Ghana - Can You Hear Me Now?

The other day I had an epiphany, and it didn't even hurt ;-) Simultaneously, my husband was talking on his cell, the kids were watching one of those sickeningly sweet (i.e., nauseating) The Land Before Time movie sequels (I think it was Land Before Time XXVIII or XXIX, they're all the same to me) on a local TV station, and I was sitting at the computer, surfing the internet. Now, you may be thinking, "Big deal. So what. Happens all the time. " Yes, everywhere else, but not here. Lest you've forgotten, this is Ghana. In fact, a lot of what we take for granted here -- the phones, internet, TV -- is a really really big deal.

My first visit to Ghana was in late August of 1990, and I was to meet, for the first time ever, my mother-in-law and various other in-laws and relatives. I was more than 5,000 miles from NJ, but it could have been another planet, as far as I was concerned. Naturally, my parents were worried. Jeez, they worried when I got on the Path train to go to work in the big, bad "City." Meanwhile, they were born in Manhattan, for goodness sake.

Anyway, it's 1990 and here I am in Ghana, safe and sound. Now, I'm supposed to let my parents back in NJ know that we arrived safely, but herein is the catch. This is Ghana. There is no phone in my mother-in-law's house. In fact, there is nary a phone in any house in Ghana. If you wanted to make a phone call to America, or anywhere else for that matter, you had to go on an adventure: you went to the Ghana Postal & Telecommunications office. Overseas calls had to be "booked" through an operator, but first you had to schedule your phone call. So you went to the P&T office, told them you wanted to call America, and they gave you a time to come back, hopefully in the same day and usually several hours hence, but that was if you were lucky. You see, there were a limited number of available overseas phone lines, and if you weren't quick (or lucky), you were shut out and you'd have to try again the next day.

If you were one of the lucky few, you'd get to the P&T office at the scheduled time (and this is one of the few times when a Ghanaian would make an effort to be on time, cause in this case, you snooze you lose), tell the clerk the overseas phone number you want to call, she places the call for you and then directs you to one of about six booths. Within moments, through much hissing and crackling and an exceptionally disconcerting echo on the line so that you hear yourself first and then only fragments of what is being said on the other end of the line, you are finally connected to your party.

Here's how my first conversation home sounded:

Hi, Dad (Dad). (...honey) What? (ut?) We got in okay (kay). What? It was fine (fine). Where's Mom? (...om) I said, "where's Mom? (Mom?) (...ping.) What? Oh, shopping. What? Oh, she's nice. What? She doesn't speak much English (ish). What? Okay (kay). I'll tell him (him). Love you, too (oooo). Okay, bye (bye). {Sniffle}

And it wasn't that much easier in America to call Ghana. Even though there were very few land line phones available, we were fortunate that our family had one of the first. And luck really had nothing to do with it in this case. Our luck was borne of the fact that three of my sisters-in-law all worked in the P&T office, so then (as now), it's a matter of who you know.

So, say Sly wants to call his Mom. What he does is dial the overseas operator at a precise time, and say that he wants to book a call to Ghana. The call is typically arranged for a slot 6 hours later, so if you dial the operator at 10:00 pm, you get a 4:00 am wakeup call; if you dial at 11:00 pm, you get a 5:00 am call, and so on. Given the time difference, you've got to plan it just so that it's early enough in Ghana that your intended party might still be home. Of course, certain slots get filled really fast, and if you miss the good ones, you're screwed. So, every hour, on the hour, you get another chance to win. If you "lose," then the operator (and back then, it's a real person, not just a recording!) advises you that the calling slot has closed, and suggests you try again later. And God forfend your clock is slow.

Less than two decades later, we find that everyone, from the kenkey seller on the corner, to the Ghanaian version of "masters of the Universe" have a personal cell phone (or two or three). And if you don't have a cell, you only have to walk a few feet to find a phone vendor (usually established at a small wooden desk with a huge beach umbrella over their head) who'd be happy to place your local call for a mere 20 pesawas. Want a house phone? You only have to fill out a form at the phone company office, pay a small fee, and within a few days, you've got a brand new phone installed. And, if you, want for an additional 60 Ghana Cedis, you can even have broadband. Wow!

"And, what about TV?," you ask. Well, back in 1990, Ghana had only one television station: GTV, the Station of the Nation. It operated only about 3 hours a day, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and showed local news, sometimes a second (or more commonly even, a third) rate American sitcom, once in a great while an American movie of the week (which always seemed to star Susan Saint James, for some obscure reason). And if God was with you, there'd be a televised football match. And truthfully, you loved/hated it when it was a movie or a special or better/worse still, a game, because regardless of the time it started, at 9:00 pm SHARP, it was over. Not, "to be continued," not, "same bat time, same bat channel," not, "stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow on this station." It was just, over. You'd find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat, your eyes would pendulum between the TV screen and the clock, your pulse would quicken as the program was drawing to a conclusion. Would there be enough time? Would we find out what happened to the baby elephant? Would we discover who was the murderer? Would we find out who won?!!! Maybe.

In August 2007, we've got round-the-clock viewing, and Ghana's free TV stations now number a record breaking FOUR: GTV, TV3, MetroTV and a brand new station, Net2 (which may or may not be breaking some serious international copyright laws and treaties, but, hey, that's their problem, not mine).

Ghana may still be officially classified as a "Lesser Developed Country," but it has, undeniably, come a long long way.

Road Trip - Destination: Atimpoku

Saturday was a scheduled "lights off" and as is our wont, when confronted with a hazy hot day stuck in our little house doing nothing but sweating, we decided to take a road trip. One of our favorite destinations is Atimpoku, about an hour's drive from our house in Tema. In a fit of tag team insanity (Sly suggesting, me agreeing), we invited an additional two kids to accompany us - Mike's buddy Mawuli and his brother Selasi. Four boys, one girl, one husband and me, thank God for my MP3 player.

Atimpoku is a small village which lies along the Volta River, just upstream (or downstream? I don't know, I always did poorly on the river questions on exams... guess I should have paid better attention in geography class) from the Adomi Bridge, which was built in 1954 and still as beautiful now as it was then. If you're interested, it costs 8 cents for our van to travel over it, free if you're walking.


We went to a riverfront resort called Akosombo Continental Hotel, and it's a nice place just to hang for the day. It's got a beautiful pool, friendly staff, all kinds of boats for hire, and a mini zoo with assorted wildlife: a couple of crocodiles, a dozen monkeys, lots of Grey parrots and other indigenous birds, some (wild?) turkeys, two cute little deer-like animals, and (major shocker!) two fairly large snakes, which is quite unusual here in the ophidiophobia capital of the world. The vast majority of Ghanaians apparently have a morbid fear of all snakes, big or small, venomous or not, dead or alive. Don't believe me? Ask one.



And the view from the riverside path doesn't put a strain on the eyes either.



The kids enjoyed the pool, even though the weather wasn't really cooperative with more clouds than sun. Nothing stops a kid, not clouds or rain or adults yelling (dozens of times, it seems) "Stop Running!" So, for the first two hours, all went well. Then, the hunger pangs began. Now, I like this place, but the fact is their food is mediocre at best, and for the dubious honor of eating it, you get to pay obroni prices. This would wind up being an expensive lunch, that no one would eat. But, within sight is our salvation. It's only a trudge up one hill and down another and we're there.

Aylos Bay is a smallish place, that builds itself up pretty big as offering lodging, food and drink, campgrounds, canoing and river swimming (our kids are desperate to swing the rope out over the river). We did stay there once, when we found ourselves shut out of all the "good" hotels. But for $25 a night, we got a single room, no A/C but at least a working ceiling fan. The shower area of the bathroom had no raised lip to separate the shower from the toilet, so when you showered, the water that didn't run down the drain, ran out the bathroom door and into the bedroom. Talk about soggy. We had to ask for extra towels to create a threshold, and while it didn't work perfectly, it kept the wading pool to the immediate area in front of the toilet bowl, so not terribly terrible.

The grounds at Aylos are lovely and wild; verdant would be the word that most aptly describes. And of course, my own little flower cannot help but to improve the scenery.





They've got some traditional masks and musical instruments hanging, and some of the most interesting wall carvings and statues that you'll see in Ghana. This is one of them.


Credit for the picture has to go to my friend Leann and it was "borrowed" from her blog (see the link for the Best Blog in Ghana to the right) .

But, as usual, I digress. The food and beer at Aylos Bay is pretty decent and cheap, so that is where we headed for lunch. The fare is the standard "continental" style food, meaning chicken and chips or rice, but since that's what the kids wanted (and isn't that what they ALWAYS want), that's what they got. I have become addicted to their battered shrimps, which are plucked fresh from the river (more on this later), and served with a spicy sauce. I keep suggesting they try adding beer to their batter. Jeez, I'd even sacrifice some of my own, but what do I know. So what that beer battered shrimp on the menu in an American restaurant would cost about $8 for a lousy half dozen or so shrimp. But, as I said, what do I know?

One of my pet peeves, and I find this in almost all the restaurants in Ghana, is that they bring out each entree as it is done, rather than all at once. Local foods like light soup and fufu come out fast, and any food that has chips with it comes out last. What that means is that Sly always eats first, kids always eat last. And these particular kids are hungry ("Mom, I'm Staaarrrving!"). Now I've been known to have the occasional mean streak, and I don't usually tend to feel guilty about a lot of things, but I really really feel bad when my food comes first and there are starving children in Africa. ;-) This particular day, it was worse than usual, poor Selasi didn't get his food until the rest of us were nearly finished with our meals. He kept appealing to the waitress with big brown sorrowful eyes, but no dice. Apparently, the cook had to go kill a chicken (sarcasm notwithstanding, this is more probable here in Ghana than elsewhere in the world). Whatever. It finally was served to the poor kid, hot and juicy, and Selasi ate every last morsel.

On our trudge back to the swimming pool next door (and you don't know how tempted I am to jump over the wall separating these two places), we stop and plucked a couple of berries from a shrub. I have no idea what you call it, so don't ask. But no, they're not poison.


Louisa, the owner of Aylos Bay introduced us to it about a year ago, giving each of us a single berry, just to taste, as we were leaving. It tasted alright, kinda sweet, only a tiny bit of meat to it with a pit in the center, but otherwise nothing special (or so we thought). The day was still early (remember, this is a while back), so we decided to go to another local restaurant, which we see all the time from the road (or from the river when we're on the boat) and which has intrigued me to no end. It just looks very "neat."

Abadi Idyll turns out to be a small, cute, well maintained lodge owned by a German man and his Ghanaian wife. We decide to sit at a table on a dock near the water's edge. As usual, we ordered a Star Beer. It was bubbly and cold, but, as we both agreed, it tasted really weird, too sweet, maybe it spoiled. I don't know. So we called the waitress over to bring another Star. Again. Yucch! It was like some evil Snapple worker sabotaging the Anheuser-Busch plant. "Yoo-hoo, Miss? Can you bring a different beer, a Guilder perhaps? Both of these Stars taste strange." Of course she could, but we could see the panic in her eyes (as in, are we gonna pay for these?). Not to worry, we assured her, we'd pay for all of them. So she carries our Guilder to us. For crying out loud. It's a conspiracy! Light bulb goes off. Duh. It must be those weird berries we ate. Sure enough, they did something weird to our taste buds. Everything we ate or drank for the next hour was soooo "different." The kids thought it was great, of course. Plain old sachet water tasted like the nectar of the gods! Kids.

Okay, back to the now. After lunch at Aylos, we went back to the hotel and spent another hour or so. While the kids played and splashed, Sly arranged with Kwame, the pool boy, to retrieve our shrimps. All 5-1/2 kilos of them, that's about 11 lbs worth. The last time we were at the hotel, during another day time lights off, we learned that some of the workers arrange for fresh shrimps for their customers. "How much," you wonder? How's about $2.50 a pound. Take a look at this big boy. Nice, huh?



With the car packed up, kids, wet swimsuits, goggles, towels, toys and shrimp, we head on out. One of the "things we do" when we leave this area, is stop in the village proper and get takeout (or take away, as they say here) for dinner, always assuming we'll (meaning, I'll) be too tired to even think about cooking, much less washing dishes.

The way you buy your take away is this: pull your car over on the side of the road, and wait. Within nano-seconds, a few dozen young girls "come a runnin." Each and every one of them carrying a huge plastic bowl or glass fish tank style box of food on their heads, and they run in flip flops, of all things, not even Nikes. The first one to cross the finish line doesn't get a medal, but she (hopefully) makes a sale.

We tend to attract a fair amount of attention when we pull over. Most of the hawkers assume that the driver, is well, the driver (rather than my husband) and they ignore him completely and head straight for the obroni in the passenger seat. When you are the one "trapped" in a car, what comes immediately to mind is: Shark Feeding Frenzy. Only we are the bait! I'm quick though, and my window is closed even before the first food-laden hand can be thrust through. Sly gets out of the van, and the swarm now senses that he's the intermediary, so they leave us alone.

What the girls sell is an assortment of local foodstuffs: Tiny fried fish sold in a skinny plastic bag, called onemanthousand, and yes, you have to write it like that. Cause that's how they look, a thousand little itty bitty fish crammed into a tiny bag. About the size of a fingernail cutting from your pinky. But they're crunchy and delicious - head, tails and everything in between get eaten by the handful, kind of like popcorn.


There's also two kinds of fermented corn dough -- abolo is a bit of sweet corn dough that is wrapped and flattened in a folded banana leaf then baked, and the other pure starch is white kenkey which is a similar dough wrapped in a corn husk and steamed. Another offering is shrimp that is salted and smoked and sold unshelled, skewered on a stick. Not nice, but since I've got my own fresh shrimp, who cares.

On the way home, it finally starts to rain in earnest, we expected it since it's been threatening all day. But the kids don't even notice, they're pooped and sleeping in the back but I'm stoked. I'm already thinking about my dinner. Let the kids have there onemanthousand or abolo or kenkey. For me, it's shrimp shrimp and more shrimp. Yummy.

What's in a Name?

First, a bit of lore: Ghana's and mine. Children born to Ghanaian parents are presented in a special ceremony called an "Outdooring" or naming ceremony, which takes place on the 8th day following their birth. This is when they are presented to family and friends and well wishes and sometimes gifts are bestowed upon them. Although it varies among the tribes, children are usually given a Christian or Moslem name, as well as a tribal or traditional name, which might reflect the day of the week in which they were born. This is done in the Ewe tribe, of which my husband's family is clan.

I can vividly remember the "Outdooring" for our oldest son. It was June, and already hot where we lived in Maryland. And, as can be expected when there is a newborn in the house, there was very little sleeping being done there, least of all by me. Yet, at dawn of the morning of Friday, June 10th, my husband and I and Sean, awaited the arrival of our first guests.

I have a picture of that day burned into my memory (and on regular film, for when the first brain farts occur, which could be any day now). I am sitting on the couch, wearing what I now call my "Ghana dress" which is a wax print dress made for me by my sister-in-law, the only one that fit me after the almost 50 lb. weight gain I experienced... I still have that dress, though it is so thin and ratty looking, I can only wear it around the house. Okay, I am barely alive... never before, or after, if truth be told, have I looked or felt that exhausted. I can barely hold a smile on my face, much less a baby in my arms. I look like shit.

The Ghanaian guests arrive (on time! I am amazed to announce), dressed in their Ghanaian finery, women in the best wax print kaba and slit they can have made, all of which makes me feel even more dejected than I thought possible. The living room is full of happy vibrant people (well, except for me).

Now begins the libation ceremony. A bottle of schnapps is opened and poured into a glass and water poured into a calabash. The eldest among the guests performs the ritual: a small amount of schnapps is poured on the floor, then a bit of the water, then more schnapps, and the Ewe ancestors are implored to watch over our son, to guide and help him as he grows up, to turn him into a good and moral man. The elder takes the second sip (the first going to the "ancestors"), and then presses the glass to the baby's lips (I know, I know, studies say that the poor kid's at risk for "a lifetime of alcohol-abuse related problems," but this is for the ancestors!), then the glass is passed to the Daddy (big gulp) and then to the Mommy (tiny sip, after all, I'm breastfeeding), and finally, every guest takes a sip. Our son, Sean Christoper Kwame, is now officially "presented" to our friends and family. May the ancestors watch over and protect him. Me, I'm going back to bed.

As in any culture, parents put a lot of thought into what they name their child. One common theme among Ghanaians is naming their children for a virtue: Faith, Patience, Mercy, Innocence, Justice, Peace, Prosper, to name a few. Another theme is religion: Emmanuel, Adom, Abraham, Peter, Noah, Jesus, Joseph, Judas (and the Judas I know is quick to point out that it's Judas, brother of James, not the other one!), and Godsgrace (funny store interjected here... Michael has a classmate who goes by this name, and every time the teacher should vocalize the words, "... by the grace of God" this little girl pipes up, "Who? Me?"). Then there are the Ghanaian words with a meaning: Serwa is a woman of noble character, Selasi means full of hope, Mawuli means God is with me. Oh, and here's one that I have only come across once: Agyeman which means, born fourteenth(!)

Well, despite a parent's good intentions, as we all know, everyone picks up a nickname. That can't be helped. And these children will come to be known more by their nickname than by any other name. Sometimes, the name that sticks is based on their chosen profession: "Cappie" for the carpenter, "Prof" or "Teacher" for a teacher or college educated person, or "Old Soldier" for an ex-army man. Sometimes, it's for their appearance or physical anamoly: "Heavy D" for a VERY BIG man. Sometimes, the moniker that sticks is the favorite expression -- a classmate of my husband's who always asked his teachers, "Please, may I know..." naturally, became "May-I-Know." You get the drift.

The obituary notices and posters typically list a persons name, and then their aliases or A/K/As, for how else will you recognize your old school mate? The fact is, there are relatively few surnames, in Ghana. For example, the captain of Ghana's soccer team is Stephen Appiah... and so is our electrician. So, if a funeral notice is posted for say, Stephen Appiah, A.K.A. Captain Black Stars, or Stephen Appiah, A.K.A. Kikrikee (Ghanaian version of electricity ZAP!), without the provision of their nickname, you'd likely be at the wrong funeral. And my sincere apologies to the Stephen Appiahs, for using their name in this manner... God grant long life to both of them!

Within a single day, I may be called many things. I am Mom, Babs, Auntie, Sister Barbara, Madame, Mommy, Momma, even Sir. It all depends on who is talking to me (kids, husband, niece, sister-in-law, taxi driver, house help, laborer). It takes some getting used to. On my first trip to Ghana in 1990, I hated being called "Mommy" by men old enough to be MY father. I resented it, in retrospect, maybe a bit too vociferously, and insisted that they call me by my given name. Didn't happen. Maybe Barbara was too difficult to wrap around their tongue.

I also couldn't, for the life of me, understand why my sister-in-law kept calling my husband, "Uncle Sylvester." Why? Was I missing something? Wasn't he her brother? Talk about a dysfunctional family! I finally figured out that it's a term of respect, endearment, even. But you see, I didn't know, didn't understand. I just didn't get it. Now, I get it. I can Auntie, Sister, Uncle and Brother with the best of them.

In closing, then, I see that "Uncle" Will [Shakespeare] was right, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

Barbara A/K/A Obroni Babs