I am back from my first time in Africa

Arburi, Ghana

I have some things to say about my three-week visit to Ghana, my first time to what we call a developing country, which is where most of the people in the world live:

It’s trite, but people really live the same way wherever they are. They wake, they bathe, they eat and they go off to school, work or some place and make their way home, where they make meals and rest or recreate and do it over again the next day. Everyone needs a place to sleep, clothes, shoes, transportation and wholesome, nutritious food, and to have a place in society. This might seem obvious but it should not be taken for granted. Again, it’s a cliche, but we really are more alike than different.

But the details vary, and they matter.

Cocoa pods on a cocoa tree. Cocoa remains a major agricultural product of Ghana.

Ghanaians seem to sweep daily first thing, whereas Americans clean later in the day or weekly or not at all. Americans value external cleanliness and maintenance; Ghanaians value the internal more. Also, because the days are the same length all year less than a degree north of the equator, Ghanaians get going early. They’re on their way by 7 a.m., or earlier. I suppose this is true in much of the United States, too, but it seemed ingrained in everyone there.

It’s nice that the sun comes up by 5:45 or so every day but it would be a drag that it’s dark by 6:30 every day of the year. I appreciate summer and daylight saving time more now. Same for the variability of the seasons in the temperate latitudes.

Clean air is precious. Dusty, smokey, putrid air is bad and should not be subjected on anyone, but I know it has been for millennia and will be for the foreseeable future. I think this is overlooked too often in discussions of climate change and the developing world. I’m all for less reliance on fossil fuels and reducing sprawl as good for the environment, but I was reminded that what is good for the environment is generally good for human beings, too.

When institutions, be they government, religious, economic or social, begin to exist primarily to keep existing, they may do more harm than good and should be reduced in size and number or abolished. But the good they do may not be obvious, especially to outsiders, and could outweigh what is seen from the outside as harm, or at least balance it. The art is judging where the balance is. Also, it’s not for outsiders to find the balance.

Citizens of nominally democratic countries increasingly believe government and politics do little if anything to actually help the great mass of the people and instead serve mainly themselves. They see national elections as mostly irrelevant to their daily lives and personal futures.

A march in Accra led by the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations, which seeks improved enforcement of the country's 10-year-old law on rights of people with disabilities.

While they may identify with a particular political party, they see these parties as mostly just an apparatus for members to advance themselves and one another, not as a means to a truly greater good. This is true even where government actually does a respectable job day to day carrying out public functions like maintaining and building infrastructure, promoting and protecting public health, regulating commerce to mitigate the negative parts of free enterprise and capitalism, ensuring children get a basic education so they have hope of functioning as adult citizens, enforcing order and criminal law, and promoting a measure of shared national identity and civic cohesion.

DeLuxy has an advertising campaign that uses pride in democracy and national unity to promote its paint.

People aren’t reading and buying newspapers much anymore. But they like them and want them around just the same. Go figure.

People like TV whether it’s good or awful. Men will watch sports and women will watch telenovelas and beauty pageants. I am not endorsing or condemning any of this and admit there are exceptions.

Africa may be where the two biggest economies of the world compete through the rest of the 21st century, and so far, China’s prospects are looking better than the United States’. While most of the cars and trucks I saw on the roads, whether private vehicles, taxis, tro-tros or commercial cargo-hauling trucks, were Japanese or Korean and there were a few Fords and some European GM brands (Opel, mainly and a weird number of Vibes), I saw no American-nameplate dealerships on what I take to be Accra’s new-car mile. I did, however, see dealerships for Tata of India and for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Czech brands.

Meanwhile, I saw people who look East Asian all over and saw ads for flights to Guangzhou as well as BWI and London. A consumer-product brand almost as ubiquitous as Coke and Pepsi was Vitamilk, which is from Thailand. And one of the biggest middle-class housing developments -- actually, the only one -- I ran across is the work of Chinese investors. My impression is highly superficial but from what I saw, it seemed attuned to to what the Ghanaian and greater Accra market wants: An attractive but affordable stand-alone home not too far from the city but accessible to the beach and countryside. That sounds familiar.

Good roads should never be taken for granted. Nor should good public transportation.

Tro tros show how free enterprise can fill a need. I doubt they’d work here but wish someone in Utica would give it a try. Somewhere in the Mohawk Valley there must be a few people brave, smart and ambitious (or desperate) enough to be a tro tro mate.

A tro tro in greater Accra.

Chinese business people might have an advantage over Americans in Ghana because the Chinese, I suspect, are more comfortable with relationship-building and the value of family and tribal and hometown ties. Americans can certainly learn this but I suspect it’s still second-nature to most Chinese. I acknowledge I am making an irresponsibly superficial judgment here but it’s also an honest observation.

The Islamic call to prayer is a starkly beautiful sound, especially at dawn.

Charismatic Christian worship is joyful but not what I call beautiful. This is purely an aesthetic judgement on my part.

As a generality, the human psyche requires familiarity. I never understood so clearly why immigrants tend to converge once in a new place. Whether regarding foods, language (including dialects, idioms and accents), ways of greeting and the sense of one’s place socially, being an outsider perpetually is tiring and difficult, whether for a few weeks as a visitor or on a permanent basis. Being around people who share your ways of being in the world, whether all the time or in brief but reliable respites, is crucial to long-term coping in unfamiliar environments. The United States, and I presume places like Canada and Europe, must be bewildering to Ghanaians and West Africans. There are just so many subtle and small but significant differences in daily customs and ways of life and social norms. I now greatly admire those who navigate here temporarily and especially long-term. I also now understand why they tend to seek out people from home. One needs the occasional little island of familiarity when navigating the constant flow of customs and habits.

If I had to live in either a rural African village of mud-brick huts or a violent, economically depressed American inner-city neighborhood or abandoned and boarded-up rural town, I’m not sure which I’d pick. If I got a life-threatening illness, I suppose I'd rather be in the U.S. -- though I'd dread paying for it -- but suspect that’s the only advantage.

From a village near Kasoa

It’s great that almost everyone in Ghana speaks some English, but that doesn’t mean you will be able to instantly and effectively communicate with anyone. It’s not most people’s first language, and accents and idioms are as as important to language as vocabulary, grammar and syntax.

Okra -- or okro -- and boiled peanuts are good wherever you find them.

A view from the Sweet Mother Eco Resort

The Volta River from the Afrikiko Riverfront Resort.