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.