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.

The Saddest Thing in Ghana

So I’ll admit, walking through Ghana I don’t get particularly sad. Sometimes I get mad about world politics and neo-colonialism and social injustices, but I don’t feel overwhelmed with pity or tears or anything. The people I see work incredibly hard to eke out a living, but eke they do and they are generally very happy in their lives. (Not that that’s an excuse to ignore social injustice.)

But one group of people make me incredibly sad every time I see them.

Mus says they are originally from Niger and that the group migrated here in the early ‘80s. I don’t know if it’s true, but they’re complexion places them as being from Northern Africa. In any case, from what I’ve seen this group of people has made no effort to participate in Ghana’s economy in any real way. I’m not sure if they’re illegal immigrants or if they have trouble getting work permits, but they all make a living from begging. I’ve never seen a single one selling anything or working anywhere.

Which is strange to me, because most Ghanaians work in an informal economy without government interference. These people could hawk items on the street- many Ghanaians survive on what they make hawking. No work permit needed. If they had even a little capital to buy a bike or a phone or a charcoal pot, they could set up a street side business. The government doesn’t interfere with such things at all. It’s only large establishments like hotels, restaurants, and internet cafes that need permits or pay taxes. Most of Ghana works in informal institutions.

The parents in this group make me incredibly angry because of the way they exploit their children. They set up at a high traffic area, usually in an area with a lot of foreigners. The parents sit back against a wall, directing their children to latch on to certain people. Then the kids, some of whom are as young as three, go to that person and grab their hand, their clothes, their leg, begging for money.

Now, most Ghanaians at this point are so sick of these people who clog up their walkways and latch on to you so you can hardly walk, that they refuse to look at the kid and just angrily pull away.

What a horrible ordeal for this kid! Their parents push them to go do something that is obviously not socially acceptable in the wider society around them. In return they receive nothing but scorn. I can’t imagine how the kids are affected by this. It makes me so sad for the kids and so angry at the parents.

Let me interrupt to say, begging in Ghana is not uncommon, and Ghanaians are very tolerant of it. But in Ghana, the only time it’s acceptable to beg is if you have a physical disability that prevents you from working, such as being blind or having lost a limb. Since most of the work in Ghana involves manual labor, having such a disability exempts you from being part of the work force.

But as these people are healthy and have been living here for awhile, Ghanaians do not feel sympathy for them. In addition, many think it’s shameful for them to exploit their young kids, keeping them from school and making them withstand ridicule to provide the families income, especially since the parents are capable of going to work.

Those kids are going to have serious issues after having been shunned in such a physical way by the people around them. But what can passersby do? If you pause, the kid will latch onto your hand or leg in such a way that you can’t move. Yet, in all this, they are only obeying their parents, who are hiding in the background.

It breaks my heart.

Hopped up on Testoterone

So the male puppies have entered that precious stage in life when everything centers around who has the biggest penis. They run around trying to hump each other and get into huge fights which end with me grabbing a puppy and dangling him mid-air until he calms down.

We have one male puppy, Bear, who’s just plain to lazy to be bothered with it, and sleeps while the rest fight. But he’s too lazy to even fight for food, so fighting for status is out.

In a few months, they will become eunuchs and the playing field will be even.

Chicken Math

The Bad News: The chicken’s already been replaced. Mus’s parents bought four baby chickens to rear themselves.

The Good News: They’re young so none of them are roosters yet.

Roosters are evil. Check it out:

Roosters + City Lights = Crowing all night = 1 extremely crabby Jess

In fact, there’s a mathematical law that says that an inverse ratio exists between the distance a rooster is from my bed and the level of my crabbiness. As that distance decreases, my crabbiness increases. And rapidly, might I add.

The Death of a Chicken Salesman

The Bad News: A member of our household has passed.

The Good News: If I had to vote one member out, she would be the one.

That’s right everybody, the chicken has gone to Great KFC in the sky. And before I start my whoopee’s and tra-la-la’s, I do have to say that I don’t condone gruesome, violent deaths. Not even for chickens.

But I also won’t lie to you. I did not like this chicken. She has a habit of stealing food from the puppies, and even pecking at them. The adult dogs do not want a one-eyed puppy, and so they chase her away.

Yesterday, she overstepped her bounds and the dogs had to put her in her place. Her place on the food chain, that is.

Satch and Poos-Poos, our two proud mothers, chased the chicken around the back of the house and bit her, pulling all the skin off her breast. Then, being the domestic pansies that they are, they became confused about what to do next and went to go take a nap. Sweet Mother found her and called Mus in a panic. Mus and I found the chicken and, well- let’s just say that I had quite anatomy lesson. I couldn’t believe she was still alive.

Sweet Mother took her over to her owner’s house for him to kill and cook. I guess he wasn’t there, so she gave it to some women- maybe relatives?- hanging out at his house. We haven’t heard about it yet, but we’re afraid he’ll be mad.

But this chicken had a sticky end coming, if you ask me. She refused to stay in her yard with the other chickens and roosters. Instead, every day she’d flap her way over to our yard. The roosters would try and follow her, but they were justly afraid of our Baker’s dozen of dogs, and kept their distance. So this prudish chicken didn’t lay an eggs. And tell me, what happens chickens that don’t lay eggs?

Tempted by the Fruit of Another...

Well, Amy, my fellow fruit adventurer… I wish you had been there.

The other day Mus and I traveled to visit a farming relative of his. This man raised fish, goats, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, bees, and various types of edible rodents ranging from guinea pigs to porcupines to rabbits. He additionally grew corn and lots of fruit.

As we were touring his farm, he would randomly pluck a few fruits around him to give to us to try. The first type of fruit he gave us is one I’ve tasted before- they’re called blackberries. But do not be deceived- they don’t resemble any type of berry we have in America. Imagine, if you will, branches ending in what look like a little seed pod. Upon closer examination, you find the pods look like tiny brown fuzzy velveteen throw pillows from the ‘70s. Your first step is to crack that fuzzy outer layer- you squeeze and peel it much like a roasted peanut. Underneath is a peach-colored fuzzy layer. You pop it into your mouth and suck on it. The experience is very similar to sucking on a raspberry-flavored piece of velvet. The velvet slowly melts in your mouth, leaving a smooth, round pebble on your tongue. In the end, it leaves your mouth feeling sandy and dry.

The second type was new to me and much stranger. It was an orange globe resembling a tangerine, but smoother. Mus instructed me to bite the end of it, spit out the peel, and drink the juice inside. This is very similar to how we eat oranges here. I bit the end, spit it out, and looked at the fruit, only to find something very similar to milk flowing from the inside. I desperately tried to catch all the juice in my mouth, but it seemed the fruit was pressurized like a can of soda, because the milk kept erupting from inside though I exerted no outward pressure.

As I’m trying desperately to keep up with the flow, so I won’t cover my hands, clothes, and camera with the liquid, I discover that’s it’s becoming more and more difficult to move my jaws. Sure enough- my teeth are stuck together. Is this lockjaw? I wonder. I throw the fruit away so I can stick my hand in my mouth to find out what’s going on, and discover that my fingers are covered in milk. And they are also glued together.

Ask me the question whether this globe was animal, vegetable, or mineral and I don’t know if I could tell you. It was a fruit containing dairy and superglue. Imagine the warning labels the FDA would have to invent.

God should have written on the peel of that fruit DON’T PANIC.

Lastly, I found fruit from outer space in a remote village Mus and I hiked to. Now, if I had to create some sort of alien fruit for Star Wars or some bad sci-fi TV series, this is exactly what I would make.

This fruit is yellowish green and grows on a tree. It’s about the size of a cantaloupe, but shaped like a mango. The outside looks a bit like a playground kickball, but upon closer examination you find it’s spikier than a kickball.

When the fruit is opened, the whole thing is flexible. Meaning you make a slice on one side, and you can unroll it like a rug. The inside is covered in bright yellow tentacles, resembling a sea anemone. And if you look, hidden amongst the tentacles, you’ll find a slimy oval of goo that’s about the size of a ping pong ball. You pull it out and find it stringy and sticky, like a little peeled mango. You pop it in your mouth, and it tastes almost exactly like a banana Runts candy. It tastes absolutely synthetic. If I hadn’t watched the lady pick the fruit herself, I would wonder if it was some kind of hoax.


By the way, we brough the fruit home, and Mus's sister Hamida refused to eat it, saying it looked "unnatural."