Working at Legal Aid (with unrelated photo)

I started a new assignment working (volunteering) for the legal aid scheme In Accra.  Similar to the U.S., Ghana has funded a legal aid scheme to provide counsel for people bellow a certain income level.  “Scheme” may sound odd, but the language here is more like the English version of English.  For example, at legal aid, when one talks to a client, it is called “taking instruction”.  When they write letters on based on what the client tells them, they say, “My client instructs me that . . . . . “.

The legal aid office is downtown where most of the buildings are government offices.  My building is a non-descript concrete building that looks like it was never completed and has a dirt drive and parking lot that turns to mud in the rain.  I am the only obruni (white man) in the office, which, in itself, makes this an interesting placement.  The entire office is a hallway with 6 offices, that include a conference room and a small lobby.  I spend most of my time in two of these offices.

Legal aid is not well promoted and most poor people have no idea it exists.  The office is (surprisingly to me) not overwhelmed with work for being in a place where most everyone cannot afford attorneys.  From what I can tell, they take some action on every case that walks in the door.  All cases, except criminal cases, must go through mediation before it can be assigned to an attorney.  Many cases involve land disputes (these are common because, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, there is no centralized and reliable registry of deeds).  They also take on rental disputes, inheritance disputes, matrimonial matters, and so on.

I most often sit in the mediation registry, which is a room about 15 x 15, the size of a big bedroom.  In this room there are 6 desks, and some people share a desk.  At times there are 8 employees working there, sharing space, working on computers, talking to clients or to co-workers.  There is a constant flow of people, clients and co-workers, moving in an out of the room. This is the room where clients come in to report for mediation or to make their first contact with the office and explain their problems that will lead to a mediation.

To me, it is very Ghanaian to have an office without any concept of personal space.  No one seems to mind that everyone can see and hear everything that goes on.  For them, it's all part of office life, and people will cut into each other's conversations with comments.  Even the clients telling their personal woes do not seem to mind the lack of privacy or the interruptions.  People are very patient and no one demands uninterrupted service or undivided attention.  

There are two mediation offices and they are mostly staffed by people doing National Service.  Anyone who completes college in Ghana must do 12 months of national service and receive an allowance.  They can be placed anywhere in the country with no choice of their placements, but money for housing is provided for those sent far from home.  They could be put in a small school up north or get lucky and end up here.  So, there is a young energetic vibe here, which I like.  It is a mix of men and women, Moslem and Christian, richer and poorer.  The office is overstaffed, and people have slow periods during the day.  No one seems to resent their placement, or act with indifference to the job.  Not everyone works as hard as everyone else, but they all do their job, and the office seems to run well with minimal supervision.  Actually, it seems like no supervision.  Clearly, everyone was trained at some point, but then I never see anyone acting like a manager, telling people what to do.  People will ask for advice from each other, but no one bosses.  My belief, is that this is a reflection of the communities they grew up in.

Interestingly, when someone has nothing to do, they have no problem putting their head on the desk, watching a downloaded TV show, or just talking.  No one indicates any disapproval.  I even see people who are working with the attorneys do this.  The attorneys will talk to assistants who are playing games on their computers and act like this is normal.  I have noticed this type of behavior in others places.  Places of business are often overstaffed and the extra people who have nothing to do feel free to nap, etc.  No one feels the need to look busy when at work.  If and when they are needed, they do the work. 

I think one reason for seeing so many people napping is that this is a country of the sleep deprived.  Most people are up by 5am.  I often wake up at 5am because of all the noise of activity outside and then lay in bed until 6:00.  By 5am the neighborhood around me is already abuzz with the sound of children, things clanking, music playing, etc.  People who commute from outlying neighborhoods, must Ieave before 6 to avoid the jams, as most work starts by 8.  In my house, the host mother starts baking at 4am, and an assistant arrives at 6am.  Also the fact that this is a very religious country makes the day longer.  Many people tell me they do some kind of morning devotion, which is sometime between 4 and 5am.  I hear a local church every morning singing and clapping starting about 4am.  Moslem prayers start around the same time or by 5am.  This is 7 days a week for both.  Morning prayers need to be early so people can then have time to take care of their morning chores before they head out to work and school.  An eight hour sleep would require people to be in bed before 9pm, but I see no evidence of early bedtimes.

Anyways, back to legal aid - the people are friendly and I made a few friends straight off.  Each day, the office handles a number of mediations, and I get invited to participate on some, particularly if they are in English.  I am told that there are 46 recognized languages in Ghana, and we get people from all backgrounds.  Most people at legal aid speak at least two if not 3 or 4 local languages, so that they are always able to find someone who can communicate with a client.  Often enough, people speak English, even if they say they do not.  So I can participate directly in the mediations. 

Each mediation is a window into Ghanaian life.  In one, a young man was living rent free in the storage room of his aunt’s church and she wanted to evict him because he does not regularly show up for morning devotion, choir practice, clean-up times and so on.  He says its true but that he must make a long commute for his national service, he then works an evening job, and he is trying to learn web design before he sleeps.  He said he often gets 2 hours sleep.  She would only say that we all work hard and did not find this an adequate excuse.  He desperately wants to stay in his room, because he has nowhere else to go.  In Ghana, tenants pay rent for 2 years in advance.  He has no ability to this.  National service only provides a small allowance.  We got them to agree he can stay so long as he shows up for morning devotion (4am) everyday and bible study 2 nights a week.  The aunt would not let him participate in any other church functions as a sort of punishment (the man really wants to be in the choir), because of his lack of total participation.

In another mediation, a woman was asking for a divorce.  It took a while for the full story to come out, but it appears that she was first married and had a family and then divorced.  She then remarried and had a second family.  All the kids are now grown and gone.  Her first husband died and she went to his home village to partake in some funeral rituals that she felt compelled to do.  As part of these funeral rituals, she was required to sleep with another man before she could return to her 2^nd husband.  (I’m not making this up!)  The 2^nd husband learned of this later after her return home and, of course, he was very unhappy.  He said he wanted a divorce and they continued to live in a one room home with this problem over their heads.  Clearly the parties do not talk to each other very much.  At the mediation the husband said he no longer wanted a divorce, he wanted to stay married and pleaded for her to stay.  He said he was angry because this all happened without anyone telling him about it beforehand.  She said she could no longer trust him because he got angry and asked for a divorce.  We arranged for a trial separation and asked them to return in a month.

Sometimes I work in a different office, that holds one attorney and 3 women who have completed law school but not yet taken the bar exam.  For them, this is a good training during the interim.  The office is half the size of the first and it has three desks.  I have seen 4 attorneys (or student attorneys) and 3 clients in there at one time.  Again, no one acts like this is an odd arrangement.  Any client interaction in the office includes interaction with everyone else.  Again, this is just another example of the sense of community that I find everywhere.  It is hard to explain and could be the subject of a longer blog.  Let it be said that on the street, on the beach, in tro-tors, in the neighborhoods and everywhere else, it is not surprising to see people feeling free to interject themselves into other people’s business or discussions.

When I work with the attorneys, the work has been less interesting.  Talking to the law students had be fun.  Most of the work is done on forms and we simply fill them out.  I suppose since they have attorneys in training doing the work, that it makes sense that they work off of forms.  But my sense tells me that this is what court is like.  Court cases do not seem too complex.  For example, a divorce involves serving the other side then getting a court date for the trial, which is held in the judge’s chambers.  There is little to no discovery that I am aware of.  I have heard of trials of other matters and it just all seems to be handled on a basic level.

I do not mean to judge the whole legal system on my one week in the legal aid office.  I may be speaking very unfairly of the court system.  I can update this report in another week or two.

I thought it would be interesting to mention that many clients who come in do not have addresses.  So many houses are not on any roads.  For example, where I live, I have to walk through a number of alleys between homes and through people's "yards".  Within the past 10 years, the government has gone around giving every house a house number so that the address will be the house neighborhood and the neighborhood.  For example, my house would be something like: House no. B538/4, Cambridgeport, Cambridge, MA.  When people come to my house in Accra for the first time, we give to directions to a local bar on the road and then they call and we go meet them and walk them the final distance to the house.

Lastly, here is a photo of me wearing some clothes I bought here.  No one looks twice if I wear this.  Not everyone dresses colorfully, but a lot of people wear african outfits (for men, the shirt and pants are usually the same material).  On Sunday, the women wear their very best.  So many are beautifully done up.  They like their dresses to be tight, and then they walk slow, to be seen and to not sweat.