more on legal aid and a trip to lake Bosumtwe (with photos)

I am getting to know better my way around legal aid and how this small office can be responsible for all of Greater Accra.  The maximum gross income to get free legal representation is 500 cedi’s a month, which is the equivalent of $200 a month. (!!!)  Very likely the majority of the country would qualify for our services, and the Accra region is over 2 million people.  And yet, on some days, the office is quiet.  How can that be?  My belief is that the government would like to keep legal aid small so that it does not cost too much.  Money is short and poor people’s rights suffer.

I find that when I tell people I work at legal aid, they say they never heard of it.  People just do not know about their right to legal aid, . . .  as well as most other basic rights.  The courthouses do not have any notices advising people of legal aid and I know of no effort to get the word out.  If someone comes into court on a criminal case and cannot afford an attorney, the court does not advise the defendant of legal aid.  I’m told that most criminal cases come into the office through family members who want to get someone out of jail.  I have not yet seen or heard of a criminal case here, and wonder where they are.  People who work here say that most of their clients hear of them through word of mouth or possibly because they met the right bureaucrat who told them about it.

As I mentioned before, all civil cases go through mediation before going to the attorneys, and the mediations have a high rate of success.  I’ve now sat in on a several of these, and the parties treat the mediations like a court case.  While they assert their positions forcefully, they take the advice of mediators seriously and have a surprising ability find some basis for coming to agreements.  There are usually about 10 mediations scheduled each day.

If a case cannot be settled through mediation or if the other side refuses to come in after 3 attempts (the last attempt includes service by the police), then the case is referred to the attorneys.  There are about 5 or 6 attorneys working in the office.  In addition, there is a list of about 25 to 30 attorneys who receive referral cases from legal aid and they are suppose to charge 10% of their regular fees.

I like the people here and it’s hard to believe most were randomly assigned through national service.  Talking to them is fun and opens up so many new areas of life here.  I find the law is very similar to home, except that the law takes into account traditional customs in dealing with marriage, property rights and inheritances.  This sometimes leads to some very sad outcomes.  Many people live in ancestral or family homes / property.  For example, if a man in the family dies, it is not uncommon to see cases where the wife and children are pushed out of the house / off the land by the man’s siblings.  Unfortunately, wife and kids have no rights under customary law, because the husband only had a customary right and not an ownership interest to the home or land he occupied.  Customary property rights are often derived from a chief ‘s grant to a family (chiefs still have a lot of power over ancestral lands), and the property rights do not pass by death to spouses.

Lake Bosumtwe

This past weekend, I traveled with 6 other volunteers to Lake Bosumtwe, which is about 30 km outside Kumasi, which is the 2^nd major city of Ghana.  We took a VIP bus on Friday night to Kumasi.  The buses are the nicest on the road and most expensive, not much different from a typical tourist bus in U.S.  To my surprise the road between the two major cities is a mess.  Some of the distance is a divided highway, 2 lanes each way, but a large section was never paved.  Just a bumpy, rutted dirt road with cars, trucks and buses are jockeying for position in the dust.

About half the distance is a two lane road that runs through small towns.  At each town, people sell food, drink and wares to the various vehicles through their windows.  And at each town, there are a series of speed bumps.  This all makes for a slow, bumpy, uncomfortable ride, even the nice bus.  Five hours to go 240 kilometers, which I think is about 165 miles.  Cost was 18 cedis ($6.50).

Lake Bosumtwe was formed by a meteor over a hundred million years ago.  It is surrounded a rings of hills that rise up just a few hundred yards from the shore.  The hills are lush, with many shades of green.  The lake is large, filled with rainwater, and has a number of small villages around the lake.  Farming goes on around the edges and the hills have small patches of plantains and cocoa planted.  The first day we took a long walk through farm fields looking for a trail to take us up one of the hills.  After about 2 hours of walking, we decided to just walk through a patch of cocoa trees planted at the bottom of a hill, hoping to find a trail leading up.  We found instead an area of cut trees where farmers intended to either extend the cocoa or plant plantains.  We walked through this and found an area of plantains that is much easier to walk through.  This got us pretty high up, as well as soaking wet with sweat and drained from the sun.  On the walk back we found a guesthouse where we bought drinks and then continued the walk back to our guest house for a swim under the setting sun. 

The lake sits in the hot sun all day and the surface water feels like a hot bath.  When you swim, your head and arms are in warm to hot water and your feet are in cooler water.  If you dive down it gets progressively cooler to the point of reaching some actual cold water.

The lake has a number villages long the shore.  They are poor, of course, but food seems plentiful, but with little variety.  Men fish using long hardwood boards, that look they were shaped from the huge timbers found in colonial houses.  The men paddle the boards and throw a round net into the water.  When they pull it up, they have fish about 8 to 12 inches long.  It does not look very hard to do.

There were some local people from Accra staying in our guesthouse, and they bought a basket of fish, had it grilled by the staff and shared it with us.  It was really good.  Sharing food here is common.  Many times I talk a little to a person and then they say, “You are invited”.  Which means I am invited to share their food.  People sometimes say this just because I am sitting near them.

Some of the volunteers wanted to try fishing, so we made arrangements for a fisherman to meet us in the morning, who for a fee, would provide us with boards and teach us to fish.  We all thought it would not be too hard, as it looks so simple.  But staying on the board is very hard.  The wind picked up in the morning and waves formed.  I could not paddle the board unless I laid on my stomach and even then, I would sometimes fall off.  The board weighs a few hundred pounds and it does not turn easily.  The locals sit with their legs straight out in front on the board.  An impossibility for us. 

I have some pictures:

The road to the lake ends here. Behind the trees is the lake.  Access to everywhere else is by trails and two dirt roads to branch off from this road in both directions.

Path to the road that leads to the village with our guesthouse.  The trees on right are plantains and the one on left is probably a mango tree.

View from of the lake from the road.  That is a fisherman paddling his board.

Ahead is the village and to the left in the trees is the roof of the guest house where we stayed.  The property sits on the lake.

The only store in our village.  The two people to left are standing on the lip of the drainage ditch that runs along the side of the road.  Hanging over the door are single servings of laundry soaps, powdered drinks, etc.

We started to walk a trail around the lake and these are cacao trees.  The green pods contain the cacao.  We ate one and inside is white pulp that tastes sweet and inside each section of pulp is a seed.  If you eat the seed, it tastes like a chocolate bar that was 100% cacao - pretty bitter yet chocolatey.

More of the trail

We came to a village and these kids insisted on saying hello.  Kid in front is naked.

Showing the kids their picture.  In the back is a boy playing with a tire. 

That's me hiking up the hill - no trail.

We came to a clearing that is being prepared for plantains.  The day was hazy, but the hills are green, green, green. 

Hot peppers growing wild among the plantains.

Watching fisherman in the early morning sun.  The man on the left has fish in his net that will go into the basket. 

Sunrise.  At left is how boards are stored.  The man behind is washing himself after fishing.  On the water are plastic bottles and containers used to hold lines leading to more nets or traps.

We try out the boards.