Blah Blah Blah
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 10/Feb/2011 10:13, 34 days ago
We could see that the winter was unusually cold as the plane came in to land. The fields and trees of southern England were brushed with snow as we emerged from the low cloud hanging over Gatwick. Forgetting what real cold actually feels like, I wasn’t wearing anything more than a light t-shirt to keep out the chill as we exited the plane. I shivered. It was great to be home. Our parents were there to pick us up, give us a warm welcome and deliver us to a cosy bed where we could sleep off the journey for a few hours. I drank in the view out of the window as we rushed back up towards the M25 on the glassy smooth tarmac. Everything looked so cold, so new and so foreign.It was my 30th birthday and my parents invited round uncles, aunts and cousins.“What is it like in Ghana?” was the standard question asked. Where should I start?“It is ok,” I responded. It was clear that everyone wanted more details but I couldn’t begin to describe the range of experiences, frustrations and challenges. “It is very different.”It is very different. I walked down to the shops in Caterham town and wandered around Morrisons in a dream. It was so peaceful, so organised, so smoothly operated and so pleasant. Everything was clearly labelled. No one was shouting. A child shrieked and was quickly shushed by its mother. There was soft inoffensive background music instead of raucous thumping music blaring from tinny speakers. The floor was clean and without gaping death traps. There was a small queue at the checkout so I used the self-service machine. It worked and I wasn’t surprised. The electric doors worked. There were no flickering lights. There were lots of people there, it being shortly before Christmas, but was not crowded. It was efficient. It was beautiful.The following day I went up to London on the train to see some friends. The journey was peaceful. I used one of the machines to buy my ticket. Everything was on time. Signs pointed the way at every turn. I didn’t need to ask anyone for directions. The pristine cars hummed quietly and their drivers didn’t lean on their horns. They obeyed traffic lights. The roads facilitated the flow of people and traffic in the most efficient manner to completely eliminate crowding. I met my friends, one of whom had navigated by GPS on his iphone. The pub was on the little map. He never needed to ask directions to anywhere.There was no need to talk to anyone. No wonder everything was so peaceful. It is one of the biggest differences between Ghana and England. It is not that the Ghanaians are naturally friendlier than the British or that the British are naturally reserved and impolite. There is simply no need to communicate in Britain. In Ghana, by contrast, it is impossible to survive without communication.My little sister is visiting us in Ghana at the moment on a post-Christmas break. We wanted to catch a bus from Cape Coast to Kumasi so arrived at the bus terminal and asked for a ticket. Two grumpy women peered out of the breeze-block hut and bluntly told us to wait. I asked if I should wait somewhere specific. They waved their painted nails at some plastic seats and resumed their conversation. Some bus drivers stood around so I asked if the Kumasi bus was leaving soon. They told me to wait on the plastic seats. We sat down and I asked some fellow passengers where they were travelling to. Some were Kumasi and some Accra. Goats and children were playing in the road. Some stalls were trying to outcompete themselves on how loud they can play Christian pop. The colonial Methodist church loomed above us behind a bronze statue of a white man in a pointy hat. The clock on the tower was stuck on ten past two. The terminal was getting crowded. People sat on bags and pillars. Some enterprising tro tro drivers turned up and started shouting at the crowd to take their transport instead of waiting for the regular bus. A newspaper seller shoved his selection of dirty papers in our faces. We’d interacted with more strangers than I had during two weeks in England. The crowd grew bigger and I overheard a young man asking about the queue. Was there a queue? None of the officials had mentioned it. Nothing was signposted.“No one told me there was a queue,” I said.“You should have asked,” the young man simply replied.Having driven around Ghana, I know that it is impossible to find your way without continually asking. Signposts are rarely displayed and there’s certainly no GPS.These interactions with strangers are common and necessary in Ghana. They are the only way of navigating the country. In England, such everyday encounters have been rendered obsolete and this has had an enormous effect on our culture. I walked around Caterham, London and Croydon and saw thousands of English people not talking to each other. It is not that we are rude– we just don’t need to talk. We can read where we’re going. We can find what we need on our mobile internet. We can buy items using machines and bank-cards. We keep in touch with our closed circles of friends through the internet. We do not need to waste time on people we don’t know or like. As was demonstrated by our Kumasi bus queue, communicating through talking is time consuming, often inaccurate, irritating and inefficient.These everyday interactions with strangers give Ghana its friendly and trusting quality. These interactions may even help make people more friendly and trusting. By exchanging a few words every day with your neighbours, you interact in their lives and become more community minded. Different levels of society interact far more than at home. A friend who has lived and worked in Aberdeen University for several years still struggles to understand ordinary Aberdonians– there is, after all, very little need to communicate with them. Rich people rarely interact with poor people. Liberals rarely interact with conservatives. Catholics rarely interact with Protestants. Muslims rarely interact with Christians. It breeds fear and misunderstanding between groups. If only we all needed to ask each other for directions instead of relying on our tom-toms.Ghanaians are continually meeting strangers who turn out to be friends of friends. These coincidences are so frequent that it comes as no surprise to discover the world to be a small place. We laugh at their naivety, thinking that the same might be true in England.“Oh!” the old man working in the visitor reception on the top of Mt Gemi in the Volta Region smiled as he read in the visitor book that I was from London. “There are two other people visiting today also from London. They are about your age. Maybe you know them.”We smiled at his naivety before reading down the visitor book and seeing the names of two other VSO volunteers from London.“Yes,” we laughed. “We do know those people.”The old man did not look at all surprised.