milk - pure gold.

I haven’t visited it yet but I also found a new shop in the middle of the bush yesterday. Hidden between a few trees and mud huts there is, wait for it, a video shop! Insane or what, they rent out SVCDs at 10p a night. Crazy. I have yet to see what they have in stock. Allegedly they stock Nigerian Juju movies and American films - we will see.

Another thing I found is a barber’s shop, which somehow shows live premiership football. I have no idea how this is achieved round here ad there is only one TV station and it blows goats. The shop does not have a satellite dish either. I shall have to go for a haircut to investigate.

As a mental note to myself I must remember to tell you about the Celine Dion phenomena, but that’s for another time.

Ciao.

PS no time for spell checking, proof reading or comedy insertion. as usual.