And in Other News...

A cold front is moving through Hell and temperatures should be dipping to around 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

The impossible, the unthinkable has happened. I’m sick of Ghana.

Now I want to be clear. I’m not sick of Mus, or of his family, or of the people here. I’m sick of the Ghanaian government and their utilities companies. They are ruining my trip.

Now, I like to think of myself as fairly tough. I like to camp. But see, when you camp you know and expect you won’t have water or electricity, and you can always go back to civilization to again experience the joys of a DVD and a hot shower.

I’m angry because we have no running water or electricity, nor do we have the capacity to secure such things.

Let me go back and retrace the progression through my trip.

When I arrived, we had no running water. I expected this. Mus’s family hires someone to go and fetch water from nearby wells. No big deal. In addition, there was power rationing, meaning every 5th night we had to go 12 hours without power.

Since I’ve been here, our tap has flowed twice. In almost 5 months, we’ve had 2 days of running water.

Now, they’ve upped the power rationing. Instead of having power for four whole days and then shutting off power for 12 hours on the fifth day, now we have 24 hours with power, 12 hours without.

Can you appreciate what a significant jump that is? Now, at any given moment 1/3 of connected Ghanaians have no power.

By the way, the electric company changed the schedule like that without warning. I live in a house where the radio or TV or both is on from 5am to 10pm. No announcement.

And then there’s the unannounced black outs because of maintenance, repair, or the fact that someone flipped the wrong switch.

Of the last 4 nights, we’ve spent 3 without power.

Furthermore, we haven’t had power for 24 hours.

You ask- How am I writing this? I left home and am sitting in a friends fancy office, and he has a generator.

The government blames it all on the drought. Lack of water, lack of electricity. But the draught is not as bad as they are portraying it. Farmers aren't having any problems with their crops. It's rained several times and hard since I've been here and it's not even the rainy season yet! Plus, it hasn't been that hot.

But just think of what this will do to the economy. Factories are closing. Hotels will have to raise their rates so they can provide petroleum-generated electricity every other day. TV stations will hurt- who wants to buy an ad on TV when only 2/3 of the population will even have the opportunity to watch it?

And the government doesn’t seem to care. Or at least it has more important things to spend money on.

Tthe electric company and the water company are both state-owned and the government is frittering away money on everything but these basic necessities. They’ve spent a lot of money on celebrating their 50th anniversary and on a new Presidential Palace- they announced the figures on the news, and I don’t remember the exact number, but they were both costing millions of US dollars. They spend this, when not a single Ghanaian citizen has uninterrupted use of clean water or electricity? Where are their priorities?

I mean, think of President Kuffour, sitting in his multi-million dollar presidential palace, when a few blocks away, his neighbor doesn’t have electricity or water! Meanwhile, Kuffour in his three piece suit is sitting in air conditioning using power generated by petroleum- which the Ghanaian tax-payer so kindly bought for him.

I’m sorry, but I do not like Kuffour, and it’s not just because he has electricity and I don’t. Journalists have been reporting all kinds of shady human rights abuses in his administration. Some political opponents have mysteriously “disappeared” and rumor has it that he’s involved. He’s also been lampooned by journalists for dispensing soldiers to polls to intimidate and bully voters.