Day 5 (A Letter Home) January 20, 2006

Hi Guys - It’s Friday afternoon in Accra. It’s loud here. Taxi cabs shout constantly at each other with their horns. Highlife, hiplife, and Chris de Burgh music blares from every open window. It’s f’n hot. Walking the streets outside, it’s only a few minutes before my shirt is sweat-soaked and my water bottle is empty.

Me and the six other new JHR recruits arrived Monday night. It’s a really great and talented bunch of people. A few of us will stay here in Accra. Sarah Meehan (posted at Joy FM) is at the JHR house in an area called Osu (seems like it’s the white expat borough), while me (@ Metro TV ), Hilary Doyle (@ The Chronicle ) and Kofi Sarpong, our human rights ‘expert’, will live in this strange smelling little apartment here in a busy area called Adabraka. We're still awaiting the arrival one other dude named Richard Garner. Jessica Grillanda left at 3AM for LOVE FM in the midland city of Kumasi, and Raegen went to work at a radio station in the mainly Muslim northern city of Tamale - an 11 hour bus ride north of here (although we just got a text she was already stranded in a broken-down bus). And John Gaudi is headed west to SKYY Power FM in Takoradi.

The idea is that we’re to show up at work next week and partner with Ghanaian journalists, share skills and ideas, and try to do more stories on human rights issues. Although, aside from the soccer that fills the papers, pretty much any actual news story here is a human rights issue: political corruption, police brutality, housing, water and food issues (in the north, apparently witchcraft and voodoo are hot topics…) So I guess it’s basically just doing good journalism… but media here is fast becoming a more important and effective voice for change, so maybe we’re here at a good time. While many of the countries around us are fighting, Ghana is pretty stable, and Ghanaians carry a lot of pride in their nation. The local media people we’ve met so far genuinely seem like they want to make it a better place.

I’ve no idea what will actually unfold when eventually we get to work, but we’ve had some insightful meetings (over a lot of Star beer) and some good guidance with some of the outgoing JHR vets here, so I think we’re about as ready as we can be.

Tomorrow we’re off on a 3-day homestay in a rural village with a local family. Rumour has it I might have to kill a chicken. We’re to come back to a pool party meet & greet at the Canadian High Commission, so I can already foresee the the flip-sides of life that are going to spin us around here.

Okay, going to try and send this before the internet crashes again. I already miss you guys, and cold clean tap water. Hope everyone’s stool is solid and that you’re not getting too ripped off by taxis and waiters.

Over and out from Africa.

Jeff xo

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Training for the Human Race

CBC Radio - Sunday Edition / Westworld Magazine 2006

It’s hard to be healthy in Ghana.  All the food is fried.  I’ve had fried rice and fried chicken 127 straight days.  Beer is cheaper than water and a menthol cigarette is disturbingly refreshing break from Accra’s air pollution.  And it’s hot here.  Most days it’s an effort just to move.  But to avoid becoming a bloated Brando, a crazy Kurtz in the African heat, some evenings I try to run.

I find jogging is tough enough on the golden sunlit sea-wall of my hometown of Vancouver (recently voted the UN’s most liveable city in the world) but 12,000 km away in Accra (just a short flight from Lagos, Nigeria, the most unliveable city) it's almost nonsensical. I look forward to an evening run about as much as cerebral malaria or a tall glass of local tap water.

Human race conditions here are not ideal.  Metro TV’s weather report: sun with sunny breaks, high of 35, low of 34, possibility of perspiration - 98%. You can often taste the air, flavoured by exhaust that spews from the swarms of tro-tros and taxis that rule Accra’s streets. The gas/electric hybrid car is still science fiction, as are apparently traffic rules and garbage cans.

As the sun’s power dims and the sky turns the colour of roasted marshmallow (the air smells like the charred stick) I hit the street.  A white guy alone in this neighbourhood turns heads, but a white guy jogging is pure entertainment.  People stare incredulously before flashing big toothy smiles.  Wide-eyed children scramble into the street chirping “Obruni! Obruni! ”  - my daily reminder that yes, I am a ‘white person from the horizon’.

Today I wear a Tim Horton’s t-shirt that I found in the Makola Market.  Makola is Accra’s West Edmonton Mall without the mall.  Wind through a labyrinth of streets and stalls and stands and you'll find 10 city blocks of used North American clothes that the locals call obruni wayoo – loosely translated as ‘the skins of dead white people’.  I jog past an old woman in an orange Hooter’s shirt selling bananas and pineapple chunks.

Running here only makes sense to people if 1) you’re insane (The Adabraka Psychiatric Hospital is just around the corner.)  2) running for or dodging taxis.  3) training for football/boxing.  Sometimes I wear the jersey of Ghana’s national football heroes, the Black Stars.  Sometimes I throw air punches at the guys on the street, Muhammed Ali style - a Great White Hope training for my own personal Rumble in the Jungle.

There’s always action on the gritty side-streets.  Barefoot kids boot soccer balls.  Greasy guys work on their cars.  Shopkeepers tend stalls specializing in everything from belts to fish to cel phones.  God is the silent partner in most business here.  Lord Provides Fast Food.  By His Grace Radiator Repair.  Jesus’ Finger Furniture.  He’s also apparently the #1 co-pilot: devotional slogans brand the back windows of most taxis and tro-tros.  Road to Heaven.  Man Proposes God Disposes.  Pray Until Something Happens.  It’s as though everyone is trying to remind the Big Guy that Ghana is here.

I run past people that he seems to have forgotten.  A man with elephantiasis (a condition I’ve only seen on Ripley’s Believe It or Not) lugs his heavy legs over the curb.  Women draped in babies beg for food.  Young boys lead their blind grandfathers through lines of stopped traffic, knocking on windows for change.

I keep running.

I run past scruffy chickens, a clueless herd of goats, urban cows. I am bombarded by smell and sound - kebabs roast on hot coals, smoked fish, diesel fuel.  Taxis constantly fight for attention with their horns.  Drinking spots blast Kenny Rogers or hip-life music through blown-out speakers. (Note to Bono: If you really want to effect change in Africa, maybe tour with Lionel Richie or Celine Dion.)

I run past the corner where I was mugged by guys with machetes (gotta run faster); past the bus-stop where an old guy got stung to death by bees (shoulda run faster). Local-boy-done-good Kofi Annan smiles peacefully down at me from a big U.N. billboard.  A Rolls-Royce with Nigerian plates glides by.  So does a legless man on a skateboard wearing flip-flops on his hands.  

But run too fast and it’s also easy to run past the beauty.  I hang a right down Swamp Groove Avenue, turning where Pojo the painter is making a portrait of his mother for his father.  A group of taxi drivers take a break to joke and chatter and over bottles of Export Guinness.  A dozen seamstresses turn vibrant cloth into shirts and suits.  

I'm almost home.  Ghana is pumping through my blood. I can see how it gets into the blood of others.  Here you can’t help but understand what it means to be human. Every day you are reminded you are part of the race; it’s an endurance test, where emotions and experiences are amplified by the scorching sun and cranked out over a blown speaker.

JT