Hatching, Matching and Dispatching - Going Home as an Expat

Open spaces, familiar smells, no mosquitoes: must be home!

One of the great things about living abroad is the sense of adventure, whether it be the new places, new cultures or personal growth.

One of the terrible things about living abroad is that one is not at home for the events great and small: births, deaths, weddings, Halloween trick-or-treating, Christmas dinner, New Year's Eve, etc.

This is all part of the chosen life. In exchange for being the crazy person who lives halfway around the world, you change your status in the minds of others. You are not there. You are out of the picture. And when you do go home, you are this week's special guest, complete with questions that you would rather not answer. "Tell me, how is that whole Ebola thing going?"

Mr. and Mrs. O have indeed gone home since they arrived so many months ago. They spent a few precious weeks spending quality time with family and friends and gorged on the things they missed most: salmon, corn on the cob, craft beer, potato chips and Netflix.

Why not write about these things? Perhaps it would be difficult to accurately convey to the reader the wonder of eating fresh strawberries. Perhaps it would betray the incredible privilege of simply hopping on a plane and visiting home at one's leisure. They are roughing it, of course.

The reasons for the visits home are the usual for expats: hatching, matching and dispatching. That is to say, births, weddings and funerals.

A good reason to go home.

The first visit was planned around summer holidays, but also a close friend's wedding, which allowed for the family to feel part of home and see lots of family and friends, including quality time with the grandparents. Yet for every wonderful wedding attended, the family has missed two and will probably miss a few more. Again, a price of the life abroad.

A not-so-good reason to go home.

The second visit was more unexpected and was for a family funeral. In this case, Mr. O still got to feel part of home and see lots of family and friends - yet for the most tragic of reasons. And there might be more missed. This too, comes with the territory.

Friends and family of Mr. and Mrs. O have also given notice that they will soon be having babies. However, it will be a while before they can see the little ones, so they will simply have to experience it virtually.

That being said, the ability to speak to a dying loved one by phone or video call and to fly home to be with family is a privilege. Once upon a time, people sailed for weeks on end to live miserable lives in a completely alien place and they would find out of a loved one's passing by letter months later. And that was it. Now, one can check on any of their friends on Facebook and see photos and videos of newborns and weddings, among a thousand other life events, both consequential and inconsequential.

It is now approaching the Christmas season, which expats seem to engage in one of two ways: 1) spend serious money and energy to go home for the holidays to be with family for a traditional Christmas in cold weather, or 2) go somewhere to completely forget about home, usually with a beach.

This year, the family has decided that with all of the recent travel home, they will be going for option 2 with like-minded friends eager for a little escapism.

That Time in Cape Town (The Revenge)

That's more like it.

A public park, complete with Vootrekker jungle gym.

The guide/ex-prisoner shows Robben Island.

Several months after the unexpected medical detour on the way to South Africa, Mr. and Mrs. O were ready to exact their revenge.Why the obsession with Cape Town? In short, it is not Africa. This is where expats tired of life in high-walled, overcrowded and polluted cities go for a break (Johannesburg included). It is practically a rite of passage for many. From the stories, it sounds like the Happiest Place on Earth. (The open spaces! The seaside! The sidewalks! The stores! The restaurants! The food! The wine! The potable water! etc)

After many months in Ghana, Cape Town is indeed like stepping into a dreamland. It is stunningly gorgeous, with the backdrop of Table Mountain, the ocean, the greenery, it makes one understand why the Dutch decided to make a home and why Afrikaaners went to atrocious lengths to hold onto it for themselves for 400 years.

For the family, it meant staying in a quality hotel where everything worked and no detail was overlooked, popping out every morning for a coffee and pastry, followed by a walk in the park and a trip to a memorable and well-executed tourist site that accommodates children (Cape Town Kids has a massive list of things to do).

Little Miss in the "Nemo" tank.

And indeed, there were many places to see. Just a few highlights:

• The V&A Waterfront: featuring seaside shopping, restaurants and other toursity places like the top-notch Two Oceans Aquarium.
• The Cape of Good Hope: a drive down to the cape is well worth it, including cliffside roads, a national park, and visiting the penguins at Boulder Beach.
• Table Mountain: the iconic backdrop to the city also has a cableway to the summit (weather permitting) and the views are much more panoramic than a humble blog can handle.  
• Robben Island Museum: the infamous island prison that housed Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners, which is a short boat ride from Cape Town and a sobering place to visit.
• Woolworth's: not actually a tourist site, but for a Ghana resident, walking into a store to buy a gallon of fresh organic milk and local raspberries is an experience in itself.
• World of Birds: no time to drive out of town for a safari? Not going to shell out for your pre-schooler? This place has over 3,000 birds and various mammals and reptiles, including an enclosure to feed squirrel monkeys, which alone was worth the price of admission.

  

  Enjoying the views down the Cape.

  
  

There is a darker side to Cape Town as well: the effects of apartheid are still quite strong, including the legacy of enforced segregation, which means blacks mostly live in the under-developed outskirts, while the whites have the prime real estate downtown and by the sea. Security bars are everywhere and the city has been given the nickname "Rape Town" for good reason.

To get a sense of the other side of Cape Town, Mr. O took a Township Tour, which sheds some light on the non-touristy side of the city, including Langa and Gugulethu. While blacks are not required to live in them, townships are for many the only affordable option. While they do not have the physical poverty common in Ghana, there is a spiritual poverty, with astronomical rates of HIV, alcoholism, drug abuse and unemployment.

Oh hello there. Welcome to my beach.

As scary as they sound, they are also communities and municipalities (some in the hundreds of thousands). Life in the townships is undoubtedly rough, but there are also those who are working to improve life, and while tours like these are derided by many as poverty tourism, participants unanimously praise it as giving a window into an area ignored by outsiders and building intercultural understanding.

Life on the other side of Table Mountain.

After seeing both sides, there was one last obligatory stop: the supermarket. At the nearby Pick and Pay, the family stocked up on essentials of all kinds: organic fair trade coffee, instant oatmeal, fruit snacks, baking ingredients, medical supplies and other goodies. Thus, the family made sure they used all of their allotted weight on their trip back to Accra and had a happy ending to the trip.

Wedding Bells

"Sorry, I've never been to one of these weddings before."

"Ghanaian?"
"No, Presbyterian."

In two visits and almost two years, Mr. O was rather ashamed that he had never been to a local wedding. When a coworker graciously invited the office to her impending nuptuals, he jumped at the chance.

What's a wedding without a personal musician?

In Ghana, much of the social calendar revolves around three events: births, weddings and funerals. The outdooring of a newborn is rather exciting for the community, much like a baptism. The pomp and circumstance of a wedding is rivaled only by the incredible lengths that a family will go towards to send off their dearly departed. A "proper" funeral comes at the end of a month-long process including full-colour homecoming advertisements, rituals (Christian/Islamic and indigenous) and the deceased is sent off in a massive ceremony (mournful or joyful, depending on the age and social status) with lots of food, fine clothing, colourful decorations and always a sound system blasting upbeat pop tunes, perhaps to alert St. Peter of a new arrival. At the end is a massive mortuary and party bill that families will go into serious debt over, lest they look like they did not really care about their relatives deceased and living. Thus, there is a lot of money to be made in the local industries of hatching, matching and dispatching.

Let's have a look at what we are getting ourselves into.

Thus a wedding seems a bit less daunting of a proposition for an obruni. Mr. O joined a number of colleagues made the journey to nearby city of Koforidua. Perhaps it was the fresh rains greening the surrounding hills and the blue skies over the colonial-era buildings, but the place had a certain charm about it. Also, it appeared to be kept very neat and tidy for its size. (Editorial note: expat residents will not corroborate this opinion.)

The wedding itself was pleasant. The service was held in a Presbyterian hall and the stage featured not only the usual wedding setup, but a total of THIRTEEN pastors and prophets. Thankfully, there was only one emcee and one keynote sermon that went for about 45 minutes and consisted of the classic African subjects of "Why don't young people respect marriage and tradition?" and "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve".

Their moves are not found in the Roman Catholic missal.

Livening up the service was a killer church choir that had been bussed in from Winneba. Between the pastors, prophets and choir, it seemed like the hosts were quite a power couple. There was also a revered traditional musician (minstrel?) that followed the couple down the aisle. The foreigners occupied a privileged space in the audience, up front next to the chiefs (two) and mothers and aunties (too many). After the deal was sealed, the aunties in the front spontaneously got up and had a revival-style dance party in front of the altar. 

Need snappy logistics in Ghana? Hire a wedding planner.

The ceremony clocked in around three hours - some noted that Presby weddings are long even by local standards. The ensuing photos, rejigging of the hall and reception were surprisingly short for westerners who are used to marathon events going into the wee hours. There was a buffet dinner served and a few words of thanks, but no big speeches or organized dancing. The group toasted with sparkling juice and the whole thing was wrapped up by 5, as the happily-married couple sent the group off.

Traffic is Like Jazz

"Traffic in Ghana is kinda like jazz. You're all moving to your own beat, improvising, trying new things. And somehow it works." 

Recently, a colleague said to Mrs. O. This is a fairly mild assessment, but it does work.

In Ghana, driving is not for the faint of heart. Where does one begin?

It gets a little hectic at rush hour. Enjoy the view.

THE ROADS

The road less traveled: 4x4 recommended.

In Accra, all of downtown is paved, but this is the exception. For much of the country, only main roads between towns of significance are paved. So if your town is not on the way to somewhere important, you probably travel by dirt road, which washes out in the rainy season. If you are in a larger town, most of the main roads are paved - and they probably still wash out in the rainy season, leaving deep potholes that lead to a dramatic dance when vehicles try to negotiate. Even in the capital, a vehicle with decent clearance is recommended.

Some roads are just bizarre: a stretch of Independence Avenue between Flagstaff House and 37 Military Station is fully paved, but soft enough that it has developed ruts that are relatively harmless (traffic moves slowly here) but looks rather comical, as the painted lines on the road zigzag in this section.

THE VEHICLES
All vehicles in Ghana are imported (with one exception) and almost all of these are second-hand. And a vehicle will be driven until it is physically unable to to function as a means of conveyance. AND for Ghanaians a vehicle will not be repaired until actually broken down. No tune-ups, no "I hear a weird noise, let's take it to the garage to check." Doing the math, this means there are a lot of old rickety and beat-up vehicles out there and a statistically significant number of deathtraps. These take a variety of forms:

A handyman's dream.

-Private vehicles are fairly common, but again, depend greatly on the status of the owner. Accra has plenty of twenty-year old Corollas poking by, but also a few Porches and Bugattis. Sport Utility Vehicles are quite common, both for the safety of a larger vehicle and the ability to negotiate all sorts of terrain (thus having more "utility" than in the North American suburbs). There are a lot of cars on the road - and with a growing population and economy, more people are deciding that they'll look better sitting in their own vehicle than like some shmuck riding transit.

-Taxis are omnipresent and comprise all sorts of cars, with the distinctive yellow shoulders. One will often find them driving slowly and impeding traffic, as they are hunting for a potential fare. Or one will find them driving slowly as they are filled with a family of five on their way to church and also bringing a shipment of yams in the trunk. 90% of taxi drivers show little regard for the rules of the road and their own mortality.

That's probably up to code.

-Tro tros are ubiquitous in Ghana. These privately-owned transport vehicles ply a myriad of routes around and between towns, with their driver swerving in and out of lanes while their mates man the sliding side door and yell out their destination ("Madina, Madina!" "Labadi, Labadi!"), packing in people by the dozen as they go. Where a public transport system should be, tro tros have filled the void (as they have elsewhere, known as dala dalas, danfos, matataus, maxi-taxis).

-Transport trucks are quite common and by the looks of them, are best avoided. They always seem to be filled to the brim with whatever they are carrying and as if an important part is going to fall off at any moment. Due to their poor condition and heavy loads, they are often poking along at unbelievably low speeds, if not pulled over for repairs.

-Motorcycles (or motos) obey no laws but those of physics, weaving in and out of lanes, hopping on sidewalks and driving between vehicles all the way through traffic jams. In Accra, they also are the common mode of transport for machete-wielding thieves looking to steal a purse or phone and make a quick getaway. In the poorer North, they are the main way to get around and entire families might be riding on one. Three-wheeled Chinese "Moto Kings" are becoming increasingly popular as well.

THE DRIVERS

Sound advice.

From timid young learners to reckless daredevils, there is a wide spectrum of drivers on Ghanaian roads. Many will bribe to get their license (for those who have one), which adds up to a lot of people on the road in whose abilities one should have no faith in whatsoever. Consequently, the driver fatality rate is very high.

Coming from the highly-regulated driving environment of the developed world, it takes some time to adjust to local driving conditions. However, Mr. O has been noted (by Mrs. O) to have grown fairly aggressive as a driver. While practicing defensive driving for the safety of his family,  he also practices offensive driving to avoid being stuck in traffic for hours on end, using his vehicle's size when needed. This means elbows up in the traffic circle, abruptly changing lanes to avoid poorly-parked tro tros and impromptu off-roading to cut around ridiculous traffic jams in general. When returning home, Mr. O will find his ability to talk himself our of a traffic ticket will be severely tested. ("Oh chale, was that an illegal turn on to a one-way street? Sorry-o! Next time!")

THE (LACK OF) TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT
All of this is very loosely enforced. As Jack Sparrow would say, the traffic laws are more "guidelines". The lights are obeyed, although in the case of a malfunction, instead of blinking yellow they simply shut down, leading to a Darwinian push of traffic in multiple directions.

The road signs are also mostly suggestions, except for ones warning of speed bumps, which are often jarring for even the smoothest ride. A friend has designed a helpful list of traffic signs to help navigate Ghana's roads.

This seems excessive for a traffic stop.

The largest hazard by far is the police. In the city, they are positioned at key roundabouts and intersections, ostensibly to keep traffic flowing at peak periods, but it is difficult to see how an entire truck of them parked on a corner listening to the radio achieves this goal. The police are often noted for their ubiquitous blue camouflage barreling down the road with sirens blaring for an imaginary emergency, but occasionally one is in the intersection in a shiny white coat, with matching gloves and pith helmet. (Colonial? Yes. Snappy? You bet.)

When the police do see something amiss, they will wave you to the roadside and inform you that you have committed an infraction (real or imagined - Mr. O has committed both). The law stipulates that the officer write the offender a notice, with a fine to be paid later. But who has such fancy things as ticket books? Not the burly guy who pulled you over. He would much prefer that you unlock your door (don't), let him in the vehicle (really, don't) and drive him to the police station to sort things out (seriously, bad idea). Or a little dash/coffee money/pre-Christmas bonus could let him know that you respect the law and have learned your lesson. There are a thousand combinations to this routine.

All the fun of this cat-and-mouse game is lost when traveling between towns. Anyone driving on a major road will have to slow down every 20km or so for a police barrier checkpoint. What are they checking? Who knows. But God forbid your vehicle look a little unsteady, have expired stickers or your driver look impressionable, because there is often an informal toll or penalty to be paid for the price of law and order.

All of this makes for an intimidating experience. But it all needs to be put into perspective: this is how an entire country (and much of the world) works. One of Mr. O's colleagues recently remarked, "Yeah, it's not great, but way better than Mumbai."

A Year Later, Chale

High Street abuzz with obrunis and bibinis.

This past weekend the family went for a little street art at the Chale Wote festival in James Town, one of the oldest parts of Accra. The whole family piled in and brought friends with them - apparently Mr. and Mrs. O have the reputation of being somewhat adventurous and pathfinding for the expat set.

Some of the pop-up murals produced during the weekend.

The festival did not disappoint: it is put on for Ghanaians, by Ghanaians and shows not only the rich heritage and culture of the Ga people (Accra's original inhabitants) but also the creativity and forward thinking artistry that exists in the city. Visitors were treated to art installation after art installation on the theme of Death: An Eternal Dream Into Limitless Rebirth. From colourful murals to funeral processions, the festival was a feast for the eyes.

Why yes, that is a wall of sewage on the cliffside.

Also, as a slum, James Town is also a feast for the nose: sanitation is a massive problem in the area and some of the wayward detritus washing up on Ghana's beaches originates from this part of town. Newly-arrived friends were quite taken aback by the smells, but after being in Accra for such a long time, the family is so much at home that they have simply stopped noticing when it gets funky. 

In any case, a short visit to see friends producing artistic Bolga baskets turned into a day exploring the area and taking in the experience. Part of that experience was Little Miss getting regularly mobbed by James Town children (and sometimes adults) who were constantly touching her skin and hair. It is unclear what they expected, but perhaps there could be a Touch The Obruni installation next year? Little Miss, although quite shy, was a good sport and did have fun playing with Ghanaians when not overwhelmed. Kids, of course, can be kids.

Funeral procession of plastic waste.

Little Miss makes a friend.

If any of this rings any bells to readers, this is indeed not the first time that the family has been to this annual festival. In fact, last weekend was their one-year anniversary in Ghana.

In addition to not noticing the smells and minding the mobs of children, Mr. and Mrs. O have noticed that they have indeed been feeling "at home" lately. Things have become routine, but never dull. While the travel has slowed down somewhat, going out at night with friends is a more common occurrence and they are starting to know "the scene" in Accra. Mr. O was particularly excited in the run-up to Chale Wote, knowing some of the artists and anticipating the excitement of the festival. If all goes well, the family might even be around for Chale Wote 2015 - and is already counting the days.

Flamenco dancing.

Bolga Baskets reimagined.

"Social Reality" by Ibrahim Mahama

Life and Death in full colour.

Baba the Kebab Guy

Where the magic happens.

Down the street from Mr. and Mrs. O's residence is a cluster of stalls catering to a mix of construction workers, students, day-laborers and the more adventurous expats. Some are like mini-convenience stores, whilst others sell the usual local staples of fufu, banku and tilapia. Some are semi-permanent metal and wooden structures while others are basically a folded table and an umbrella, coming down at night and avoiding any messy taxation issues - namely, the propensity of vendors to not pay them - and ensuing demolitions by the Accra Metropolitan Authority, which can be quite devastating for a micro-entrepreneur.

One business of note is Baba the Kebab Guy. Baba hails from Bolgatanga in the Upper East and has brought his specialty down south wih him. For reasons that perplex obrunis, kebab vendors are fairly scarce in Accra - but a great kebab is good any time of the day. For 50 cents, one can get a stick of beef or sausage, coated in suya spice and with a bit of onion and green pepper for flavour. So if Baba is not sold out by the time Mr. O returns from work, everyone gets a nice snack, with some fried yam or sweet potato from the lady the next stall over. The combo is fantastic.

Baba is no friend of The Man.

As you can see from the crude red paint on his sign, Baba is not a diligent taxpayer in the eyes of the AMA. Part of this is due to the byzantine bureaucratic structure for small business owners to follow and part of this is him trying to stretch his limited cedis in a city of inflated costs.

Legal troubles aside, one expects that Baba will be selling his kebabs for a long time to come.

If you are asking, yes, Baba will cater your party. A spicy beef kebab pairs well with a frosty Club lager, which will set you back about $2. And he apparently will cook goat or guinea fowl by request. Order today!

A Brief Musical Interlude

As much as Mr. and Mrs. O would like to identify with it, they are most definitely a step removed from the average Accra resident, for whom life is not all manicured gardens, pool parties and weekends at the beach. But for those who would like a colourful window into the everyday hustle of Ghanaian life (accompanied by an infectious beat and impeccable flow), have a listen to "Someway Bi" by M.anifest. If Accra had a theme song, this would be it.

(One day, there will need to be a proper introduction to dear readers to the rich musical history of Ghana. In the meantime, enjoy.)