The world according to me

While being in Ghana I had the chance to meet up with Jerry J. Rawlings former president and military leader of Ghana. I was curious and had lots of questions. I wrote about it, but the text got pretty long, so I will publish it in three parts. Enjoy part I:


Last stop Boom Junction (Part I)

How do you address a former president? It is none of my every day problems. I was at a loss. ‘Good Morning, Mr. Rawlings’, would that do? Or would that be too informal? If I remembered it correctly, protocol demands that you call him Mr. President even if he is just the ex-president. But ‘Good Morning, Mr. President’ would sound somewhat subservient. Choosing a greeting, it seemed, would have some importance, because it kind of set the stage for the conversation that was to follow.

People had told me about Boom’s hypnotic power and I didn’t want to be blinded by nice words. I wanted to be hard and piercing. Popular or not that man was responsible for a good amount of hardship and, at least morally, for the deaths of a number of dissidents and former military leaders. They call him Boom for he had been a fighter pilot and was famous for his hyperactive no-nonsense way of solving what he perceived as problems.

I had plenty of time to mull over the question. I had already spent half an hour drinking coffee that Rawling’s boy had served. I was faithfully waiting for the big man sitting in his study in his colonial style residence in Accra trying not to drown in his big brown leather couch. Feigning activity, I started taking notes about the interior of his study; the frightening gang of Mastinos, Great Danes, and Dobermann patrolling around the huge garden; the flight simulator software sitting on a shelf next to miniature aircrafts models and other petty facts that promised to hold some sort of explanatory value. When I ran out of details, I fell into some sort of vegetable coma. The air condition was going at full blast, slowing me down to the speed of a snail on a cold autumn morning.


His hands were trembling

He came without making a fuss. I don’t know what I had expected, but he wasn’t all that impressive. He was a big man alright. The lean figure I had seen on black and white army photos was no more. He was about 1.85 meters tall and weighed maybe 100 kilo. Instead of the tight olive army pants I had seen in the books, he was wearing a cream colored traditional shirt with some stains on it and grey pants. His full beard and his hair had turned salt and pepper. He had Ghanaian traits, but a lighter complexion inherited from his Scottish father.

The most striking feature, though, was his failing physical strength. He seemed hung over and he excused himself for being late by saying that he had slept in. His hands were trembling like you see it with people suffering from an early stage of Parkinson. He didn’t say much in these first minutes and kept massaging his temples. He wanted to know about me, why I came. But my answers didn’t really seem to get through to him. He left after a short while, saying he had to swallow his pills.

He seemed to have regained some vigor, when he came back some 15 minutes later. It kind of reminded me of Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness, who’s most remarkable feature is his voice, a booming organ that summons the ghosts of the past. Same here; once locked up in one of his monologues, Rawlings was back to his old energetic self. Still, I never lost the impression of facing somebody who was spending more energy than he had left.

Drowned in memories

I had prepared a two page list of questions separated into different topics like economics, politics, revolution and personal history. I had changed their order several times to create a flow, something close to a real conversation. I finally decided to start with his personal background, make him talk about things that should be comforting him. Than, gradually, I wanted to switch to more delicate questions finishing off with full-on accusations.

It didn’t work out at all. We were talking for about three hours and he answered maybe a third of all my questions. Still, I enjoyed it, because he wasn’t evading my questions in that gruesome style practiced by politicians and the like; he was answering straight away. It was more the crazy amount of stories stored in his memory and his volition to tell them all that put me off the tracks. I asked him about how to organize a coup and he ended up telling me stories about how he and his men had cultivated cassava on the fields surrounding the army barracks and that, when the plants were ripe, leading officers had come in, filling the boots of their cars without even asking.

It was all very interesting, but rather like a walk through a maze than a clearly structured interview. He had this annoying habit of never finishing a sentence, of constantly rephrasing what he was saying and always trying to put as much content in a sentence as possible. It works while you are there. His tumbling prose combined with his deep authoritarian voice creates a sense of urgency, of someone who really has a message. But if you listen to the tape later on, you are left with a lot of useless fragments, allusions, and overtones - and very little meaning.

I had read about most of the stuff he told me. I liked some of his anecdotes, things you don’t get in the books. Unfortunately, he also gave me quite a number of political propaganda about the current government and its president, J. A. Kufour, who had won the elections in 2000. Rawlings accused him of being corrupt, which he probably was, because corruption is woven into the very fabric of this society. He also accused him of having led the country onto the brink of a tribal war and of ruling with fear and the suppression of fundamental rights.

(to be continued)

Labels: rawlings

Now that I started posting about Ernest and Michael again, I remembered a comment I got from someone who is much more interested and involved in development education adn coporation than me. I actually don't remember his name. We had just met at the airport on our way to a meeting of GLEN, the Global Education Network of Young Europeans. He had been to Burkina Faso and so we been chatting about West Africa. When I finally told him about Michael and that we were paying his school fees, he look me up and down and told me off.

His argument was quite elaborate, but basically went like this: By giving money to a boy like Michael, we were creating a feeling of apathy in the ones who receive the money, because they kind of owe their well-being to some rich white guys. Plus, we make it harder for development workers like him, because we were creating some sort of expectation. Like when you feed animals and they get used to it and demand it over and over again.


I have to admit that his way of talking, his irony and his cold blooded attitude did unsettle me somehow. But he made a point and though, intuitevly, I decided not to give in, his argument has left me with quite some doubt about what we do, be it as insignificant as possible.

Labels: development work

Here is what my mate Jake wrote about Ernest and why we help him. Jake has been in Accra since about a year and will stay some longer. He works there for a microfinance organisation preparing a study and doing some research for his PhD if I am not mistaken. Cool guy.

Ernest Owusu - A boy's life in Ghana

I first met Ernest Owusu in April, when he accompanied his friend Michael Kwakye on a visit to my house to pick up money for school fees. While Michael was preparing to pay his tuition for the third term of his year of Senior Secondary School (SSS), Ernest was considering his options. He was also in need of school fees. Since students can only attend once the term has been paid for in full, Ernest missed about half the term while his parents worked to put together his tuition.

When he returned from the third term for his summer vacation, he learned that his mother had fallen ill and had been moved back to Ernest’s hometown, the village of Oda in the Eastern Region. Normally she is a petty trader, selling kontomire (a leafy green vegetable). She is currently unable to work due to her sickness. For a number of years she has endured periods extended illness fairly regularly. When she gets sick she is normally treated at the hospital. Since the family is uninsured, her bouts of illness are a double-edged sword: rather than generating income, she brings home hospital bills.

Meanwhile, Ernest has been living at his family’s home in Madina, a suburb of Accra. He normally lives there with his parents and his older brother in a rented single room of a compound house. The compound has had neither power nor running water for over a year. The family’s room has no kitchen facilities, and they do their cooking outside. For bathroom facilities they walk to the nearest public toilet.

Ernest’s brother is 19 and was fortunate to have both parents available to support his education. He attended SSS all the way up to final examinations. Unfortunately, his family was unable to come up with the examination fees, so he could not sit for the tests to earn his diploma. He now sells car batteries in Madina.

In addition to the income earned by his brother, Ernest’s father supports the family by working at the airport in Accra. He had held a good job there as a baggage porter; but midway through his employment the airport hired more porters. Some of these turned out to be crooks who knowingly allowed the contents of passengers’ luggage to be stolen. When the criminal activity was uncovered by airport management, all the porters were fired. Now Ernest’s father spends his days at the airport working as a freelance travel agent, offering to arrange tickets for domestic travelers who arrive without reservations. The work is not very steady.

Ernest remains upbeat. His friends know him to be a keen debater and an argumentative sort; Ernest would like to be a lawyer. For now he is in the General Studies track at SSS—each term he takes eight courses: four core required courses, plus geography, economics, government, and Christian religious studies. Of these, government is his favorite. He hopes to join the school’s Debate Team. At the moment, though, it appears that the tuition money simply will not be available.

About 120euro would pay for the coming term, including tuition, boarding, books, and all other fees.

Jacob Appel

Labels: Michael

Its been quite a while since I wrote anything. Came back to Germany, had another nasty stay in hospital and got a job writing for a website on climate change, microfinance and demographic change. Life is back to normal, more or less. The contact to Ghana, however, never broke.

Michael ist still in school. The cool thing, I got in contact with people from a small NGO here in Munich, Internationales Komitee Journalisten Helfen (Journalists help; website in German only), these people all have regular jobs and all, but they have been ative for quite a while helping people in Bosnia, Ukraine, Argentina. They liked Michael's story and gav us some money to help him and another guy called Ernest. Sweet.

Labels: Munich-Ghana

For all the people who take the effort of reading all this: I thought it might be interesting to see it from Michael's perspective. Some months ago he sent me an email which had quite some impact on me. It is about being in school and being somehow different, because the other kids know that you have someone paying school fees for you and that your parents wouldn't be able to pay them Well, read for yourselves. I added a recent picture of Michael so that you remember who's talking, a boy of 17 years (The picture is shit though. Jake took them, when he was trying to find out whether Ernest was seriously needing school money or not. From the looks of it, I say they were quite impressed by his questions. Looks a bit like taking pics of delinquents. Poor boys.)

Michael's letter:

Dear Thilo,

How is the family and you. hope you are all doing great.
Well thilo as i told you i arranged a meeting between jake and my friends including i. Let me try and sumarise all in two or three sentences to you.

it all started with an introduction followed with some interrogations. EACH OF US HAD TO make his aspirations background, age, difficulties he or she was encountering and that kind of stuff. Hope you understand what i am putting across. After this he also made his intensions and suggestions known to us.

Thilo i must say that i was actually impressed with whatever jake said except a suggestion he made.That is he suggested that my friends do exactly what i did. that is write a letter to district assembly, appeal to media entities for their problems to be published etc.

Thilo with writing letters to the district assembly i deem it a good idea but it all requires money and time. this is so because one has to put pressure on them by being to the offices almost everyday and this involves transportation.

with appealing to the media entities thilo i must say i will NEVER advice anyone to allow his problem to be published in the news papers. why because i have regretted doing that even though it is through that i am being able to further my studies.

Thilo the truth is that most of my mates knows that i am from a poor home hence despises me . that is they consider me to be inferior hence my inability to make freinds there. it had an impact in my performance acadamically but thank God i have been able to overcome it.

Thilo i am pleading with you to help my friends to further their studies. especially Abigail since she had not started and will have to be in school for four years.

now about the extra tution i have discussed it with jake but latest by tomorrow. i will test the head of the science department of the school's number to you on your phone so that you can contact him for any infomation.

Bye for now and take care. Regards to your family

Labels: Michael

I couldn’t believe it; the damn thing had just swallowed my credit card. Here I was all set up with brown leather shoes, plaited shirt and my good trousers. Everyone was waiting for me, the white guy brining in the monies from abroad. And this damn thing just breaks down on me and leaves me stranded without cash.

Time was running out, the sun was rising. I could feel the first driblets of sweat running down my neck. I hit a few buttons, but the screen stayed blank. No use waiting. There must have been one of the ubiquitous power cuts. Electricity wouldn’t be back until dawn. What a stupid coincidence. If the ATM had been offline five minutes earlier, I could have walked away to another part of town cashing there. A few minutes later and I would have been on my way, meeting Michael at the Daily Guide office to go and pay the fees for his future school.

Without my credit card, I was lost. Life can be so easy in Accra when you have money. You can get everything. I mean EVERYTHING and I leave it up to your imagination to define that all-comprising variable. But than some faceless machines swallows your plastic card and all that superiority and power just fades away. For a second, I felt lost, like waking up from a comfortable dream and not knowing where I you are. The ATM’s money slot seemed to stretch to the size of a big black gap.

I really have to get more sleep, I thought. But I had a mission and I was already late. No time for paranoia and doubts. It took me a while to get to the bank’s headquarters in the early morning rush-hour and to find a service employee with the authority to go and crack ATM’s. But I finally got the money. Two Million Cedis, donated by friends and strangers, people who for one reason or another had decided to help a young guy they didn’t even know. How cool is that. The thought high jacked my early morning grumpiness and the fatigue gave way to coffee and the blazing sunlight.

When I got to the office, Michael was already there. He had sunken back into the couch waiting patiently. He had been there since seven. He had to otherwise he would have spent hours in Accra’s suburban traffic hell. I sat next to him and we waited for Avickson, a journalist from the Daily Guide who had written the initial story on Michael.

On our way out, Michael collected the foam mattress he had left with the security guards. He also produced a black metal box covered with red half moons. It contained all his personal belongings. Thus equipped we boarded a taxi that took us to the lorry station. Lorries are actually large mini buses if something like a large mini bus exists. They were plenty (another Ghanaism) at the station, still we waited out of respect for Avickson. He was too scared to board one of the many Mercedes buses saying that they were driving too fast. He was probably right, so I settle back into my newly acquired plant like patience and bought ice cream for all of us. I kind of liked his point. Dying on a humanitarian mission would just be too pathetic.

We got to Akropong around twelve o’clock. The town had been built on the ridge of a small mountain range. Rain clouds from the Atlantic would pass over Accra without even shedding a drop of rain. They would drift north over the vast and dry Accra plains and get stuck at the Akropong range. On these days the town would be cloaked in mist and drenched in pouring rain. I had once seen a traditional procession of chiefs, queen mothers and drummers virtually swept away by the downpour.

Today was different. The sun came blazing down and we could see far down on to the rolling plains. Still it was cooler and less dusty than in Accra. Lush green vegetation lined the winding road. The palm trees that dominated the coast line had made way for Banana and Papaya forests, huge Mahogany trees were towering above the thick undergrowth.

The school itself was surprisingly big. Rather like a huge campus covering an entire hill. The gates were at its base, the school buildings right on top. When we passed the gates, we saw girls in school uniform fetching water from a mechanic pump nearby. They had to walk up the steep street to their dorms. No boys were around to help them. The lazy bastards were playing football. We stopped at a long one-storey building, the boys’ dorms, to drop of Michael’s belongings and the mattress. The place wasn’t full, but you could see that a huge number of students were sleeping in there. The room looked rather like a long hall, about thirty meters long and ten meters wide. I counted 30 double beds, so some 60 people were living in here. I didn’t know what to say. Things are just different in Ghana.

We walked on and passed something which resembled a church; that is a huge roof spanning over some kind of congregation hall. Two people were sitting in front of it hiding behind a wooden table covered by a huge pile of papers. They were both Vize-Headmasters watching over students’ inscriptions. They were there to greet new students and see to it that they were placed and being registered. The job seemed quite relaxed.

Michael had been here before and produced a huge yellow folder, a smaller pink booklet and a tiny blue paper card all bearing the school’s insignia. What ensued was a complicated and seemingly bureaucratic procedure that saw as passing through a number of offices collecting stamps, signatures and good advises.

It finally turned out that we couldn’t pay in cash. We had to leave the premises and go into town to deposit the money at the Ghana Commercial Bank. The place was packed. Apparently we were not the only ones paying school fees. Another form was filled and signed. But with Michael being under 18 years he needed the approval of a parent or guardian the form read. I can’t even guard myself, I thought, but Michael and Avickson left me no chance. I sighed and signed.

Michael had opted for the General Science section. That meant he would study eight subjects comprising Math, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Geography, English, Social Sciences and Integrated Sciences (I didn’t really get the meaning of that one). He had gotten rid of the French lessons that had troubled him in Junior Secondary School.

Back at the school, I could speak to Comfort Ofosu, the Assistant Headmaster, we had met earlier. First thing she did was ask me for some money to fly to Kenya for a conference on how to teach blind kids. I told here politely that I had seen too many conferences to sink the little money I had brought into something similar efficient.

She didn’t seem to mind and told me more about the school. The place had been built in 1957, one year before independence. The pupils had to wear a school uniform of white shirts and brown trousers. White stands for purity and brown for “mother earth that liberally gives of her bounty”. About 1400 students were on campus and the girls were easily outweighing the boys. A small portion of the students were blind. I saw some walking around campus led by little ones.

Comfort told me that Michael’s case was by no means an exemption. There were kids coming in from villages around who had to work for their fees. Quite often they would only come in for two days a week. They would spend the rest of the time working on their parents’ fields or selling petty things at the market. Many of them would drop out after some time, because they couldn’t follow the class anymore and were receiving bad marks. She had no clue about figures or percentages of children that were blocked from higher education due to financial problems. But she said that it was the vast majority.

As I had written before, the money I had brought was enough to cover school fees until September 2007. Michael was quite optimistic to get more money on his own. Nevertheless we decided to stay in contact. I also asked him to let me know about other kids that were suffering from similar problems. I have been talking about helping them with a number of people. Still, Ghana is a highly corrupt country. The last thing one should do is send money just like this. But there are some good people down here and I think we could build on this.

When all was settled, we went to the school’s cantina. All that was left was Macaroni and stew. I had plenty while Michael didn’t eat much. I guess he must have been quite nervous. He was about to spend his first night in the place that would be his home for the coming years. I wished him all the best and walked down the hill towards the school gates. Avickson was once again complaining about the big Benz cars, but I was just tired and there was no other car passing by. We took the first bus that passed and I slept all the way back home. I woke up when we entered Accra. I played my favorite game and let the images gathered throughout the last days pass by my inner eye once again. It had just been some money, I told myself. Still, I couldn’t help feeling good.

Labels: Michael

Labels: Michael