So I was planning this great exposé about that Ghana now has a female running for the flagbearer of the ruling political party – aka this is as close as Ghana has been to a female president. On this issue, I have interviewed people, I have thought about it from several angles, but I somehow cannot get a good post out of it!
At the same time, I have now temporarily relocated to Sweden, which meant some serious packing, saying farewell to friends and family and stressing in Ghana! In Sweden, it has meant some serious adjusting, saying many hellos to friends and family and trying to wind down…
Next week, I will go to the city of Marseille in France for this symposium on ethics. Lets see if I can do some blogging from there…If I can’t, it means another week of no posts here while I am sipping a café crème in the warm winds from the Mediterranean sea attending a symposium!
Anas was the one to expose the ill-conditions for children at the Osu Childrens’ Home, the bribes at Ghana Customs and some other high profile scandals. The article with the suggestive heading “Smuggler, Forger, Writer, Spy” outlines Anas sometimes risky methods and his background – he is a lawyer, so draws on his knowledge to produce evidence that will hold in court! It also discusses the problematic aspect of Anas now running a for-profit investigative bureau, Tiger Eye.
Nicholas Schmidle writes in The Atlantic:
The demand for Anas’s services soon outstripped his capacity at the newspaper. Some of the requests he received for investigations didn’t quite qualify as journalism. So last year Anas created a private investigative agency called Tiger Eye. He rents an unmarked space across town on the top floor of a four-story building where a handful of his newspaper’s best reporters work alongside several Tiger Eye employees. It’s difficult to know where one operation ends and the other begins. But they’re all part of Anas’s investigative fiefdom. The work space is divided into two sections: a war room of sorts, with a bank of computers against one wall and a wide table in the middle where the team hammers out strategy; and Anas’s office, decorated with framed awards, oversize checks (including one for $11,700 for Journalist of the Year), and snapshots of himself in disguise. Anas appeared uneasy when I asked him about Tiger Eye, partly because he realizes that its commercial aspect puts him in ethically dangerous territory. Yet it also constitutes a major source of the budget he relies on for long-term newspaper assignments. During the two weeks I spent with him in January, Anas fielded calls from the BBC and 60 Minutes, as well as private security companies, asking if he could conduct investigations for them. All offered generous compensation.
An issue that is not explicitly discussed, but can be read between the lines, is how lonely Anas is at his post.
Do we really just have one investigative journalist in Ghana?
If you have time off this Monday, I recommend you read Schmidle’s well-written article in full!
After water and traffic, will mental health be Ghana’s next big challenge?
According to photographer and fellow blogger Nyani Quarmyne, 2,4 million Ghanaians are estimated to sometime in their life be in need of psychiatric help. With not more than a handful psychiatrists and around 2000 hospital beds, it is clear that most Ghanaians in need will be left without any help.
On Tuesday, I went to see Nyani’s beautiful, hopeful but also deeply disturbing photos, depicting the mental health crisis in Ghana. There were women who had been locked up by their men, men who were starring blankly in front of them, elderly with their mentally ill grown children with no help, but also the man at a health facility that was rearing chicken and the man who had secured a job with Zoomlion after years of mental illness.
The pictures that got to me the most was probably the ones with men fastened to tree trunks (like the one above), one outdoors, seated on a stone, one naked in a dark clay house. Imagine, having your family put your foot through a big chunk of wood and then closing the whole with an ironrod so that you could not escape…keeping you in a dark room…there you are, like an animal…so hopeless somehow…
Then there was the picture of the records keeper at a psychiatric hospital in Accra. In a blue nurse’s dress, between thousands and thousands of files, she has her desk. The filing system looks ancient and clearly is overflowing the space. Yet, she comes to work every day. I was thinking about human defiance…
Fellow blogger AntiRhythm was also there and voiced his critique this way:
“Families cannot afford about 25 Cedis (about 13 Dollars) a month to pay for the drugs that would create the right chemical balance which would make us call these unfortunates normal.
So they are shackled and manacled to prevent aggression or injury to themselves or embarrassment to their families.
When I saw it, I asked blogger Fiona: What country is this? I knew the answer; I feared the answer; I feared facing up to more evidence about the different layers of existence in this country.”
The NGO that partly sponsored this photoproject, BasicNeeds Ghana, has extensive programs that target thousands of people with mental illness or epilepsy, predominantely in Northern Ghana, but also in Greater Accra. They also have a knowledge project with several worthwhile publications available online, and now also a glossy book with Nyani’s photos – “Ghana, a Picture of Mental Health”.
I wish Ghanaians would have a glance through, we need to know what is happening to the weakest in society right now…
Now, to all of you that might sound regular, even mundane. Why are you telling us this? Meeting a blogger from your own blogging group, c’mon! Well, just hear me out! We have never met before! Jemila has been living in the states and following our meetings and emails from afar, but just moved back to Ghana.
I liked how the whole meeting happened. I was walking back to work after lunch and a student of mine comes towards me with a woman I have not met before. I say hi to my student (turned out she is Jemila’s sister!) and Jemila says:
– Hi, I’m Jemila!
And it was suddenly so obvious.
I wonder if Internet critics (“our kids only sit in front of screens these days”) would change their mind if a stranger on the street turned into a friend, just because of blogging?
After having had my blog hacked into last week, my blogging time was eaten up (a suitable expression for this post!) by changing passwords etc. While I am on this topic, if you haven’t changed your blog’s password – or email password for that matter – this year, do it today!
Anyways, now I am back with a snack!
In Europe, they are at this time celebrating the yearly return of the sun and good weather. And what always comes with nice and temperate times…?
Yes: Ice Cream. This year, the celebrated Magnum kind of ice-cream-on-a-stick has created a Ghanaian version with Ghanaian chocolate! This follows the trend of chocolate as a more refined sweet. These days, people are specific when they want chocolate – they might want a certain brand (Valrhona is supposed to be one of the best), a certain cocoa percentage (70% cocoa melts in your mouth, 80% and above can taste bitter, although preferred by some) and maybe even a specific country of origin for the bean (say Ghana or Ecuador).
Magnum UK describes the Ghana ice cream in this fashion:
“For chocolate connoisseurs.Bite into its cracking milk chocolate made with specially selected cocoa beans from Ghana.”
The phrase “specially selected”, makes me smile but still it is good news and possibly even nation branding that Ghana is mentioned together with “connoisseurs”, however still the question is: When will we in Ghana also take part of that value added?
The ice cream is also available in Sweden where they add the information that the rest of the ice cream has a hazelnut flavor. So when I go there next month, I plan to have a bite!
However, longterm the conflict in Ivory Coast will of course have an effect on Ghana. When our neighboring country, instead of being a business and political partner, is at war or dealing with the aftermaths of war the conflict will be felt here. Currently, Ghana has not really taken a stand in the Cote d’Ivore situation, refugees are crossing the boarder and I have heard that cocoa beans do the same…
“It’s days like this when the distant din of news – of CNN and BBC and Al Jazeera reporters ‘on the ground’, reporting disasters and developments around the world, come just that once step too close to home. “
“The two females who were quarrelling in fluent French wore opposite white T-Shirts with portraits of their political idols, embattled Laurent Gbagbo and internationally recognized winner of last November
disputed polls Alhassan Quattara embossed in them.”
Interestingly, the altercation reached a fever pitch when the one wearing Gbagbo’s T-Shirt pushed her opponent and a scuffle ensued between them but they were quickly separated by the onlookers who were visible enjoying the squabble even though some of them who did not understand the French kept on shouting repeatedly “Gbagbo and Quattara in Ghana Part 2”
But this isn’t a sequel to a popular movie, it is reality and people are killed as I write this – if not from bullets so from a failed state where social amenities including health care, food and water cannot be accessed anymore.
What would a responsible neighborly response be at this late hour?
A celebrated part of new Dust magazine (that has been mentioned a number of times on this blog already) is the section called “you know you are in Accra when…” Basically a list of fun stuff that we can see daily and only become funny when highlighted. I have observed, similar things have been posted on Twitter with the hashtag “onlyinGhana”.
Anyhow, I have some to share with you:
You know you are in Accra when…/Only in Ghana…
…an envelope can double as a bag to carry about town.
… A meal costs anywhere between 70 pesewas and 70 GHC.
…you hear “I’m coming, eh!” when someone walks away from you.
…parking is free, but throwing your trash, going to the washroom or drinking cholera free water has a steep price.
…you have to run to cross the street, even if the “green man” is giving you way.
These are just some I thought of when driving to work the other day – do let me know your homemade ones as well in the comment section below!
On Wednesday Ivorian performer Dobet Gnahore graces Accra with a concert at the Alliance Francaise.
This energetic singer/dancer provided me with one of my best concert experiences in my life last time she came to town, so expectations are sky high!
Dobet Gnahore (MySpace, official website)has it all – the music in her blood as a daughter in a family of Ivory Coast musicians, many amazingly beautiful melodies and songs sung with a versatile voice and one of the most interesting and captivating stage presences I’ve ever seen – Dobet just rocks!
So I was planning this great exposé about that Ghana now has a female running for the flagbearer of the ruling political party – aka this is as close as Ghana has been to a female president. On this issue, I have interviewed people, I have thought about it from several angles, but I somehow cannot get a good post out of it!
