The Wild North
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 21/Oct/2010 16:28, 34 days ago
Every culture has legends and mythology, often rooted in historical fact. Part of America’s mythology is the Wild West – a period of time roughly spanning the 19th century when many of the United States’ great dramas were enacted. Californian gold rushes, civil war, cowboys, Indians, railroads and pioneers form the backdrop to countless films.Sometimes, Upper East Ghana can feel like the Wild West. There are examples of poverty, brutality, corrupt law enforcement officers and, to use a word I heard from a pastor I was talking to in a motorbike garage the other day,‘heathens’ living in the rural areas. There are also the wide open spaces, the long empty roads and the armed bandits holding up stage coaches and buses.It is a land of opportunity. Fortunes are made and lost. Big men come and go. The dream once associated with America is now being experienced in Ghana.Fifty years after being freed from British colonial yoke, Americans were still practicing environmentally unsustainable agriculture by poor small scale subsistence farmers and plantation owners satisfying the European market. The rich and developed areas of the country were all on the east coast– New York, Boston and Philadelphia. These were the areas first colonised by the Europeans and kept as the seat of government. They were considered the ‘civilised’ areas of the country by their own citizens. Being sent to the Wild West was often seen as a punishment.Similarly, agriculture in Ghana produces cash crops of cocoa and mango for the European markets whereas in the Wild North subsistence agriculturalists plough up virgin grassland. The seat of government is Osu Castle in Accra– a former British colonial sea fort in the developed, educated and ‘civilised’ south of the country. Being posted as a teacher, nurse or doctor to the wild north of Ghana is often regarded as a punishment.Indeed the north and the south of Ghana are culturally distinct. As in America, you can identify a northern Ghanaian by his dress, his name and his speech. As in America, there are similar conflicts, rivalries and jealousies. I have even heard someone speculate that if the income gap between north and south is not closed, civil disobedience and even war may be a possibility for the next generation.Christian missionaries are active in the Wild North, just as they were in the Wild West. Their bravery in adversity and frequent hypocrisy feature in many good westerns.A good motorbike in the Wild North is as valuable as a good horse was in the Wild West. As I found out to my cost, motorbike rustling is a popular crime. They drive them further into the Wild North, across the border into the badlands of Burkina Faso and Mali.New discoveries of gold in the Tongo Hills lead to unregulated and illegal rushes to the area. Sleepy villages are overrun by economic migrants trying to seek their fortunes, bringing their blasphemous ways and indecent manners. Rowdy saloons and whores move in. The government tries to regulate but the officials are all corrupt. The closed network of gold merchants in Bolga makes a tidy profit by trading with the big men from the south coast and Kumasi. Matronly guest house proprietors attract these traders by offering home cooked food and fine foreign liquor.As people pioneer further and further into the wilderness areas, the herds of wild herbivores, bison and elephant, are pushed towards extinction whilst making way for cattle. National Parks, pioneered in the Wild West, are now in the Wild North– the native inhabitants of Yellowstone in America and Mole and Kakum in Ghana have to clear out of their ancestral lands for the protection of their own environment.Outlaws are on the run with bounties on their heads. The notorious Michael“The Burger” Johnson escaped from Tamale prison earlier this year. His ‘wanted’ poster is up in every bus station and public building – 30,000GHc reward for information leading to his capture. Bounty hunters, as in the Wild West, are currently out looking for “The Burger” in the Wild North.Maybe in a hundred years, once the Wild North has been tamed, films will be made mythologising this fascinating time in Ghana’s history. Maybe that’ll give Ghana enough time to become a global superpower and to put a man on the moon. In this land of the free and home of the brave, I often get the feeling that anything may be possible.