Welcome to Fieldwork

You know it's time to leave when...

2007-12-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's like making the day's events fit your horoscope, but I feel like there have been some signs. First off, I opened my little butter packet the other morning and it was green and moldy. All the others were fine. Then, today, CLA opened a little jelly packet to find *it* crawling with mold. Again, it was the only one. Seriously, what are the odds? I know nothing about astrology (despite the number of times people asked me about their futures when I told them what I was studying in grad school), but even I can see the symbolism here.

On an even more obvious note, everything elastic in my possession has rotted...I'm talking right down to the "stretch" in my tee-shirts. I suppose it makes sense that the climate that produces rubber should also decompose it; I also recognize that my belongings have been put through the proverbial wringer this year, running laps between muggy Cotonou and nose-bleed-dry Niamey. Still, I'm down to my last hair tie, and even that was a gift from visiting friends 2 weeks ago.

On the practical side, work is done. It is officially the dry season, a local staff has been trained and put in place, and we just ate salad at the grand openings of the Kalalé solar gardens. I have to say, it was pretty neat to be 115km out on a dirt road eating vegetables grown by solar-powered drip irrigation. [Check out some photos of the installation and results here.] More incredible, however, was seeing the women's groups in the big market on their first day selling their goods. Even better than that was learning that they had sold everything...easily. And the cherry on top came the next day when the president of the women's group forced me to stay late into the afternoon so she could buy me pounded yams (the local specialty - think mashed potatoes and tomato-gravy). When I tried to politely excuse myself, she said, "All these times you come here, and I couldn't give you anything. Now I can finally buy you some pounded yam to thank you." I would have gotten teary, but she followed this up rather quickly with a "Sit down now, and EAT!" and then proceeded to haze us through our afternoon meal. My kind of lady.

So yes, there's the "moldy condiments" factor. There's the "belongings attrition" factor. And there's the "contract completion" factor. But more than those, there's also the "what-I-thought-was-concrete-right-and-wrong-is-feeling-less-so" factor. My existence here has felt, much of the time, like an incommensurability. So many of the things I take as premises -- unquestioned foundations -- for a rational system of ethics, are not true here. And for so long, I've felt the urge to fight these local premises themselves, fearing that any understanding on my part constituted moral relativism.

I think, however, that at least some of the point of an endeavor like a year away is to be able to see and understand the ethics in a different system...even one you think may be fundamentally flawed. This is tricky, because you have to let go a little bit...there are times when you have to be willing to allow for things you don't understand, or even detest, in order to make any sort of connection. To get over the incommensurability -- to be able to have a real conversation about values -- you have to temporarily assume the other person's premises. This is the only way to get at anything deeper, the only door to change.

This means that you have to allow for polygamy to be able to engage people without writing them off as either heinous patriarchal sexist bastards or foolishly unenlightened women. You have to allow that "tribe" -- something for which we have no analog -- frequently runs thicker than blood. You have to bite your tongue when someone hits a child because calling the person out only shames and confuses. You have to learn to draw different borders around corruption.

It's a terribly tricky line to walk because you *do* risk losing your footing entirely, if only out of fatigue from always doing the "affording" to everyone else's values. Grassroots work under a completely different set of ethical premises requires a flexibility that is exhausting. Neither of us has yet shown up late to a meeting, even when we know no one else will arrive until at least an hour after the stated starting time. And we have not yet willingly blown through a red light, even though everyone around us does. But both have gotten increasingly more tempting. It's one thing to bend in the name of understanding, connection, and cooperation. But before the elastic loses it's snap, it's time to go home.

...that and we've been dreaming about grocery stores and burritos.

Coup de Gueule

2007-11-14T04:11:00.000-08:00

(My apologies to those hoping to read about camels, dissertation research, solar electrification, or moto-rides in the streets of Niamey... today, I am French, and I am pissed off.)

Ok - so I may have been in West Africa all year but that doesn't mean I've been out of the loop entirely. In fact, the house I currently stay in has a T.V. with all sorts of amazing channels, like CNN, which enable me to stay on top of current events. So I get to follow all the latest news about political instability in Pakistan, Burma, Georgia, Venezuela... and if I stay up late enough Thursday night, I can even catch the Democratic presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas! But this coup de gueule doesn't go out to Musharaff's totalitarian moves, the Burmese Junta's human rights violations, or Hillary's staged Q&A's.

This coup de gueule goes out to my country, this tiny little piece of proud land we call France. Today is Black Wednesday in France because all public transportation has stopped. Can you imagine Paris with no subways, no buses, and an all-British Eurostar staff? Well, I suppose it's not too hard to imagine since it's not the first time this happens. I watch shots of empty rails and defeated French workers waiting on platforms, and I feel shame.

What's the problem here? What are transportation workers' unions protesting? They are protesting Sarkozy's intended reforms of the "régimes speciaux de retraite", that special status 500,000 working and over 1 million retired (that's one hell of a gap) civil servants enjoy in France that enables them to call it quits after 37.5 years of paying their dues. The rest of the working force, meanwhile, labors on for 2.5 more years. These special arrangements, which the strikers like to call "social acquisitions", are vestiges of the past: they made sense decades ago when transportation work was physically dangerous and harmful, what with coal and steam and smoke and all. But they are absolutely moot today. Still, transportation workers see their "régimes speciaux" as a right they have acquired over time, and which no politician - let alone a right-wing president who likes to jog in the morning à la Bush - can take away. So as France's debt grows deeper and deeper, the transportation workers do what they do best: they strike.

What's particularly infuriating this time around (no, Sarko is not the first to try and change this institutionalized system of privilege), is that French public opinion does NOT support these strikers and that Sarko was elected with an absolute majority after months of campaigning on these reforms. Special interests are paralyzing my little country.

The French like to pride themselves on their ability to enjoy the good things in life. They distinguish themselves from the Americans they love to hate so much with their five weeks of paid vacation every year, their free healthcare, and - apparently - their right to strike indeterminately. But the reality is that the French government can no longer sponsor the French way of life, and we don't live in a world where a G-8 country can remain a G-8 country and live like a G-8 country when a chunk of its labor force gets to retire at age 50 or 55 and spend the remaining 30 years of its life (because yes, life expectancy in France is just over 80 years) living off its children and grand-children's money.

The "régimes speciaux" in France reflect a "mentalité spéciale" that's got to go. It pervades in large sections of French society, from civil servants to students (yes, students strike too. Apparently they don't want their public universities to implement some kind of admissions process that goes beyond just signing up). It is a misplaced sense of entitlement that guarantees only that the days of ze French way of life are numbered.

Show us your model

2007-10-29T03:24:00.000-07:00

Last night, we watched attentively as some of Africa's most famous football (soccer) legends picked numbers and names out of a glass bowl and, with a transparency we all wish upon the next Nigerian elections, determined the four different groups for the 2008 Cup of African Nations. Niger didn't qualify, yet all of Niamey dragged TV sets out of shacks and into streets and dirt roads to watch the event communally. Starting next January, 16 African teams will come together and battle it out in Ghana's stadiums for one of the most important and reputable titles in the region. Some are obvious favorites: Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal... Others inspire more giggles than awe: Sudan (how did they get it together to even have a team?), Namibia (where is this place again?), Benin (we're protective of them, but you have to admit nobody really knows how they made it this far...)

It's going to be an exciting tournament. And we're here to give you a reason to care.

We all know that soccer is more than just soccer. We've blogged about this but smarter people have already written serious books about it before us. Soccer matches and soccer tournaments have triggered wars and taken down military regimes. And more than any other sport - or diplomatic effort for that matter - soccer can bring together Israelis and Iranians, Ghanaians and Nigerians, French and Germans, and Salvadoreans and Hondurans in one same, enclosed space, for 90 minutes... where the only shots fired are soccer balls aimed at soccer nets.

Clearly, what happens on that field and the scores that ensue must have something to do with more than just the individual performance of each player. It's also about the quality of the teams. And that, my friends, can be endogenous (I couldn't help myself) to any number of things...

With this in mind, we present to you the 2008 African Cup of Nations It's-More-Than-Just-Soccer Pool. To participate, simply email us the following information:
1) A written $5 pledge (it ain't fun if there are no stakes);
2) Your prediction rule: this is the rule you will have to commit to for all predictions throughout the tournament. You can choose any factor you believe best predicts victory. This can range from strictly athletic factors (the team with the most players in the Premier League will win) to strictly political factors (the team from the most democratic country will win). Identify your rule and explain it (note: number of languages and female literacy are already taken by yours truly);
3) Make available any external data needed to verify your predictions;
4) Pretend like this is a really cool and witty idea;
5) Do this by December 31st, 2007.

Qualifying teams are Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Morocco (Group A); Nigeria, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin (Group B); Egypt, Sudan, Zambia, Cameroon (Group C); Tunisia, Senegal, South Africa, Angola (Group D). Games start January 20, 2008.

Good luck - and may the best empirical model win.

Congratulations, Al Gore and the IPCC!

2007-10-15T02:15:00.001-07:00

Gore is a class act. He hardly even smiled at his press conference, and I have to believe it's because he knows that the work has only just begun; he's only just gotten people's attention. Violence and petroleum-use-based climate change are indelibly linked in a way that those of us who are wealthy-enough-to-choose-green fail to grasp, and I believe the Nobel committee was right - if not downright visionary - in giving Gore and the IPCC this year's Peace Prize. Explicitly making this link between climate change and peace, on all levels, is the critical next step in the process of fighting back.

If we are serious about building a peaceful world, we need to do more than raising awareness and changing the habits of the developed world: we need to find and encourage alternative development paths worldwide. Sure, we talk about the role of oil in Iraq and Darfur. But our consumption patterns are not just devastating on the state level, they have framed a pattern of development that is destroying individual lives and creating conflict on all levels, down to the tiny villages of West Africa.

Al Gore knows this.

After all, Gore, Thomas Freidman, and their colleagues are good guys: they never fail to address the relationship between climate change and poverty when they talk about our oil addiction and its environmental consequences. Thanks to them, we are all aware that climate change, wrought largely by developed nations, disproportionately affects the world's poor. Global agriculture and aquaculture have been altered in measurable ways, with devastating implications for those engaged in subsistence activities.

Unfortunately, until now, that's where their message has usually stopped--with this very *passive* notion of the developing world being harmed by the carbon evils of the developed world. Certainly this is true. And I don't fault the big voices on climate change for their message. They are rightfully focused on global stewardship and what we can do in the developed world to start fixing the situation; they also know that it would be both unfair and devastating to saddle developing communities with heavy petroleum taxes or the cost of greener technologies. But the message of “it’s the developing world’s responsibility,” while correct in what it asserts, silently endorses the standard “petroleum path” for developing communities.

This is unhealthy, unwise, uncreative, and – most important – unnecessary. The “petroleum path” is scary, and not just from the climate-change perspective. Sure, the Sahel is drying, and the farmers in the region will soon be facing adapt-or-perish pressures. But the most frightening manifestation of oil-addiction here is not the lengthening of the dry season; it’s what happens when an oil truck goes off the road.

You’ll know you’ve come across this scenario because for miles leading up to the truck, you’ll see people of all ages running towards the scene, carrying jugs, bowls, even thermoses. As you get closer, you’ll see people who look, well, wet…the smell will hit you just before you see the truck itself, and then it will all be clear—women, men, and small children are literally coated in gas as they climb over each other to pound holes in the tank and siphon off the contents.

Tom Friedman, gas here actually *is* $5 per gallon, forget any carbon tax. It’s all smuggled in from Nigeria and sold at roadside stands in old booze bottles, filtered (if you’re lucky) through an old tee-shirt. For people living on less than a dollar or two a day, it's the quickest money-maker around, so can you blame them for sending their 6-year old into the fray? Can we really expect people to restrain themselves and to think about last year, when a truck in the same situation went up in flames near Nattitingou, killing over 300? Of course not. On the way out of Cotonou a few months ago, I saw another gas truck that had gone off the road only minutes before. The driver and crew were staking out their turf around the tank, but it was only a matter of time until they'd be overrun, perhaps killed.

What’s the root of oil-addiction at the bottom of the pyramid? There are over a billion people (that's another China, my friends…) who don't have, but desperately want, access to the development opportunities afforded by electricity. What are the options for electricity in remote villages? Today, it's wait for the grid or buy a generator. The sad reality is that even if governments had the resources to expand grid infrastructure to many of these places, there's simply not enough power to go around. Most of electrified West Africa is well-accustomed to rolling blackouts. And so people are clawing past each other to find gas to feed their generators.

Do you blame them? Think about what it means to have a health clinic with lights and outlets (or imagine the converse). Think about what it means to be able to keep street shops and markets open at night thanks to streetlights. Think about what it means to have a pump on a well so women can engage in small commercial activities and girls can go to school instead of fetching water all day. Think about what it means to be able to do homework without hunching next to a tiny kerosene lamp (if you’re lucky enough to have one). Think about what it means to have phone service. Electricity provides a path out of poverty; and right now in the desperately poor villages of West Africa, this translates into oil greed of a variety never talked about in the climate change discussion. While the developed world is finally getting serious about changing our energy habits, the developing world is going down the same old path...only it has gotten even more dangerous.

So, as we environmentalists bask in the glow of the Nobel announcement, I submit that this is the moment for the response to climate change to expand, not settle. Yes, we need state-level change and top-level policy in the developed world, and that has now been acknowledged at the highest level. But we also need to intervene at the bottom, to innovate and create and start moving everyone away from the standard petroleum path. If in 20 years we just have another generation of war-ravaged nations to wean off of oil, this year's Nobel may be in vain.

Le Monde est Petit

2007-10-15T02:10:00.001-07:00

Certain things are universal. I wouldn't go so far as to call them "truths," but there is an order to the cosmos on a scale somewhere between electromagnetism and gravity...let's say, oh, at the length of about a meter. That's right; the human scale. People are neither electrons nor rocks, but there are some incredible patterns to humanoid behavior in need of some explanation. To wit:

(1) Celine Dion. The woman is everywhere. Urban African restaurants, rural African radio, New York, the Mall of America (oh yes, I did), dentists' offices, airplanes, the Burney family backyard fireworks displays...she is loved by all, even those who claim otherwise. And she apparently mediates all human interaction, bringing the world closer together. Physicists have long been trying to reconcile forces at the atomic scale with forces at the cosmic scale. Perhaps we have found a missing piece?!? The gluon, the photon, the Dion, the graviton...

(2) Gendered Toilet Behavior. I thought it was a suburban American joke, those silly men who won't put the seat back down. Maybe they're macho; maybe they're just forgetful...but they certainly aren't the norm, right? Wrong. Even in the land of pit latrines, men are men, and women are left to clean up the mess. Recently in Kalale, we had an incredible opportunity...a BRAND NEW LATRINE uninfested by roaches. Yes, it was just a hole in the ground, but a *nice* one. The universal truth about roaches is that it's quite easy to keep them out, but almost impossible to get rid of them once they invade. The trick with a latrine? All you have to do is COVER THE HOLE. Now, is that really so difficult? Apparently it is. One month, and our nice new latrine is just as disgusting as any other, even though I lectured and begged and took to stalking in after the boys in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. I'm trying to see this as a sign of higher order, but it hurts. Especially at night.

(3) Suicidal Insects. In the small slice of West Africa that we've seen, I routinely marvel at the speed with which an insect will die in whatever liquid you have recently left uncovered, be it a beer, a laundry basin, a bowl of soup. I thought this must be the Africa dummy at work, but, being a meticulous scientist, I realized that this merited an experiment in the States in September. So I took the paper and a glass of juice outside. BAM! Dead fly. Several iterations of this revealed that the average time of suicidal invasion is longer in the US than in Ghana, Benin, or Niger, but I believe this can be explained alone by the relative density of insects in these places. Perhaps you are thinking, "Hey wait, she was talking about human-scale behavior. What's with the bug business?" To this I have two answers: (a) I am a physicist and this is good enough for government work (especially in this administration); and (b) I AM talking about human behavior...why are we all idiots that keep leaving things uncovered??

(4) Enginerds. Future geeks/dorks/nerds (I am told they're different, but as I am all three, I cannot discern...) of the world are identifiable from a mile away. The air-sucking laughter (with perhaps a snort or two thrown in); the slightly awkward discomfort with looking people in the eye (even when it's not explainable by cultural norms); the outcast status...Oh yes, and of course, the inexplicable and impelling need to build things that roll, even if it is out of old bamboo stalks and melons.

Isn't the world a beautiful place?

It’s Not Just That My French Sucks

2007-10-15T02:08:00.000-07:00

The first time I saw the word, it was on a sign over a toilet in Parakou: S’il vous plait, tirez-moi doucement. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ll flush gently; no problem.” The first time I heard anyone say the word, my reaction was, “Aw, now that’s kind of cute.” I had tripped getting off the back of a zemidjan (taxi moto), and the driver and every male within earshot earnestly muttered it together, creating a little chorus of “Doucement”s. It made enough sense, but diligent student that I am, I looked it up to be sure and then contented myself with a revised understanding that the word meant something more like “Careful!” The next time I heard it, I’d just broken my clothesline, so when a neighbor-of-whom-I-am-not-so-fond-and-vice-versa called out to me, I thought she was rubbing it in. I wanted to yell back, “Doucement yourself, you big jerk…And stop stealing my clothespins and send your daughter to school!” Fortunately, I held back…because the next time was after a young boy, looking the other way as he chased a flat soccer ball, had run smack into me. “Doucement, eh?” he said, looking up at me with big guilty eyes and waiting for my response. Part of me thought, “Were you raised in a barn?!? You don’t hit people and then lecture them about being careful!” The other part of me, though, had a sneaking suspicion that he was trying to apologize and that this word was more versatile than I had imagined.

It’s been a problem for me this entire year, in both languages. It’s not just that I’m like David Sedaris trying to explain the Easter Bunny to Eastern Europeans with a 100-word French vocabulary. And it’s not just the “Garbage v. Rubbish” business of non-American English (though Ghanaians do have a funny way of asking if you’d like to “alight” from the tro-tro here so you can “go-come-back-that-place”). It’s that I am accustomed to life expressed through a colorful, if at times inappropriate, vocabulary—one where there’s a one-to-one correspondence between word used and sentiment expressed. My very ability to function on this planet depends on “I’m so sorry”, “Bummer”, “Easy does it”, and “Hey, be careful!” being very clearly distinguished from one another.

But here, so much goes unsaid. Ask for clarification, and you’ll get a verbatim repetition, shrugged shoulders, or folded hands. You’re just supposed to get it, nuances and all. I, normally on the oblivious side even when confronting the blindingly obvious, am completely left behind. The gendarmes don't ever demand money; you're just supposed to know when smoothly bust out your 500CFA handshake. I'm reduced to following the cues of everyone else in the taxi-brousse..."cues" of course being stiff elbows to the ribs and big eyes that seem to be screaming, "get with it, already, stupid anasara!" Trips to customs sound to me like: “Your Excellence, Mr. Junior Rubber-Stamping Secretary of the Application of Tariffs, we are honored to be here to present to Your Most High Benevolence our Association.” Okay, fine, grammatically-speaking, it’s a sentence. But I thought we were here to ask for an exemption?! Where was the question? Did someone ask it while I blinked? On top of it, I know that the letter handed over to Mr. JRSSAT isn’t any clearer than whatever was just said. Somehow, though, at the end of the day, everyone else understands, and the exemption is granted.

I’ve more than once made people uncomfortable because I don’t understand that they are asking me for money or presents: “Do you know about my farm? We grow soy, and right now is when we do the planting and fertilizing.” “That’s great! I love tofu and soy milk! Soy is so nutritious.” Shifting in seat. “Yes, well, harvest time isn’t for a while. Now is when we are finishing preparing the ground.” “Ah yes, I see. How long does it take to grow?” “Well, you see, that’s the thing. I am here to talk to you about fertilizer.” “Oh, well, I don’t know much about the condition of your soil, so I am not sure I am the best person to help you.” “No, I mean, I want to ask you about fertilizer.” “Yes?” Nervous shifting. “That’s to say…” More silence, as I wait. Then the light bulb springs on. I take the lead: “Have you bought the fertilizer?” “No.” “Are you able to buy the fertilizer?” “No.” “How much does the fertilizer cost?” “40.000CFA.” “Do you want me to buy the fertilizer for you?” “No.” What?!? Okay, now I am REALLY confused. In the end, the woman just wants money - for other things - but talking about the cost of fertilizer is supposed to be my cue. Doh!

What's a girl supposed to do? I trust that people here know I am earnest and sincere, if stupid. So I do my best, smile a lot, and try to roll with it. But life has a way of always laughing at you. Just when you think you've gotten the hang of some of this stuff, you buy a 5000CFA ($10) phone card and accidentally scratch the numbers off. As you're kicking yourself for wasting an amount of money that is horrible even at home, nevermind horrifying here, you see the tiny text next the remains of the card number: Grattez doucement.

Merci, I think. Merci beaucoup.

1000 words * 30 fps * 4ish minutes = ...

2007-10-15T02:07:00.001-07:00

Hello friends.

Omowe has gone multi-media. Here's a video my incredible sister edited together (but credit where credit is due, I picked the Afro-pop soundtrack) showing the installation of solar-powered pumps in two villages back in August. You'll notice that the system in the first village draws water from a small river. They are fortunate enough to have surface water year-round, and our goal here is to help them use that water for irrigation (they now transport and spread water by hand, attempting to avoid crocodiles in the process). The second village has a severe overall water shortage, so we drilled a borehole with the hope that we can use the water for both drinking and agriculture.

Two-thirds of the agricultural part of this pilot project are shown in the video - the pumps and panels were in and working and we were able to fill the big water reservoirs. I've just returned from another trip to finish the preparation of fields, the planting of seedlings, and the installation of drip irrigation lines. Solar powered drip irrigation is now officially happening, just in time for the dry season. Pictures to come soon. In the meantime, hip hip hooray for veggies.

Thanks for reading and watching.

[Big Important PS: This video was actually put together for in-family viewing, hence the heavy footage of yours truly...it was also never meant to be shown widely, and it's too large to embed directly here, so take care with our little private YouTube link. Unfortunately, the mastermind behind much of the action shown in this video, Mr. Walt Ratterman, also happened to be the mastermind behind the camera. Jokes about soundtrack aside, if anyone deserves credit, it's him!]

Yes! I love movies!

Seriously?

2007-09-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

I have tried and failed to find an internet connection fast enough to upload photos from my moto-trip north. So you're just going to have to believe me, for now, when I tell you I made it - on a little 110CC scooter made in China. I braved the rains of northern Benin and the heat of the Sahel, I dodged the goats and the camels crossing the road without a care in the world, I zigzagged around and sometimes through the potholes of the more desolate areas on the map, I raced against truckdrivers who didn't like the idea of a yovo girl passing them on a scooter. And, ironically enough, it was at the Nigerien border that I had to pay my first bribe. With my moto papers in order and all, the authorities naturally asked for the next thing on the list, proof of insurance. I chuckled. Proof of insurance falls under the same category as driver's license and respect for traffic laws in Benin: optional. But the Nigerien border officials were not laughing. In fact they were "very serious": Niger, they said, was very serious about this sort of thing. And they shook a menacing index finger in my face. Strange, then, that when I finally payed and stroked their egos, they issued me a ticket for my inability to produce my moto ownership records, not my proof of insurance. When I informed them of their mistake, they explained that they were doing me a favor, that failure to provide proof of insurance could lead to prison. Yeah, right. Or maybe proof of insurance is not a fine-able offense, except if you're a white girl with a new moto in West Africa.

If that wasn't enough to sour my arrival in Niger, my friend and I arrived in Niamey triumphantly on a Saturday evening only to get stopped by the Nigerien police, again. Apparently, when we finally stopped to check our map and figure out where we were spending the night, we had parked right in front of the National Headquarters for the Nigerien Police Force (seriously?). And that's as bad as taking pictures of the American Embassy. Take note: in Niger, do not park in front of official buildings, ever. You might be mistaken for a Touareg planning an insurgency. Seriously. The police took our passports and considered keeping them over the weekend (apparently Sunday is a day of rest for the police, too). They smirked when I told them they'd have to take me along with them because there was no way I would separate from my passport for that long, especially since the Nigerien authorities seem to enjoy asking for my papers on a daily basis. Good thing my Beninois friend was with me. Not only is he "African", he also happens to be a man, a quality that can take you a long way in this part of the world. According to him, there is always a solution... it may include a CFA2,000 dash or ridiculously hypocritical banter with your friends the cops, but there is always a solution. So I let him do the talking while I tried to put on my best don't-hurt-me-I-am-so-sweet-and-exhausted face (since the don't-mess-with-me face I tried at the beginning didn't work all that well).

In the end, Officer Kassoum, the ranking officer in the pack of cops who had descended upon us, accepted to keep with him a mere photocopy of our passports, "for the record." He quickly became a close friend, warning me about the dangers of pick-pockets in the city's open markets, refusing to take the CFA2,000 olive branch I offered as thanks, and even giving me his personal cell phone number just in case I had any more problems in Niamey. We chit chat on the phone on a regular basis now. I even brought him dates the other day to help him break the Ramaddan fast. I think I'm getting the hang of this.

So I made it to Niamey in one piece and I didn't have to cram into a bush taxi for 15 hours to get there. I'm still enjoying the look on people's face when I tell them what I did. They stare at me, their mouth half-open in disbelief, they look at my little moto scooter, and back at me. And then they laugh and ask me how many kamikaze bugs I caught on my face and in my teeth on the way. Yeah, that was definitely my biggest concern.

Niamey is hot. Seriously hot. Every day I devise new ways of making my nights slightly less unpleasant. My latest solution is to keep the mattress on the floor, the window open, the curtains drawn, and the fan blowing all day, and to put the mattress aside, open the curtains, and set up the sheets on the cool spot on the floor where the mattress used to be at night. Now you might wonder, why not just get yourself a place with air-conditioning, you silly girl? And this is where the developing world makes life very difficult for people with lower middle-class budgets. In countries like Niger and Benin, you're either ridiculously rich or desperately poor. People with A/C also have pools and SUVs and maids and tend to work for industries I'd prefer never to frequent in my life, like NGOs and oil and private military training services. I don't have the pool, I don't have the SUV, I certainly don't hire maids... so no A/C for me. Instead, I shower, I air-dry (very quickly) and I set up camp on the tiled floor. I am not losing hope though - October marks the end of the hot and muggy rains and the beginning of a cooler, windier season, my very own, all-natural, air-conditioning system. Hey, I take my luxuries wherever I can find them, or whenever they are offered to me. Call me a cheap grad student, but I prefer to save my stipend money for things like enumerator salaries and moto-scooters and dried dates.

The luxury of leaving

2007-09-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

I left Africa for five days last week and checked into the Novotel. My mom, who never ceases to surprise and impress me, decided to come to Benin for the sole purpose of seeing me. I was certainly excited at the prospect, yet I was also apprehensive. What would my mom think of this place, of my living conditions, of the moto-scooter we bought back in June, of my personal hygiene? Did I smell and did I fail to notice anymore? Clearly, I needed to prepare for her arrival.

I informed my landlord ahead of time to make sure he payed the electricity bill enough to keep power on during her stay. I swept and mopped the entire apartment. I hand-washed the sheets in hopes of getting rid of that oppressive smell of humidity that hovers above my bed and seems to have impregnated every item of textile in my room. I stocked up the fridge with multi-grain bread, low-fat butter, and instant decaf coffee to make the place feel slightly more like home, at least in the mornings. I did it all... all that was in my control, that is. But running water, it appears, is not at all in my control. I was not too worried when the water went off the afternoon of my mom's arrival - the government tends to do that in the middle of the day (clearly when no one needs water) and turns it back on by 8pm. But the water had not come back by the time we went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning. We waited for the 24-hour mark, and when that inevitably hit, we suddenly thought a short hotel stay entirely justifiable. We packed and we left.

And I had my first hot shower in over eight months. And all the CNN I could ever ask for. And sheets that felt and smelled clean. And no mosquito net. And no mosquitos. And silence... precious precious silence at night. We had a view of the ocean from our hotel window. I could stand there and watch from a distance families, friends, lovers, heading to the beach. I wasn't the immersed field-researcher living with and among the people anymore. I was the removed scholar watching them from my third floor window (My advisor would not be proud). I could even take my very own computer down to the lobby and instantly access the internet: no cyber cafe, no USB sticks, (almost) no sporadic internet connection, no sudden power outages. It all seemed so luxurious and yet so normal at the same time: that's what my life usually looks like after all. It hasn't been like that at all over the past eight months, but it's been like that otherwise and it will be like that when I return (except maybe for the CNN part). It was so easy to forget what that felt like and so easy to fall back into it as well.

As much as it pains me to admit it, maybe the kids here are right to scream out "Yovo!" every time they see me; hard as I try to blend in, I don't. I sweat more than everybody else, my skin turns white to red to brown to red again, my hair dances uncontrollably in the wind and, at the end of the day, I can always just leave this place.

I took my mom around on the little moto-scooter. We played tourist for a few days, visiting old European slave trade forts and cities on water, zooming through the open market without really stopping, buying over-priced gifts even after negotiating down to half the original offer... and at night we retreated into the Novotel, enjoyed decent wine and stimulating conversations, and I pretended I wasn't in Africa anymore.

My mom left too soon and I went back to my cold showers, my mosquito net, and that smell... but the transition back wasn't as difficult as I feared after all. That Novotel escapade must have been revitalizing in many ways. Or maybe we are a lot more adaptable than we think...

... which is fortunate if true because I am taking my backpack and that little moto-scooter on Monday morning and I am heading North. One local and trustworthy chaperon, two bottles of sunscreen, one pair of kick-ass H&M sunglasses, one helmet (yes yes, I am wearing a helmet), two Bradt guides, one pair of rain pants, one bottle of Cipro, one big backpack, one week, one thousand kilometers.

Seriously, how else was I going to get myself up to Niger?

The Africa Dummy

2007-08-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

In political science, when we try to explain simple things like development or war, we like to account for the fact that some regions of the world tend to experience these things just by virtue of being what they are. In a statistical regression, we call this the regional dummy: it answers questions like "ok so we see a civil war here... is that because we're in Africa?" Including this regional dummy in a statistical regression prevents any one particular region from driving the entire relationship we're analyzing. If, say, we are trying to explain economic growth and, say, Africa always tends to experience low growth while Asia always tends to experience high growth, we might want to account for those regional particularities in order to move beyond them and pin down what factors systematically explain growth across time and space. Hence the regional dummy.

The Africa dummy, by the way, is pretty much always a significant and negative factor when it comes to pleasant things like growth or peace or social harmony. Go figure.

But lately I have gotten a taste of what the Africa dummy feels like on the ground. The Africa dummy has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That stupid line they use in Blood Diamond, TIA (This Is Africa), which usually comes out just before old friends start shooting at each other or stealing from each other, is an actual mentality here. TIA appears to explain anything and everything. Forget all the other acronyms we like to use in our discipline - GDP, HDI, ELF... It's all about TIA.

I have become acquainted with two types of TIAs over the past nine months:

There's the angry, almost hostile TIA that is thrown at me by either (1) young men I ignored in Lagos, or (2) immigration and visa officials who enjoyed their temporary position of power over me a little too much. This one is supposed to scare me away, warn me that I am not in Kansas anymore and that all bets are off.

And then there's the apologist but also self-deprecating TIA, most commonly used to explain long waits for no apparent reason, ubiquitous tardiness, or differing concepts of honesty and truthfulness. This one takes cultural relativism to a whole new level.

I resent the Africa dummy. It may be the kind of rhetoric I'd expect from some Texan politicians, but it's not the kind I expect from Africans themselves. It creates and reflects a resignation that only perpetuates the lines that never move because there's only one person who can help and he's off to lunch, the meetings that never happen because people don't bother showing up, the time everybody wastes on flattery and deference in order to get anything from anybody.

But most importantly it is simply not true. It is a shell of an excuse. The immigration officials in Cotonou may be bastards who like to ignore your questions when they don't have your passport and visa ready for you after the 48 hours they said it would take, but the officials at the Niger embassy are kind, professional and efficient. Our first landlord may have been a crook who evicted us after reneging on our agreement but our second one offered us a wonderful apartment for an honest price. Some transport companies may be incompetent liers who claim the truck that is carrying your fancy solar electrification equipment is on its way out of Cotonou while it is still stuck in the Port (and then, when caught red-handed, claim that what they said did not technically constitute a lie), but others provide the service you expect for the price you agreed upon. The Africa dummy is much worse than a significant variable in a statistical regression - it's become an entire mentality, the most over-rated and exasperating excuse, the worst kind of apology.

When i went to the immigration office in Cotonou to extend my visa and the officials decided to keep my passport without reason for a few extra days, a man standing in line next to me thought he was doing me a favor by suggesting I offer them some money because "this isn't Europe after all." He then leaned toward the window and smiled at the official on the other side, the single most unpleasant individual I have ever met, saying "it's ok, I understand, I am African too." He was from Lybia.

I don't know if his method worked but I payed no more than the appropriate fee and eventually got my passport and my visa extension. If I survived the Nigerian border without paying a dash, I thought, there was no way I was going to pay my first bribe in a country where Nick Kristof thinks we should all buy real estate.

The TIA crowd is like the cool kids in high school who do bad things like smoking and cheating on tests. It's cool to know when to offer a dash, and it's cool to expect that things don't function otherwise. Instead I'm the white girl who believes what the signs advertize and calls people on their crap as they smirk back at me. It's nothing new, really. I never was a part of the cool crowd in high school after all.

A Mix CD for the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Community Union in Cotonou

2007-08-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Last week, if you’d asked us about difficult tasks we’ve faced this year, we might have said single-handed survey enumeration in the slums, or project coordination a million miles from anywhere without any modern communications technologies. But that would have been last week.

This week, thanks in part to the money he’s making helping CLA, Chief Olujobi bought his first CD player. Now he wants a representative mix of American music. He likes reggae and, as he put it, “sentimental stuff.”

This is more than a task; it’s a mission. With one 2-volume mix of Americana, we want to present a broad musical cross-section, correct the notion that the US is all white people, introduce the concept of the independent woman, and more generally eliminate all the “-isms” and “-phobias” in the world.

We need your help.

Disc 1

1. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution – Tracy Chapman (Nothing like a little Tracy to make you want to take to the streets and protest some flawed election.)
2. These Are The Days – 10,000 Maniacs (Here’s to hoping Olujobi will remember those days of surveying the hot and dirty Tokpa market fondly.)
3. Tiny Dancer – Elton John (America hearts Elton. So should Nigeria.)
4. Video – India.Arie (Women can be strong.)
5. Jack and Diane – John Cougar Mellencamp (Cougar? Silly Americans!)
6. Imagine – John Lennon (Ok so not American, but also probably the most American of them all.)
7. Everything is Everything – Lauryn Hill (You can be a young mother of three and a rock star in America.)
8. Daydream Believer – The Monkeys (We’re hoping we won’t have to explain the whole concept of “homecoming queen”…because we don’t get it either.)
9. Somebody More Like You – Nickel Creek (Bluegrass represent!)
10. I Got You Babe – Sonny & Cher (We’re betting he’ll know – and love – all the lyrics by next week.)
11. Cecilia – Simon & Garfunkel (Ditto.)
12. Santeria – Sublime (We are in Voodoo Land after all.)
13. Unpretty – TLC (Insert obvious message here.)
14. With or Without You – U2 (Bono hearts Africa.)
15. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison (Women can be free spirits.)
16. Dust in the Wind – Kansas (Place-name bands have to be represented on the Americana mix.)
17. Didn’t We Almost Have It All – Whitney Houston (He wanted sentimental…)

Disc 2

1. With a Little Help From My Friends – Joe Cocker (Better friends means greater trust means more economic development and less civil war.)
2. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen (He’s called The Boss for a reason, Chief.)
3. Angry Any More – Ani DiFranco (We had to… and it’s one of the tamer ones…or, vraiment, the only one.)
4. D’Yer Mak’er – Led Zeppelin (The obvious choice for Classic Rock meets Reggae.)
5. I Can’t Wait to Meetchu – Macy Gray (Sounds like an SMS I got the other day.)
6. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding (Classic… and it’s kinda what he does all day, sitting on a bench in Jonquet, waiting for the Mercedes to roll by to change Euros and Dollars on the marche noir.)
7. De Doo Doo, De Da Da – The Police (The song in our iTunes library that most resembles Pidgin English.)
8. You Don’t Know How it Feels – Tom Petty (We’re hoping he won’t catch that part about rolling another joint…)
9. Every Rose Has its Thorn – Poison (The monster ballad must be represented on the Americana mix.)
10. Father and Son – Cat Stevens (Olujobi never went to Jewish summer camp but we did and this, too, is part of us… even if he doesn’t know it.)
11. You Can’t Hurry Love – Diana Ross (But maybe with three or four wives you don’t HAVE to wait.)
12. I Say a Little Prayer – Aretha Franklin (He’d LOVE her.)
13. Breathe – Unknown (to us) Artist (Hey, all those songs that sound the same by young American-Idol-type girls are also Americana.)
14. For Once in my Life – Stevie Wonder (It’s better than I Just Called to Say I Love You.)
15. The Zephyr Song – RHCP (The obvious choice for Alternative/Punk meets Reggae.)
16. Least Complicated – Indigo Girls (This song has a deep message that can be applied to many situations.)
17. Fat Bottomed Girls – Queen (‘Nuf said.)

Lest you think we gave this little to no thought, we do have a short list of “instantly-rejected” selections:

Sk8er Boi – Avril Lavigne
Million Voices – Wyclef Jean
Add it Up - Violent Femmes
Bootylicious, Milkshake, Blow Your Mind, etc… – Destiny’s Child, Kelis, Eve feat. Gwen Stefani, etc…
Personal Jesus – Depeche Mode
Anything by The Cure
Anything by Fiona Apple
Anything by Sleater-Kinney
She’s Like The Wind – Patrick Swayze
Cold Beer and Remote Control – Indigo Girls

Oh yeah – we almost forgot. Say hello to Chief Olujobi.

It's been too long...

2007-07-24T04:53:00.001-07:00

We've settled in rather easily to life in Cotonou over the past few weeks; it's downright pleasant. Perhaps you saw Nick Kristof's op-ed in the NYT a few weeks ago saying that buying real estate here would be wise [check it out here (and by the way, NYT, Free Times Select, you elitist jerks!)]...The man has a point: Cotonou is a main city in Africa, and West Africa at that, but it's holding it together. Public works projects as far as the eye can see-- new roads, trash cans, and...my personal favorite...sewer cleaning day! Last week, all across the city, teams of workers lifted the covers off of the sewers every 10 meters or so, and hauled out any muck that might be impeding drainage. BOOM! One day, in and out. Sure, it stank, but it was an amazing feat of coordination and quite heartwarming. Go, Benin! Ghana, take note: you, too, can cover the sewers and keep them functional!

In the spirit of fairness, if we were to organize the Pan-African Public Goods Games, Ghana would kick some serious butt in the rural electrification coverage competition. The rest of West Africa would be eating wake...but Benin wouldn't be standing still or tumbling backwards like some other countries. On that note, here is a pictoral update of the little Beninois rural electrification project that is so near and dear to me...enjoy!

Ogbomosho

2007-06-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

I knew two words of Yoruba when I began my Yoruba lessons last Fall: Obasanjo and Ogbomosho. The former is rather obvious, and the latter had been a recurring theme in my academic research: a great deal of Yorubas in the Diaspora originate from the town of Ogbomosho. The Ogbomoshos travel. They stick together. And they don't forget where they come from. That felt strangely familiar to me. When it came time to take on a Yoruba persona in my class, I thus became Titilayo from Ogbomosho. And when my Yoruba respondents in Accra asked me defiantly if I had "ever been to Nigeria," I responded without a flinch that I was headed to Ogbomosho in May. So when I found the opportunity to accompany my friend Jide back home to Ogbomosho, I had to seize it.

Ogbomosho is a rather small city (of approximately 1.5 million people) by Nigerian standards. It has one reputable university, one impressive meat market (where they kill, cut, sell and burn cattle right there in the open air), one stadium, one football team, one Baptist seminary and over 400 Baptist churches. There are five or six hours of electricity at night and on Sunday mornings if we're lucky. The roads are packed with taxis, okadas (moto-taxis) and oil trucks; the latter have the right of way.

In Ogbomosho I am the rare Oyinbo (pronounced O-EE-BO, a.k.a. Obruni) to step out of the gates of the Baptist seminary and to come on academic and not evangelizing mission; and because Yoruba is a tonal language, the Oyinbo interpellation sounds like a question: Oyinbo? Oyinbo? is all I hear when I zoom by on okadas. Ogbomosho is the second largest town in Oyo State, Nigeria's "Pace Setter" State. (Lagos, by the way, is Nigeria's "Center of Excellence" while Abuja is its "Center of Unity" - whoever came up with these mottos?) This time of year, electric rain storms paralyze the town every other day and keep the landscape green and the air refreshingly light.

The people of Ogbomosho welcomed me to Nigeria with such kindness and generosity that I almost forgot which country I was in. Those I interviewed showered me with food and drinks the way only my Hungarian grandmother used to. They were delighted with my forays into their colorful culture, and the Yoruba greeting and bowing sent them cheering with laughter. They thought I looked "beautiful" when I went native with my braids and Yoruba cloth (I thought it made me look like a market mama. It's all relative.) They loved to call me Titi. And they all tried to get me to accept Christ. Don't worry mom, they failed.

Lizzie Williams, who wrote a brilliant Bradt travel guide for Nigeria, claims that "[Q]uite frankly there is no other way to write about Nigeria than personally. It's a destination that's not about Eiffel Towers or Serengeti Plains, but about a conversation or a unique moment." She is right.

One Chief I interviewed offered me the opportunity to meet the King of Ogbomosho and before I knew it, Chief Evergreen escorted Jide and me to the Kabiyesi Palace. I didn't know what to expect but was instructed to call him Kabiyesi (King) and to kneel in greeting. We entered the Kabiyesi quarters in Chief Evergreen's red Mercedes. We approached the Palace's visiting room and as we entered, I let Jide and Evergreen take the lead because in a room full of old men in Yoruba attire, I had no idea which was King. Jide and Evergreen walked forward and suddenly prostrated themselves right there, face flat, on the carpet. I kneeled, as instructed, and looked up to find a short elderly man in a purple gown, rocking his legs from side to side on his chair and smiling at me. He motioned for me to come sit next to him and he asked me about my research. We chatted for a while about Ogbomosho, the Yorubas, my work, Nigeria. Every now and then his attention turned to the television set in the corner: Desperate Housewives was on, followed by the Martha Stewart show. What dissonance, I thought, to be chatting with the 81-year-old King of Ogbomosho while Martha baked a cake in the background.

The King told me of his travels to Britain, Germany, France, and the Middle East. The U.S.? I asked. He had never been to America. He told me he had an opportunity to go to Texas in 1957 while working for a French oil company. "But I found out that it wasn't good to be black in America then," he said as he pointed to the skin on his arm. He shook his head resoundingly. "So I decided I didn't want to go to the U.S." The gap between his dated impression of the U.S. and the kind of place I knew it to be today really struck me, and I pondered how much space there was between the kinds of things I heard about Nigeria back home and the taste I got of Nigeria today.

And maybe both can be true. Nigeria is a notorious image of violence and fraud that almost kept me away entirely, and a depth and wealth of personality I am grateful to have experienced - if only briefly. I don' think Nigeria was meant to be summed up in a blog for it is a country of contradictions and constant dissonance. Like when a King watches Desperate Housewives as he receives visitors; or when the women of the house cook dinner lighting charcoal with one hand and holding their cell phones as flashlights with the other; or when the same people who drive on the shoulders of roads and have no regard for a line at the bank, the chop shop, or the gas station, queue up willingly for their daily church offering; or when newspaper editorials scrutinize and criticize a flawed election process and conclude that Yar'Adua's victory was God's will; or when children all over town jump up and down in joy when electricity comes back on for a few hours at night in a country that holds 10% of the world's oil reserves and the tenth largest gas reserves in the world.

Nowhere else did I find such big hearts and loud mouths, so many open arms and so many grabbing hands. Hard as I try, I can't paint a picture of Nigeria. But maybe these snapshots can give you a taste... if not a good laugh.

The Seme-Badagry Road

2007-06-09T07:23:00.001-07:00

My plans to travel to Nigeria met many raised eyebrows and two cents over the past six months. This is not surprising given the kind of press this country attracts. There's those rebels in the Southeast who regularly kidnap and release foreign oil workers. There's that monster of a city in the Southwest in which over thirteen million people try to live and make a living, and whose appeal was best captured by my advisor's claim that he would "rather be in Baghdad than in Lagos." And then, of course, there was that joke of an election, which confirmed the ruling party's firm grasp on power, awakened pockets of electoral violence throughout the country, and pissed off Madeleine Albright. When we think of Nigeria, we think oil, we think email scams, we think corruption, we think muggings, we think religious riots... sometimes we also think bad B-movies. Embassy men aside, there are many, many deterrents to visiting Nigeria.

But am I really going to write a dissertation about the Yorubas without setting foot in their homeland?

I thought I was avoiding one of the most dangerous airports in the world by entering Nigeria by road; instead, I was thrown into the grabbing hands of border officials at Seme. We left Accra early Wednesday morning to avoid arriving in Lagos at night. One old red volvo hatchback, a few too many luggages, and five travelers. My friend Jide. Our driver Solomon. One Ghanaian-born Yoruba, Suzie. JAB. Me. We left our overpriced hotel around 5.45 a.m. Three hours later, we were at the Ghana-Togo border. I had not realized how many checkpoints there were on the road to the Aflao border with Togo, but riding in a car with a Nigerian license plate, we had no choice but to stop and listen to the Ghanaian police's verbal harassment. All in all, however, the border crossings into Togo and Benin were rather eventless. The two obrunis went through the slow and official way (you know, where they stamp your passport and all); the rest simply "met us on the other side."

We arrived in Cotonou and dropped off JAB by mid-afternoon; the car grew eerily quiet during the stretch of road that linked Cotonou to the Seme border with Nigeria. At some point, the traffic in front of us slowed down, and I noticed a queue of cars and trucks parked on the left shoulder while men lined up on the right, peering into our vehicle as we rolled slowly by.

Finally, Solomon pulled over on the left shoulder and parked behind an oil truck. A few men gathered around the car, but I wasn't too worried yet as Solomon seemed to know most of them. I trusted Solomon. Not only was he Jide's friend, but he didn't hesitate to stand up to the Ghanaian cops when they told him to go back to his country (he was born in Ghana, mind you) - definitely my kind of guy. I don't know how long we stayed parked on the shoulder, but Solomon was involved in some serious negotiations - all in Yoruba - that largely escaped me. Part of me was desperately wishing my language skills were better so that I could feel a little more in the loop and a little less like the stupid white tourist. Part of me gladly surrendered to being the stupid white tourist.

Finally, Jide clued me in. He informed me that I was to cross the border alone with Solomon in the car while he and Suzie took the unofficial route across... on moto-taxis. I guess that's what you do when you don't have a passport. If asked, I was to tell officials that I and three other obruni sistahs had hired Solomon to take us to Benin, and that once in Cotonou I simply decided I was going to go alone all the way to Nigeria instead. Hence the empty car with one lone passenger. Before I could retort with a joke about how silly that story made me look, Jide hopped on the back of a moto-taxi and drove off.

It was just Solomon and me. We pulled up slowly to a rope blocking the road and parked. Solomon pointed to a long, white building on the right and advised that "whatever they say, don't give them any money." I left all my belongings in the car and walked up to the first counter with my passport in my hand, my bank card and a few Naira bills in my super-secret-REI-pants-pocket. As much as I hated leaving my bags in the car, they were safer there than on my back. It did feel strange, though, walking into this no-man's land of a border carrying only my passport. The border-crossing building was rather non-descript and I found myself wandering around directionlessly until the first official stopped me, stamped my passport, and marked my exit from Benin. Painless! and I walked confidently to the next official. This man startled me by being the first in the past five months to ask me for my yellow fever card. I handed him my passport, in which I had stapled my yellow card, and waited as he slowly flipped through it. He took his time, and finally announced "Ca c'est pas bon [This is no good]." I asked him what was no good and he claimed I was missing a stamp. I then showed him the stamp that marked my yellow fever vaccination, and he shook his head saying "the other stamp." I flipped through the pages of my passport and showed him the exit stamp the previous official had just placed, and he shook his head saying "not that one." I grew nervous. "What stamp are you talking about?" He seemed to take pleasure in the fact that he knew something I didn't. After a few condescending "You don't understand what I'm asking for?" Solomon and his temper intervened. I had not realized this, but Solomon had been hanging out behind me this entire time. He began to yell at the official, claiming that the stamp he was asking for didn't exist and that he was full of nonsense (I think he used a different word). I stood there while Solomon and the official engaged in a screaming match in Franglais (half French, half English). This quickly turned into a fight about tone and respect, as many screaming matches I have witnessed in this region do. I was alarmed that Solomon had taken the interaction to a whole new level of hostility, but quickly realized that this would actually save me. The official was visibly upset that Solomon refused to speak to him in French. So I calmly stepped into the conversation, in French and with a great deal of deference, playing good cop/bad cop with Solomon. I explained to this official that I had not had any problems with my yellow card before and that he was the first to ask me about this stamp; he claimed that the airport officials in Accra were supposed to have stamped my yellow fever card when I entered the country. I calmly disagreed, in French, and stood there quietly; Solomon was still yelling in the background. This went on for another few minutes. Finally, the official looked at me and said "Alright, just give me 200 and go." That was, of course, what this was all about. I opened up my bare arms, displaying my pants and shirt as my only belongings(gotta love the super-secret-REI-pant-pocket). We stood at loggerheads for a few minutes while Solomon continued his diatribe on the side. Finally defeated, the official handed me my passport and motioned for me to pass. I still don't know what stamp he was talking about.

I was in Nigeria now. And in a country that consistently ranks first or second in Transparency International's index of corruption, the officials are a tad more straightforward when it comes to bribing. This one flipped through the pages of my passport a few times, gave my visa a quick glance, closed the passport and slammed it on the table announcing his price: 200. I, in turn, opened up my passport, displayed my Nigerian visa so he could take a better look at it, and told him defiantly that I had already payed a good $56 to get this visa. The official smirked, looked me up and down, and shrugged me away.

It wasn't as difficult as I expected. Nothing stopped these officials from insisting that I pay them. My guess is that people don't typically protest, and that expectations of having to pay a bribe (or "offer a dash", as Nigerians euphemistically put it) are self-fulfilling prophecies. I wouldn't have protested either, had Solomon not advised otherwise. I could have and would have spared the two or three dollars these guys demanded. But I have to admit I was glad I had not played by their rules, and I walked back triumphantly toward the car.

I had made it! I was in Nigeria. So were my bags, my passport, and my money. Yet I was a fool to believe it was all behind me, because the road leading to Badagry and Lagos - I was soon to discover - was an entire horizon of bribes and dashes. Suzie mentioned she had once counted 47 roadblocks on this stretch. I was too baffled to count for myself, but she couldn't have been too far from the truth.

At first it was immigration officials, loosely defined. Solomon warned me not to hand my passport to anyone before confirming with him first. I obeyed, though I have no idea how Solomon distinguished the real thing from the fraud because they all looked the same to me: young men with sticks and guns. They all wanted to know what the hell I was doing here. I, too, was beginning to wonder. There were hoards of them, each asking for my passport and hoping for his own dash: immigration, customs, drug control, even the veterinary quarantine squad... The Badagry-Seme Road was, obviously, where they cashed in. I gave nothing but my passport, and only when Solomon acquiesced. I noticed Solomon "dashing" a few officials here and there; I'm sure those expenses were included in the transportation fee I had payed him.

Immigration officials eventually gave way to police officers. For each police station we passed, three roadblocks awaited us. At that point, Solomon's strategy changed and I realized that the liability in the car - me - suddenly became an asset. We slowed down, and as the cop approached the car, Solomon declared almost alarmingly "Tourist in the car! Tourist in the car!" The official peered inside, caught sight of me, and motioned for us to move on. I quickly got the hang of this, and took out my Katie Holmes sunglasses and my travel guide: I had truly become the stupid white tourist in Nigeria, and it worked. Solomon didn't even have to say anything anymore. I rolled down my window. Cops approached the car, noticed me, and walked on.

The road eventually cleared up until we hit Lagos evening traffic, which is itself a claustrophobia-inducing mayhem. The car grew quiet as Lagos offered a cacophony of car horns and vendors outside. I was exhausted. I did not know whether to feel anger or sadness at the bribing parade that had welcomed me to Nigeria. My friend Jide laughs when I bring it up again. He tells me people say you haven't really been to Africa until you've been to Nigeria. I beg to differ, on so many levels. And I think I'll leave my first impression of Nigeria where it belongs: at the border.

East or bust!!

2007-05-21T10:08:00.001-07:00

We're back from our trip to the Eastern and Volta Regions. Beyond being a much-needed vacation for us, it's highly recommended for any future visitors. The scenery is beautiful, the people are mellow, and travel is fun and easy due to a great mix of locally-owned lodges and friendly village life (special props to the Water Heights Hotel in Wli -- it's not in your guidebook, industrious travelers, so take note!).

As a going-away present, we give you these photos of our last days in Accra and our trip. [click here] Ghana, as they say, is finished. Benin beckons. Nigeria...well, I'm not sure it beckons, but it's on! We'll be throwing our voices to you from different countries for a bit...aren't the internets amazing?

Holding On

2007-05-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

[Begun May 3, 2007]

Today I withdrew $4000 from the EcoBank in Parakou. I don't know many people accustomed to toting around that kind of cash, let alone in a country where it amounts to more than most people have seen -- cumulatively -- in the last decade. But the bank is 3 hours on bad roads from our project site, there's equipment to be bought and laborers to be paid, and it's unacceptable to run short when people's livelihoods are at stake. Shaking my head at the orders-of-magnitude cognitive dissonance as I finish counting the money, I shove the envelope in my bag, step outside, and hail a zemi.

This moment, to me, is torture. There aren't a lot of price tags in West Africa. For a short list of items and services (pure water sachets, fixed transportation routes, phone units), prices are fixed by common knowledge; beyond these kinds of staples, everything is open to discussion. I've never enjoyed bargaining, least of all over small items. You're usually talking about the equivalent of 10 cents, and a dime that is nothing to you buys a solid meal here. On the other hand, even if you don't personally mind being ripped off all the time by local standards, your coworkers care because it has a negative effect on the local economy. Where there's a local price and a foreigner price, local services stop serving locals...it's basic entrepreneurialism. And so, in some way, you feel compelled to argue the 20 cent taxi moto fare with $4000 swinging from your shoulder.

My "strategy" is to pre-empt the entire bargaining discussion by offering a price that I know is at the very top of the range, but not ridiculous by local standards. The zemi driver knows instantly that he's getting a great deal, even if it's not that rare 20-times-the-price stupid tourist windfall; almost without exception, people accept these initial offers. Additionally, I avoid the terrible feeling of trying to bargain down a price when we both know that I had enough money to buy the plane ticket here.

*************

Beyond being at peace with 11 people shoved into a 5-seater that should have been junked before the Carter administration, coordinating a development project means getting comfortable with uncomfortable juxtapositions. There's no middle ground; it's something I have to define every day. The tradeoff between immediate needs and future goals is a particularly tough line to walk.

You're in your job as a development worker because you have skills and time to help a community in need plan for a better future. After all, planning is a leisure activity that people engaged in subsistence activities can rarely afford. But...who are you to say what "perspective" a subsistence farmer should have? It feels presumptuous and ridiculous to talk about longer-term vision when people are on the edge of starvation. On the other hand, as a person with the luxury to do this, who are you *not* to? It's your responsibility.

Both things are true. There are immediate needs and there's a future. If you're going to do your job well, you have to remember both. The right hand feeds the people who are hungry right now. The left hand plans so that there will eventually be no more "hungry right now." Let go with the right hand and you become a cynical (and overpaid) development worker content to sit behind a desk and believe in slogans like "people need a hand up; not a hand out." Let go with the left hand and there might be some tomorrows that are better than today, but they won't last. No, there is no letting go. You have to be comfortable stretched in the middle. You have to be simultaneously heartbroken and hopeful. Your entire role is to fill that gap. Both things are true.

*************

The men building a latrine for our office clearly haven't eaten lunch again. I've taken to walking over each day and casually checking in just so I can buy them some food; they'd never ask. As they eat, we all sit under a big tree and I work on some overdue calculations for the next phase of the project. Sometimes they pause and stare at my pen, my notebook, well aware of how much these items cost. I can only hope they realize that I don't equate the pen and paper with lunch. Both things are true.

Sunshine

2007-05-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

[Begun May 1, 2007]

Seen "Blood Diamond"? Before heading to Benin last month, I watched an obviously illegal rip (the only kind around here). I was thoroughly entertained right up until Leonardo DiCaprio skewered Jennifer Connolly for being one of those bleeding-heart-types: "You people are all the same. You come here with your laptops, your malaria medicine, and your tiny packets of hand sanitizer and think you can make a difference." I squirmed...with the instant defensiveness and resigned queasiness that indicates someone has pegged your deepest fear. "Check, check, check...and check," I thought. "What am I doing?"

The short answer is this: the Kalale district of Benin is over 100km from paved roads, with no grid electricity, no running water, and no communications. It's a predominantly agricultural area and the district has a terrible malnutrition problem (estimates hover at 40%), because growing during the hot dry season is incredibly difficult. It's simply too costly to run generators to pump water from the wells for irrigation. The alternative -- women transporting basin after basin of water on their heads and spreading it by hand -- is insufficient for proper market garden agriculture. So, at the request of a local organization, we've decided to use the most abundant resource here -- the sun -- to address the problem. We're going to install solar-powered pumps for drip irrigation and clean water supply, and solar panels to electrify public spaces in the villages (community centers, street lights, schools, clinics). We think it's a comprehensive intervention that will address a whole host of development issues here in a sustainable way -- economically, socially, environmentally.

We're starting with two test villages and two "control" villages this year. Then we'll refine and work our way up to all 44 villages in the district. On top of the electrification itself, we're going to try to measure the impact of this project in a scientific and comprehensive manner never done before, through village and farmer surveys, market monitoring, and measurement of environmental indicators. And then there's all the capacity-building in association with this. We believe that a good development project leaves the initial development workers unemployed after a few years...and so we're training local horticulturalists, electricians, administrators.

Still, Leo's in my head. It's the free market v. aid debate and it wakes me up at night. The development economists' question is: why do this particular project? Why not take the entire $252,000 budget, and -- instead of buying solar panels, drip irrigation systems, and street lights -- just dump it right next to the well in the center of each village? Which would have a greater overall impact? It's a killer question, and there have certainly been some terrible development projects over the years. The very ambiguous legacy of aid, especially in Africa, is enough to make one wonder.

Is there a right answer? It's hard to know. But I do know this: the woman who tells me that she'll send her children to school with the money she'll make and the time they'll all save not having to haul water...that woman wouldn't see a single cent of the money if it were dropped in the center of town. So we march on.

Embassy men

2007-05-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

I put off going to the Nigerian, Togolese and Beninois Embassies until I had nothing left on my to-do list but getting my visas for my next trip... so I finally dragged myself out of bed and into a tro-tro last week to confront my red-tape fate. There are few places I dislike more than embassies and few people I dislike more than embassy men. The embassy man is the guy who stamps your passport. Before he does, however, he holds onto it for a while, knowing full well those precious moments are his. At the Nigerian Embassy, the embassy man told me - with a smile and after I had submitted my application complete with the $56 fee and all - that I could not apply for a visa from Ghana without a Ghanaian residence permit and that I had to go back to my country – France – to get my visa. At the Benin Embassy, the embassy man told me I’d have no problem getting two visas, one for my three-month stay in Benin and the other to transit to Nigeria, and kindly accepted the 70,000 CFAs ($140) I had to dish out for them; the very next day he informed me that under law I could not have more than one currently valid visa for Benin in my passport at the same time. My favorite, however, is the Togo embassy man. This embassy man invited me into his office and shared with me the challenges he had to overcome to pull himself out of a northern Togolese village and into his Embassy office. He discussed, as he held onto my French passport, 15 years of French sanctions on Togo and how it killed the Togolese spirit. He speculated about the French presidential runoff on Sunday and claimed that Segolene would win because she was much prettier than Hillary. He observed, with disdain, how important “Francophonie” is to the French identity. It was a lengthy soliloquy. I sat there, legs and arms tense, nodding and staring at my passport in his hands, deferring to him.

Then this embassy man asked me about the origins of my last name. I hesitated for a few seconds, weighing the pros and the cons of a truthful response in my mind, and finally admitted to him that my father was born in Algeria. He looked up at me, raised his eyebrows, and smiled. In that instant, his tone and expression changed entirely, as if he had realized for the first time that there was a person sitting across from him. And then… he spoke to me “as one African to another” about the economic struggles of African countries. He asked me what I was studying. He listened to my response. He called me an expert in West African politics. And the next Segolene. He asked me for my email address. And then he stamped my passport.

I got home that evening and crossed the “GET VISAS” item off my to-do list. It was a sweet reward, though the experience made me feel a tad sleezy. My tactics ranged from name-dropping (Nigerian Embassy), to passing as “African” (Togolese Embassy), to making a scene in the Embassy lobby (Benin Embassy). But I got all my visas and I suppose this, too, is fieldwork... and I suppose these embassy men are only half as arrogant as those who stamp the passports of Africans wishing to travel to Europe or the United States.

Visas mean transitions and, with a third of fieldwork under my belt, I had many people to thank and bid farewell to this week. Sola, my survey enumerator, is busy running his shop, selling pure water for 100 Cedis less than everyone else, and campaigning for the next legislative elections. Kofi, one of my initial connections to the immigrant community in Nima, continues to run his bilingual school for immigrant children, proudly showing off the trophies and awards they have won in soccer tournaments, dancing and drumming competitions. Doris and Dan have expanded their shop, setting up a station in front to sell breakfast omelettes in the mornings. Our curry-sniffing campus guard is gone, rotated to a different campus gate with the coming of the new month. Henry, his replacement, has already proposed to JAB. The half-dozen children we cross on our running path every day have learned our names and call out to us with the same fervor and enthusiasm they used to say Obruni!... only this time we respond just as enthusiastically.

One day we land here with our work goals and our daily habits and the next we are gone. Our West African adventure meets their daily reality and for a brief period of time we are part of each other's lives. And as much as I’ve complained about the lack of friendship and intimacy, I will miss many people here. To them, we’re the obrunis who always asked for mangos, but not too ripe; who preferred to walk to campus under a high noon heat than take an overpriced taxi (obruni inflation); who could never figure out how to unplug their pen drive safely from the computer; who always asked for dishes with no meat – and that means no tuna and no chicken either; who actually didn’t believe in Jesus; who ran around campus every day and sweated much more than everybody else; who never fully figured out how to cross a road, or hand wash clothes or pound fufu. To us, they’re the ones who made these past few months in Accra much more than just a grad school lab… a place to explore, discover, criticize, vent about, cry about, laugh about, and write about. A place that evoked in us affection one day and frustration the next.

But never indifference.

For your viewing enjoyment

2007-05-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

One of us is wrapping up field work in Ghana. One of us just got back from 3 weeks of project work in Benin (um, yeah, and I will post all the blog entries I wrote by hand just as soon as I can type them up). We're both getting ready to leave Accra behind until our return flights to the States! First for a week of traveling in the eastern region (rumors of monkeys and waterfalls abound); then eastward ho! I'll be back in northern Benin. CLA will be hitting Nigeria before settling in for a few months of work based out of Cotonou.

So while the behind-the-scenes work begins for the transfer of omowe to its new home(s), here are some photos! [click here]

The Field

2007-04-22T04:06:00.000-07:00

When I started graduate school four years ago, parties in the cubicle area and jokes about Poisson probability distributions took up much of my time. There was a lot to look forward to, like passing the comprehensive exams, attaining candidacy and turning in an approved dissertation prospectus. There were a lot of authors and articles to memorize in order to cite and reference at the most opportune moment. There was a lot to fear, like meetings and elevator rides with my advisors. And then there was The Field.

The Field… in my discipline, those who go there overplay it as a one-year credential builder, and those who don’t mistrust it as a one-year paid vacation.

As I progressed in my graduate school career, The Field became an increasingly awe-inspiring and elusive concept for me. I was supposed to prepare for The Field, yet I was also supposed to expect that my dissertation topic would change entirely once in The Field. Students came back from The Field with fascinating anecdotes, impressive job offers and I've-been-there auras at workshops that always intimidated me. The Field was a rite of passage I truly anticipated.

I knew I, too, would go to The Field one day, yet I didn't know what to expect. My ideas for fieldwork destinations varied widely over the past two years, from Fiji and Malaysia to South Africa to Zambia to Nigeria to the current West African medley. It was challenging, in particular, to explain The Field to my family. My plan was to go to a few West African countries, find communities of immigrants, and ask them about their experiences integrating and getting expelled. No problem.

Today, I am in The Field. So here’s where I chip in.

On a day-to-day level, The Field is entirely unglamorous. I go to sleep, wake up and get out of the shower sweating. I walk around with a fake $5 wedding ring on my left hand, which I hold up when my respondents tell me they want to take me on as their second wife. The other day, apparently, I even had two children waiting for me back in California. I break down and scold the last random local who dares to call me obruni at the end of my day, because I was called "white", "white man", "white lady", "Chinese", "German", "Japanese", “Holland” and "Jamaican woman" over the last five hours. I run around a labyrinth of alleys and sewage water, seeking respondents who will remain focused for 8 pages and 76 questions while market women shout, trucks roar by way too fast and way too close, and dozens of children congregate at my side, peer over my shoulder and occasionally touch my arm with the tip of their finger to see exactly what the white lady’s skin feels like. I wait… for my enumerator to arrive, or the rain to stop, or the 1pm prayer to end, or the 3pm prayer to end, or traffic to move, or the generator to start.

On a more general level, The Field is a place I both love and hate intensely. The Field is my laboratory, except that it’s a different continent and I also have to live in it. I realized recently that when JAB disappeared to the lab for hours to work on her Physics dissertation, she was going to her very own “Field”. The only difference is that while they get to explain 99.99999999% of the variation they see in some measurement, we’re perfectly content when we explain 5% of it. And I suppose that makes sense – the random walk is never truly random; the translation is never as literal as you’d wish; the respondent is never as patient and thoughtful as you’d hope; the questionnaire is never as clear as respondents need it to be (a reality I was confronted with recently when a respondent asked me what "gender" meant); opportunities for added noise abound, and The Field really feeds you both renewed appreciation for and skepticism toward social science datasets.

I love the Field because it is ever humbling. Just when I think I’ve got a great story to tell my advisors, I find contradicting data. Just when I think I know my way around this city, I face plant in the trotro.

I love the Field because it is all data: conversations with taxi drivers, Doris and Dan, my enumerators, the university campus guard (who, it appears, is constantly high on some kind of curry powder he sniffs on the job). There is so much to code and record. I am limited only by my own stamina.

Ironically enough, those are also the very reasons why I hate the Field.

So yes, the Field, in my experience so far, is a challenging year. It builds character, confidence, and hopefully credential. It offers both an honest attempt at telling a sound and relevant story, and an opportunity to BS your way through a dissertation. The line between the two is actually quite thin.

Or maybe I am entirely wrong, and after one too many strange interactions with locals, I sometimes wonder if The Field is nothing more than that isolating and alienating 12 to 18 month experience that guarantees you come back just socially awkward enough to be a real academic.

Extreme Makeover

2007-04-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

Some days are slower than others. Yesterday I spent the afternoon following the rigged presidential elections in Nigeria, and the evening catching an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” on Ghana’s Metro TV. After reading all about Nigerian politicians who, with access to over 90% of oil revenues, have wasted billions of dollars on parties, helicopters and fancy homes abroad, I saw a poor Mexican-American family of 11 win a brand new three-story luxury home.

I’m not a big fan of reality TV – my interest in it waned considerably after Joe Billionaire and the beginning of grad school. But on a lonely and humid night in Accra, my eyes were glued to the TV for that half hour, and I was admittedly moved to the point of tears. Their moldy house was entirely demolished and a brand new one was designed and built in its place in six days. I swallowed this extreme makeover stuff because it was half an hour of things made right. One needy family. Hundreds of volunteers. Public broadcasting. And big men with money. A combination that changed eleven people’s lives entirely. It all seemed so easy.

And I thought to myself… if only there were an “Extreme Makeover: African Government Edition,” we could wipe out a whole lot of rotten political foundation in just under a week! Sponsors anyone?

Growth

2007-03-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

The rains have begun, and they are a thing to behold. Everyone told us the rainy season around here would be dramatic, and it turns out they were employing phrases like 'the sky opens' and 'monsoon' in the literal sense. But what no one remembered to mention is the wind that goes along with the rain. It's unbelievable -- easily 50+mph gusts, ripping corrugated metal roofs off of shacks, sending dirt and debris tearing down the streets.

I passed the first of these storms in a tro-tro with a visiting friend. We were going to take a day trip to some botanical gardens outside of Accra, rent bikes, do the tourist thing. Somewhere in the hills north of the city, our van began to rock back and forth in the wind. We pulled over, and almost instantly, we were in the deluge, water pouring in the poorly-sealed (not even sure the use of the word "sealed" is appropriate here) windows. Over the course of an hour, we would occasionally move a little and then stop again. It was unclear what would prompt these decisions to drive on, as, to our untrained eyes, the conditions hadn't changed AT ALL -- rain still beating down, wind still blowing sheets of metal past us, lightning striking all around. I suppose this untrained eye is used to functioning wipers on vehicles, though, so what do I know?

Anyway, after a few hours, it stopped. This cycle has repeated several times over the past two weeks. Total celestial mayhem...and then, everything that survives is a bit greener and cleaner. The idea of rain as the dual-agent of destruction and renewal had until now been a metaphor to me. But in a place where the ramshackle and the rooted, the fortified and the vulnerable, are practically on top of each other, the power of the rain becomes quite literal. It highlights the already uncomfortable juxtaposition of extreme wealth and abject poverty that occurs in a place without much of a middle class.

In this post-rain light, I've decided to finally post my birthday thoughts for Ghana. (And appropriately, I got completely doused on my way to the cyber to do so.)

At 50, Ghana is being touted--both within and without--as a success. The slogan "Championing African Excellence" appears on tee-shirts, billboards, head scarves, television ads. It is clear that Ghana has many things going its way. Respectable democracy, peace, and a ton of money flowing into the country provide a very good base for growth...

...Along with "good governance," "growth" is definitely a favorite buzzword for this jubilee year. From our tiny perch, looking out at one small slice of this nation, it seems like all this talk about growth is no joke. The shops that were around when we arrived have doubled their inventories, little food stands have sprung up along every road, and there is construction (though often with suspicious scaffolding) in all directions. We've witnessed the birth of a new tro-tro station, the formalization of a new route, and the building and naming of a new bus-stop ("Block Factory"). Even our hostel is adding another floor.

[Editorial aside: (1) we have no idea where the "block factory" actually is...you'd think a huge decorative concrete block fabrication facility would be hard to miss, but apparently not. (2) Our hostel definitely has zero safety concern with this new addition, and bits of concrete rain down on the laundry area. However, just as drivers here believe that honking constitutes their sole responsibility vis-a-vis pedestrians, apparently because this construction is in fact visible, we have been duly warned. (3) Is it a 3rd floor or a 4th floor? Tough to say, and somewhat Escher-esque in that way. Thankfully it's not such a seismically active region...]

At first glance, all of this growth seems positive...but linger a little longer and it becomes clear that it's all private and the infrastructure is not keeping up...not even close. Accra is far beyond it's capacity in terms of garbage collection, sewage management, roads, water, electricity. The new residences springing up in this part of town are enormous, but they have no running water. Here's an image. Even without the open -- and blocked sewer (before the rains even started!) -- you get the idea:

And so I wonder about this growth when it can be counted in private new households, not functional neighborhoods; in individual fancy cars, not roads to hold them. While it is apparently easy to throw up a plantain stand next to the road, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Ghana's lagging infrastructure is that middle-class Ghanaians who want to start on-the-books businesses here say that it's actually quite difficult. A woman down the street, born in Ghana but raised in London, moved back to open a cafe. It's finally running, but it took her two incredibly frustrating years. A friend of mine, Ghanaian but born and raised in New Mexico, just moved back here to start a sustainable mining company aimed at bringing the resources back to the mining communities. He's incredibly smart and has started and run successful businesses, but he wants to tear his hear out over the red tape and corruption. Shouldn't this be Ghana's dream? Educated Ghanaians who want to move back to the country and invest?!?

My birthday wish for Ghana is that growth continue, but that opportunities be accessible to everyone. I'd like to see the government get its act together to support all of these entrepreneurs in a tangible way. Make it worthwhile to be on the books; make it easier to start a business. Invest the resulting tax revenue in infrastructure -- water, electricity, roads, sanitation, transportation -- that will provide a stable backdrop for all classes to pursue better quality of life. Someone pointed out to me that the government spent as much money on the 50th anniversary celebration as the nation received in food aid last year. It's great - and appropriate - to celebrate 50 years of freedom. With a little bit of effort, though, Ghana could be celebrating across-the-board growth and freedom from food aid entirely. In a few years, the rains could be leaving everyone feeling renewed.

Absurdities (a team blog)

2007-03-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

We've decided to laugh and categorize as "absurd" the things that might otherwise drive us crazy (like Dick Cheney or China's foreign policy).

1) The West African Concept of Time. A 2 p.m. wedding means 4p.m., a 10 a.m. meeting won't start - of course - before 11 a.m. If government officials are involved, 3.30 p.m. is code for 7.30 p.m. It's ridiculous... even by our standards. On the other hand, taxi drivers are surprisingly punctual... which means we've got the hurry-up-and-wait routine nailed.

2) It is finished... There's some weird belief here that people want to hear and see certain things, even if they are not true. People are always "just on the way" to meet us, even after we've waited twice the time it would have taken them to arrive. Restaurant owners offer a plethora of selections, 2/3 of which are never available. Vendors will keep their shops open, even on days with no inventory. No one ever wants to admit that they've run out of something. Instead, the conversation goes something like..."May we order dinner?" "Yes, please sit down." "What do you have today?" "Oh...the food is finished." The same, by the way, holds true for public services. It's not that the government isn't providing electricity or water. It's just that the water and power are finished.

3) The Religious Free-For-All in Benin. That man says he is Catholic, but he locks himself into his room to do Muslim prayers and he sent his daughter away for 3 months to a traditional healer. That woman says she is Christian, but she makes a daily hike down to the river to clean and maintain the fetishist site. This family is Muslim but they do some nightly incense ritual and all wear voodoo scorpion and snake rings. Everyone has a "kosher" religion that they outwardly claim, but most people are hedging their bets with some voodoo/animist beliefs as well. They're very quiet about these, but the signs are everywhere and so are the stories.

In Kalale, we ate with a family headed by an incredibly warm woman simply known as "Maman." (No one we asked could tell us her name; not that it matters, as it's what she wants to be called.) Maman is known for helping those in need, and her home is part family residence, part guesthouse, and part safehouse. One resident, Lucie, was brought to Maman by a Catholic missionary priest who spent many years in Kalale. He had been out in the bush one day and had run into Baby Lucie and her father. It turns out that Lucie had the misfortune of having her upper front teeth come in before her lower front teeth--a sign, according to her father, that she was a sorceress. He was on his way out into the bush to slit her throat. The priest managed to take Lucie away but it was clear she could never go home again.

The workers in the health clinic are having a hard time combating the prevalent practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the region. The Boo people have long performed this ritual on women on the night of their marriage in the belief that it promotes fidelity. In a terrible confluence of religious beliefs, the Boo have recently taken up the flag of the very Christian HIV/AIDS message being spread all over Africa. Now they say that FGM is the best way to prevent HIV/AIDS.

(4) May you go in Peace and not in Pieces. The one bus company with a semblance of professionalism in West Africa (i.e. the bus leaves on time), also offers its very own complementary pre-trip blessing. On our way to Benin, our bus-preacher sent us off with a prayer, screaming "In the mighty name of CHEE-SSUSS" into the microphone and wishing that we arrive as victors, and not victims; that we go in peace and not in pieces.

(Absurdity Add.1: every speaker in West Africa is used at twice its capacity. It's unclear how people get the message through all the feedback.)

(5) The art of asking twice. The foreign exchange bureau NEVER has the currency you need, but stick around and ask two or three more times, and it will eventually come out of the drawer.

(6) My survey enumerator ran off with my money. Enough said.

Ok... none of these is as bad as Dick Cheney or China's foreign policy... but you get the point.

For George W. Bush

2007-03-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

We thought you'd like an update on your African HIV/AIDS initiative. The ABC's have really taken hold here.

Sincerely,

T.C.B.O
(The Concerned Bloggers at Omowe)

An American's Take...

2007-03-07T05:02:00.000-08:00

We've returned safely from Benin and Niger, just in time for Ghana's 50th birthday celebration. Photos are up (see post below) and there's much to say, but we're trying to organize it into digestible pieces. Project updates, crazy stories, and Happy Birthday Ghana thoughts all to come in the next few days...

In the meantime, I thought I'd give my perspective on the slice of Francophone West Africa we visited so briefly. As has already been beautifully described by my fellow blogger, the changes are stark and immediate upon crossing the border. Benin and Niger are poorer by all indicators--income, growth, infrastructure, roofing material--but have superior public services. In a funny twist, the currency is stronger (the CFA is pegged to the euro) and everything is more expensive. This felt so...stereotypically French...that it got me thinking.

...and I'd originally planned to keep those thoughts to myself, but then something funny happened. Here in Ghana, people really think that CLA and I are sisters. In Benin and Niger, everyone--regardless of education level and before hearing my present-tense-heavy language "skills"--could immediately peg me as American and her as French. I got a lot of all-knowing "ah, mais oui! tu es americaine!" in two short weeks. Because I apparently stand out so sorely, I have decided to do a little "ah, mais oui"-ing of my own. I hereby *embrace* my sunglasses (the Sahelian sun is hard on the light-eyed), my vegetarianism, my ponytail, my Western Girl self...and give you:

The Reasons Francophone West Africa is SOOO French:

(1) Sidewalks. Seriously, where else are the dogs supposed to do their business? Combine this with the covered sewers and the calls on the bathroomless bus for "ARRET PEE-PEE!" (no joke) and you have a very French equation for who gets to do what where.

(2) Baguette. It may pale in comparison to the wonders of Paris, my dear CLA, but HELLO?!? It's BAGUETTE! Really, when it comes to colonial food legacies, you have to give it to the French. Ghana seems to have inherited from the British a taste for stale doughy white bread, mayonnaise, and prehistoric scone-wannabies appropriately called "rock buns." Benin and Niger feel like little slices of heaven in the morning with tiny breakfast stands everywhere offering up coffee and baguette for the equivalent of 20 cents. Which brings me to...

(3) Caffeine. Niger might be the most caffeine-addicted society I've ever encountered. Coffee/tea stands abound. Tuareg Tea (like the tea equivalent of Turkish coffee) is something, well, to be tried...preferably before noon. My favorite manifestation of this caffeine-craze is a particular breed of entrepreneur in Niger--the walking coffee-man. These guys troll the streets with a toolbox-shaped crate holding coffee and tea fixings, glass cups, and spoons in one hand; in the other hand they haul a perpetually-boiling pot of water sitting atop a homemade 1-gallon tin can stove. They'll stop and fix you a cup whenever and wherever, and prices are delineated by strength: 50 or 75CFA will wake you up gently, 100CFA will start your heart, 200CFA requires bravery, and 400CFA approaches the liquid-solid phase-change boundary. Apparently at more remote customs posts, the coffee-men simply pose the question: "2? 4? 6? 8?"...as in, "how many hours do you want it to keep you awake?" On top of all of this, there's the booming kola nut business. When we asked about trying one, we were told in a very dramatic manner, "You might as well warm up with cocaine." We decided to save it for the next trip.

(4) Cigarettes. Smoking is far more prevalent in Niger and Benin, and the evidence of the puffing colonialists is everywhere: cigarettes for sale on pharmacy carts (!), smoky odor in restaurants, and a sucking sound permeating the speech--even of non-smokers. This goes something like: "Blah blip blah bee blee blah blah [suck in between teeth as though inhaling]...et PUIS...[suck in between teeth as though inhaling] blah bee blee blah." Oh yes, and the French expats in Benin and Niger are, predictably, chimneys.

(5) Everyone speaks French. Before you think, "Uh, Duh!" I am actually getting at something deeper here. The English in Ghana is generally deplorable, except at the very highest education levels. At primary and secondary schools, the official language of instruction is English, but in reality most use an English/local hybrid with the (acknowledged) result that many students don't actually master either. On top of this, many Ghanaians display an unsettling eagerness in any conversation to switch away from English to Ga or Twi or Fanti or Ewe...to the exclusion of others who had been part of the dialogue. Even at the prestigious university in Legon, it is safe to assume that any students speaking English to each other are foreigners. Not so in Benin and Niger. My theory is that it's the legacy of French assimilationist policies: anyone who's been to any school at all speaks the language reasonably well, and it's widely acknowledged that business transactions, important meetings, school lessons, and public conversations all take place in French. People only switch to tribal languages as a last (or later) resort, and even with my remedial skills, I frequently found it easier to understand the French in Benin and Niger than the English in Ghana.

(6) "I can't be bothered with you" attitude. We got a lot less attention for being white in Benin and Niger, which came as a very welcome break. Here in Ghana, people are incredibly nice when interacting one-on-one. They really do go above and beyond--offering use of their phones if you look lost, making sure you get off the tro-tro in the right place, walking with you to your destination if you ask for directions, showing you the back market alleys so you can buy a soldering iron--and they take a lot of pride in their international reputation for friendliness. On the other hand, this can also manifest itself as something that feels far more shallow and race-based in a way that is very difficult to stomach and understand. I usually get asked for my phone number before my name, many people simply greet me as "obruni" instead of saying hello, and I've seen taxis pull high-speed u-turns in front of brakeless tro-tros at the chance for my business--when I wasn't even looking for a cab and someone on the other side of the street was. In Benin and Niger, the live-and-let-live feel is far more prevalent. Of course, there are two sides to every CFA...This also means that bank workers, hotel receptionists, and bus attendants could not possibly care less about helping you change money, fix the fan in your room, or reserve a seat. I had to laugh on our first morning in Cotonou when we asked for directions from a man sitting on the corner. He was immediately *exhausted* by the request, like it was such a thorn in his side to raise his arm to point. Even when it comes to business...maybe the taximan wants to go where you'd like, maybe not. Want to buy a mango? Think again. We got turned down for small purchases by countless vendors simply because this would require getting change...from the stand three feet over.

(7) Nomads. There's definitely a different feel to northern Benin and Niger due to the presence of the Peuhl and the Tuareg communities. Peuhl villages can be found scattered throughout the bush and on the outskirts of towns and cities. The women--dolled up with eyeliner and brightly-colored face decorations--will use the local wells and sell in the markets; the men will graze their cattle right through medians, backyards, the stadium...until it's time to move on. In Niamey, Tuareg men march their camels--laden with hut-building materials--right down the four-lane street, traffic be damned. "But wait!" you say, "This has nothing to do with the French whatsoever." I know, but doesn't the whole "I'll do whatever I please" just fit?

(8) Line? What line? Um, yeah. You have to laugh...birthplace of the Enlightenment, and somehow the complete inability to wait in line not only persists in the boarding areas of Paris-bound flights worldwide, but also in the ex-colonies. Reserved seats on the bus? Still a granny-trampling free-for-all. Teller at the bank? March right on up and dump your documents in the middle of the current customer's sentence. Ironically, the one place we actually took a number and calmly waited (and got) our turn--the Air France office! So maybe there's hope!

Photos V.2 are up!

2007-03-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

We are back in Accra, where it took us a mere 2 hours to upload our latest photos! Enjoy... [click here]

The tro-tro, the zemi and the taxi

2007-03-01T04:06:00.001-08:00

In this part of the world, most people have no clue how old they are, so it was wildly appropriate that I celebrate my 28th birthday last week in Malanville, at the Benin-Niger border, with neither internet nor phone reception. After a full day in bush-taxis, crammed together in a dying Peugeot with 7 or 8 other people (not counting children), we treated ourselves to an air-conditioned room and some wine in Benin's northernmost market town. It was downright pleasant. That's the good part of spending a few days in the bush of northern Benin, where running water, electricity and asphalt are nowhere to be found. The slightest return to civilization is a celebration.

Over the past two weeks, I got my first taste of sub-Saharan francophone Africa, something I had been looking forward to for a while now: what exactly did the French do here? The ABC bus transport headed to Lagos dropped us off in Cotonou at the Stade de l'Amitie (the Friendship Stadium), our first big surprise here, for it is a wide and vacant space. In Accra, this would have been a brilliant opportunity for another loud, smelly and bustling market. In Cotonou, it remained a majestic, empty plaza with Olympic size stadium and swimming pool. The country may not be growing as much, but it’s got its government services figured out: the sewers are closed, the roads are marked and the streets are lit. And lo and behold there are sidewalks here. I never realized how important sidewalks were until I tried to walk the hundred yards that separate our hostel from the nearest restaurant on our roundabout, in Accra, at night. Believe me. Sidewalks matter.

Yet Benin, being an ex-French colony and all, could use a bit more entrepreneurial spirit. You know the situation is dire when two academics start concocting a list of business ideas in the streets of Cotonou. The list below is just a beginning…

a) A private bus company that understands the concept of reservations. The country abounds in cell phones, yet bus operators in Cotonou are incapable of communicating with those in Parakou to let them know that the bus is full, or that it has only 5 seats left. The guarantee of a reserved seat for a slightly higher price is an idea that has got to be exploited here. People end up taking the more expensive bush taxis once the buses turn them away so my guess is that they would be willing to pay for this.
b) A system of street vendors who sell not only coffee but also pastries. Right now the bakeries have no coffee and the coffee stands offer only stale baguette. Let's bring the coffee and the chocolate croissant together, people.
c) A company that sends out employees throughout the city to sell small change (I must credit this idea entirely to JAB). I cannot even count the number of vendors who turned me down because they didn't have enough change for my bills. Perhaps they would be willing to pay a small fee, a really small fee, for readily available small change? Perhaps they could make up this cost with all the once-forgone sales they would then acquire?

Logistical inefficiencies aside, Cotonou is a rather charming coastal city with beautiful beaches. The tro-tros of Accra are nowhere to be found, giving way instead to zemis – or moto-taxis – that flood the tiled streets and roundabouts. Everybody rides the zemis. If they don’t, they have their own scooters. And – I’m sorry to say – helmets are few and far between. Yet making up for this is the unique sight of middle-aged women in traditional dress and sunglasses, zooming by on their little motorcycles. Seems like I will fit right in…

After a week in Benin, travelling from Cotonou to the North – where apparently they are in dire need of some solar power – we crossed the Niger River into Niger early Monday morning. We headed North and West toward Niamey, moving farther into the dry, the hot and the bare. It’s hard to believe there is ever a rainy season here. We emerged from kilometers of bush and dust, potholes and broken road shoulders, and entered the city on a wide boulevard under an overpass declaring "Bienvenue a Niamey!"

This place is as intriguing and uncanny as it gets. If you look at a map of Niamey, you could almost mistake it for Paris. The Niger River runs right through it, dividing the city into a left and a right bank. The right bank is the university. The left bank is everything else.

In Niamey, the heat is dry and aggressive; the four-wheel-drives share the road with taxis and camels; the call to prayer wakes you up every morning at 5; the women run at the public stadium with hair, elbows and knees fully covered; the street vendors are convinced that if you don’t want to buy their strawberries then you might be interested in their pineapples and if not in their pineapples then perhaps in their mangoes and if not in their mangoes then for sure in their coconuts; the children greet you screaming “donne moi cadeau” (“give me gift”); and the taxis take you where you need to go only if it’s convenient for them. Everytime I lean into the driver’s window, tell him my destination, and wait anxiously for his response as he ruminates over the decision, I think to myself… how very French.

And yet of the three urban centers we have explored so far, Niamey has by far been the prettiest and most pleasant. With more space and fewer people, the city is a lot more manageable. The Southern Sahelian climate blows the trash away to the outskirts so it need not congregate in the city center. And the couscous is almost as good as my grand-mother’s.

We return to Accra on Sunday, bus transportation willing. Here ends our reconnaissance mission. Accra, Cotonou, Niamey. We will not be complete novices again. In each country, we have acquainted ourselves with local cuisines, modes of transportation and Nigerian embassies… just enough local knowledge and local contacts to come back and pretend we know exactly what we’re doing and where we’re going.

Bonjour, tout le monde!

2007-02-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, from the land where old Peugeots go to die. Seriously, the auto mechanics of the Sahel could definitely have quite a showdown with the Cubans in a keep-the-POS-car-running contest. Thanks in part to them, we successfully crossed the border today from Benin to Niger--an amazing sight as far as borders go--and a few things have changed. One of us has learned to stumble along in French; one of us is now a year older and wiser. There's plenty to write, and we promise we will. But after a while in the middle of miles and miles of dry dusty bush, we just wanted to let everyone know that we're back and we're fine.

Adaptations

2007-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

After one month, I've discovered that some of my tastes have dramatically changed. Here's a Top-5 list of things I never liked before but now do. Those of you who know me well will understand this as evidence of the lengths to which the human spirit will go to adapt to new circumstances:

(5) Chocolate and Chocolate Cookies

So ubiquitous. So non-mysterious. So cheap. The bang for the buck, calorically-speaking, is much appreciated.

(4) Shpants

Okay, technically, I suppose they're more like capri pants, but whatever. Long enough to be modest, short enough to clear the dirt, fitted enough to avoid snaggable objects. Brilliant. My new favorite item of clothing.

(3) Sidewalks

At home in College Terrace, they gave me claustrophobia; here they make me want to weep with joy. See CLA's latest post, but by any objective measure, Ghanaians are in the running for worst drivers in the world. The further away I can be as a pedestrian, the better.

(2) Soda

Mmmm. So refreshing, so cold. Often easier to find than water. And to top it off, you can feel self-righteous while downing your favorite fizzy product, since distributors recycle glass bottles. In the face of unbelievable amounts of litter--both on the ground and clogging the open sewers--there's a reason to feel good about this newfound vice.

(1) Television

Most of you know that I've been in a long-term, stable, monogamous relationship with the New York Times. But I admit it; I'm having an affair. Without easy internet access to papers and the blogosphere, I've come to treasure the occasional half-hour of CNN in Ghana TV's lineup. Yes, me, who has chanted "CNN is not the news" at rallies. Sigh. I'm not proud.

But in my defense, I believe that one can learn from GTV, even with its unpredictable and violent volume swings. For one thing, Ghana has nailed the song-and-dance Public Service Announcement. Currently, there's one about why we should all celebrate the 50th anniversary of independence. Think karaoke bouncing ball, an upbeat west african melody, a macarena-style dance....Another one addresses the upcoming currency change (knocking off 4 zeros in June), reassuring people that they won't suddenly be destitute. Hear it once, and "there is no change in value; the value is the same" will be in your head for weeks. Now that's effective advertising. I think there could be an amazing showdown between GTV's PSA department and the Bay Area's Mattress Discounters. (I apologize for putting it in your head, but now you know what I'm talking about...) Finally, I have to commend the "Presidential Science Education Initiative," by which snippets of physics, chemistry, and biology lectures are broadcast on GTV. This is nothing like Bill Nye or even Mr. Wizard. This is straight-up balancing equations, converting units, answering questions about the digestive tract...during the hours when the rest of the world is tuning into soap operas.

Still, even if they have their charms (I mean, hello, solving physics problems on national TV?!?), I'm pretty sure none of these fads of mine will last...after all, the human spirit is also ultimately stubborn.

"Are you a missionary?"

2007-02-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

Hah! We've now been asked this a few times. Ghanaians laugh and smile a lot, so the giggling "umm, no" has not, thus far, insulted anyone. But we've realized we need a better response. Fortunately, we have an idea. In the past week, there's been more decisive legislative action worldwide surrounding football hooliganism than any other (dare I say "more"?) pertinent issue of our time. Over the years, significant national economic trends have been linked to big matches. In 1969, riots surrounding qualifying matches helped spark the 100-hour "soccer war" between El Salvador and Honduras. Just this past summer, Cote d'Ivoire effectively suspended its civil war to give unified support to its team in the World Cup. All of this leads us to believe that our dear footie has some serious potential. We're planning to write a book in the next few years--"Will Football Save the World?" And in the meantime, we're going to say that we're football missionaries.

All this comes in the season of FIFA Friendlies...If you watched any matches last week, perhaps you saw Les Bleus lose to Argentina (wah!). Maybe you had that sick "can't NOT watch" fascination as England continued, well, stinking. Most likely you celebrated as the good old Americans finally found the Landon Donovan they had been looking for this summer. Not us. We, well...we watched something a bit different. The Ghana Black Stars handily dispatched the Nigeria Super Eagles, 4-1, ending a 15-year drought versus their regional rivals. Ghana has a bit of an inferiority complex vis-a-vis Nigeria, stretching beyond football. Nigeria has more money, more influence...oil. There's a complicated history here (read CLA's dissertation in a few years), but from the looks of things in the courtyard of the Catters Hostel, the game provided some vindication for Ghana. Joseph, our building manager, couldn't stay in his seat the entire match, a huge grin plastered to his face. Yvette (Ivoirian living in Ghana) stayed more subdued in her chair, nodding in affirmation but visibly nervous any time the ball entered Ghana's defensive half, unable to relax even with a three goal lead. Some guy I've never seen before yelled "GOOOOOAAAAAL" any time Essien or Appiah touched the ball, regardless of where. On the other side of the yard, the Nigerians (and one Beninese buddy) good-heartedly went back-and-forth with Joseph throughout the scoreless first half, and even until 2-0. At that point, they started claiming that the game didn't mean anything without their star striker, Obafemi Martins (though it was patently obvious that their problems weren't up front...). By the time the final whistle blew, they had quietly disappeared inside. Joseph finally sat down and sighed, "all of Ghana will have a holiday tomorrow."

Counting

2007-02-08T06:46:00.000-08:00

Ghana turns 50 this year. TV, billboard and newspaper ads abound in announcing the country's so-called "Golden Jubilee" throughout Accra. As the first Sub-Saharan country to achieve independence, Ghana gets to be the first in the region to throw its big 50th birthday bash. Before coming to Ghana and before making it one of the big country cases in my dissertation, Ghana was to me nothing more than that little country we use alongside South Korea in our motivating example in any class on development. The power point graph is striking enough to enlist the curiosity of even the most complacent undergraduate in the room. Ghana and South Korea at equal levels of per capita income in 1957. Subsequently, a steady upward sloping line for South Korea; a desperately horizontal line for Ghana. In 2002, South Korea's per capita income stood at $16,000; Ghana's, at $1,900.

So how is Ghana doing at 50?

Ghana is doing well these days to the international eye. John Kufuor, Ghana's president, was just elected Chairman of the African Union - sparing the organization the embarassment of having Sudan's President campaign for and obtain the leading position. Kofi Annan just returned to his home country after an impressive, though not entirely uncontroversial, two terms at the head of the U.N. Everywhere I turn, Ghana is heralded as a model of "good governance".

To be frank, though, I don't really get that last part. Ever since Bush made it a key condition for sharing in his Millenium Challenge Account pot, "good governance" has become everybody's favorite alliteration. Good governance, along with sustainable development, has truly become one of the international development community's favorite jingles today. How's Ghana doing at 50? Oh, quite well, you know, good governance and all. We've said it about Museveni too. And yet both Museveni and Kufuor, according to independent local newspapers, payed off their Members of Parliament to get re-elected. Museveni spent a lot of money changing the Constitution in order to enjoy a "third term" (though, really, he's been in power in good-governance-Uganda since the early 1980s).

What exactly are we counting when we say Ghana enjoys good governance? It's true, Ghana has had multi-party presidential elections since 1992. It's rather peaceful, barring those ethnic riots in the North. And, barring the indomitable law of the jungle on Accra's roads, I don't have to fear for my life or my wallet when I walk around the streets of this city. There is order here. There is a functioning state; compared to some of its notorious neighbors in the region, Ghana at 50 is a rather democratic, peaceful, political entity. But is Ghana well-governed? Is the government doing what it's supposed to do? What happens when we start counting... the number of road accident fatalities (2,173 in 2004), guinea worm cases (3,977 in 2005), malnourished children (20% of all children today), empty taxis (by our estimate, 8 out of 10 cars), covered sewers (0 in our area), chickens hanging out at and eating from the bottom of uncovered sewers (enough to become a vegetarian), burning trash piles (enough to ruin your evening run), weeks the water has been off in Accra metropolitan area (4 or 5)...?

And yet where there is reason to rant there are also reasons to hope. Two years ago, people got their drinking water out of a large generic bowl resting on top of women vendors' heads. Today they buy "Pure Water", 500 mL of sanitized water in individual plastic packets (now if only people learned not to throw the plastic packet on the ground once they're finished drinking). HIV/AIDS billboards abound, aimed at prevention and de-stigmatization. Though, with signs that say "Stop AIDS. Be faithful to your partner(s)," the message is at times a tad clumsy. And people continue to come together to provide basic rights and services where the government really fails. One of the guys who put me in touch with the Nigerian community in Nima, one of Accra's worst slums, is not only "a man who knows people," but also the Director of a primary school for children whose parents cannot afford to pay for private schooling (or, for that matter, for their children's lunch) and who seek a better education for them than what the government schools of Nima can provide.

Ghana at 50? Well, it's not a basketcase like Sudan, an inexistant state like Somalia, an ambiguous warzone like Cote d'Ivoire, or a stale dictatorship like Togo. But it's a far cry from the model of good governance I'm still seeking here.

"I don't think you're going to convert me in this tro-tro..."

2007-02-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

That's what I heard my erstwhile travel companion say from the row behind me in the very crowded and chatty tro-tro we had boarded. "I don't recall you telling me your religion," the man replied to her...I think. It was actually difficult to hear, because one row up, an old man was standing in the middle of the tro-tro (in retrospect, it's difficult to understand how this was possible, but he was indeed doing it) preaching to the entire vehicle in Twi about the importance of accepting good old Yesu and the Bible. Those were, of course, the only two words I understood, but they were being repeated frequently. "Mmmm...Not my bible," I thought, in synch with the conversation behind me, which came into focus again: "Actually, I think religion is a very personal thing and I don't really feel like talking with you about my beliefs." Then, the zinger reply: "Well, maybe you can give me your phone number..." BAM! Because even if it starts holy, it always ends with a phone number request. The old man up front just kept going. Those of us in the blessedly non-fire-breathing middle row -- including the tro-tro's mate -- sort of exchanged smiling heads-down glances. Certainly no one was going to tell the old man to stick a sock in it (the profound respect for elders here is actually beautiful), but we in the middle seemed to agree that something about this proselytizing--from both front and back, in two languages at once, and absolutely unrelenting--was over the top.

The over-the-topness of the evening's transportation certainly didn't stop there. This particular jalopy stopped at Madina market, and we needed to continue further north, to Adenta junction. No problem: cross street, listen for the "ADENTADENTADENTADENTA" banshee wail of the mate, board appropriate van. But things were busy; it had been market day, and a throng of women with their wares stood awaiting the next tro-tro, looking to head north as well. Their big silver bowls--usually piled to three times their capacity with all manner of goodies and situated (surprisingly stably!) on their heads--suddenly needed to fit on laps, and they were gearing up for their giant volumetric puzzle. Mayhem ensued the minute the tro-tro arrived. The women wanted to get their seats, but it took them time to get their things into the van. Meantime, though they hadn't been waiting as long, some opportunistic men tried to shove by and board. Bad move. Lots of yelling in both Twi and English, pushing, spilling. We were standing back a bit and suddenly we noticed that the front seat was empty--the big silver bowls don't fit there. BINGO! We slid around the masses, someone asked where we were headed, we muttered "Adenta"...the door opened and we were inside while everything got sorted out behind us. But then, there was someone hanging on the front passenger window. Turned out the guy who opened the door was not the mate, and he wanted a pittance for "ensuring that we got the front seat." Before I could figure out how to answer this absurdity, a "You have GOT to be kidding me" and a double-death-ray glare shot out the window from beside me. Mission accomplished. This tro-tro full of women is something like Tetris meets Grand Theft Auto, but we were packed and moving.

When we arrived at Adenta junction, we had to catch a final van to our friends' neighborhood. We wandered through the tro-tro park, looking for the right area...we were headed towards "Housing Down" so this of course means listening for a "DONDONDONDONDON"...we heard it, but as we headed towards the sound of freedom, we were accosted by other drivers and mates in the park who wanted to "help" us...by sitting us in an empty tro-tro. This ensures that theirs will be the next to leave, but an undetermined wait for the rest of it to fill is about the last thing we want at this point in our journey. Again, before I could even process, I heard my partner in crime: "Are you CRAZY?!? It's completely EMPTY. What do you think we ARE?" And I'm being pulled through the annoying empty tro-tros and onto a full--and pleasantly quiet--one that promptly departs.

We had a wonderful evening among friends, but the lesson of the night is clear: when navigating Ghanaian transportation, it's best to be in the company of someone who takes care of business!

Sermons and Ceremonies

2007-01-30T02:14:00.001-08:00

The Emmanuel Eye Center sits in a pristine white building two steps down from our hostel and across from Doris and Dan's. It is an anticlimactic establishment on our roundabout, and I have wondered for the past four weeks how an eye center in ghana got such a clean, nice, gated building. It was not until last sunday that I saw, peering through the opened gate, a few dozen people sitting quietly and listening attentively to a man standing above them with a microphone. The Emmanuel Eye Center, I realized, is also a church.

And it seems that every time a nice, neat, concrete building stands out among the packs of shacks, it is inevitably a church. Presbyterian. Episcopal. Methodist. Anglican. Baptist. Charismatic (that one's new to me). Catholic. The churches, along with Shell and Western Union, are doing well in Ghana.

I have attended a couple church services so far (my search for subjects knows no bounds), and I have found them entirely confusing. The preacher screams into a microphone. The content of his sermon is unintelligible to me. The congregants follow the service actively, breaking into a "Hallelujah!" here and there. There is music, sometimes there is dancing; and there is always a big pot for offerings, inevitably full by the end of the service. It's lively, it's colorful, it's loud, and it's got a whole lot of "Jesus". But at the end of the day the precise take-home message remains unclear to me. According to the little I understood of these sermons, and to the weekly Christian paper here, it sounds like Christians in Ghana are told to pray an awful lot.

My husband lied to me about his faith and has disappeared and turned off his cell phone, what shall I do? Pray. My child has been sick for over a week, what shall I do? Pray. My business isn't turning any profit, what shall I do? Pray.

I guess this religious perspective on life would not bother me all that much if every single part of Ghanaian society was not infused with it and praying was not the first obvious alternative to people's woes. All the retail vendors lined up on the side of Accra's streets seem to compete for the most ridiculous religious references on their storefronts. By His Grace Cleaners. Glory Tires. Consuming Fire Fast Food and Catering Services. God Is Great Beauty Salon. I used to think that Nyame was a really important politician I did not know about because that name also appears on every storefront and tro-tro window. Last week, however, I learned that Nyame was merely the Twi word for God.

To be fair - and scientific as us political scientists are - I had to balance out my flirtation with Christianity with an encounter with Islam. Hence we could not refuse an invitation to a Muslim Yoruba wedding last Sunday at the Lebanon House Club. I did not know what to expect of course, but was told that there would be plenty of people and was thus hoping to blend in discreetly on the sidelines or in the background.

When we arrived, we were directed straight to the stage to sit with all the Al-Hajis, next to the bride and groom. We sat down to face an audience of 200 men in robes, staring right back at us. After an hour of people watching and introductions and kneelings and greetings, and after the 3.30pm prayer, the ceremony began. In a blend of Hausa, Yoruba and English, the Imam declared a minimum monetary amount, launching the "Donation Auction" section of the wedding. Audience members came up to donate money while a band of drummers praised each Al-Haji around us in hopes of extracting a 5,000 cedi bill (about 50 cents) out of them. Once the minimum amount was achieved, and we realized this money was going to the Imam and not the newlyweds, we proceeded to the "Refreshments" section of the ceremony, where meat and rice and meat and meat and meat were served. The men and women sat on separate sides of a large square; we, however, were told to sit with all the men at the VIP table, where we were served first. Apparently two obrunis from America can transcend all religious customs here.

This was no random Muslim wedding. This was a high-society Muslim wedding. There must have been a good two thousand guests there; and the MC, who happened to be my contact to all this, invited us two obrunis on stage to introduce my research and the purpose of our presence. When he handed the microphone to me, I tried out one of the many Yoruba greetings I learned last quarter at Stanford: "E Kaasan!" Fortunately for me, greetings are tremendously important in the Yoruba tradition: no conversation truly begins without at least two backs-and-forths of greetings. So my pitiful attempt was enough to delight many a guest and an "aaaahhhh!" of surprise buzzed through the crowd. This, too, is fieldwork?

Later, the bride and groom came into the square to dance and receive, literally, showers of money. By the end of the night, a hoard of kids in torn t-shirts and shorts zigzagged around the labyrinth of tables, scavenging for leftover food.

Blatant income inequalities aside, however, the ceremony - filled with music, colorful Yoruba and Hausa attires, and many many greetings - was a truly and uniquely beautiful experience.

Though I couldn't stop wondering, throughout the night, how many other wives the groom had waiting for him back home.

A Mixed Bag of Justice

2007-01-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, a man hired a taxi to our building and then ran without paying the fare. He jumped the fence and took off down the street; as cries of "thief" amplified and reverberated, seemingly every young male in the vicinity joined in pursuit. The startled building residents and several women and old men nearby gathered, watching down the street even though the thief and his followers had disappeared. Apparently, a few people recognized him and said he was known to have done this type of thing before. Lots of "tssk tssk"-ing, head-shaking, and looking into the void...and then, triumphantly, a gang of 15 or so young men appeared around the corner in the distance, marching the perpetrator back up the street to the scene of the crime. Kofi, our building owner, was called out to give the man a stern talking-to, and then he was taken to the police. In the United States, some generous do-gooders might have tried to help in a similar situation, but their actions would have been considered extraordinary; elsewhere in Africa and Asia, people would have eagerly pursued the thief...and then have beaten or even killed him.

...

As guests at a huge high-society traditional Yoruba wedding on Sunday, we watched as immense quantities of food were served down the power chain. The (male) community leaders were fed first (along with us, their guests), followed by elders, other high-powered males. Then the wives of community leaders, female elders, women of influential families, etc. Then onto the subsequent tiers. At each phase, uneaten food was taken back to be recycled and served out to a lower group. What started out as a distinct pairing of rice-plus-sauce for the elite became saucy-rice for the ranks. After a few hours, the already enormous wedding became an open free-for-all, with community members flooding through the gates of the courtyard...some dancing and celebrating, but most looking around for leftover food and drink, or party favors that might later be hawked. Meantime, even after countless courses had been dished to all tables, we were given additional "takeaway" plates. These met with approval at our table, everyone nodding in support of the benevolent extravagance of the hosts.

...

Knowing we would never eat them, we wrapped our takeaway plates in a plastic bag. A particularly industrious boy had been flitting around behind us gathering used cups and bottles and washing them. He clearly had a plan to reuse or resell the cups and to return the bottles for the deposit at the distributor. He wore nothing but tattered shorts, and had a very distended stomach. I quietly called him over. "Yes, you...come here," I urged when he looked at me shyly, unclear as to why I was interrupting his work. When he understood, he slipped over and I handed him the bag, but as he smiled and turned away, a large teenage boy ripped it from his hands. Again, the cries went out, and everyone nearby--young and old--jumped to the cause, ensuring that the little boy got his bag and the big kid got "tssk tssk"-ed. Even when everyone is hungry, theft is inexcusable around here. But what happens when the story doesn't end at the police station? Did giving the boy that bag of food put him at greater immediate risk after the party than his hunger?

...

And then, the stories this morning: suicide bombing in Eilat extraordinary rendition, carnage in Baghdad, and Bashir may be the next head of the African Union. It's hard to say what type of injustice causes the most heartache.

photos!!

2007-01-29T05:26:00.000-08:00

Last week saw repeated power outages around Accra, and the lack of fan (or even breeze) stifled any ability to think clearly. So we made a break for it, slipping away to the Cape Coast area, ~150km west of Accra. We visited Kakum National Park, one of the last bits of pristine rainforest left in West Africa, and Cape Coast Castle, a hub of the slave trade for centuries. We spent a lovely shabbat outside the hustle-and-bustle, and returned to an Accra eerily quiet due to the funeral of the long-time Chief of the Ga.

Check out photos and some commentary from our trip here. For the most part, they're very low-res, as uploading is slow and unpredictable. We'll be happy to pass on full-res versions in, oh, a few months.

Doris and Dan

2007-01-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

The Catters Hostel, our new home in East Legon - just north of Accra and south of the University - is a 10-by-15 room we call home. And since this is our home in Ghana, we have made it our business to get to know the neighborhood.

We discovered the bread guy on our way to that little French bakery one morning. He sells whole wheat bread out of the back of his van, which he parks on the side of the road, where there is no sidewalk. But don't let this fool you: this guy is all-business. He's got exact change waiting in his shirt pocket; he keeps a close inventory of his supplies and his sales on the little clipbox he hugs close to his chest; he wears a suit and sunglasses; and somehow he does not sweat. His whole wheat bread, by the way, is quite tasty.

We happen to live off one of the main roundabouts in and around Accra. This means two things: (1) it's easy to commute to and from home, and (2) the craziness of Accra's traffic and tro-tros awaits us as we step out the front door. Yet at the center of this circle lies an oasis of calm where Golden Triangle Chinese Restaurant offers disco lights and pretty damn good (if not HOT) Chinese food. Note that the vegetable curry comes with shrimp.

We recently met Doris and Dan in our search for groundnut paste (a.k.a. peanut butter). They own the little shack two steps down from our hostel. Shacks in Accra are microcosms of the NYC Deli. They sell anything from ginger cookies to canned mackerels to toilet paper to candles to wine-in-a-box to malt drinks to cereal. We entered, hesitantly looking around for groundnut paste. Doris smiled and said the groundnut paste was "finished" - an ambiguous term meaning she did not have any - but that she was happy to trek over to Makola market downtown to get us some. When we came back the next day, I immediately noticed three jars of groundnut paste - a small, a medium and a large - displayed on the shelf. Doris and her husband Dan welcomed us. I picked the medium jar, and Doris revealed her business strategy to me as I took out my money: she had payed 15,000 cedis ($1.55) for it at Makola market and was selling it to us for 16,000 cedis ($1.66). That mark-up was certainly not enough to cover her transportation to and from the market... or maybe she was deceiving me and I was naive enough to believe her. Yet Doris and Dan were friendly. Their little shop was neat and tidy and with now two additional jars of groundnut paste on display. I payed her 20,000 for the groundnut paste, not really sure whether I was being nice, duped, condescending, or just plain fair...

My third week in Accra is coming to a term and the turf is slowly gaining familiarity. We have found our running circuits; we know where to escape to for Chinese food; we have learned how to cross the road when vehicles have *absolute* priority; we have a bread man, a mango lady, and doris and dan; I have experienced a wide range of interviews: some are laborious and disappointing; others are random and invaluable; still others are complete misunderstandings. The other day I found myself asking a Nigerian "businessman" to stop calling me "baby" and to stop giving out my number to random people who thought I was in town to "have a good time, baby". Not all interviews will make it into this dissertation.

Our hostel is off a road called Lagos Link. It's on a roundabout named Tetteh Quarshie, a traveler who introduced cocoa to the country in the late 19th century. It's a 2 minute walk from a French bakery. And a 15 minute walk from our running circuit on campus. In sum, it's home... for now.

Address

2007-01-23T02:33:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have asked, here it is.

Our names (or just mine if it contains treats!!!)
Catters Hostel, Room 101
PO Box 1539
Cantonments, Accra
Ghana

Mixed Blessings?

2007-01-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

yesterday, i accompanied my energizer-bunny, field-working better half to two interviews, figuring i could do my own work and help if needed. the first meeting, at a fancy hotel (named shangri-la, perhaps for the absence of view of accra's main road just beyond the gate), was with a nigerian community business leader. i sat nearby with my own reading, and then went on a little investigative exploration. i had seen a sign out front: shangri-la goes solar! "no way," i thought, and having read a lot of papers recently about the role (and fate) of PV/solar in developing countries, i thought, "let's find out how the system is doing." of course, no one could really tell me much. person 1: the system is for water heating...nice, i thought, though truth be told, i haven't missed hot water in the slightest. it's probably a must for a hotel catering to the elite, though. person 2: the system is partially installed but not fully working...uh-oh, i thought. "when was it installed?" answer: oh, about a year ago. mmmm. me to person 3: "can you show me the system?" person 3: blank stare and giggle. no one really knows where "it" is, though i try to explain that "it" might have several parts that look like...in the end, the idea of the obruni trolling around on the roof was just too much.

after the interview, the businessman offered us a ride to the next meeting location. ghana is a land of incredible hospitality. this man absolutely expected that he would take us; people we meet simply have it ingrained in their bones that they will offer us a soda or snack and we will accept. this notion of how to receive guests is foreign to even the most welcoming westerners. any doubt or polite refusal on our part--from "are you sure you don't mind giving us a ride 40 minutes away?" to "thank you so much but i am not thirsty right now"--is confusing, insulting, or both. here, you accept the drink, and if you don't want it, you leave it aside. here, you accept the ride, even if it puts you where you were going 2 hours early.

so we accepted the ride, in what turned out to be the most tricked out vehicle i've ever seen-- the mercedes version of a land-rover, with all possible gizmos included--video screens on the backs of the headrests, thumping audio system, controls everywhere. and then we rolled across town to a very run-down neighborhood. as is frequently the case, such juxtapositions are hard to stomach. the man, devout in his right (he'd come to the interview after early morning mass) was telling us that religion is peripheral in ghana, it has no political relevance. as he spoke, however, along a 3km stretch of shanty-town, we passed over 30 signs for churches, and every -- literally, every -- tiny shack, curio store, and food stand bore a name with some religious reference. from the top down, it's good to hear that politicians are not obviously using religion for leverage. from the bottom up, however, separation of church and state seems to have taken on a different meaning entirely. i fear--based on tv, radio, sermons blasting out into every neighborhood--that the poorest of the poor are being told from the pulpit that their personal is not political.

the tro-tro game

2007-01-18T03:15:00.000-08:00

i stood near the bus stop as tro-tro after tro-tro rolled by with mates twirling their arms out the window, vaguely waving them around and around and calling "sick sick sick" (indicating travel to "circle" a.k.a. kwame nkrumah circle, a main intersection near accra). i was heading that way, but which one to take? there always seems to be an infinite number of tro-tros from which to choose along any given road, so today i made a stab at creating a quick numeric guide.

first, the basic visual inspection is a must. four good tires, no screaming brakes as it pulls over, no big dents, good doors, and no obvious wobbles or i am a no-go. fortunately, this first pass actually doesn't eliminate too many vehicles. now comes the fun part.

(A) rear-window stickers: anything in Twe (i have no idea what any of it means, beyond "welcome") = 0 (neutral); anything having to do with miracles, redemption, salvation, resurrection = -1; blank, subtle, slightly commercial or slightly religious = +1.

(B) driver: nice shirt, relaxed looking = +1; hunched forward and muttering = -1.

(C) mate understanding of "efficiency": stuffing vehicle = -1; getting moving = +1; telling you to sit down = 0 (unclear which of the previous this portends).

(D) seat availability: front two benches = +1; outside seats = 0; back inside corner = -1.

(E) music: news or HITZ 103.7 (beyonce...ghana hearts beyonce) = +1; gospel = 0; radio preaching = -1.

(BONUS) nice mate who doesn't try to rip you off and is kind about stopping, letting you out, etc. = +1

today i scored a 6.

Because raw vegetables have more vitamins...scattered thoughts from day 1

2007-01-17T09:08:00.000-08:00

The sound of my mom's voice over a crystal-clear cellphone connection almost made me cry. On one level, there's just nothing like a call from home to simultaneously infuse energy and draw out tears from unknown places. On another level, the little orange plastic sim card I bought for peanuts has already made this a very different experience from the last time I spent significant time in a developing country...it's a tiny piece of rock-hard evidence that technology can make a difference and that alternative models of development are possible.

The itch has been building over the past six years (nothing like grad school to make one feel bound and tied) so it's nice to finally be outside of the walls and to feel the unique grit of travel. I arrived in Ghana safely and despite my immediate pulmonary reaction to this region's particular grit--the Harmattan winds, a lovely weather pattern by which some not-insignificant portion of the Sahara's dust is sucked into the air and sent southwest to hover and settle on Ghana/Togo/Benin/Nigeria--I am happy, healthy, and excited to contribute to the blog. I promise to be more polished in future postings.

To give a bit of a physical sense of our daily life...our apartment is in East Legon, between Accra and Legon, home of the University of Ghana. I spent the first day getting to know the area and fighting jetlag. We hit up the tiny French bakery down the street (anyone want to hazard a guess as to the main reason behind the apartment choice?), walked up to the university, then went into Accra to visit the immigration office (the man at the airport only gave me 30 days on my stamp, and I will probably not leave for Niger and Benin for project work until late February), and enjoyed dinner outside.

Not surprisingly, sidewalks are makeshift or nonexistent and street vendors abound--near our apartment, one can buy pleather recliners, exercise bikes, wheelchairs, mangos, rice, whole wheat bread ("and so much more" according to the ad on the side of the bread truck), phone cards, sponges, skirts and shirts. Here, the cabs and tro-tros (think 20-person Japanese Vanagons) hail you, the pharmacies have names that would never get past marketing (like "Pills and Tabs"), and it's just as fascinating to be an obruni as it is to be a gringa...only, as a bonus, it's not quite as evil.

Beyond the expected developing-developed world differences, two wonderful Ghanaian gems stood out to me on day one. First, the confident and firm "that's RIGHT I'm a female physicist" handshake got me a few winces. Here, it's relaxed and lingering with a little mutual snap at the end. Amazing--an entire nation of surfer bros. I like it. Second, the sign above the student hall at the university reads: "Taco Bell: Where Nice People Meet." Man, that was NOT the case in New Mexico.

It's great to be here.

That tro-tro ride home (I)

2007-01-15T02:11:00.000-08:00

This weekend I took a shot at washing my own clothes. I asked Cynthia, Dominic and Ester's house girl (though technically, she is Ester's cousin) to show me which buckets to use. As I started to soak my first pair of pants into the soapy water, she laughed and yelled ''wash!'' I looked at her quizzically. I thought I was doing just that. She grabbed the pants from my hands, and showed me how it's done, scrubbing every single inch of fabric together with fervor, soaking and scrubbing and soaking and scrubbing. This was not going to be the pleasant hour of clothes-washing at sunset that I had envisioned. I observed Cynthia, then tried to emulate her strength and skill, but she only laughed disapprovingly. ''Wash,'' she yelled, ''wash!'' My pride was slightly wounded and I remembered my advisor's warning that fieldwork would be the most humbling experience in every possible way. I'm not sure he had laundry-time in mind when he said this to me, but his words helped nonetheless. I tried to imagine him washing his own clothes in a bucket of soapy water and I laughed.

My first full work-week in Accra has been one of adjustments: waking up before six every morning to beat traffic and rush to every corner of the metropolis to meet my first few research subjects; catching a cold when all I've been doing is sweating; calling it a day at 9 p.m. when Dominic and Ester's two and five-year-olds are still running around in hyper-activity; introducing my taste buds to the savors of fufu and tz, the country's maize, yam, cassava and corn staples - when I really miss those Harvest salads at Bytes Cafe; and for the first time in my life, washing my own clothes in two buckets of water when I really miss laundromats... I am adjusting.

But I've decided I should always give myself two weeks to do just that. After an intense week of logistical frustration, I was afforded a friday evening gift. My tro-tro picked me up at the university main gate, and I was given one of the front seats - the best seats in the entire vehicle if you ask me - from which one enjoys an almost-panoramic view of Medina market winding down on a friday evening. In the tro-tro, no one can accost me in an attempt to make a sale; nobody realizes I'm an obruni (well, sometimes they do but by the time it hits them, I'm already gone). With the windows down, I am a part of the scenery yet removed just enough to observe and absorb in peace. This tro-tro blasted local music rather than Christian preaching (it's usually one or the other), and the traffic was surprisingly fluid. We were cruising home. The music, the breeze, the market. It was one of those moments, and I caught myself breaking into a goofy grin. We stopped at a light. A ten-year-old school girl got out of the tro-tro with her mother. She looked back at me. I waved and smiled. She broke into the biggest smile and waved back, turning her head to see if her mother had noticed. She hadn't, so the moment remained between her and me. The light turned green and my tro-tro drove away. Hesitantly, she waved again. I smiled and waved back and she jumped in excitement. I did not really understand why this moved her so, but it moved me too so I stopped wondering. I arrived at ''housin' down, block seventy nine,'' shouted out ''BASSTOWOP'' (bus stop) the way the locals do, hopped off, and walked the rest of the way home. The regular kids ran out into the path to greet me with an 'obruni!' My friend at the car shop invited me over to gather around a small TV screen with a dozen others to watch the next football game on Sunday (which I unfortunately had to miss as my research duties called). The candy lady across the street shouted ''You are welcome!'' as I walked by. And I arrived home after a long week of commuting and interviewing and bargaining and navigating crowds, happy to put it behind me as I orient myself clumsily through this new city.

Not all tro-tro rides are like that. In fact, most are crowded and stuffy. All you can see are a dozen heads bobbing up and down. All you can smell is petrol. All you can feel is the drip of sweat running down your temple, and that one dripping off your nose, and that other one racing along your stomach. One evening a lady refused to take our tro-tro because I was in it. She spoke in Twi, so I had to venture a guess. But watching her approach the van, notice me, and walk away as she muttered some Twi and an ''obruni'' was enough for anyone to interpret. I was, after all, the only white person in the car.

Last night, Dominic and Ester's boys, the hyper-active ones, Datame and Geybem, practiced their good-byes. Good-bye, Aunty Cleh!

Today, I am moving to East Legon to be closer to the University and Accra. I will have shorter tro-tro rides, running water and access to a washing machine. Not to mention a brand new obruni partner in crime to share all of it with. I have a lot to look forward to.

the obruni has landed

2007-01-08T00:23:00.000-08:00

It's Harmattan season in Ghana, which means that the air was the first thing to hit me when I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac of the runway at Kotoka International Airport last Wednesday. I landed in Accra and was immediately reminded what it felt like to sweat without moving. I am trying to plow through this unfamiliar and uncomfortable phase as efficiently as possible, reminding myself that it takes at least a couple weeks to start letting down your guard a little. But for now... the glares and calls of the locals feel hostile; the five-paved-road system in the suburbs of Accra seems incredibly complicated; the accents, maneurisms and expressions are difficult to parse. I amass a collection of landmarks to find my way, waiting impatiently for that moment when everything begins to look just a tad familiar.

Yet some things already are... like the national obsession with football (soccer), or the sound of Shakira and Wyclef Jean at 6 a.m. in the streets of 'my neighborhood'. If all else fails, we should seriously consider the role that Shakira and football might be able to play in establishing world peace.

I stay with a family in Adenta, a suburb north of Accra. Dominic and Ester are wonderful, welcoming me with a generosity that would seem strange back home. They refuse rent. They forcefully stop me from cleaning their dishes. And they offer to make me dinner every night. Dominic enjoys wine and the fact that he now has someone to drink it with, so I even get to enjoy a glass of red every now and then. I'm at a loss for how to thank them. Dominic assures me it's ok, that this is the 'Fra-Fra way' (Fra-Fra's are one of the many tribes here). I've realized that the only way I will be able to thank them or pay them back will be by sneaking in groceries on a regular basis, and rent money the day that I leave. That's the 'Western way', I suppose.

Adenta has no running water, not because it cannot afford it or does not have the infrastructure for it, but rather because the suppliers of water tanks pay off Adenta's MP to maintain the status quo. So I'm learning to 'shower' as efficiently as possible with one bucket of cold water, which isn't such a bad way to fight off the weight of Ghana's humidity on my poor little obruni body.

It's the little daily victories that bring the most hope and excitement in my days (beside sitting around Dominic's living room and watching his 5-year old and 2-year old boys misbehave). My greatest feat so far has been learning the language of the tro-tro conductors and feeling empowered by getting to know Accra's public transportation system. The tro-tro, just like the matatu of East Africa, is a 10-passenger van seldom carrying less than 15 passengers. It has one driver, whose job it is to find that makeshift lane on the side of the road to curtail traffic (think L.A. rush hour on one lane), and one conductor whose job it is to yell out unidentifiable destinations and wave his hand in such a way that everyone knows where we're going except for me. Five days into this adventure, I've gotten to know those key destinations that are somehow missing from my little Ghana Bradt Guide, and I'm learning where the roads go when the maps end. This, too, is fieldwork?

But if these observations sound like complaints, I will not have done my first week in Ghana justice. True, the locals do stare at me curiously. As Dominic remarked, they stared at him just as much in Pleasanton, California. And if I actually overcome my timidity and say hello to them, they break into a wide smile and reply enthusiastically. It is also the case that every single person I have met, from Dominic's friends to perfect strangers, has gone out of his/her way to help me out somehow. And now and then, when I catch a glimpse of what this place will feel like once I have gained familiarity with it, my heart thumps into my throat in excitement, to the beat of the sound of Shakira.

the three amigos

2006-12-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

The flight to "the field" is supposed to be something one remembers the rest of her life. The chaos of fieldwork preparation is over. A great big question mark awaits ahead. The fatigue from the previous few weeks hits you, yet the adrenaline from both stress and excitement keeps you awake. Mental pictures rush behind your eyelids. That last run at the dish. My last raisin scone at Douce France. That warm shower and the smell of toast and coffee in my parents' apartment. The good-bye party in a now empty blue cube. That last meeting with my advisors...

I was not looking to hear anything new and they were not going to tell me anything they hadn't already. I was simply giving them one last opportunity to impart upon me, as academics who have done more than their fair share of field research, some final words of wisdom. Have I done all the research I can from the ivory tower? check. Have i conjured up an overly ambitious research strategy for the field? check. Have I gotten my visas in order? check. Have I loaded up on my malaria pills? check. My advisors are not the talkative type. If I don't come into their office with a list of prepared questions, the meeting remains short and the chatting sparse. These guys weren't going to give me their last words of wisdom unless I went fishing for them.

So is field work supposed to be fun or is it supposed to be isolating? Some scholars follow questions while others follow cuisine. Some need daily access to a blowdryer; others like to rough it just so they can say they were there and did it. What am I supposed to expect?

The three amigos spoke up in a chorus of divergent opinions. It's the most humbling of experiences. It's isolating. It's never what you expect. It's difficult. It's fun. It's not the 9 to 5, but it's intensive work.

Strangely enough, though, they eventually converged to impart upon me a nugget of wisdom I hope to keep nearby throughout the year.

It's going to be the time of your life. Go enjoy it.

what's a tonal language, anyway?

2006-10-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

It means that different tones in the oral expression of the language (or different accents in the written expression of the language) convey different meanings. For example:

bí (high tone) means "to deliver a baby"
bì (low tone) means "to throw up"; and
bi (mid tone) means "to ask"

... so if I want to ask my Yoruba subjects some questions without them thinking I'm about to give birth or get sick on them, I better get my accents and my tones right.

hello, future employers

2006-10-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

a lot of you have asked about the names. or, as my mom said, "it's really kind of weird." here's the story: we'd like to keep our full names off of the blog. this allows us to be more open in our postings with you, without being quite so open with future potential employers. (to our future potential employers: we know you google potential employees. it's okay.) we don't plan to post anything salacious; i'd just like to be able to openly discuss science, energy, development, foreign policy, and still be able to get government funding, apply for science policy positions, and collaborate with government labs. (oh wait...) furthermore, a certain other contributor to this site might like a green card one day. (oh wait...) so there you have it: our quasi-anonymity explained.

since we will be involved with yoruba communities in west africa, we have taken it upon ourselves to learn a bit of yoruba. and, like any good students learning a new language (or two: j'apprends a parler francais), we wanted classroom names. so, yoruba 101:

titilayo = joy forever
ayodele = joy has come home

aw.....

The Onward Journey

2006-10-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

Paul Theroux writes: "It is always a mistake to try to explain plans for the onward journey. Such plans sound meaningless because they are so presumptuous. Travel at its best is accidental, and you can't explain improvisation."

Fieldwork is precisely travel-with-a-plan. This doesn't necessarily mean you know exactly what you'll be doing "in the field", or even where you'll be going. But it does mean having enough of a dissertation "business plan" to explain to third parties - namely your advisors, your parents and your friends - why you absolutely have to spend 12 to 18 months in obscure countries like Niger and Benin. Hopefully, in the process, you also convince yourself that it's the right empirical strategy for your dissertation question.

We're seeking airfares, applying for visas, renewing our passports, reading Bradt travel guides, filling up on vaccinations and medications, all the logistics that clearly ensure we fully stress out about the onward journey two months before we actually take off. But this is the little stuff you can actually plan, so you hold onto it because it makes you feel prepared... or at least slightly more prepared.

The Onward Journey is a presumptuous one with the following plan:

We'll ease into West Africa late December with 3 to 4 months in Ghana (Image from Ghana Research, www.nsu.edu):

We'll then venture into Niger where, I've been told recently, nobody ever goes for fieldwork (Image from www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca):

We'll follow that up with a few months in Benin (Image from Peoples' Prayer Profiles, www.kcm.co.kr):

And depending on how the "data collection" goes, we may top off this journey with a stint in Nigeria.

Though, I have to admit, it's one decision I'm happy to put off for now.

It's unclear to me how many scholars leave for fieldwork with a clear vision of what needs to happen; my guess is that they're just as few as the number of scholars whose fieldwork travels go according to plan. I'm not quite sure how to best prepare for fieldwork. It sounds and seems as meaningless as Theroux claims plans for the onward journey to be. Let's just hope the accidents and improvisations we may end up surrendering ourselves to still lead to a reasonable dissertation.

...but it was springtime in africa

2006-10-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

we're leaving behind one dissertation in search of another, exchanging dollars for cedis, carefully choosing singular items of clothing, and continually forgetting what we'd remembered we'd forgotten to do. yes, preparations for the dark continent are underway, and this little website is obviously the most important first step. we have no idea what we'll write in the next year, but we'll try to keep it from becoming another boring travel novel. stay tuned...