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>Stud
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This fall, I will take up studying again. Somehow, I have mixed feelings about it – don’t get me wrong – it IS a dream came through to be a cocky PhD-student, to spend my days in a campus setting, to read about topics that interest me, to rub shoulders with cool AND bright people. The other side of it is that it has been quite nice to finish work after 5 pm, maybe not even think about it again after that. I liked not having to prove myself everyday. I enjoyed making money, too.
Tomorrow I have a meeting in this building, the Institute of African Studies at University of Ghana with a professor I hope will accept to be my supervisor. I’ll keep you posted. As usual.
>Everyday life
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The wonderful, however non-exciting, everyday pace has reached me here in Ghana. Everyday, I kiss my bf goodbye in the morning, go to work, eat lunch with the same crowd, work a few more hours and then take a taxi home. At night we might do some visits, maybe go out to eat and then – it has of course already been dark for a while – it is time to go to sleep. I dream my vivid dreams (as always) and am awoken by the sun shining into our bedroom around 6 am.
But I mean, there are also stark differences in this “everyday life” compared to the “everyday lives” I have led before. For instance, before I never before saw the green tail of a gecko disappear into my wardrobe when opening my underwear drawer. I did not use to go for lunch to a “chop bar” where most of the customers order goat or snail soup. Nor for that matter meet a (living) goat family everyday on my way to lunch. I never used to celebrate when a supermarket opened in my town, now I do. (That was yesterday, and it just made my week to be able to have salad, hard bread and goat cheese for dinner). I never before used to come home to my own house. Complete with a man. Also, even if I feel I have gotten used to the way things look around here, I do sometimes remember to marvel that the soil is copper red, the nature deep green and whole trees can be covered in flowers, that people do actually carry suitcases (even backpacks) on their heads with ease, that men dress in big colorful prints and it looks good. And that every plant looks different from the Gotlandic nature I knew in my earlier life…
In the picture my favorite Ghanaian grass. Its every strand looks like a bouquet of Swedish “timotej” grass. And yes, I am aware that in my previous life I probably would not have mentioned “goat” three times in a short text like this one.
>What about the summit?
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The plan was to compose a beautiful, yet sharp piece of writing summarizing the AU-summit, combined with the stack contrasts of the leaders’ potbellies to the Ghanaian street life. But then, I thought if my readers want to read a trashing of Mugabe they will go to the Economist’s website. So to please you, loyal friends, here’s instead a picture with me and my (bf’s siblings’) children. Enjoy your weekend!
>My last week as a millionaire
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The value of the Ghanaian currency the Cedi (pronounced like “CD”) is as of now about USD 1 to 10 000 cedis. This means that if I go to change 100 dollar, I will get about 1 000 000 cedis, and voila, I’m a millionaire! That’s the nice part. However, when the biggest note is the yellowish 20 000 cedi note, it means that even if it is nice to be a millionaire is is extremely impractical. Buying groceries for 200 000, means counting (at least) ten notes. Or when changing money I cannot double check I have the right amount, because I don’t have time to count hundreds of notes! Since the coins in use are only worth a pittance, even the smallest purchase involve notes, which has made the notes wear out. Buying things becomes a hassle, since you have to carry big stacks of money. I couldn’t imagine buying a car, for instance!
Due to an instable economy, the cedi has been inflated over the years. I estimate the value of it to have almost halved since I last was in Ghana 2,5 years ago (based on a beer-taxi homemade index 🙂 and today everything you buy, more or less is ‘thousend something.
Therefore it is welcomed that on Sunday, 1st of July the currency in Ghana will undergo a redomination. 10 000 cedis will next week be 1 Ghana cedi, or 100 pesewas. A huge campaign attached to it is aired on radio and TV with a really happy high-life tune in which they sing “the value is the same”. In a country where still a big chunk of the population do not know how to read or write, explaining that is not easy. Probably the reason for knocking 4 zeros off, and not what seems easier to me – take out three, is that it is nice to have a currency that is equal to or even worth more than the US dollar. Regardless, the campaign has been well received, and “the value is the same” is a slogan that is now used jokingly in almost every situation (“But that is not your lunchbox!”, “Nah, but the value is the same”.)
Bank of Ghana launched the new currency at a press conference some time ago which show similarities to the old one, for instance “the big six” or the Ghanaian freedom-fighters from independence in 1957 are portrayed on all the bills. On the other sides there are famous buildings like the University of Ghana and the Bank of Ghana. Only the 50 Ghana pesewas coin shows a woman. Then it is not a named historic person, but an unknown trades-woman.
Because of the depreciation of the cedi, I have come to see “money burning in the pocket” with my own eyes… it is a common thing to have a heat rash on the thigh/butt from carrying a heap of money in your pocket not allowing air to pass through…But, after this week, and the 6 month period in which both currencies can be used, my time as a millionaire, with rashes, is over.
>Midsummer update
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Since today is an ordinary office day in Ghana, I will have to wait until tomorrow to meet up with the Swedish community (of four) here in Ghana and celebrate midsummer. You don’t know midsummer? It is a tradition when Swedish people gather to celebrate the ferility of the soil by making a giant fallos from flowers and dance like frogs while drink hard liquor and watery beer. This is how we’ll do it tomorrow, Ghana-style.
GHANAIAN MIDSUMMER
farsk potatis(day fresh potato)=potato
sill (herring)= Salmon from Koala supermarket
graddfil(sour cream)= yoghurt?
graslok (leek)=garlic sprouts
jordgubbar (strawberries)= mango?
pripps bla (Swedish beer)= Ghanaian Star beer
knackebrod (hard bread)= German hard bread
Snaps (traditional shots taken with song)= Absolut Vodka
Also, this weekend, I will inspect the house my bf and I have rented, already next week we’ll be moving in! I will post pics soon.
In the photo me and my bf’s mother celebrating something else.
>Gold coast
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It is all over the news, OIL FOUND IN GHANA! The “black gold” was found just off shore Ghana by UK-based firm Tullow Oil and according to the bbc the finding is one of Africa’s biggest with 600m barrels (which tells me nothing, but news papers also state it is “of commercial value” so it is quite a lot, I guess). Even though it will take years before the oil can be accessed, everybody is discussing the news, many with the critical question “will this commodity really come to benefit the Ghanaian people?” However, the Ghanaian politicians are already celebrating. President Kufuor has stated:
“My joy is that I’ll go down in history as the president under whose watch oil was found to turn the economy of Ghana around for the better”
The politicians sure need some good news. Yesterday, I went to the donor partners Consultative Group meeting in Accra where development partners come together with the Ghanaian government discussing how the aid available can give best value for money. President Kufuor came to the meeting for the closing ceremony. We all rose to the occasion, a respectful silence spread, and the president marched into the conference room with his entourage. He stopped at the podium and Ghana’s national anthem came on. About half way into the anthem, all lights went off, the AC stopped, the anthem was interrupted and we were all, president and ministers included, standing in the dark. It was a not so subtle reminder of the energy crisis here in Ghana.
>Perspective
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If I was a rich girl, I sometimes say, I’d buy…I’d have…I’d go to…Today I found a site that lets me know how rich I already am. It sure offers a perspective.
>Once in a blue moon…
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..one hears about something very interesting. Yesterday I wrote about my lack of access to tampons, a few hours later I receive an email from a friend suggesting I should try something else- the Mooncup. Women friends, there’s an alternative to the tampon that is cheaper and friendlier both to our bodies and to the nature. Spread the word!
I have already ordered one. Thanks for the tip, Em.
>Needs
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After 1,5 months away from my native Sweden, some embarrassing needs have popped up. When in Sweden, I never thought I even have any special needs. Also with globalization, I figured almost anything could be found anywhere (unfortunately also at any price).
However, there are some things I just have to have that cannot be found here. I shrug at the memory of an earlier long absence from Sweden when I almost cried of happiness when somebody gave me some gingerbread (pepparkakor). Why cry for a cookie you normally anyway only eat at christmas?
Without further excuses, here’s the list:
Books, please any fiction will do! I have not come across any book in a Ghanaian bookstore to this date I would like to read.
Moskito repellent, strangely in one of the most malaria infected areas in the world finding the kind of repellent you put on your skin is impossible.
Tampons. Cannot be found. If any exporter reads this, do the Ghanaian women a favor and start sending them in bulk!
Mint seeds, so that I can grow green mint and make proper Mojitos. Very important. I have the sugar, the rhum and the ice, now I just need the mint.
Fibers. A bag of kruska-kli, will do. Bread in Ghana is good, but as white as snow.
Send to Kajsa Hallberg, c/o Adu, P.O. Box CS 8884, Tema GHANA and you will be rewarded promptly in Ghanaian chocolates.
>Poetry and rain
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I am reading the wonderful vivid stories compiled in the book by the Danish baroness Karen Blixen who came to live in Kenya in 1913 and stayed for almost 20 years. In the book, beautiful insights of life at a coffee plantation, masai people and the politics of first world war are interspersed with shockingly racist accounts by a baroness who was not only a writer, artist and safari hunter, but also a slave owner.
In this section she tell her kikuyu slaves about rhymes and poetry and they ask her to continue. The chapter is very typically named “Negros and verse”.
One night out on the corn fields, when we had harvested the corn…I started for my own amusement to speak to my workers, most of them very young, in verse in Swahili. There was no meaning to the verses, they were made up for the sake of the rhyme:
Ngumbe
Na penda chumbe (The bulls like salt)It soon attracted the interest of my workers, they gathered around me…
-Speak again, speak about rain.
Why they thought that poetry sounded like rain, I do not know. It must have been an expression for approval, because rain is in Africa always longed for and welcomed.
-Karen Blixen in Out of Africa
>A child returns
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So yesterday I went to the beautiful village of Ekumpoano together with 25 trafficked children for a reunification ceremony with their parents. It wasn’t only kids, parents and me there but IOM staff, journalists from TV3 and Joy FM, policemen, the Minister of Women and Childrens affairs,local MPs and municipal politicians, the Chief of Ekumpoano ( a surprisingly young,goodlooking guy)and probably over 1000 villagers.
The returning children, many smallish due to malnutrition and hard work, had been sold by their poor parents to work in the fishing industry in Ghana and were three months ago rescued by IOM and sent to rehabilitation. Now they were to be returned to their communities.
It was a hot day and we were late. The white bus with the kids stopped in an alley and kids, blue bags and bottles of water filled the village square. The ceremony started with an opening prayer 3 hours later than it said on paper (and probably only I believed). I thought it was a very good idea to have an acctual ceremony to mark this ‘second chance’ event in these 25 childrens lives. Through the rescue program, the kids will recieve free schooling and supplies which will make them more likely to finish primary school than their peers in the village.
Still, the ceremony made me think about central problems with aid. Where do we start? By giving some children a second start? What about the 500 children watching the event living with equally poor parents (read:mothers – since the fathers often are absent)? What did the villagers think of the ceremony (half in English, half in local language Fante) – educational on human trafficking and childrens rights or that it was a fun day when some big cars came to the village? Is it fair to raise these issues and not come with an alternative?
After the ceremony the invited guests and IOM staff were given something to eat and drink. When I walked back to the car, kids and old women asked me for money saying they were hungry.
Here’s an article from an earlier reunification ceremony.
>Flash me!
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A big difference in the Ghanaian everyday life since I last was here 2,5 years ago is that now a lot more people are in possession of a mobile phone. The development is much like what I remember from Sweden in the mid 1990ies, in a very short period of time a cell phone went to being extremely costly and a unique accessory to an ordinary must-have. The Ghanaian phone company Areeba let’s you buy credits from as little as 3000 cedis (25 cents, or 3 SEK) and that amount is valid for 3 minutes in Ghana and 2 minutes outside Ghana. Affordable. International rates that are a lot better than in any other country I have visited.
However the phones themselves are as costly as in Sweden. Still people in urban Ghana carry cellphones very similar to those in urban Sweden or many times even nicer ones than in Sweden.
Since still half of the population lives on less than $2 a day, the use of very nice phones leads to stealing and articles like these can be read daily in the Ghanaian news.
The phone revolution in Africa also translates into possibilities, specifically in banking. Most people in Africa does not have a bank account, therefore remittances sent from relatives abroad must go through expensive services that often cost more than 10% of the amount being sent. If money can be sent straight to a phone that means less transaction costs and (hopefully) more money for development. More on this here.
Already, there are some banking that can be done, for instance can you get a “sikatext”, or money text message on your current balance in your account (if you have one). Banking over cell phone is already big in South Africa and japan and can maybe become so in Ghana too.
Oh, and in case you wonder… “flash me” means “call me so that I get your number”.
In the picture Josephine is using her new phone while doing laundry.