April Fool
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
Ghanaians can be so gullible. Today being April Fool’s Day, it gives the opportunity to expose this gullibility to the maximum. A local radio station announced that a UFO landed in their area and that an eight headed creature emerged – three heads close-shaved, one head bald and four heads with rasta-style dreadlocks. The alien, the radio broadcaster announced, was being held at the radio station indefinitely. Hundreds of people flocked to the radio station building, hoping to see the strange eight-headed creature. “Aliens have never visited Ghana before”, a member of the crowd correctly noted.Last year, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, a rumour started that a similar earthquake is due to hit Ghana on a particular day. With the widespread use of mobile phones, the rumour quickly spread throughout the country. On the day in question, few people left their houses. People bought up fuel and other supplies. Churches and mosques were full of people praying for mercy. Sadly, no one thought to inform me or Laura. The first we knew was when we went to work and found offices empty. Thankfully, the earthquake never struck– probably because Ghana’s nearest major fault line is nowhere near Ghana.I was talking with a former VSO science teacher who told me that, for a prank, he taught his senior high school science class that salt was mined hundreds of miles underground by trolls who bring it to the surface on little trains to sell. This followed his teaching of solubility. The students dutifully copied the notes, complete with diagram including trolls, and went away to study. It was two weeks later that a single student came to the teacher and told him that he could find no reference to trolls in the text books.I have just finished an eight-day workshop for primary and junior high school science teachers during which I have focussed on the scientific method. I have been trying to show how science is a procedure– an exploratory process where questions are asked, experiments are run and conclusions drawn. This is totally at odds with how science is taught in Ghana where the emphasis is on fact learning. Definitions are rote-learned and never questioned, even when there is no understanding whatsoever. If the teacher tells you something, you believe it. Science, as with anything else a Ghanaian is taught, is not considered an application of logic but a matter of faith. It is, as I have been told on many occasions, the “white man’s juju”.The belief in witches, magic and superstition in general is another product of this gullibility. Following a car accident involving a senior minister returning from Bawku, a pastor in Accra said that he had warned the minister not to visit the area. The accident was an act of God, the pastor said.There is, however, something endearingly innocent and trusting about Ghanaians. The irony and cynicism so common in Britain is lacking here. Ghanaians happily believe that anything and everything is possible– even that aliens might choose to land on their radio station building. The Ghanaian beliefs in everyday miracles leaves people open to dream that the impossible might just happen. The lottery is hugely popular – there’s a kiosk on every street corner. Everyone’s next big business idea willmake them a millionaire – from importing broken laptops to becoming Bolgatanga’s biggest musical sensation, Ghanaians are full of unlikely, fantastical and frankly gullible money-making enterprises. The fatalistic hope that things might just get better tomorrow spills into the national psyche –contrasting with the sceptical British need for practicalities, evidence and suspicion.It was this audacity of hope that led 19th century Britain to achieve the seemingly impossible– to link the world by telegraph, to walk to the poles, to conquer the planet. A similar naivety led 20th century America to achieve the seemingly impossible – to carve railways through mountains, to fly in an aeroplane, to go to the moon. Big dreams have no room for cynicism and there’s surprisingly little cynicism to be found amongst the Africans I have met.Perhaps we in Europe need to be a little more gullible.