Too busy this week to write anything, so I am saying it in pictures. From the top, a sign seen at the school in Suhyen west of Koforidua, new volunteer Jill getting into the swing of this week's big NPP event in Jackson Park and trees on the mountain very early one Sunday morning.

Credit Crunch

Last Tuesday, I took a tro to Asamankese, in the heart of the cocoa growing region, for a meeting with the Agric. Officer and the Municipal Chief Executive. It took, half an hour to fill and then set off towards Effidause. Almost immediately we stopped at a filling station for fuel. This may seem strange, but it is the usual course of action. Why do they not fill up with fuel before filling up with passengers? The simple answer is that the driver needs the fares taken to pay for the fuel. In the UK the bus companies have accounts with the fuel suppliers and presumably pay them on previously agreed terms and at some point after the fuel has been taken.
Credit does not feature large in the lives of most Ghanaians. Credit cards are virtually useless here, (although a debit card system using thumb print recognition as a security check is being launched and heavily publicised). Mobile phones are of the prepay variety, the electricity company is rapidly installing prepay meters with smart card technology. When VSO lease houses for volunteers they expect to pay a year, or more likely two, in advance. The nearest you get to credit with the local shops, is when they let you take a bottle of Coke home without making you pay a deposit on the returnable bottle. If you have very little money, the solution offered by stall holders is the availability of very small quantities. Nobody will object if you want to buy one onion or a twist of flour or herbs or even a polythene with a couple of spoons of cooking oil.
There are bank loans for those able to demonstrate the ability to repay and of course there is micro-credit, seen as one of the catch all measures that will lift Ghanaians and others out of poverty. However, borrowing is most likely to occur between family members.
At national level things are different. The government is, no doubt, indebted to various other countries and organisations. With very little in the way of state handouts or benefits, Ghanaians, however, know not to depend on the government. The only intervention seen as having significant impact is the degree of government subsidy on fuel and essential foodstuffs.
The news of AIG, Leaman Brothers, Iceland’s bankruptcy, nationalisation of banks, the “death of capitalism” and the speculation about what will come next dominates BBC World Service broadcasts at the moment. Occasionally mention is made of the potential impact of all this on Africa. It seems likely that there will be less money available to provide aid and that will present problems, but one advantage of being near the bottom of the heap is that when it all goes wrong, there’s less far to fall.
I pondered this on the return journey from Asamankese. I was on the back row with a goat under my seat. The goat was not particularly happy to be there, but sat still and behaved reasonably well. It got its own back on its owner when we reached Koforidua. It staged a sit down protest in the lorry park and had to be dragged away.

VSO Disability Sector Meeting

Most of the current VSO volunteers working with people with disabilites. Programme Manager Sonia Kwami is on the far left.

I saw Paul Daniels advertising a new Tesco insurance product on a row of TVs in or local department store the other day. The TV at our local spot keeps showing cheap ASDA ready meals and DVD box sets that will be ‘out on Monday’. For me this is pretty disconcerting. My ‘other life’ seems to be invading my Ghana life. Satellite TV has arrived in Koforidua. It’s been available for a while now, mainly for the plush hotels and wealthy Ghanaians, but a big push and a new Premiership coverage deal from DSTV, the local provider, means that dishes are popping up all over town. The new arrivals are mainly in bars, but one or two enterprising individuals have put them in back rooms and charge 50 pesewas to watch a match. They have chalk boards with lists of upcoming fixtures. Between football matches the spots show the Kiss Music Channel complete with British commercials.
Football is the main draw but there are also film channels, children’s channels and imported American dramas. There is nothing like the variety provided by Sky or Virgin but it provides a more choice than that provided by the terrestrial Ghanaian broadcasts. I do not have a TV, but the other two volunteer houses in town do. That said we have never sat down to watch a show together. GTV, Metro, TV3 and TV Africa show (to the inexperienced eye) similar combinations of football, news and current affairs, Ghanaian and Nigerian films, dubbed South American soaps and a limited selection of imported films and shows. I did once catch a half hour documentary on Zoomlion, the waste management contractor. Possibly the best thing, from our point of view, is the early morning direct feeds from BBC World News, CNN and Al Jazeera, only spoilt by the sudden indiscriminate chops from one channel to the next. The most bizarre thing I have seen is an English dubbed edition of a German heat for ‘It’s a Knockout’ which must have been almost 30 years old.
Without TV, the main alternative source of home entertainment is DVD. Available all over Ghana from stalls and street sellers, they sell for as little as three Ghana cedis. With incredible compression rates they manage to squeeze hours and hours of entertainment onto a single disc. This means complete series of shows like ‘Lost’ or ‘24’ or Prison Break’ (a particular favourite here) or a disc with, for example, all the Harry Potter films, and all the Spider-man films, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series and the 6 Star Wars episodes. Alternatively you can get most of the James Bond films (interestingly, this disc skips discerningly and selectively through the Moore films, ignores Dalton altogether but insists on including ‘Never Say Never Again’). The quality is not brilliant but they are watchable. It is the sound that suffers most. When it rains heavily on the metal roof you have to resort to headphones, if alone, or potentially one other person you know well enough to share with. There are usually English subtitles, which helps considerably. We viewed a near silent version of ‘Blood Diamond’, only able to pick up the odd nuance of Leonardo Dicaprio’s southern African accent.
Further entertainment is added by the imaginative titles given to the DVDs. Presumably the result of computer translation and typographic error, they include: Gun Irritable Battle Crime Roe, The Decisive Battle Orangutan Planet, Dolph Lundgren v. Robert De Niro and Beautiful Girl Special Service Unit.

Eid al-Fitr

Tuesday was a public holiday. I spent the day with Dan, Catherine and Carla. In the early evening indigo clouds rolled in and lightning began to illuminate patches of the sky. Hoping to avoid the impending rain, I took a tro tro back into town to find the centre of Koforidua packed with people. They were lining the streets watching a procession of cars (mainly taxis) slowly making their way along the main street. There were musicians on the back of trucks and people dancing in between them.
The public holiday marked Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan and Koforidua was celebrating this with the procession. Ghana is predominantly a Christian country (70 %), with a significant Muslim minority. The percentage of Christian’s in Koforidua is probably higher than the national average as the Muslims tend to be present in greater numbers the closer to North Africa you get. Given that Christian Ghanaians take their faith very seriously indeed – you just need to see the number of new churches being built to realise this – the celebration of Eid is just one indication of the Ghana’s remarkable religious tolerance. Then it might also be that any excuse for a street party is worth taking.