Why is there no money in Ghana - some observations.

Ghana is a very poor place, we all know that.  It is also a place of rampant free enterprise with countless small businesses in small shops or in small stalls on sidewalks everywhere.  I struggle to figure out why there is so little money.  There is some real wealth here.  There are nicer neighborhoods in Accra.  Mercedes, Audi’s, Land Rovers and Jaguars can be seen around the city.  There are some vibrant spots in the economy, and government officials famously profit by their positions.  But for the most part, you don’t see anything other than people struggling to get by.

What I sense, is that Ghana’s wealth is very new and most people making it into the middle class come from very poor backgrounds.  They come from places where extreme poverty was the norm.  When I watch how local people act with money, it seems that no one has lost the habits formed from poverty. 

I’m now with my 2^nd family.  The host’s name is Favour and she is super nice.  On top of that, she is a great cook.  I have had some great meals in her house.   She has a business providing breakfast or lunches for local offices and making spring rolls and somosa for girls to sell on the street or at the beach.  Like my first host family, I’d say she is better off than most people around her, but she is not as well-off as my first host family.  What I’ve seen in both households is that they live extremely frugally.  Both homes are barely furnished, which is similar to other homes I’ve seen.  No one has decorations on the walls or any extra furniture other than the most basic of necessities.  A bedroom usually has a small set of drawers to hold clothes and nothing else.  Things simply go on the floor.  Shelves, wall cabinets or tables are just not used.  There is not much clutter because there is just so little in the homes.  The kitchens have the most things, but even then it is a fraction of what you see in a western home.  There is no such thing as drawers in the kitchens full of silverware, knives or various gadgets.  Almost all cooking is done with the same few pots and utensils.   The stoves in my house are portable and plug into propane tanks.  They can move from the kitchen to the outdoors where it is cooler.

At my new house, we eat from a plastic card table and sit in two plastic chairs.  My host mother buys time/credit for her phone in the smallest increments available, 1 or 2 cedis at a time, even though you get more time/credit per cedi if you buy 10 cedis worth ($4.00).  The local shops are full of single use or smallest size items.  The cheapest items are sold in the stores, and of course they break easily.  Cheap quality is rampant, i.e., everyone wears the flimsiest and cheapest flip flops.   Volunteers often buy nice looking sandals only to have them fall apart within days or weeks.  The concept of spending a little more now to save later is just unknown. 

Leisure time is not spent “going out”.  In Accra, there is very little to do, because the vast majority do not go out.  If I go to a decent night spot, it will have a large percentage of foreigners.  Locals simply hang out in their neighborhoods, sitting around talking or doing chores outside and are rarely seen drinking or smoking or anything else so wasteful.

I practically never see kids with toys.  Kids play football, but usually is an old worn out ball.  And most people wear used clothing shipped in from the west.   In a poor neighborhood you can easily find a someone with a Timberland or a Shepard Fairey shirt or some other expensive designer shirt.

Jobs with good salaries are hard to find here.  As I said, huge numbers of people sell from small stands, drive taxis or some other non-salaried work.  Small businesses are the norm.  Only in Accra can you find a few American style stores. 

So why are businesses always so small?  Borrowing money to expand a business is almost impossible and if a loan can be obtained, the interest rate will be above 20%.

Mortgages are only available to people who least need them. Almost all real estate transactions are in cash.  A host brother in my first house worked for a large bank in a junior position.   He acknowledged that they do not give personal loans or mortgages.  He was dismissive of the idea saying that people would default on loans.  I asked about mortgages back by real estate and we got around to the problem that banks cannot rely on anyone truly owning their homes. 

A lot of land outside the city is owned under customary law and I’m not sure if there are any actual records of such ownership.  In more urban areas, not everyone bothers to register their land because it is costly and confusing.  The system of land registration is a poorly run.  I hear deeds are inaccurately written so the actual parcel is difficult to ascertain.  It is very difficult to look up deeds or to find a chain of title because papers are lost or filed in a useless manner, such a chronological order.

This amazes me because private ownership of land is the basis of so many economies.  Land disputes here are common.  It leads to some strange behavior.  When traveling outside the city center, it is common to see a half finished house on a lot that has clearly been sitting unfinished for a long time.  People do this to help establish claims to land.  Empty land could easily be claimed by a third party.  But if you start to build on it, your claim is stronger.  I’ve heard stories of people selling their land multiple times to multiple buyers, and land disputes have lead to killings. 

It is not uncommon to see painted on walls or buildings, “This property is not for sale”.   I used to wonder about this and then realized that it is to avoid 3^rd parties buying the land from someone else claiming to be the owner.  Similarly, walls are often painted with “this property is not for rent”.

Since mortgages and loans are not available, houses and buildings are built in stages.  People build as far as their money takes them and then stop and then start again when they can afford to.  First floors get finished first with an unfinished frame upstairs.  This way you can live in your unfinished home and hopefully complete it later. 

Or when homes or buildings are rented, the norm is pay for 2 to 3 years rent upfront, in a lump sum.  In return, the landlord, having received some funding, builds out a bit more, so the tenant can move in, or have an improved or enlarged space.  Each time the property is rented, the landlord can build more.  One odd example of this is a building in Danqua Circle, prime real estate in the city.  It sits unfinished with a 6 story concrete frame.  (Almost all construction of homes and buildings here is with concrete and with minimal metal or wood.)  The first floor is barely finished and has a Chinese restaurant while the remaining floors above are covered by a giant Guiness beer ad.   This may not be a good example, as most large buildings are built with capital from outside the country.   But it is very common to see businesses run out of unfinished buildings.

This whole system frustrates me, because, if property could be used for loans, it would become the biggest boost to the local economy.

Another common lament is that the government has no money for infrastructure.  Ghana does rely on aid to meet its needs.  I have tried to learn a little about taxes here.  My interest came from noticing that almost all businesses have no record keeping.  Money simply exchanges hands without receipts, or cash registers, or other record of the transaction.  If you go to an official phone store you get a receipt and the transaction is on their computer.  If I buy the same products from a stall, then no transaction is recorded.  Officially the corporate (business) tax rate is 25%, but clearly this cannot be collected from businesses with no records.  The income tax rate is graduated quickly rising to 25%, but again who will pay if they have no record of work.

My last host family ran a small store on the street in front their house and I asked the son who ran it about this.  He saw no reason for records.  I asked how the government taxes his business.  He said it was based on the size of the store.  His family paid 25 cedi’s ($10.00) to a tax collector 4 times a year.  I’m sure that is less than 1% of their profits.   

I hear that outside greater Accra, it is far poorer.  So many people come to Accra from the north looking for work.  I plan to travel there in a few weeks.

A slum school

On Thurdsay, March 13th, I went to a school in Old Fadama, to help present to a class a section on child marriage with two other volunteers.  In Ghana, 25% of all marriages are child marriages and in the northern area where it is more moslem than christian and it's very poor, the number gets over 50%.  The population of Old Fadama is primarily from the north, where people come to Accra with hopes of jobs.  Child marriages reflect poverty and found in all the poorest nations.  In general, families view girls as burdens.  Marriages are arranged and often a bridge price is paid, particularly for the youngest.  I presume that older men who pay the bride price view the girls as slaves.

In Ghana, it costs money to attend school, for school fees, uniforms and books.  The very poorest cannot send their kids to school.  As you can imagine, the school we visited in Old Fadama has the look of a school run on a shoestring budget.  The interior is nothing more than cinderblock walls and everything is unfinished.  There is no glass in the windows or doors in doorways.

We walked in from the street (alley) and the first floor is crowded with the youngest kids in classrooms that separated by half walls.  The older kids are upstairs and it is lunch time, so it feels chaotic and yet there is a certain order to everything.  Somehow the kids all have received lunch and they clean up after themselves when they finish, all without any adult telling them what to do.  In fact, I see teachers, but I do not hear any adult voices.

We wait for lunch to finish and then we enter a classroom with what appears to be 10 to 13 year olds.  We begin to make a presentation by talking and although we only reference child marriage as one where the bride is under 18, the kids are referring to 10 year old brides.  There is a din of noise as all classes are basically open to each other.  It seems hard to talk over the noise, so I open it up to discussion by asking why they think Ghana has outlawed marriage for girls under 18.  We get very good answers.  Kids are paying attention.

We then break up the class into 3 groups and have each write on a small poster reasons why child marriage is wrong.  Then each group presents their posters.  It seems to all go well.  And now for the pictures:

Waiting for lunch to finish,  The little boy wander upstairs.  An adult is keeping watch.

The upstairs hallway with our classroom on the left. Another is on the right and has no window.

This shows the style of construction.

Heading downstairs.  The youngest were congregated here.  And yes, the kid on right is naked.

The younger classes shot from the stairs

The view when entering from the street.

Kakum National Park and an Orphanage

Just one hour from Cape Coast is a park that preserves a virgin rain forest, known local as a primary forest.  Just beyond the coast is zone that was once all rain forest and filled with all kinds of birds and animals.  The trees can be huge and up to 300 plus years old.  It is not a true rain forest because it has a dry season and wet season.  Right now we are heading toward the wet season (begins in April/May), and it may rain once a week for about 4 or 5 hours.  When it rains, it comes down in torrents.  In the rainy season, torrential rains for a few hours occur daily.

The park has a canopy walk, which is basically rope bridges between the tops of some very tall and old trees.  I went with a group of volunteers.  I felt it was rather gimmicky and would have rather spent the time hiking on the forest floor.  Here are the pictures:

Below the rope bridge are normal size trees, I figure we are a few hundred feet in the air.

Just wide enough to put one foot in front of the other.

On Sunday, one of the people we were with wanted to visit an orphanage where he had worked a couple of years ago.  It had moved since then, so we met a man who worked at the orphanage at the tro-tro station in Cape Coast and took a tro-tro out of town for about 30 minutes.  We were in a small town setting.  We walked in from the main road through a very poor area up a hill and just over the crest, where the town ends and saw two buildings.  The orphanage buildings are very new and not yet finished and there are concrete blocks and piles of supplies laying about (the materials used in almost all Ghanian buildings).

When we arrived the children are all in an area between the buildings with a roof providing shade.  They are eating lunch.  There are 24 children here, with an age range from 2 years to teenagers.  It's all seems orderly, with each kid getting a chance to eat.  It's even more impressive as I realize there are no adults present at the orphanage until we arrive.  Lunch is a yellow rice and grain mix.  I understand that breakfast is bread and dinner is rice.  Fish is available on occasion at dinner.

We tour the orphanage.  The buildings are very simple.  The completed building contains dormitory rooms with bunk beds and a bathroom under construction.  The second building has a kitchen, some supply rooms and 2 other bigger rooms under construction.  There is nothing on any walls or any furniture other than the beds and the tables and benches outdoors where the kids eat.

The kids are well behaved and clean up in an orderly way without any instruction.  The younger ones are cared for by the older girls and the older boys seem to run things in general, but all in a kindhearted way.  The two year old looks to the others for care and affection and seems to receive it.  English is spoken by everyone.

It's Sunday, so they have no school or other activities.  After lunch, we ask for a game of soccer ("football").  The field ("pitch") is all dirt and slopes, as it is on the side of a hill.  The goals are made of tree branches.  We play 3 on 3 or 4 on 4 and the kids playing are no more than 12 years old, some look to be no more than 8 or 9.  They play barefoot and run over sticks and stones and kick the ball without a care.  Two of the boys are really good and they are fearless in goal.

After a while, the kids are less shy and like so many other kids I meet, they eat up affection.  There are a few young woman with us sitting on the sidelines and they have their arms and laps full.  On the field, some of the younger guys happily end up with boys climbing all over them.  The visit was short, but I think it was a nice break in their day.

Looking down the road leading to the orphanage.  The house at left is where volunteers for the orphanage stay.  No one was there, likely because it was Sunday.

The view from the hill.  There is a second building behind this one.

As usual, goats and chickens are roaming.  There were a number around during lunch and they eat whatever drops to the ground.

The view up the hill from the school.  Those are one room homes.

Finishing lunch

Cape Coast

Another weekend (#5) and another weekend trip.  This was a long weekend for most of Ghana.   Thursday, March 6th, was independence day and most people take off from work and school until Monday.  

For independence day I went to Black Star Square with some other volunteers.  The square sits between the ocean and the national stadium close to the center of Accra.  It's a huge parade ground with large stands on 3 sides that have high roofs to protect people in the stands from the sun.  The event started before 9am to avoid the heat.  Various military and police groups are represented, with each having about 200 men and women march in formation onto the square.  A few schools have the honor of marching and they come on behind them.  Everyone stands at attention by group and each group has a uniform with a color different from the others.  Soon there are a few thousand people in the square and it's not close to being full.  It all looks good and a military band is playing marching music.  On the fourth side of the square, where there are no stands, is a large burning flame and a line of military equipment on display, plus ambulances, firetrucks, etc.  Just offshore is a warship.  Everyone is excited, talking, some groups are singing, and every kind of food is available from the head porters.

After every group is on the square standing at attention, different dignitaries come onto the parade ground in black cars escorted by motorcycle police.  Last of all is the president escorted by elaborately dressed guards on horses.  The dignitaries have a special stand with the ocean to its back.

By the time the president arrives, we've been in the stands over an hour and it has been getting darker and darker.  Clearly we are in for an incredibly heavy rain.  Soon, the air is so thick with moisture that the stand across the square look hazy.  Then the rain starts.  Hard and heavy and never ending.  The people in the stands are protected from the rain by moving in from the side facing the wind.  But the people standing at attention are immediately drenched and no one moves.  It's raining and hitting the roof of the stands so hard,, we have to shout to talk to the person next to us.  This goes on for about 15 minutes and then president begins to review the troops while standing in a special car that has a place high enough for every to see him.  The car passes the first row of standees and the a decision is obviously made to have the car then simply make a large circle around the parade grounds so everyone can see him and cheer and then it returns to his covered viewing stand.

Different smaller groups, mostly specialty forces, next begin to march past the president's viewing stand and then past the crowds.  If they break into dance, they get a big cheer.  At some point, the school kids are dismissed and they break and run for the stands. 

I'm with some volunteers and after about 2 hours, people are getting antsy.  It's decided we should make a run for it and get to a place to get warm drinks.  We step out into the rain and in an instant I'm completely soaked jumping over small rivers and walking through others.  Finally, I know why there are huge drainage ditches along all the roads.

I had expected big crowds for independence day and decided not to carry my backpack, thus, no pictures of the day.

On Friday morning we worked half a day and that afternoon set off for a weekend in Cape Coast.  We travel of course by tro-tro.  Thankfully it's a 3 hour trip.  We follow the major route east along the coast - one lane in each direction.  Cape Coast was the larger of the colonial trading towns.  It has a minimal harbor with a large fort sitting on a rocky outcropping that creates onside of the harbor.  It was founded by the Swedes in mid 1600's, then taken over by the Dutch, then it was taken over by the British who held the fort from about 1700, who never lost it.  Trading was at first mainly for the gold (this was known as the gold coast).  Soon, the main commerce was in slaves.  We toured the fort, known as "the Castle".  It looks beautiful from the outside but it holds a number of dungeons for male and female slaves and a tunnel that leads from male dungeons to a door with steps down to the water, where small boats rowed the captives out to slave ships.  This was the major slave trading spot and the door they left the fort from is known as the "the door of no return".

The dungeons are huge and have very little or no light and ventilation.  We're told each of the 5 male dungeons held 200 shackled slaves, more than could lay on the ground at any one time.  We are also told the slaves had to live in their own muck.  The floors are brick with a shallow drain down the middle leading to the ocean.  But the guide shows us a mark as to how deep was the muck they lived in.  It's higher than knee deep.  He said they had to excavate to the floor when the castle was restored.  The point is made that this is where many people died.  The guide asked why Europeans would treat their slaves so poorly and then answers himself, saying it was because slaves were so readily available.  But that didn't seem satisfactory to me.  I think it shows not only how little regard the colonials had for local life, but it was a way to break the will of anyone who might try to fight back while on a ship.  It is incredibly bleak in the dungeons, especially when the light gets turned off for our benefit.  Anyone who survived and made it to the boats, had to had been beaten down to the point of giving up all hope.

We're told that the slaves were shipped out every three months.  Female slaves had better lighting and ventilation because the floor of their dungeons are higher.  We're told they were raped (of course) and if any were pregnant before they left, a soldier had the right to have the woman put up in town (under guard) and keep her and the child.  But if a slave was found pregnant on the boats, they were thrown over.  We see more rooms of misery and then we view the fort upstairs.  It is small for the 400 soldiers that we're told lived there, but with some big rooms for the governor.  It's all white and very bright and hot.  Remarkably, the church floor was the roof of the dungeon.

At the National museum, I read about a Danish ship that came to Cape Coast and waited about 200 days for a load of slaves.  During that time, half the ship's crew died.  It must have been miserable to be stationed at the fort, with diarrhea and malaria taking it's toll on everyone's health. Their misery must have added to their cruelty toward the slaves.  The fort is designed for holding and shipping slaves and the stark cruelty of the trade is overwhelming.

I have pictures of the fort, but not of the places slaves were held.  Firstly, I did not pay the fee to take pictures and the guide is standing there.  Second, it seemed wrong to take a picture just after the guide points out the line for the depth of shit and vomit or the place to hold woman who resist rape.

Here are the pictures:

Looking toward the harbor.  The tunnel from the male dungeons ends at the last point of the fort with a door to waiting boats.

This is looking toward the same point as the photo above.  The ground slopes downward through the arch at the end of the wall leading to the door of no return.  Inside the wall with the cannons, about 10 feet down, is a pathway leading to the door to the boats.  The openings you see in the wall is for soldiers to look down at the slaves and keep count.  The tunnel was closed up by the British when they outlawed the slave trade in 1830's.

Another view of the way to the door.  You can see people entering one of the female dungeons.

The view east, away from the harbor.  We stayed at a "resort" ($2.50 per night) where you see people on the beach.

The view west and the harbor, taken from outside the "door of no return".  The closest boats are sitting on the stairs that took the slaves to the boats that shuttled out to the ships.  As you can see, this is a big fishing area.

Similar view to above, except taken from a fort window.

Cape Coast is busy market town that is full of people like Accra, but without the traffic or the frantic feeling.  There are many old buildings, but they are worn so badly that it's hard to know what they were like when newer.

Here are a few pictures of the town.

Unless you enlarge these photos, it's too hard to get a sense of city from them.  You can see the ubiquitous gutters in each of the city pictures that I referenceded in the first section above.   Some are covered by wood, or metal grates or concrete slats.  You never know when smells will waft up.  On the hill is an auxiliary fort that was used to protect and warn the main fort of any inland threat.

Goats can be found roaming everywhere, in every town and city. 

Most mosques are usually small and plain.  This one caught my interest. 

  

Lastly, there is the beautiful beach.  We stayed in the usual style of resort, that has huts of various sizes and prices, african drumming and then western dance music at night and they serve meals.  I have the same problem here, as at other resorts and beaches.  There are no trash bins provided so people throw things everywhere.  And the beaches are treated as a place to swim and as a place to throw garbage and use as a bathroom.  It's ok around the hotel because they sweep the grounds and beach in the morning and too many people are around for serious bathroom use.  But just walk a few yards past the property line and there are hogs living on the waste as seen in the pictures below:

A post-apocolypse scene

As you know from reading this blog, I am in the Old Fadama Slum a few times a week.  I've heard people comment about the lagoon, asking me if I've seen it yet and occasionally noting that it is on the list of 10 most polluted spots on the planet.  I'd hear comments such as, "It's on the same list as Chernobyl".

On Tuesday, March 4th, I was at the community center waiting for my mediation trainees to arrive.  We knew it would be a while and we start talking about the conditions of a particular alley that we walked down for the first time today.  The alley was no more than 4 feet wide the middle had a dirt gutter filled to the top with a greenish-gray glop that was about 2 feet wide.  I was asking what happens during the rainy season.

I was then taken outside and shown where the alley leads to, a hill made of garbage, and told to imagine how it must look when it rains heavily day in and day out.  I'm told, "it gets mucky", with no further elaboration.  Later. I'm told that people get big bags of sawdust and throw it down on the mud.  I can see in places where the mud/dirt is mixed with sawdust.

The view of the gutter as we followed it into a wider area.

You can dee where the gutter ends (or goes into pipe and comes out in river at other side of hill?) and then the hill of garbage.  It's hard to tell it's a hill, but it looks like the garbage is the remnants of last rainy season washing garbage downhill to that spot and/or washing away any dirt covering.  

  We then walked up the hill, taking a path just the left of the last hut standing in a row above (each one is a one room house).  I took a pictures as we walked up to a road that heads to right and to a small rise (it's mostly flat here with small rises of land).  You need to enlarge these photos to see anything.

Looking away from the lagoon

On top of the little hill where I hoped to get a shot of the roofs of old fadama which includes a mosque in the midde forefront.  However the guys sitting against the house on the right starting to make noises so I took the shot without raising the camera.  In the middle you can see a sign with different photos of heads.  That's a sign for a barber.

From the top of the rise, it's less than 50 yards to the edge of small bluff, that drops off to a slowly moving river of dark gray water.  It's a scene of utter pollution devastation.  The water flows from the right to left in the pictures and two small rivers (they beome bigger rivers in wet season) are coming together to form one river that flows into the sea - Bay of Guinea.  Across the river to the left is a green field with a few cows.  Straight ahead is an enormous dump with a large herd of cows and to the left of them is a group of men burning plastic electronics to obtain the metal residue.  The copper wires are valuable scrap metal.  The smoke is highly toxic.  As you enlarge the photos, you will see hundreds of white egret type birds and dogs playing in the water.  It is now the dry season.  I'm told that during the wet season, This becomes are large lagoon and the water level rises to the height of the banks of where I am standing.

looking upstream at the convergence of two "rivers"

same view as above

Looking downstream so you see how land ends in a bluff.  Rivers bends to the left.

Looking at dump across river and the city behind that.  Enlarge the photo and see the herd of cows, hundreds of white birds and a few dogs.

another view with the field on the left bank

Looking upstream of the branch to the right using the "telephoto" so you can see the fires from scrap metal pickers.  They are burning parts of old electronics that can't have metal extracted any other way.

Lastly, I have a photo of a stream on my left that ends at a pipe underneath a house that then dumps straight into the river at my left.  You can see how the newer gray water mixes into the dark gray river.  Notice the goats standing by the stream and the resting man.  I didn't really take notice of the man before, but seeing the red bowl, he looks like he is begging, but that would be very odd, as this is not a highly trafficked area.  As for the goats, lots of them just roam around old Fadama.