A Prayer for Deliza and Giftina

I was struck by a picture my mom sent me of my two-year-old niece, Ahree, taken at the zoo last week. I hadn’t seen her in almost six months and she looked older. When I left she was a toddler. Now she looks like a little girl. Six months isn’t a long time, but for a two-year-old, it’s one-third of a life time.

In Accra, I have made friends with a two-year-old who reminds me of my little niece. Her name is Deliza and I meet her every day as I walk to work. She lives in a small shack on a narrow dirt lane not far from our apartment that links two main roads. She lives with her mother Elizabeth and her five-year-old sister, Giftina, who is the same age as my other niece Meelahn.

Deliza has an incredible smile. We don’t speak the same language, but every time I see her, her face lights up. Together with her sister who’s in kindergarten, we recite the alphabet. She has no idea what we’re saying, but she listens carefully and utters sounds that closely resemble the sounds of the letters. Her mother, who neither reads nor writes, listens in eagerly, occasionally bursting with glee at her daughter’s academic prowess.

A few weeks ago, Mark and I returned from a week in Nigeria. I hadn’t told Elizabeth and the children that we’d be away, and they were obviously distressed by our unannounced absence. The day we returned, I went to visit. The girls came running over, and Elizabeth stood behind them looking relieved, her arms turned upwards towards the sky.

“Oh we pray for you,” she said urgently as I approached. I learned through an interpreter that she thought we’d returned to Canada. She’d spent the week praying that we’d come back.

As I approached their home she walked over to Deliza and told me that they’d all been praying for our safe return. Even Deliza. “She pray for you,” Elizabeth said pointing to her youngest daughter. “Every day she pray.”

She then tapped her daughter on the back of her head to get her attention.

“Pray,” she said.

Deliza squinted her eyes together and scrunched up her little face to show she was praying. She opened her eyes and looked for approval and I smiled. Her mother tapped her on the head again.

“Show them you pray,” she repeated.

Deliza obeyed again. She closed her eyes and her face tightened. This time she held the position for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, she looked at me and a smile grew across her face.
At my birthday party a couple of weeks ago, Elizabeth and her children came as my guests. They were late for the grand event, and I was worried that they’d forgotten it was Saturday, the day of the party. Mark said he’d go and find them.

When Mark approached their home, he found the two girls all dressed up in beautiful little dresses. Inside their one room home they’d found the resources to outfit themselves for a party. Elizabeth was bathing and was not yet ready to go.

A while later, they arrived, and the girls filled themselves with platefuls of food and bottles of coke. After dinner we all hit the dance floor and both Giftina and Deliza moved to the music. A couple of hours later, I couldn’t find Deliza. I saw Elizabeth dancing and went over to learn the whereabouts of our little friend. As I approached her, I saw Deliza snuggled in a wrap tied to Elizabeth’s back. She was sleeping. The excitement of the day had tired her out and now in her sleep she moved to the rhythm of the music.

As I get ready to leave, I wonder about the lives of these two little girls. At 2 and 5 they are full of anticipation for their future and ready to learn. They don’t yet know the full harshness of the lives they have been born into. Without running water, a stable home and financial resources, their academic lives will likely end when they’re forced to pay school fees at the age of 10. With a mother who’s never been to school, and a father who shows up once every few months to drop off a couple of dollars to help raise the children, their future is terribly uncertain.

My active role in these two girls lives will end when I leave Accra on Thursday. I have two little girls back in Canada who are anxiously awaiting my return and are ready for me to return to my role as their Aunt. As time passes, it will be Deliza and Giftina who I will no longer recognize as they grow older. I can only hope that their lives are different than the ones I envision. Now it is my turn to pray.

- Janet

Take the Money and Run

Cecelia stood beside me frantically pointing at the sky. “It’s going to rain,” she said anxiously. “I am leaving now.”

I looked behind me and saw thick black clouds racing across the sky towards us. She was right, it was definitely going to rain.

“Just wait a few more minutes Cecelia,” I said with mild amusement at her obvious alarm. “Your money will be ready very soon. There are only a few people left to receive their loans.”

“No, I have to go,” she said. “You collect the money and I’ll get it from you tomorrow.”

I was amazed at her anxiousness to leave. She had waited for weeks for this loan, but when faced with the choice of getting the loan that day, or escaping the impending rain, she was clearly prepared to leave the money behind.

I told her I could not collect her loan on her behalf; that if she wanted the money, she would have to wait.

Cecelia started pacing underneath the almond tree, a huge beautiful tree located in the front garden of the West Africa AIDS Foundation. Her faced was filled with worry and impatience. Finally the loan officer called her name.

“Cecelia Amaboe,” she called out. Cecelia almost tripped over herself in her hurry to reach the table. She grabbed the bag of money and quickly pressed her ink-covered finger on the page of the loan agreement. The first raindrops began to fall.

Without a backwards look, Cecelia stuffed her money in her purse and took off running. She gave a half wave over her shoulder and left the compound. Two minutes later, as she was running up the street to catch a bus, the skies opened.

After an eight-week delay, the income generating participants were finally going to receive their loans. Early in the afternoon on June 13th, we were all seated in a circle underneath the almond tree waiting for the microfinance institution to arrive. They were an hour late but this time had promised to come with money.

Because of the many weeks delay, many of the participants had all but given up on ever receiving the loans. As people living with HIV, they are used to being disappointed and rejected, and to them, this was another example.

The micro-credit institution’s excuse for the delay was complicated and difficult to accept. They told us they’d had to open a new account at a new bank and that this took weeks to complete. Then they explained that once the account was set up, the money for the loan, which had been given by a special government department, had mistakenly been sent back. Retrieving the money from the Ghanaian government was another long, bureaucratic task.

When the loan officers finally reached The West Africa AIDS Foundation, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. What mattered to everyone was that the money had finally arrived.

The loan officers sat at the top of the circle behind a wooden table with a stack of papers and bags of cash. One by one, the participants were called to the table. If they could read and write, they signed their name. If not, their thumbprint showed their identity.

The loan officers reminded them of the importance of paying back the loan.

“If you don’t pay back your loan on time,” one loan officer said, “You will start paying interest at 1.5% a day,” he said sternly. “And if you still don’t pay, we will come to your homes to find you. If that doesn’t work, we have the right to broadcast your name on the radio.”

I looked at the faces around the circle. All eyes were on the loan officer. They listened to every word. Their expressions told me that having their names broadcast on the radio for not repaying the loan would be the ultimate shame.

The loans were broken up into two types - working capital loans for business materials and supplies, and equity loans for equipment. The participants were allowed to take the working capital loans with them as none of them were larger that $400. The loan officers would hold on to the equity loans and go with the participants to buy the equipment directly.

I offered to take the equity loans for the bakery group and two other business owners to speed up the process. I could go with them to buy their equipment. With eight businesses and two loan officers, I was worried about how long it would take to buy all of the equipment.

The loan officer handed me the money. He gave me 25 million cedis in 10,000 denominations. I did a quick conversion and realized I was carrying about $3,000 in $1 bills. I filled half a small garbage bag with the cash.

As the final few received their working capital loans and the downpour began, everyone ran for cover. There was no power in the main office building, so we all sat with our bags of money in the dark waiting for the rain to let up.

We looked around for a taxi, but none could be found. Once the rain hit, I knew the taxis would be in high demand. I worried about carrying this much cash with me on the bus, but also couldn’t wait around all night for a taxi to appear.

The downpour slowly turned to a light rain, and I gathered my things to go. A few other participants covered their hair with plastic bags and we all headed for the door.

Within minutes we were soaked. The bag of money was so heavy I kept shifting it from one arm to the other. Finally I gave up, and put the bag on my head. We ran up the street towards the bus stop. Esther wore a green plastic bag on her head, Rebecca had a black bag covering her hair, and mine was covered with a bag of money.

Thankfully a bus came by just as we approached the bus stop, and we jumped in. We had our money, but were completely soaked. Cecelia was likely home by then. She was probably right to take the money and run.

- Janet

Citizen's arrest

Traffic jams are dispiriting enough back home, especially in bigger cities. In Ghana, there are added problems, like suffocating heat and diesel exhaust; there are also few traffic lights, and the ones that do exist are often not working because of power outages.

Ghanaians have come up with a novel solution to the problem, though: self-appointed citizen traffic cops!

I was traveling in a tro-tro late one afternoon when it got caught in a traffic jam caused by two streams of cars trying to merge onto one road. There was no right-of-way and no lights to manage the flow.

A guy on crutches and in tattered clothes had taken it upon himself to direct the traffic. He stood there at the intersection of the two roads and held up his crutch as a signal for one lane of cars to stop so the cars in the other lane could merge onto the main road. After a few minutes he would halt the other lane of traffic, and continue to alternate in this fashion.

He wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart, of course. He was a poor man without a job trying to make a buck however he could. Many of the people in the cars, appreciative of his efforts, would hand him money as they passed onto the main road. (Many jobless people Ghana make money in creative ways like this. You will often see young men filling potholes on the highways. Many of them will halt traffic and ask for payment)

Not all people play by these makeshift rules of the road, though. On this day, our tro-tro driver grew impatient waiting for our turn to merge onto the main road. He left our lane and drove down the middle of the road; at the intersection he raced ahead of the oncoming cars and onto the main road. Our self-appointed traffic cop was furious! He waved a crutch in the air, and actually banged the side of the tro-tro with it as it passed by.

But he didn’t stop there. At a major intersection a half a mile up the road, an army officer was directing traffic because the lights had gone out in a power outage. The man began hobbling up the road on his crutches to tell the officer that the tro-tro driver had defied his attempts to maintain order at the intersection we had just passed through.

Of course, we found ourselves in another traffic jam right away, so the man on crutches was making his away to the next intersection faster than we were! We were all paying closing attention to the “foot race” between the tro-tro and the man. Who would reach the army officer first?

Man beat machine.

When the tro-tro arrived the man was raving at the army officer and waving a crutch in the direction of the tro-tro. After a minute or two of listening to the man’s complaints the officer approached our tro-tro driver. I was expecting the driver to pay a bribe to get himself out of the situation, but the officer merely said a few words to him and ambled back into the middle of the road to resume directing traffic. We passed through the intersection and went on our way.

I was a little disappointed with the outcome; a citizen’s arrest was in order, I thought. The government does not have – or will not spend – the money to install more lights or hire more traffic cops. This man was more than happy to fill the void in government services, much like the guys who fill potholes for cash on the country’s highways.

- Mark

Keeping it Stitched Together

I poked my head in the Almond Tree showroom and found Esther doing a little dance of joy. As she danced, she squealed excitedly. I had just told her she’d sold thirteen more hand bags and that they were en route to Canada.

Esther is one of the Almond Tree group members living with HIV. She is in the sewing group and has been working day and night for the last two months to produce and sell. Yesterday she came to work exhausted. I could see black lines under her eyes. I asked her if she was feeling well. She told me she’d been working.

“I worked until 1 a.m.” she said “And then I got up at 4 a.m. and worked again.”

Esther and her business partner Rebecca are driven to make their business succeed. They have dreams for their future – Esther wants to have a child with her partner, Ahmed, and Rebecca wants to send her five year old twins to a good school.

More immediately though, they both have rent to pay - two years worth upfront.

In Ghana landlords ask for rent months in advance. For many people living on $2/day, the sum is a small fortune. Rebecca has to pay about $300 and Esther’s payment will be close to $250. They’re both worried they won’t be able to come up with this money.

“Rebecca was in tears yesterday,” Esther told me quietly. “She has no idea how she’ll pay. She’s worried the landlord will tell her to leave.”

Esther’s landlord is a bit more understanding and has given her an extension. But his goodwill will only last so long. Her rent was due at the end of March.

In a life of uncertainty, the one thing Esther and Rebecca can control is how much they produce every day. And watching their work ethic, I think they’re constantly trying to beat their own record.

Fortunately one of their products, hand-made batik bags, are selling well. They’ve sold close to 50 bags in two months. Early on in May, a group of American Mormons arrived at the West Africa AIDS Foundation for a tour which ended at the Almond Tree Showroom. They swooped in and bought every bag the women had produced.

Other sales come from local volunteers heading back to Europe, the US or Canada and from visitors like my mom who bought clothing for my niece’s entire kindergarten class. The 13 bags sent to Canada were shipped for mom to sell at a church function on June 3rd, providing they arrive on time.

Yesterday I helped Esther and Rebecca figure out their profits for the month. They had sold just over $300 worth of products, and their material expenses came to $200. This left $100 to split between the two for June wages. Their profit will go along way to covering food and transportation, but is still far off the amount they need to pay their advanced rent.

Despite their challenges, I am confident that, with support, these strong, determined women will find a way to succeed.

I’m also sure, that as I write this, somewhere in the dark, Esther’s steady hand is turning a wheel on a manual sewing machine. And as the wheel turns, another bag is stitched together.

I just hope we can keep her dancing.

- Janet

Meeting Jihad

His name was Jihad. “It’s a rather unfortunate name right now,” he told me with a small grin. “I’m a Christian, but my name is Arabic. It doesn’t have the same meaning as the other Jihad.”

We were spending the weekend at a beach camp in Ada, a small town about 2 hours away from Accra, when we met Jihad. He had dark brown leathery skin, black tousled curls and wore bright yellow trunks. His skin was so deeply tanned that I thought he might be half black. His features, however, were entirely Middle Eastern. On weekends, he said, he lived across the river. The rest of the time he lived between Accra and a mining town in the north.

“How long have you lived in Ghana?” I asked assuming business had brought him to Ghana.

“I’m Ghanaian,” he replied.

“Really?” I asked showing my surprise.

He laughed warmly. I could tell he was used to explaining his exotic lineage. He told me to have a seat; that he would be over shortly to tell us his story.

In 1880 Jihad’s great grandfather landed on Ghanaian soil. He had no idea where he’d arrived until he disembarked from the ship.

“He just knew he was going to the new world,” Jihad said.

Jihad lit the first of a steady flow of cigarettes and leaned forward in his chair. He explained that his great grandfather had grown up in Lebanon.

“Around that time – it was during the Ottoman Empire -” he said, “the Turks invaded Lebanon and forced the Christians into the mountains. The Christians resisted but eventually settled there peacefully. Once the Muslims took over power, the Christians were told all boys would have to perform military service when they turned 14. Families didn’t want their children joining the army so sent them off a year before they reached this age.”

It was when Jihad’s great grandfather was 13 that he, like many other young boys, set off for the new world. His brother had left three years earlier, so Jihad’s great grandfather left to join him.

“Once he got on the ship,” Jihad said “he told the captain he wanted to go to the New World.”

He never specified the exact location of “The New World”, and no one ever asked him exactly where he intended to go.

When he arrived in the New World, Jihad’s great grandfather found himself surrounded by black people. Much to his surprise he had arrived in Ghana.

“Where had his brother gone?” I asked curiously.

“Brazil,” he said laughing.

“What did your great grandfather do?” I asked.

“What could he do? It’s not like today when you just jump on another plane and head to a different country. He’d spent all of his money to get there. He had to stay.”

Other Lebanese migrants had arrived earlier in Ghana and they welcomed Jihad’s great grandfather into their newly established community.

“My great grandfather was a merchant,” Jihad said. “He built a life for himself in Ghana. It was here that he met my great grandmother who was also Lebanese. I’m a fourth generation Ghanaian.”

As Jihad paused to light his third cigarette I tried to think of him as Ghanaian. Being Ghanaian was clearly his birthright, but his attitude, personality, and character traits were strikingly Lebanese.

Ghana is not a multicultural country so it is extremely rare to meet a non-black Ghanaian. Yet here was Jihad identifying himself as a Ghanaian, and proud of his nationality.

There is a strong Lebanese community in Accra. They are astute business people and operate most of the successful grocery stores, restaurants and hotels. If a business has good customer service, and a nice atmosphere, it’s likely Lebanese. Before meeting Jihad, I had never wondered if these business owners were themselves Ghanaian.

Recently there’s been an influx of another group of people to Ghana. Chinese are flooding into the country; a new wave of immigrants looking to build their fortunes overseas.

“This has all happened within the last 3 or 4 years,” Jihad explained. “The Chinese government has built things for Ghana, and the country is welcoming their business. They built the national theatre, they built the Tema motorway, and they are helping to build a new rail system. Because of their gifts, the government doesn’t tax Chinese imports. So now they’re flooding the local markets with cheap products. The Ghanaian vendors are upset, but what can they do? The government won’t stop them from selling their products.”

Jihad talked about Ghanaian politics and corruption. He has found a way to live well amongst the chaos he told us.

“It’s the wild wild west,” he said.

In the north he owns a small gold mining operation. After a number of years in the business he has learned how to keep it operating.

“Each Christmas I fill envelopes for the police officers in my area,” he said.

We raised our eyebrows. Jihad was admitting to playing a role in the corruption that plagues this country, especially amongst the police force.

He sensed our judgment and responded directly

“I need them,” he said

We asked him if he’d made money from mining for gold.

He laughed and took a long drag on his fifth cigarette. “I’ve made fortunes and lost fortunes,” he said. “But I can’t stop. Once you’ve got gold fever there’s no going back. Nothing else will satisfy you.”

“Would you ever go back to Lebanon?” Mark asked.

“No, I can only go there for vacation,” he said. “The business men would eat me alive. And they have sharks.”

- Janet

A head start

Janet and I were heading out to dinner one night last week, and she had kindly bought a plant as a gift for our hosts. Can you carry it, she asked. Sure, I said, and she pointed to a pot on a ledge outside our apartment. Because it was dark, I couldn’t see that the pot was made of cement. It must have weighed about 50 pounds. I hoisted it over my right shoulder; my knees buckled, but being the man that I am I insisted on carrying it anyway – whining about it all the way of course.

I walked from our front door to the main street and announced that we would take a cab the rest of the way. It’s too heavy, I said. It’s just down the street, Janet said, and she offered to carry it for me. I was too much of a man for that, though. I waved off the cab and hoisted the cement planter back over my shoulder. Halfway down the street, my bony little shoulder was hurting.

Janet suggested balancing it on top of my head, much like Ghanaians carry baskets of food and pails of water. A friend who was coming with us to dinner rolled up a piece of cloth, and set it on top of my head as a holder. We set the planter on my head and off we went down the street.

The rolled cloth didn’t provide much support; the crown of my head started to hurt no more than 50 feet down the road. I lifted the planter off my head and hoisted it once again over my shoulder. I wobbled off down the road, whimpering the whole way to our friends’ place.

At home, I feel like the classic 98-pound weakling. I’m not strong or fast. An ex-girlfriend used to delight in telling me that I wouldn’t last five minutes in a forest full of predators. Here in Ghana, my physical inadequacies are even more pronounced. Every day, men, women and children carry pails of water and other supplies that are at least as heavy as the cement planter – for miles, in some cases!

Physical work is part of everyday life for many Ghanaians and Canadians; I’m one of the Canadians that has to exercise, though, because physical work isn’t part of my daily routine. I mention this because I started to jog again last week. I hadn’t been running up to this point because it’s so hot here, even early in the morning. But I’ve committed myself to running a marathon with my sister in the fall so I had to start training now.

I started with a five-kilometre run one morning a little after 6. I had run about a kilometer when a young guy overtook me on his way to work or school. This is very dispiriting for most runners; in this case, it was made worse by the fact that he was wearing flip flops, tight jeans and had a pack on his back. I picked up my pace but still couldn’t catch him.

It’s about the journey, I reminded myself, not the destination; and it’s certainly not about how fast you get there.

Maybe next I’ll trying running with a cement pot on my head.

- Mark

Family law

She was only eight years old when her family decided that she was a witch, and banished her to the goat pen in the back yard. She lived there, tied to a post, until she was rescued by an NGO 10 years later. She is in the care of the NGO now and the parents have not been prosecuted for what they did to her.

Most Ghanaians believe in witchcraft, that women and girls are capable of casting spells that do harm to others. And even though the Ghanaian constitution guarantees children a right to a healthy and happy life - shelter, education, et cetera - there are traditional beliefs and practices that are still considered OK here. In the little girl's case, people may be sympathetic for her situation and be happy to see her safely in the hands of an NGO, but they would also sympathize with the parents' fear that she may be a witch capable of doing harm.

The same is true of child labour, the subject of some of our blogs in the past few months. More than 20 children who had been sold into slavery by their families were recently rescued by the International Migration organization, and returned home. Even though the parents broke the law they will not be prosecuted either.

We discussed both of these cases at a workshop in Cape Coast, which is ironically the site of one of the former slave castles (see "Door of No Return," March 13).

Renee and I told our Ghanaian colleagues we were puzzled that parents were allowed to get away with treating their kids this way. There are laws against what they're doing. Why is the country so reluctant to punish them, we wondered.

Most of the reporters in the room confirmed the widespread belief that people sympathized with the parents and did not want to see them go to jail for what they did. People believe witches exist, so while the parents behaviour seems cruel to outsiders it fits with country's traditional belief system. There is a witch camp up north where women are sent to live if they are deemed to be witches. It's difficult to find people here who don't believe in them, even in urban centres like Accra.

As hard as I try to see things from their point of view, I'm very disturbed by what happened to the little girl, and by the mere existence of the witch camp.

I find it difficult, though, to outright condemn child labour. I don't like it, of course, but there don't seem to be any real solutions. The problem is rooted in poverty, not the parents' irresponsibility or lack of love for their children. They sell their kids to work on farms, in the fishery, or as servants because they are poor. They can't afford to feed them or send them to school, and though the government has banned child trafficking they aren't doing anything to help lift the families out of poverty. In many cases, children rescued and returned home ending up being sold again.

- Mark