It goes by many names; bend-down-boutique, night-mall, second-hand. Yet, the name most widely associated with used clothing in Ghana is “Oburoni w’awu” viz “the white man is dead”. It is a rather morbid play on the fact that these are discarded articles. They were, for a long time, my boutiques (from my goalkeeping jerseys to my “cambous”) and have provided employment to many a Ghanaian. And now, some of them are being banned.
Oburoni w’awu is widely popular because it is very cheap, you can still get premium brands if you have a good eye, and you usually haggled with the seller from a likely 10 times markup to a 3-5 times markup knowing you’d been had but okay with that as well. Kantamanto, in Accra, is the commercial capital of the business with stalls selling anything from belts to suits. There, many of our likely-to-be-otherwise-unemployed youth make a legitimate living.
It all comes at a cost, of course. Locally manufactured goods are very expensive; I still cannot figure out why—is labor not cheap in Ghana? Do we not have raw materials? It may well be because of high fixed costs spread over low volumes of sales. Anyways, the cheaper Oburoni w’awu crowd out Ghanaian innovation and enterprise as these cannot compete on price.
I am not a protectionist and do ascribe to the theory of comparative advantage with each nation doing what it does best. However, two trends make me indifferent or supportive of this action. There has been an upsurge in the number of Ghanaians labeling themselves with made in Ghana goods since the previous administration. This is so even though they are premium priced. Their competition is now more from “first hand” Chinese clothing than second hand western ones. A ban should thus have little, if any effect on the nascent Ghana-made clothing industry.
More importantly, the health risks as laid out in the BBC article give pause for concern. Clothing in intimate contact with such disease prone areas as the crotch should probably not be shared, especially when they are not industrially cleaned before resale. Better a healthy population.
Sadly, this means some youth will be out of work for a while but these are highly entrepreneurial spirits and they will be back on their feet. Plus, I am sure they would not want to survive on peddling disease. Ideally, they will succeed in some innovative Ghanaian enterprise so that when, in future, we say the white man is dead, it would mean less and not more dependence on his castaways.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Monday, August 16, 2010
“If you can read this, thank a teacher”
“A courage which looks easy and yet is rare; the courage of a teacher repeating day after day the same lessons - the least rewarded of all forms of courage” – Honore de Balzac
If you attended school in Ghana, West Africa, or I daresay any African country, you have probably been lashed/received corporal punishment. I remember all six teachers who ever lashed me; two of course being my parents. I never cried. I was a big boy. I was close a few times though—my classmates at Mfantsipim can tell you about one. But these traumatic experiences do not form the basis of my memories. I can tell you the names of at least 90% of my teachers so far from Ms. Amenyui through Mr. Azasoo, Frimpong, Collins Aguzey, “Harriso wo yɛ tall”, “Adorable – Paul Adu Kumi, “Coomson aka Fuck”, “Baffoeman, Yeboaman, “Borlɛɛ”, “Karishika/Matriculation”, “Duncanman aka “The Son of Man”, “Aboa Apɔnkye” to “Duoduman”.
From Louis Baffoe intoning “you are mad!” because I screwed up a mathematical calculation to Aboa Apɔnkye teaching us temperature was the sixth sense and that HIV stood for “Highly Infections Virus” (it stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus by the way), there are many unique stories by which we remember our teachers. I recall Mr. Kusi forcing us to buy his useless pamphlets, Karishika skipping English periods while trying to induce our paying her for extra classes and Borlɛɛ’s tag line “as for you Edo, you are a baaaaaaaaaaaad boy” anytime I went for an exeat (signed permission to leave school) for the town of Cape Coast. I also remember Yeboahman allowing me to attend his high-cost but effective extra classes in Physics for free, Baffoeman lending me his Math texts for study, “Adorable” buying me an English-French dictionary, and Duoduman screening World Cup matches at his house. What I’m saying is my development as an individual and my success as a student has been entirely due to my teachers. Same could be said for the larger majority of my friends. So why are they paid so little?
I was a rebel growing up – at home that is. In school, I was always an angel, well, with the teachers anyways. Maybe it was fear of corporal punishment. Whatever, it worked. In my village, teachers wielded extraordinary power that extended to time outside school. A parent could request punishment of kids for some wrong committed at home. When teachers decreed that funerals were no place for children, it meant you did not want to be seen at a funeral by a teacher or, God forbid, the headmaster. And you did not want them to catch you doing something wrong outside of school. Teachers were our moral compasses, our role models, our number one fans, our most severe critics and our fiercest supporters.
There were inspections on Monday mornings for cleanliness – white socks, washed and pressed uniform, hair cut short, fingernails clipped, teeth brushed, it was a beauty. And this was outside of the fact they were actually doing teaching in the classrooms. When I was practicing my cursives in the sand under the big Neem tree in Dabala, it was a teacher who held my hands. And it was a teacher who taught me about “Air Pressure” and how I could turn a glass of water upside down with covering as flimsy as a cardboard and it wouldn’t spill.
The most widely heard saying in Ghana regarding teachers, however, remained “a teacher’s reward is in heaven”. But is it? I have been wondering about how society judges the value of different services. In Ghana, we were of the view that the US valued its teachers more and that they were among the highest earners in the country. How wrong we were! Teachers earn a pittance here and, it seems, everywhere else. How can that be? I do not know much about the requirements for teaching in the US but at least in my country, this usually involves attending a three-year Teacher Training College, a tertiary institution. The admission criteria for these schools are less stringent than for four year universities which meant they became places for students who did not make the college grade. One can then boost her pay grade, albeit marginally, by attending a “mature” students degree course in university although most look at this as an escape from teaching. Rather than fault this set-up, however, I fault the human condition.
Society as a whole is obsessed with education and the level of education achieved resulting in pay levels increasing as you achieve higher and higher levels of education even if your degree is as useless as Latin outside of the catholic church. No, I am not arguing against education. Ask my family, it’s the only thing I seem to offer them when we speak—go back to school, get another degree and the like. But shouldn’t the future value of a person’s work be indicated in their remuneration?
A profession which seems to be at the extreme end of this value-based remuneration is medicine where doctors are paid large amounts of money for barely keeping a patient alive. Even here, primary care doctors who save the system hills of money by preventing complications before they arise earn the least pay. What influences the value of a man’s work seems steeped more in how immediate the results are than what the actual contribution to society over time is of his work.
We are blinded by the college graduates who generate millions sometimes doing mind-numbing work on Wall Street so we pay them in loads and cap it all by giving some CEOs significant portions of GDP even when companies fail. But we are unable to foresee the fact that we would have a society of illiterates and no professionals without the teacher. Imagine a society without doctors, lawyers, businessmen, farmers, historians, technicians, to mention a few. We’d be back in the ice age in no time.
Supply and demand and the curse of Adam Smith continue to numb us into decreasing the reward of teachers because, well, they are easily replaceable. They are, of course. But is this enough to keep their pay low? Imagine waking up each day, writing the same teaching plans albeit modified for the characteristics of the class that year, standing in front of students and repeating the same information over and over again. And most of them do it faithfully and cheerfully, knowing the only reward they have is hearing of their students who made it. And the only way they could ever be rich, at least in Ghana, is go into politics and become parliamentarians.
So even though it is not teachers’ day today, shout outs to all my teachers, past and present. Part of your rewards are in heaven all right but the larger part is in our pockets as a society and especially, in those of our politicians. I pray one day it is returned to you.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
If you attended school in Ghana, West Africa, or I daresay any African country, you have probably been lashed/received corporal punishment. I remember all six teachers who ever lashed me; two of course being my parents. I never cried. I was a big boy. I was close a few times though—my classmates at Mfantsipim can tell you about one. But these traumatic experiences do not form the basis of my memories. I can tell you the names of at least 90% of my teachers so far from Ms. Amenyui through Mr. Azasoo, Frimpong, Collins Aguzey, “Harriso wo yɛ tall”, “Adorable – Paul Adu Kumi, “Coomson aka Fuck”, “Baffoeman, Yeboaman, “Borlɛɛ”, “Karishika/Matriculation”, “Duncanman aka “The Son of Man”, “Aboa Apɔnkye” to “Duoduman”.
From Louis Baffoe intoning “you are mad!” because I screwed up a mathematical calculation to Aboa Apɔnkye teaching us temperature was the sixth sense and that HIV stood for “Highly Infections Virus” (it stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus by the way), there are many unique stories by which we remember our teachers. I recall Mr. Kusi forcing us to buy his useless pamphlets, Karishika skipping English periods while trying to induce our paying her for extra classes and Borlɛɛ’s tag line “as for you Edo, you are a baaaaaaaaaaaad boy” anytime I went for an exeat (signed permission to leave school) for the town of Cape Coast. I also remember Yeboahman allowing me to attend his high-cost but effective extra classes in Physics for free, Baffoeman lending me his Math texts for study, “Adorable” buying me an English-French dictionary, and Duoduman screening World Cup matches at his house. What I’m saying is my development as an individual and my success as a student has been entirely due to my teachers. Same could be said for the larger majority of my friends. So why are they paid so little?
I was a rebel growing up – at home that is. In school, I was always an angel, well, with the teachers anyways. Maybe it was fear of corporal punishment. Whatever, it worked. In my village, teachers wielded extraordinary power that extended to time outside school. A parent could request punishment of kids for some wrong committed at home. When teachers decreed that funerals were no place for children, it meant you did not want to be seen at a funeral by a teacher or, God forbid, the headmaster. And you did not want them to catch you doing something wrong outside of school. Teachers were our moral compasses, our role models, our number one fans, our most severe critics and our fiercest supporters.
There were inspections on Monday mornings for cleanliness – white socks, washed and pressed uniform, hair cut short, fingernails clipped, teeth brushed, it was a beauty. And this was outside of the fact they were actually doing teaching in the classrooms. When I was practicing my cursives in the sand under the big Neem tree in Dabala, it was a teacher who held my hands. And it was a teacher who taught me about “Air Pressure” and how I could turn a glass of water upside down with covering as flimsy as a cardboard and it wouldn’t spill.
The most widely heard saying in Ghana regarding teachers, however, remained “a teacher’s reward is in heaven”. But is it? I have been wondering about how society judges the value of different services. In Ghana, we were of the view that the US valued its teachers more and that they were among the highest earners in the country. How wrong we were! Teachers earn a pittance here and, it seems, everywhere else. How can that be? I do not know much about the requirements for teaching in the US but at least in my country, this usually involves attending a three-year Teacher Training College, a tertiary institution. The admission criteria for these schools are less stringent than for four year universities which meant they became places for students who did not make the college grade. One can then boost her pay grade, albeit marginally, by attending a “mature” students degree course in university although most look at this as an escape from teaching. Rather than fault this set-up, however, I fault the human condition.
Society as a whole is obsessed with education and the level of education achieved resulting in pay levels increasing as you achieve higher and higher levels of education even if your degree is as useless as Latin outside of the catholic church. No, I am not arguing against education. Ask my family, it’s the only thing I seem to offer them when we speak—go back to school, get another degree and the like. But shouldn’t the future value of a person’s work be indicated in their remuneration?
A profession which seems to be at the extreme end of this value-based remuneration is medicine where doctors are paid large amounts of money for barely keeping a patient alive. Even here, primary care doctors who save the system hills of money by preventing complications before they arise earn the least pay. What influences the value of a man’s work seems steeped more in how immediate the results are than what the actual contribution to society over time is of his work.
We are blinded by the college graduates who generate millions sometimes doing mind-numbing work on Wall Street so we pay them in loads and cap it all by giving some CEOs significant portions of GDP even when companies fail. But we are unable to foresee the fact that we would have a society of illiterates and no professionals without the teacher. Imagine a society without doctors, lawyers, businessmen, farmers, historians, technicians, to mention a few. We’d be back in the ice age in no time.
Supply and demand and the curse of Adam Smith continue to numb us into decreasing the reward of teachers because, well, they are easily replaceable. They are, of course. But is this enough to keep their pay low? Imagine waking up each day, writing the same teaching plans albeit modified for the characteristics of the class that year, standing in front of students and repeating the same information over and over again. And most of them do it faithfully and cheerfully, knowing the only reward they have is hearing of their students who made it. And the only way they could ever be rich, at least in Ghana, is go into politics and become parliamentarians.
So even though it is not teachers’ day today, shout outs to all my teachers, past and present. Part of your rewards are in heaven all right but the larger part is in our pockets as a society and especially, in those of our politicians. I pray one day it is returned to you.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
Sunday, February 7, 2010
"You Speak Such Good English" – Ten Things You Now Know About Ghana And The Ghanaian
Two weeks before I was to embark on my first trip to the US, I finally went to an internet café to find out exactly where the state of Ohio was on the map. I was to spend the next four years in Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH where I had applied and being accepted for a Bachelor of Arts program but I had no idea where it actually was. Thus when people have asked me whether I am from Africa, I often wonder if I should give them an education, offer a blunt reply or just plain ignore them. Of course I went on the internet to do my research and so could everyone else but I only did it because I needed to. So instead of a ranting piece on the lack of curiosity about the world that is exhibited by many an American, I will just go ahead and give a Ghana 101 from my perspective with the hope that someone reading this piece even by accident can help spare me a few awkward moments.
1. My English is good, yes. This is because we actually speak and learn English – the Queen’s English, that is –comprehension, grammar and composition.
2. Just like you do not speak American, we do not speak Ghanese or African. There are at least 47 different languages spoken in Ghana alone.
3. Ghana is the country. Africa is a continent, not a country. I am Ghanaian, and African, just like you are American and North American (North America, by the way, is a continent that includes Canada, Greenland, Bermuda among others).
4. No. I do not know your church member from South Africa. Enough said.
5. We live in houses in villages, towns and cities not in the bush living a primitive life in hunting/gathering tribes (apologies to random lady I met at Cleveland Cavalier’s game). In that vein, most of us first see wild life in the zoo either at home or in the US – cue student surprised to hear I saw my first elephant at a circus in New Haven and excited when I apologized and said we actually lived in huts carried by the elephants.
6. Football, as in the one kicked with the foot, not thrown all game long, is a Religion. It is to be worshiped and not derogatorily referred to as soccer.
7. No. I did not come to the US because there are no good schools in Ghana. Our educational system is screwed up, I agree, but they are not that bad. A lot of us come here for school because of the opportunities for training outside the classroom, the free education, and sometimes, because we could not get into the professional schools in Ghana e.g. medical schools.
8. Yes. My accent is sexy, I know, but your mentioning I have one is definitely not a turn-on.
9. Yes. I am a card carrying member of the LONG (League Of extraordinary Negro Gentlemen) but your knowing me is no guarantee of membership privileges.
10. And finally, I am grateful you volunteered in Ghana as a high schooler and you are welcome again. Your semester abroad, though, does not an expert make. Do not present yourself as an authority on the subject of Ghana.
To the Ghanaians out there, send me a comment on something you would like known about Ghana/the Ghanaian. To those who want to learn about us, send me a comment asking what you would like to know. Till then, cheerio.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
1. My English is good, yes. This is because we actually speak and learn English – the Queen’s English, that is –comprehension, grammar and composition.
2. Just like you do not speak American, we do not speak Ghanese or African. There are at least 47 different languages spoken in Ghana alone.
3. Ghana is the country. Africa is a continent, not a country. I am Ghanaian, and African, just like you are American and North American (North America, by the way, is a continent that includes Canada, Greenland, Bermuda among others).
4. No. I do not know your church member from South Africa. Enough said.
5. We live in houses in villages, towns and cities not in the bush living a primitive life in hunting/gathering tribes (apologies to random lady I met at Cleveland Cavalier’s game). In that vein, most of us first see wild life in the zoo either at home or in the US – cue student surprised to hear I saw my first elephant at a circus in New Haven and excited when I apologized and said we actually lived in huts carried by the elephants.
6. Football, as in the one kicked with the foot, not thrown all game long, is a Religion. It is to be worshiped and not derogatorily referred to as soccer.
7. No. I did not come to the US because there are no good schools in Ghana. Our educational system is screwed up, I agree, but they are not that bad. A lot of us come here for school because of the opportunities for training outside the classroom, the free education, and sometimes, because we could not get into the professional schools in Ghana e.g. medical schools.
8. Yes. My accent is sexy, I know, but your mentioning I have one is definitely not a turn-on.
9. Yes. I am a card carrying member of the LONG (League Of extraordinary Negro Gentlemen) but your knowing me is no guarantee of membership privileges.
10. And finally, I am grateful you volunteered in Ghana as a high schooler and you are welcome again. Your semester abroad, though, does not an expert make. Do not present yourself as an authority on the subject of Ghana.
To the Ghanaians out there, send me a comment on something you would like known about Ghana/the Ghanaian. To those who want to learn about us, send me a comment asking what you would like to know. Till then, cheerio.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
Friday, January 8, 2010
Domestication aka The Time I Spent, The Things I Saw
Today, I woke up to the sad news of the passing away of Dan Lartey. My promised entry on Dabala will have to come next. He burst onto the political scene, at least my scene, in 2000 with the proclamation, “Come December 7, me and my wife are going straight to the castle”. For students of history, the Osu Christianborg Castle has been the seat of government/the Presidency since it was converted from a slave castle. Dan Lartey had started the Great Consolidated Popular Party which in Ghanaian parlance meant there was nothing great at all about this great party. The platform on which Mr. Lartey (he did not become President Lartey) run was Domestication – he was talking about a new consciousness, a new drive to emphasize Ghanaian capability and encourage domestic enterprise/sufficiency in place of the “foreign is better” mentality and the overwhelming dependence on foreign debt for Fiscal and Monetary spending. In this way, it was similar to the “Operation Feed Yourself” of the Acheampong Military Regime but then again, that regime was also known for “Fa woto begye Golf” to wit, exchange your butt (sexual favors) for political/monetary favors which doomed the former. The problem, as is usually the case in these instances, was with the vessel rather than the message for if one of the two major political parties had come up with this platform, it would have been hailed far and wide as genius.
I would run a campaign on domestication. In fact I have been running such a campaign, not politically of course but within friends and colleagues, I have maintained that the African is capable of managing his affairs (apologies to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah). Let me give you a couple of examples that have been encouraging to me. Prior to my leaving this country in 2003 as a starry-eyed 18 year old, the fashion industry had already begun making the move towards producing designs/products that met international standards, creating products and labels they could sell at a premium – one thinks of the mkogh line from Mawuli Okudzeto and the recent pkog line by Papa Kwame Osei. That industry has not let up especially as it has tapped into the Ghanaian hunger for “designer” labels and need to advertise his patriotism. As I type this, I am wearing a rather chic black shirt (if I may say so myself) with the Ghana Coat of Arms and Map in the colors of the Ghanaian Flag made so well that it immediately reaffirms my ancestry without shouting noisily that I am Ghanaian so much that people miss the point in the hullaballoo. It’s made by some minor design houses (although I have a sinking suspicion China might be behind some manufacturing) and sold on Osu Oxford street for anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks depending on your bargaining power. I presume the cost of manufacturing is much lower than that but I am willing to pay the premium. On the cloth/textiles front, Printex, among many are integrating Ghanaian idioms and Adinkra symbols into the making of cloths for the local Ghanaian market and through an advertising blitz that has made it cool to wear Ghanaian prints to work, one has begun to see the preponderance of workers clad in local wear at anything from commercial banks to Parliament House. They have ceased to be the preserve of funerals, outdooring rites and church services thus increasing revenue for these companies and generating jobs for the economy.
Two other industries have since joined the fray and are worth mentioning. The information technology field has bloomed since the first NIIT school was established on Ring Road Central. Today, there are local companies like Soft Tribe and Tribal Solutions (started by a friend of mine) which are churning out software for the peculiar needs of Ghanaian companies and providing support for home-brewed and foreign software. At the recent Barcamp Ghana, the IT presentations were the most sought after and it was refreshing to hear Ghanaian youth espousing strategies for start-ups and business models for sustainability. With minimal overlays into laptop computers, internet connection and some basic software, one can start a software development operation and build on it. At this point, I cannot help plugging REACH Ghana, an NGO started by Ghanaians like myself for Ghanaians, aimed at delivering healthcare to Ghana, providing health access to underserved communities, enhancing the education of the Ghanaian health professional and encouraging scientific research into the health and practice of healthcare in our communities. It was conceived at Barcamp Diaspora in Washington DC in July 2009. See the beginning and join the cause at www.reachghana.org. Make a change, make it count.
The last industry to comment on is the fruit juice industry. Most of the fruit produced in the country when I was here were exported but these days, it has been realized that as easily as fruit can be made into juice in western countries, perhaps more easily (due to low labor costs), it can be made in Ghana. Granted that my taste buds have been serenaded with a veritable bevy of sensations given the creative mixtures of juices that have been produced from the sleeves of these juice companies and have made it impossible for me to not go back for more but the packaging! My God, the packaging! From boxes in the mould of Don Simon to bottles in the shape of champagne (containing sparkling fruit juices for tee-to-tallers like us replacing alcoholic beverages at almost every Ghanaian function), Ghanaian firms have moved from tied plastic bags to hygienic and appealing packaging that attract the customer and provide a sense of living and accomplishment to her (deserved or not) when she drinks their juices. Again, good marketing has gone a long way to increasing their market share to the extent where I have not seen much of the foreign varieties of fruit drinks since arriving a week or so ago.
I am very much impressed by the headways our industries have made and I look forward to one day contributing to the self sufficiency of this great nation of ours. I do leave you however on a sober note. Were Dan Lartey to be alive today and as brash as in 2000, he would say “Come December 7th, 2012, me and my wife are going straight to the Presidential Palace”. This palace is the monstrosity built on the right side of the road when traveling between the 37 Military Hospital and The National Theater. You will know it by its ugliness. On what could have been prime industrial/commercial land, in the face of human poverty and suffering, we have built with a $30million loan from the Indian government, designed by Indian Architects (but resembling the ugly cousin of the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum designed by a Ghanaian) and constructed by Indian contractors, an $80-135 million eye-sore with little local involvement on the mere premise that “even the Gambia has a presidential palace (well I simplify)”. It ran smack in the face of logic and common sense but even more so in the face of the ideals of self sufficiency and ensured that as is usually the case, the bulk of a loan returned to the economy of the “donor” and made the recipient poorer in resources and richer in idiocy. I have the misfortune of passing in front of this fool’s paradise every time I go into Accra from Madina where I live but these days, rather than make me disillusioned with the custodians of our beloved country, it reminds me of the better job that could have been done by our local professionals. It reinforces what Dr. Andrew Arkutu told me in a conversation four days ago; ‘men can die but ideas cannot be killed’. May Dan Lartey rest in peace. And long live Domestication. Happy New Year.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
I would run a campaign on domestication. In fact I have been running such a campaign, not politically of course but within friends and colleagues, I have maintained that the African is capable of managing his affairs (apologies to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah). Let me give you a couple of examples that have been encouraging to me. Prior to my leaving this country in 2003 as a starry-eyed 18 year old, the fashion industry had already begun making the move towards producing designs/products that met international standards, creating products and labels they could sell at a premium – one thinks of the mkogh line from Mawuli Okudzeto and the recent pkog line by Papa Kwame Osei. That industry has not let up especially as it has tapped into the Ghanaian hunger for “designer” labels and need to advertise his patriotism. As I type this, I am wearing a rather chic black shirt (if I may say so myself) with the Ghana Coat of Arms and Map in the colors of the Ghanaian Flag made so well that it immediately reaffirms my ancestry without shouting noisily that I am Ghanaian so much that people miss the point in the hullaballoo. It’s made by some minor design houses (although I have a sinking suspicion China might be behind some manufacturing) and sold on Osu Oxford street for anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks depending on your bargaining power. I presume the cost of manufacturing is much lower than that but I am willing to pay the premium. On the cloth/textiles front, Printex, among many are integrating Ghanaian idioms and Adinkra symbols into the making of cloths for the local Ghanaian market and through an advertising blitz that has made it cool to wear Ghanaian prints to work, one has begun to see the preponderance of workers clad in local wear at anything from commercial banks to Parliament House. They have ceased to be the preserve of funerals, outdooring rites and church services thus increasing revenue for these companies and generating jobs for the economy.
Two other industries have since joined the fray and are worth mentioning. The information technology field has bloomed since the first NIIT school was established on Ring Road Central. Today, there are local companies like Soft Tribe and Tribal Solutions (started by a friend of mine) which are churning out software for the peculiar needs of Ghanaian companies and providing support for home-brewed and foreign software. At the recent Barcamp Ghana, the IT presentations were the most sought after and it was refreshing to hear Ghanaian youth espousing strategies for start-ups and business models for sustainability. With minimal overlays into laptop computers, internet connection and some basic software, one can start a software development operation and build on it. At this point, I cannot help plugging REACH Ghana, an NGO started by Ghanaians like myself for Ghanaians, aimed at delivering healthcare to Ghana, providing health access to underserved communities, enhancing the education of the Ghanaian health professional and encouraging scientific research into the health and practice of healthcare in our communities. It was conceived at Barcamp Diaspora in Washington DC in July 2009. See the beginning and join the cause at www.reachghana.org. Make a change, make it count.
The last industry to comment on is the fruit juice industry. Most of the fruit produced in the country when I was here were exported but these days, it has been realized that as easily as fruit can be made into juice in western countries, perhaps more easily (due to low labor costs), it can be made in Ghana. Granted that my taste buds have been serenaded with a veritable bevy of sensations given the creative mixtures of juices that have been produced from the sleeves of these juice companies and have made it impossible for me to not go back for more but the packaging! My God, the packaging! From boxes in the mould of Don Simon to bottles in the shape of champagne (containing sparkling fruit juices for tee-to-tallers like us replacing alcoholic beverages at almost every Ghanaian function), Ghanaian firms have moved from tied plastic bags to hygienic and appealing packaging that attract the customer and provide a sense of living and accomplishment to her (deserved or not) when she drinks their juices. Again, good marketing has gone a long way to increasing their market share to the extent where I have not seen much of the foreign varieties of fruit drinks since arriving a week or so ago.
I am very much impressed by the headways our industries have made and I look forward to one day contributing to the self sufficiency of this great nation of ours. I do leave you however on a sober note. Were Dan Lartey to be alive today and as brash as in 2000, he would say “Come December 7th, 2012, me and my wife are going straight to the Presidential Palace”. This palace is the monstrosity built on the right side of the road when traveling between the 37 Military Hospital and The National Theater. You will know it by its ugliness. On what could have been prime industrial/commercial land, in the face of human poverty and suffering, we have built with a $30million loan from the Indian government, designed by Indian Architects (but resembling the ugly cousin of the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum designed by a Ghanaian) and constructed by Indian contractors, an $80-135 million eye-sore with little local involvement on the mere premise that “even the Gambia has a presidential palace (well I simplify)”. It ran smack in the face of logic and common sense but even more so in the face of the ideals of self sufficiency and ensured that as is usually the case, the bulk of a loan returned to the economy of the “donor” and made the recipient poorer in resources and richer in idiocy. I have the misfortune of passing in front of this fool’s paradise every time I go into Accra from Madina where I live but these days, rather than make me disillusioned with the custodians of our beloved country, it reminds me of the better job that could have been done by our local professionals. It reinforces what Dr. Andrew Arkutu told me in a conversation four days ago; ‘men can die but ideas cannot be killed’. May Dan Lartey rest in peace. And long live Domestication. Happy New Year.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Dreaming Reality
Why do I cry?
when I think of you,
When you bring me joy
In my dreams,
make love to me, your juices
mixing, flowing, churning blood
in my veins, down
to my heart, up
to my head
One with me and separate
Who are you?
I touch your hair,
Feel it thick through my fingers
But can’t find the roots
Deep black humus threads spanning
Time and intervening oceans
I eat the fruit.
Today I died
No. I hung myself
You never quite understood me
Did you?
First I tore my heart
Then my eyes—why ?
I hung myself on the big Mango
Won’t let blood go to my brain
Remember! You told me not to hang upside down
Why did you turn me back?
What were you doing in the dark—and—light doorway?
I long for you day and night
—And midnight
Am I dead?
I know your back, the curve
Of your hips, here they are wide
there rounded
here hollowed by child bodies
The eagles nested here
Turn your face to me!
I know you, you know
I’ve climbed your back,
Sucked your breasts
Been in you.
Father calls you my Girlfriend
—you must be the One
So why do I cry?
There’s a blue veil hiding you
I’m hungry
Tell me, am I awake?
You have left my dreams
No! I’m thinking
You, I, the world
Megbona lo—I’m coming back
Your fingers sear my skin
I need
There’s an explosion in my loins
My loins turn to jelly—I want to fall
My first steps,
Steady, steady
Thank You
—for your hand.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
when I think of you,
When you bring me joy
In my dreams,
make love to me, your juices
mixing, flowing, churning blood
in my veins, down
to my heart, up
to my head
One with me and separate
Who are you?
I touch your hair,
Feel it thick through my fingers
But can’t find the roots
Deep black humus threads spanning
Time and intervening oceans
I eat the fruit.
Today I died
No. I hung myself
You never quite understood me
Did you?
First I tore my heart
Then my eyes—why ?
I hung myself on the big Mango
Won’t let blood go to my brain
Remember! You told me not to hang upside down
Why did you turn me back?
What were you doing in the dark—and—light doorway?
I long for you day and night
—And midnight
Am I dead?
I know your back, the curve
Of your hips, here they are wide
there rounded
here hollowed by child bodies
The eagles nested here
Turn your face to me!
I know you, you know
I’ve climbed your back,
Sucked your breasts
Been in you.
Father calls you my Girlfriend
—you must be the One
So why do I cry?
There’s a blue veil hiding you
I’m hungry
Tell me, am I awake?
You have left my dreams
No! I’m thinking
You, I, the world
Megbona lo—I’m coming back
Your fingers sear my skin
I need
There’s an explosion in my loins
My loins turn to jelly—I want to fall
My first steps,
Steady, steady
Thank You
—for your hand.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Why So Poor? -- Of Minds(ets) and Men
Masitala, Malawi – According to this BBC news report, William Kamkwamba woke up one day, figured he could build a windmill out of bicycle parts to supply electricity to, and pump water for his village and did it with practically no formal education. A couple of years ago my father was working in his backyard garden. He needed to dig a shallow hole and with no tool at hand, picked up a broken piece of calabash that was lying innocently by. Before he began to dig, he looked at us and said, “Improvise”. It was the first time I had heard the word. Improvise! A blessing and a curse. I did not spend years trying to understand what he meant. No, I did not even think about it after the words escaped his lips. It was just one of the big words daddy liked to use on occasion. Like the time he said “my food is always palatable”. But I did get the old boy to tell us what exactly the word meant. I thought it was pretty simple -- use one thing in place of another. I’m not so sure anymore. I’ll tell you why in a little bit.
On many occasions, I’ve had the opportunity to ask myself why the African continent is so poor. I’m sure you have too. So why are we poor? Is it because of the many years of colonialism and the slave trade or the additional years of bad leadership, coups and counter coups, civil war and strife started by men who care for nothing but themselves? Are we still lagging in development because of neocolonialism and the strangling juggernaut of the western financial institutions or because our very minds are inferior to the best of the world and our mindsets inherently retrogressive instead of progressive? The question of whether colonialism, neocolonialism, political strife and the combined exports of the World Bank and IMF has been detrimental to the continent is a moot one and has been argued on many fronts so I will only briefly examine them here.
More than a hundred years ago, the white man landed on the shores of our beloved black continent (the Dark Continent as they called it) and proceeded to rape and ravage it out of gold, cocoa, timber, the strongest men, freedom and indeed its very soul. What this did was in essence take away the foundation on which we could build our countries and our economies. The remnants became second class citizens, strangers in their own land, told where they could go and where they could not, paying taxes to foreigners and unable to buy one imported commodity without the other – I suppose the forced balanced diet kept us healthy. After that came the age of the Strong Men of Africa, the Mugabes, Nyereres, Nkrumahs, Contes and a spate of coups with stories of US and Russian involvement as the two major powers of the world sought influence in the as yet unexplored philosophy of African neocolonialism—that would come later. And when it did, it was through the multiple protectionist moves in the World Trade Organization and the extension of loan facilities from the World Bank and IMF. They attached western imports of economic philosophy and conditions that, even with the best of intents, took no account of the peculiar economic and political climates of the recipient countries. Add to this the fact that some of these conditions require loans to be disbursed in installments from western banks with all the transaction fees applicable and stipulate that consultants be hired from the donor country on development goals in the recipient and you have, by anecdotal evidence, anywhere from fifty to eighty percent of loans going back into the donor economy while drowning the poor African country further into debt. It’s not all tales of doom and gloom, of course and I am not a proponent of the “the west is keeping us down” cacophony so I will focus on the African.
The point of this piece is to look at those two essential components of human progress, the mind and mindsets of a people, and the people themselves. The last time my mother visited the US was for my graduation from college. On a stroll through Chicago, she casually remarked on how nice it would be for the white man to build some of his skyscrapers back home. Needless to say I flew off the handle with a lecture on how we had to fight our own battles, et cetera. My mother, bless her soul, is the most important person in this world to me and the one I respect the most so this example is not to cast her in a bad light. She is also a certifiably smart lady and that is the crux of the story. In Ghana, we have brains and smarts. I read animal farm, makers of civilization, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Pride and Prejudice before I was out of 6th grade. The second year college classes I took in college taught little different from what I had read for three years in high school and when I pit my brains against friends with “similar” levels of education, I find out again and again how much more theory they know than I do. In fact the truth remains that one of the main reasons I came to the US for school is because I could not gain admission into medical school in Ghana. In every medical school I interviewed for in the US, there was one Ghanaian faculty member or two and even more students from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and the like. There are Africans excelling in most, if not all, of the greatest institutions of higher education this country. No! The African’s mind is flexible enough to bend the most esoteric theories and to propose some himself. Even with the limited educational infrastructure, the African child rises to the top. So why is it a bachelor’s degree at a third rate university outside Ghana is enough to gain you a promotion, in Ghana, over a long term employee with multiple Ghanaian degrees?
It is not the lack of firepower that is holding us back. It must be our mindsets then. From the ingrained mindset of inferiority of everything African through our unwillingness to chance innovations to the lack of support and in fact, the PhD (pull-him-down) of those entrepreneurs who try it, we have connived to drive the continent farther and farther into poverty. The problem with improvisation is that the African has been doing it for ages and has thus become complacent and comfortable. Improvisation allows us to use inferior tools albeit with extra effort for accomplishing tasks and we are just happy that way. We are not motivated to innovate. We lose sight of that intrinsic component of the word improvise, the creation of something new to replace what is. When my father first said “improvise”, it was while using a broken calabash in place of say, a hoe. There was no progress there. However, because we were just fine digging without a hoe, we had no incentive to look for better ways to dig. We missed the chance to innovate. But the buck does not end there. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, why is there so little invention coming out of Africa? Our institutions are ill equipped to advance science, I know but that is just the beginning. Until we move beyond that essential Africanness of coping with the hard life and start looking to get into a more comfortable lifestyle, we will be unable to progress. Have you seen the travelling Ghanaian? Poor soul has oversized carry-ons, multiple oversized checked bags and some more for the children to carry. Why? Because he is bringing gifts to family members. Why? Because they are foreign goods. It is not good enough to buy these same things in Ghana. It has to have made the flight to hold any value to the Ghanaian. The Ghanaian has to have Holland prints in textiles to wear to a funeral --in effect stifling the local enterprises that seek to compete with the influx of cheaply made, overpriced foreign goods.
As much as the Ghanaian yearns after imported milk and bread however, few can afford it thus allowing room for local inventors to prosper on their minor creations. Yet, our economies suffer the ignominy of lagging behind the prosperous ones and our people suffer from lack of access to healthcare, education, employment and clean water. This is no fault of the minds and sets of minds in corpus but of the corpus itself. It is man and the men of our various countries that drive us deeper and deeper into the ground and bring our countries, which relatively flourished post-independence to their knees groveling for western handouts. The “Strong Men” of the continent began the looting process that continued in coup after coup which promised accountability but looted the state coffers while paying lip service to higher ideals. These were followed by pseudodemocracies installed to legitimize corrupt governments with the support of countries like France all so the interests of these supporting countries could continue being served at the expense of the poor African. No matter how great the demand, it is the African, like the times past when he sold his fellow man to the slave trader, who continues to sell his country out for thirty pieces of silver. And when he is finally thrown out of office by the vote, what right does he have to demand additional graciousness from a country he has so thoroughly helped to exploit and why must we pay him to relinquish power?
Many reasons are proffered for the poverty of my people. Though they all have legitimacy in and of themselves, none of them hold as much weight as the dead weight of corrupt men that bogs the continent down. From high school, when the senior student extorts sardines and milk out of the first year student so he can protect the latter from other extortionists and where a housemaster takes money from parents so as to reserve preferential treatments for their children and the headmaster takes money to admit a bad student over an excellent one, corruption runs riot in the fabric of our countries weakening the seams and breaking the bond of unity that keeps it strong. Until we change our minds(ets) and until there arises a new generation of (wo)men willing to stand tall and move our nations forward, we will forever lag in the darkness of our skins and our soils crying out as children of the dark yearning for the light of prosperity yet running back into the darkness from the pain the light causes our eyes which are so accustomed to nothingness. Long Live Africa and on men, may there be peace, and prosperity.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
On many occasions, I’ve had the opportunity to ask myself why the African continent is so poor. I’m sure you have too. So why are we poor? Is it because of the many years of colonialism and the slave trade or the additional years of bad leadership, coups and counter coups, civil war and strife started by men who care for nothing but themselves? Are we still lagging in development because of neocolonialism and the strangling juggernaut of the western financial institutions or because our very minds are inferior to the best of the world and our mindsets inherently retrogressive instead of progressive? The question of whether colonialism, neocolonialism, political strife and the combined exports of the World Bank and IMF has been detrimental to the continent is a moot one and has been argued on many fronts so I will only briefly examine them here.
More than a hundred years ago, the white man landed on the shores of our beloved black continent (the Dark Continent as they called it) and proceeded to rape and ravage it out of gold, cocoa, timber, the strongest men, freedom and indeed its very soul. What this did was in essence take away the foundation on which we could build our countries and our economies. The remnants became second class citizens, strangers in their own land, told where they could go and where they could not, paying taxes to foreigners and unable to buy one imported commodity without the other – I suppose the forced balanced diet kept us healthy. After that came the age of the Strong Men of Africa, the Mugabes, Nyereres, Nkrumahs, Contes and a spate of coups with stories of US and Russian involvement as the two major powers of the world sought influence in the as yet unexplored philosophy of African neocolonialism—that would come later. And when it did, it was through the multiple protectionist moves in the World Trade Organization and the extension of loan facilities from the World Bank and IMF. They attached western imports of economic philosophy and conditions that, even with the best of intents, took no account of the peculiar economic and political climates of the recipient countries. Add to this the fact that some of these conditions require loans to be disbursed in installments from western banks with all the transaction fees applicable and stipulate that consultants be hired from the donor country on development goals in the recipient and you have, by anecdotal evidence, anywhere from fifty to eighty percent of loans going back into the donor economy while drowning the poor African country further into debt. It’s not all tales of doom and gloom, of course and I am not a proponent of the “the west is keeping us down” cacophony so I will focus on the African.
The point of this piece is to look at those two essential components of human progress, the mind and mindsets of a people, and the people themselves. The last time my mother visited the US was for my graduation from college. On a stroll through Chicago, she casually remarked on how nice it would be for the white man to build some of his skyscrapers back home. Needless to say I flew off the handle with a lecture on how we had to fight our own battles, et cetera. My mother, bless her soul, is the most important person in this world to me and the one I respect the most so this example is not to cast her in a bad light. She is also a certifiably smart lady and that is the crux of the story. In Ghana, we have brains and smarts. I read animal farm, makers of civilization, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Pride and Prejudice before I was out of 6th grade. The second year college classes I took in college taught little different from what I had read for three years in high school and when I pit my brains against friends with “similar” levels of education, I find out again and again how much more theory they know than I do. In fact the truth remains that one of the main reasons I came to the US for school is because I could not gain admission into medical school in Ghana. In every medical school I interviewed for in the US, there was one Ghanaian faculty member or two and even more students from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and the like. There are Africans excelling in most, if not all, of the greatest institutions of higher education this country. No! The African’s mind is flexible enough to bend the most esoteric theories and to propose some himself. Even with the limited educational infrastructure, the African child rises to the top. So why is it a bachelor’s degree at a third rate university outside Ghana is enough to gain you a promotion, in Ghana, over a long term employee with multiple Ghanaian degrees?
It is not the lack of firepower that is holding us back. It must be our mindsets then. From the ingrained mindset of inferiority of everything African through our unwillingness to chance innovations to the lack of support and in fact, the PhD (pull-him-down) of those entrepreneurs who try it, we have connived to drive the continent farther and farther into poverty. The problem with improvisation is that the African has been doing it for ages and has thus become complacent and comfortable. Improvisation allows us to use inferior tools albeit with extra effort for accomplishing tasks and we are just happy that way. We are not motivated to innovate. We lose sight of that intrinsic component of the word improvise, the creation of something new to replace what is. When my father first said “improvise”, it was while using a broken calabash in place of say, a hoe. There was no progress there. However, because we were just fine digging without a hoe, we had no incentive to look for better ways to dig. We missed the chance to innovate. But the buck does not end there. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, why is there so little invention coming out of Africa? Our institutions are ill equipped to advance science, I know but that is just the beginning. Until we move beyond that essential Africanness of coping with the hard life and start looking to get into a more comfortable lifestyle, we will be unable to progress. Have you seen the travelling Ghanaian? Poor soul has oversized carry-ons, multiple oversized checked bags and some more for the children to carry. Why? Because he is bringing gifts to family members. Why? Because they are foreign goods. It is not good enough to buy these same things in Ghana. It has to have made the flight to hold any value to the Ghanaian. The Ghanaian has to have Holland prints in textiles to wear to a funeral --in effect stifling the local enterprises that seek to compete with the influx of cheaply made, overpriced foreign goods.
As much as the Ghanaian yearns after imported milk and bread however, few can afford it thus allowing room for local inventors to prosper on their minor creations. Yet, our economies suffer the ignominy of lagging behind the prosperous ones and our people suffer from lack of access to healthcare, education, employment and clean water. This is no fault of the minds and sets of minds in corpus but of the corpus itself. It is man and the men of our various countries that drive us deeper and deeper into the ground and bring our countries, which relatively flourished post-independence to their knees groveling for western handouts. The “Strong Men” of the continent began the looting process that continued in coup after coup which promised accountability but looted the state coffers while paying lip service to higher ideals. These were followed by pseudodemocracies installed to legitimize corrupt governments with the support of countries like France all so the interests of these supporting countries could continue being served at the expense of the poor African. No matter how great the demand, it is the African, like the times past when he sold his fellow man to the slave trader, who continues to sell his country out for thirty pieces of silver. And when he is finally thrown out of office by the vote, what right does he have to demand additional graciousness from a country he has so thoroughly helped to exploit and why must we pay him to relinquish power?
Many reasons are proffered for the poverty of my people. Though they all have legitimacy in and of themselves, none of them hold as much weight as the dead weight of corrupt men that bogs the continent down. From high school, when the senior student extorts sardines and milk out of the first year student so he can protect the latter from other extortionists and where a housemaster takes money from parents so as to reserve preferential treatments for their children and the headmaster takes money to admit a bad student over an excellent one, corruption runs riot in the fabric of our countries weakening the seams and breaking the bond of unity that keeps it strong. Until we change our minds(ets) and until there arises a new generation of (wo)men willing to stand tall and move our nations forward, we will forever lag in the darkness of our skins and our soils crying out as children of the dark yearning for the light of prosperity yet running back into the darkness from the pain the light causes our eyes which are so accustomed to nothingness. Long Live Africa and on men, may there be peace, and prosperity.
Prime
*************************************************
This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
*************************************************
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