Separation

A pleasure boat was on its way to the Dodi Island in the middle of the Volta Lake. Under the water are the villages and leftovers of the people who were displaced due to the construction of Akosombo Dam. Half of the passengers were foreigners, and the rest of them were, apparently, rich or powerful Ghanaians. A band was hired to offer a concert through the entire trip. The trip also included buffet style food, a wide selection of drinks, and comfortable seats. Beautiful as it appeared to be, the four-hour-long voyage took the rich people and the foreigners away from the real world in which millions of Ghanaians live: the expense of a trip like this far exceeds the affordability of a regular Ghanaian.

It always surprised me that how separate the lives of the rich and of the poor are in this country. Although income disparity is large in my homeland, Shanghai, every day the working class people still pass by the luxurious neighborhoods, hotels, public baths, and restaurants on their ways to work. But here, one rarely sees any intersection of the living spaces between the rich and the poor. The economically deprived communities, for example, comprise mostly the shops, barbers, markets and churches that deliverer services to the people living in these communities. On the other hand, the Cantonment and Airport Residence area, the historically rich communities, are exclusively with houses that are enclosed by wall, and with the roads designed for vehicles and the services that are totally unaffordable to the working or lower-middle classes. Thus, people who live in the poor communities have no reason to pass by. These Ghanaian communities are comparable to the suburb communities in America, but are much more fortified and defensive. The message delivered by such neighborhood designs, seemingly, is the unwelcoming attitude from the rich towards the poor.

It is out of my knowledge to give judgment on such separation of living spaces. In the present day, the income gap between the rich and the poor in many African countries are too wide and too deep to imagine. We should not forget that by 2008, the majority of Ghanaians (58%) are reported to have shortage of cash, and about one third of its people are either without enough food or without clean water. We should not forget as well that due to the mass rural-urban migration, the urban living space is in severe shortage and a lot of urban-dwellers are unemployed. Moreover, the current government’s attempt on solving these issues is not quite effective, leading many Ghanaians to run out of patience with the implementation of policies whose benefits are taking too long to materialize.

Today, I have not heard or observed any conflicts resulted from the income disparity between the poor and the rich. It seems to me, then, that the issue between these two groups of people is not too harsh. Is it because the living spaces are not shared with each other, so that the poor has few opportunities to witness the differences between their living conditions? But at least, in an increasing globalized world, it is believable that the rich people will keep collecting their money, leaving the income gap to grow even wider. This is a new challenge that Africa must take.

The painful cooperation

The huge wholesale market, located in Makola Mall in the urban area of Accra, contains both Chinese and Ghanaian wholesale shops. Because foreigners are not allowed to do retails in this country, usually Ghanaian retailers came to many wholesale stores and made deals with the Chinese. This provides opportunities for close interaction between Chinese and Ghanaian merchants. But it seemed to me that such interaction did not facilitate the understanding between the two. Ghanaian and Chinese merchants have a little knowledge about each others, even if they met frequently. A lady, whose shop is next to a shop owned by a Chinese couple, told me she rarely talked to the Chinese wholesalers. She said she did not even care about knowing them. “I don’t like Chinese people. They are bad.” She complained

My sample is not big enough to represent the overall attitude from the Ghanaian merchants to the Chinese ones in the Makola Mall. But my observation at least reveals the advent of Chinese did not make some Ghanaians happy. Their unhappiness may be associated with the recent influx of Chinese commodity into the Ghanaian market. These “made in China” tags usually make people think about the mass production of cheap products. Also, the fact that many Chinese merchants could find ways to avoid paying tax for their commodities lowered the prices even more. Seeing the arrival of Chinese merchants, not only some Ghanaian wholesalers, but also some retailers, felt hurt. The wholesalers, for sure, could not compete with Chinese on prices. To the retailers, purchasing products from Chinese wholesalers also generated tensions. A Ghanaian retailer told me that there are standards for Ghanaian cloths. Once they saw the cloths, they know how durable they are. However, many Chinese brought their cloths with the same patterns or designs but lower quality. The retailers saved money on purchasing these cloths, and then found the print of many cloths was easy to fade. When they attempted to return these defective cloths, the Chinese wholesalers refused to do so.

Many Chinese merchants also retain negative feelings towards the Ghanaians. Some of these feelings are merely bias over the people with black skin in general. To Chinese, African people are associated with disease, violence, illiteracy and bad life habits, and so on. Many who came to Ghana did not change such perception mainly because they refused to understand Ghanaians. One reason they refused to do so is language barrier. Many Chinese in Ghana are not fluent in English or do not even speak English. Another reason is that they disagree with Ghanaians’ life styles. For example, many do not understand why Ghanaians are so religious, or they dislike the fact that Ghanaians eat by hand, and they do not want to know why. Unwillingness to assimilate resulted in distrust towards Ghanaians among many Chinese merchants.

The Ghanaian media have also affected the current relation between Ghanaians and Chinese. Some Ghanaians can recall the news, like Chinese being caught due to sex traffic in Ghana months ago, and Chinese doing retail business where they are not allowed to do so. Chinese also complained that the media cared little about the good things they have done to this country, while newspapers had negative depiction on them if they caused minor problems such as labor related issues.

So far as I noticed, the receptivity of Chinese in Makola Mall is low. It seemed to me that the unwelcome feelings towards the Chinese merchants are destructive to the Chinese wholesale business here. Surprisingly, I still saw many Ghanaians bargaining in several Chinese stores. The reason for the continuing interaction is unknown to me, but at least I feel the painful relationship between these two groups may persist. Increasing Chinese people would aware of various opportunities in Africa and arrived at Africa. Distrust could be a serious obstacle for the future business cooperation between two. To improve this, both sides should make effort to know about the other, though this will be a long process.

The Labadi shop owner

I knew a lady whose job is selling the materials used to cook Ghanaian cuisines and soups Her little booth is located around the Labadi station and because so, I got to know her when I was waiting for tro tro. Labadi is a small town in which Ga people reside. There is almost no attraction to the foreigners in a typical local town like this. Probably for this reason, she was very excited when seeing me. I was invited to sit on the only bench of her store on the other day. She treated me very generously with light soup and kenke. She insisted on asking me to take more cow meat and fish, and even put a piece of meat she already had a bite in front of me and ask me to eat. Such hospitality led to cultural shock to both of us. Under such circumstance in China, one is supposed to keep saying no and being extremely polite about it. But in this case, when I told her I felt bad about taking too much from her, she almost misunderstood me. “What? You don’t like me?” She was surprised.

The great hospitality I received from the shop owner was probably owing to the fact that I am a whiteman. However, I rather believe that it is the peaceful environment of the small town that allows people to be extremely nice to the outsiders. At least on its surface, Labadi’s people live in a harmonious way. Although the shops, road and houses are in poor condition, people had smile on their faces. I knew from the shop owner that in this small society many people know each other. Moreover, the traditional sanctions forbid people from committing crimes, so I did not feel any discomfort at night as I did in central urban area in Accra. I also did not encounter any situation when people ask money from me. These are the elements that urbanization has wiped off. Take urban area in Accra as an example, people were busy pursuing economical goals and thus competition was very high. People even went to church to ask favor of God to defeat their competitors. When I was walking in the Makola Mall, I only felt an agglomeration of mess. Of course, modernization is far more complicated and has many positive effects. But I think the traditional small scale society still has its own advantage, and people who chose to live in such life style should not be blamed or be considered as pitiful.

The future of Ghanaian traditional cloths?

Ntonso and Bonwire were the two craft villages I have visited, where the famous Ashanti kente cloths were made and dyed by hand. Both of the villages looked poor and deprived. As soon as I arrived, a group of children, with dust on their faces and cloths, screamed and ran to grab my hands. Adults tried to show their best hospitality to make friend with me, so that the chances for them to sell their kente might increase. In Ntonso, the pots that were used to boil the dye for kente were smoked into coaly dark. A chicken with only one claw stumbled around the fields, intensifying the grey and depressing environment. It appeared to me that making cloth barely enhanced the living standard of these craft villagers.














I could connect what I have seen with two factors, although I am not quite sure if they are the causations of the phenomena. Firstly, all the kente I have seen were handmade. A several-meter-long strip that is made on a webbing loom could make a master kente maker spend several hours on it. No wonder that a traditional Ghanaian kente shirt could cost more than fifty Ghana Cedi. Since this price is less affordable for the local Ghanaians, the kente sellers may anticipate foreign buyers (assuming Ghanaians cannot get the same item in a much cheaper price than the Whites). Nevertheless, I doubt if most of the westerners would spend much on buying a kente cloth that they may not wear it frequently in their home countries.

Another factor, the advent of Chinese people has probably resulted in a major impact on the Ghanaian textile industry in general. Chinese traders had gained large amount of influence in retailing of textiles in Ghana. Not only did they sell cheap Chinese cloths, they also imitated the Ghanaian wax print. On August 30, 2006, BBC reported that Chinese companies copied the designs of Ghanaian textiles, and sold them with cheaper prices in the Ghanaian market. Many Ghanaians still hold the idea that things from other countries are better than from theirs. The sudden competitions from Chinese made the demand for locally produced textiles fall by between 50 to 75 per cent.














It is worthy of worrying that the tradition and beauty of hand-made textiles become less desired by people. This is not just happening in Ghana, but in the entire world. Capitalization allows mass production in order to ensure lower prices of products. A good thing of it is that the people in the developing countries may afford more items and increase the quality of lives. However, how many traditional skills of making and designing cloths by hands are threatened to extinct, owning to the fact that the people in craft villages cannot stuff their stomachs? I think it is the Ghanaian people who can decide whether or not they should speed up their development at the cost of losing part of their culture.

Not because I don't like to travel

I am living in a building so called "International Student Hostel I" (We called ISH One). It is not a real hostel, but a dormitory for foreign students. I usually joke that this is the place with the highest concentration of white people in the entire country. Living inside sometimes made me forget the fact that I am in Ghana. Most of the foreign students are Americans in our building. I think that is because American schools love to send students abroad for studying, or people in Africa afford and are inspired to do exciting things such as traveling in a place where none of his/her friends have been. For that reason, every weekends I saw backpackers from our dorm gathering in the lobby, and preparing for their future trips to Northern, Eastern and Central regions in Ghana, or to Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin.

Backpacking is also my favorite, but my research about Chinese community in Accra usually occupies my weekends. I think the biggest challenge is to find Chinese people here. Although data shows there are over 20,000 Chinese living in Ghana, many of them do not live close to each other. Rich people live in houses where I cannot be access to; working class lives in staff dorms built by their Chinese bosses, and some of them are not allowed to step out after 6pm due to some security concerns. Luckily, many Chinese people come to University of Ghana and play basketball on the afternoons of every weekend. That at least provides me some opportunities to stretch my personal relationship for my research(social networking is critical because Chinese people usually do not feel comfortable to reveal their feelings to strangers). But at the same time I lost many opportunities to travel outside.

It is possible that I could not really explore other regions in Ghana and foreign African countries much, but I believe I will know Accra and Tema really well through searching for the scattered Chinese people. Fortunately, most of the Chinese I have talked to are cooperative and friendly. They are interested in helping a novice researcher like me, thanks to the fact that I belong to their culture to some extent.

Makola Mall

I stood on the street of the Makola mall in the central area of Accra. In front of me there was an unbelievably huge and congested market. On a narrow street, the vehicles were sharing the road with hundreds of people. I believe if I can overlook this place from the air, I would see a huge scrambled salad in a heavy and dark color. I say dark not only because of the color of the skin of many people, but also because of the aged signs and advertisement of shops, through which I can hardly identify their original color. Along the road, numerous shops occupy the buildings that are two floors to four floors high in general. The shops are not only on the ground floors as I usually see in China and US, but the balconies on the floors above were opened as shops that sell medicine, shoes, furniture and so on. Exterior stairs allow people to go upstairs to see what is sold. Because there is such a concentration of shops in a limited space, every shop-owner managed to attract the passerby by all means. For example, many shops removed their gate, making me clearly see what was sold here. Some owners even extended their commodity shelves onto the street, so that the passerby needed to look at these shelves in order not to clash them. I felt the Ghanaian government does not pay much attention on how a shop should be operated, and let the owners do whatever they want. This has made the street appeared to be extremely crowd and messy.


There is saying that desperate people do desperate things. I think it is applicable to describe a country in which people are anguishing and struggling along the poverty line. I realize that urbanization has created many problems in this country. The opportunities of the city allure countless people to emigrate from the rural area. However, no one will be ensured to have food once the capacity is reached. People need to compete each other more fiercely in order to add some more rice on their plate, or they have to put down their dignity, and beg money from others, especially the Oburoni (white people). I heard from Chinese people commenting that blacks are poor because they are lazy and greedy for money. But I think that this problem is more complicated than that. It could be brought up by urbanization, which may reinforce people’s search for money regardless of the ways they use.

The third US visa

To me, this summer is the "dealing-with-embassy" season. Back to May and June, I have been to Chinese Embassy in New York for at least 3-4 times. After, I sent my passport to the Embassy of Ghana in Washington to get permission to go to Africa. Before I leave for Ghana, I was rejected at the airport and was told to get a UK visa through the Consulate of UK in NY. Now I am in Ghana, I also need a visa to go back to US to continue my education in US.

To be honest, I hate dealing with the government agencies like Embassy. Unlike companies, they never put the concerns of the customers into consideration. They are slow and sometimes arrogant. A friend of mine needed a German visa to go to Europe in this summer, the German Embassy rejected her because she had no "letter of good conduct". In the history of her education abroad program, she was the first one who was asked to get that, due to a very pale reason. She had to travel between Penn State and New York, back and force, to get this done.

Among all the Embassies, US is probably the hardest one to deal with. One of reasons is that they require to interview every student visa applicants. In China, tens of thousands of people want to come to US for study. In front of the visa officers, they needed to defend themselves like a plaintiff, to prove they have no attempt to migrate to US. Years ago, two-thirds of the student visa applicants may be rejected due to the reason of being labeled as "potential immigrants". Thus, by the time I was admitted by Penn State, my important daily life is to practice how to deal with a visa officer and not make him suspect me. Now that I have been issued US visa twice, I am quite good at that. Before leaving for Ghana, I have obtained every single document that I can think of to persuade a visa officer.

The Embassy of US in Ghana allows the first 100 applicants for the visa interview to enter at 7:30am every Wednesday. I arrived at 6:30 am. I realized I was the only non-Ghanaian applicant. We were called in around 7:45, and the visa officers started working on time at 8am. I felt I waited for a long time on my chair because I fell asleep and had several dreams.

Once I was called, I walked into the window with full confidence. I opened my document file and took out a pile of documents, and waited for my "trial". The officer was a amicable guy around 30 . To my surprise, his questions were "How was Penn State?Do you like Ghana?"But I still anticipated him to ask for the documents. I picked up my documents and showed him without being asked, "This is the letter written by the ISS officers","That is my transcript", "Oh, I also have my bank certificate. Do you want to have a look?" He looked at me and smiled, "Ok, ok, calm down. I trust you. You are fine." And without researched on my paperworks, he just asked some simple questions and told me to pick up my visa on Friday.

I have realized that the general characteristics of the visa officers may be different in different countries. Maybe the busy and chaotic metropolitan environment has affected the officers in New York or Shanghai? But at least here in a relatively poor place, I felt some kindness through dealing with the government workers in Accra.

So Cold!!

In August, the rain season has passed, but the sky is still dark everyday. The weather is humid and hot, making my skin sticky all the time when I was walking outside. The campus is way too big to me, and I have no where to find bicycle. I am very tired of walking 20-30 minutes on the dusty road from class to class.

Something worse than that even happened. The first two night when I was here, the water stopped in my dorm--this is something common. The PSU group coming before me said the dorm had been out of water for a whole week at the first week of their life here. They ended up carrying shampoo and cloths to another building to take shower--of course, COLD SHOWER!

There is no such thing called hot water here. This is tropical area, and people seem to enjoy taking shower with cold water. But to me, even if I was sweaty and hot, a cold shower was hard to bear. But what else can I do? I tried not to take shower for up to three days, and this made me sicker. Fortunately I am used to doing so now, and here is how I do it. I came to the showering place, lock the door, and do fifty push-ups with knuckle. Then I turn on the water, jump in side, and keep doing leg lifts to warm up. Thus I can bear a five minutes cold shower.

My friends told me they have been used to this. I guess it still take me a week or so to get to that stage. Sometimes I think positively that taking cold shower is the best way to keep healthy on the face of the earth. And I should be proud of practicing it!

Preface

From August 2009 to December, 2009, I decide to open this special blog and share some of my experiences here in Ghana. As a sociology student, I believe my observations and experiences will make you have a better idea on what Ghana looks like, if you haven't been there.

One more thing...I know sometimes my English doesn't make any sense, although I try hard to write like a native speaker. So please, please, let me know if I made mistake on grammar or structure. I will edit it.