Manu's pipedreams

Wrap-around porch

2011-11-07T11:24:00.009Z

Today is wrap-around porch day at House-of-Mine. I love to delve into technicalities. I'm a details person, which is sort of ironic considering how clumsy and messy I am. Anyway, in my mind's eye, I love things to be "just so" and will do endless research on the tiniest detail, just to know exactly what it's all about, how it works, and whether it suits my purpose exactly.

After spending months figuring out the ideal nest or, rather, concomitantly, I decided that I wanted a (fully mosquito-netted) wrap-around porch: an indoors-outdoors kind of transitional space where I can enjoy the breeze and have my meals, keep a couple of dogs at night, and even work when the room is too stuffy or boring.

It will also serve another purpose: I've always wanted to use compressed stabilised earth blocks to build my house and, although online sources tell me that, if done properly, it's as sturdy as cement blocks, locals consider it as not durable. I suspect both sources are right: "done properly" is the issue. I fully intend to supervise closely and give specific instructions for the block-making stage, but I won't be around 24/7 and chances are that somewhere along the line, the block-makers will take a few liberties with the proper specifications. I therefore have to make provisions for it and protect the walls against the elements. Enter the wrap-around porch.

Because I like simple designs, I think what I would feel most comfortable with is just an overhanging roof held by some type of pillars.

In terms of depth, I think something in the region of 2.50-3.00m (98-118 in) would be ideal. Enough to have outside sitting, dining, and working spaces when the weather allows it. Enough, too, behind the kitchen and bathroom area, to have a few clothes lines where the laundry would be protected against sudden downpours.

What I now need to ascertain is how much more foundation work will be needed. This will all have to be factored in to decide whether the porch will be built immediately, or later on. This is a question for an architect, no doubt, but I'll keep looking into it in the meantime...

My shack in an orchard

2011-11-03T20:39:00.003Z

Did I tell you I'm getting ready to move? I know I did. After 11 years living in big houses, really too big for my needs, discouragingly so when it comes to sweeping, mopping, dusting, cleaning, etc., I've decided to downsize. Not because it's fashionable, but because it's really the only thing that makes sense to me right now and in the foreseeable future.

Kids are gone, and this -my 21st move- will be handled as if it were to be my last move. Among other things, it means that I need a place that is designed so that I will feel comfortable living in it, and maintaining it, growing older. Space will be outdoors: I intend to have a netted wraparound porch and, of course, the land itself is spacious. Indoors, it will be functional, with an emphasis on what really matters to me (the kitchen, mainly), rather than on conforming to an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all plan which, even if socially "right", won't feel comfortable to me. The experience acquired with my 20 previous moves, and apartments/houses, taught me what works, and what doesn't, with me. I'm therefore not only a highly experimented mover, but also what you could call a highly experimented dweller: I've lived in so many places, and I know exactly what I liked, or didn't like, in each of them.

Having lived in Paris, France, for 13 years, I know a lot about small lodgings. I won't go to that extreme, but I will make good use of space-saving tips and tricks learned in Europe. My (for now) final plan is an 80sq m/861sq ft abode, with the kitchen/dining area taking up about one third of the total. I'm not saying that's how a house should be. It's what works for me.

Here is the plan I came up with, after much pondering:

It is a bit coarse, it was my first time using this little free software (Sweet home 3D) but it gives a general idea of what I think I'll be comfortable with.

Interestingly enough, from the time I started drawing the plan to the point where I felt satisfied with what I had, I'd downsized from a 2-bedroom to an all-in-one room plan. No frustration involved. I rather felt right; free; on the way to an uncluttered life and environment. Downsizing can be enjoyable!

Getting ready to move

2011-11-01T08:41:00.006Z

When? September 2012, hopefully. Why a post about now? Because this move, the 21st in my life, will be (1) somewhat radical, although it's become difficult for me to say what is radical and what is not, considering my rather unusual life; (2) hopefully one of my last, if not the last one.

Wait a minute... I never thought I'd ever say "my last move". Am I growing old or what?

Now to the where, why, and how.

Where: Baboonland is still in the GAR (Greater Accra Region), but about 50km from Accra. I acquired a comfortably large piece of land where I intend to erect a small house amid a lot of fruit trees. My shack in an orchard. Does it sound like a dream?

Why: Baboonland, because I love the area. I've loved it for more than 10 years. When I saw an opportunity to acquire land there, I jumped on it. It was a bit of a gamble, considering how land deals go in Ghana and, as far as I know, mostly everywhere in Africa, since I was the first to sign up on a new programme. I wanted unspoiled land, and although I'll welcome neighbours sometime in the future (read: when I grow older and dependent), I wanted to be able to enjoy the quiet for a few more years, before everybody else builds on their plots and move in. I'll still enjoy privacy, since my property covers a whole block. Fortunately, everything went smoothly with the purchase and I'm now ready to start building.

How: Like a trip, part of the excitement of moving to a new place resides in the planning itself. I've been researching building techniques, drawing endless plans, etc. for months. Years. I want something small. No sprawling building, no empty, dust-gathering rooms, no inefficient corridors and other wastes of space. Small is beautiful, they say. More to the point, small will make it easier to maintain myself. Having lived 13 years in Paris, I know all about cramped spaces. While I don't plan on living in a "cramped" space, I fully intend to make rational use of whatever space I decide to have, keeping in mind that the overall impression I want to achieve is that of a weekend/vacation place in an orchard. I've now come up with a very trim plan for a 2-bedroom house. Although small when seen from the outside, the absence of corridors and other space-wasters allows for relative spaciousness inside.

I've pondered on the building technique for some time too. Ideally, I would like compressed stabilised earth blocks. The idea is to use something like what was developed at Auroville, India. I know of similar techniques being in use here in Ghana. I'm now looking for a building company able and willing to build for me.

This is how I'm getting ready in the grand scheme of things. There are smaller ways too: moving to a smaller house than those I have lived in for the last 11 years will require some adjustment. I've started rearranging my current space so that everything fits nicely in two bedrooms and a sitting room. Frankly, when I'm alone (that is, 85% of the time), I don't even open the doors to the other rooms! Now I'm just getting more systematic about it, taking in 2 rooms what I really need, and sorting out the rest between what I'll keep in a store-room (as little as possible) and what I'll dispose of. It is my hope that giving this downsizing exercise an early start, I'll have more items on the I-won't-use-it-again-so-let's-get-rid-of-it list than on the let's-keep-it-for-the-time-being list. It's all great fun! and my house here looks better already. I've always liked to travel light, and enjoy downsizing and getting rid of the clutter.

An exercise in speculation

2010-07-28T12:05:00.000Z

Having been paid for the last 20+ years to read the fine print in big contracts, this writer believes she has a fairly good grasp of how they are written and of the different loopholes less-than-honest negotiators can exploit for their own interests.

Although people from every country of the world could find similarities with contracts that made the headlines in their own motherland, this write-up is by no means intended to vilify anybody or any specific country without proof. Indeed, we don't have any proof and would only like to attract the attention of the general public to risks of unpatriotic behaviour embedded in such big contracts.

Let's take, for example, the theoretical example of a relatively small country ordering several aircraft; contracting with a foreign security company to rid itself of the drug trafficking menace; buying state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to better monitor telephone usage; contracting the building of tens of thousands of houses; or building a monorail.

The theoretical careful reader of these news, having at heart to educate him/herself as much as possible on the affairs of his/her country, would have researched the foreign contractors and established that they were nonexistent; created a mere few days before the deal was discussed; without any identifiable track record of prior achievements; or so seriously indebted that their continued existence would be a matter of concern.

This theoretical careful reader would wonder whether the relatively small country officials did even ten minutes research into the foreign contractors to ascertain the feasibility of the contracts. Surely, a company that doesn't exist, or was formed three days before the deal, or that is crippled by debt would find it difficult to perform, wouldn't it? Surely, that much would be obvious to the least educated person, let alone high government officials, wouldn't it?

Like yours truly, this theoretical careful reader has been reading every single word of thousands of contracts and agreements over a 20-year span and knows a bit about the terms of conditions usually included in such instruments.

Considering the most plausible answers to this theoretical careful reader's above-mentioned questions, the next question would be: why sign anything if you know or suspect the contract can't possibly be performed?

There comes the loophole we alluded to earlier on. It's very boilerplate wording, very neat, and shouldn't be seen as anything sinister if the signatories' intentions were pure. Our experience is that whenever a deal is struck, and in order to secure the order for the contractor who will have spent money to put up a proposal, then will have to spend more to hire extra workforce and, generally speaking, make provisions to begin performance at the appointed date, all contracts include a provision which in effect says that if, at this point, you renege on your word or for any reason rescind your commitment to this agreement, you will owe the supplier penalties to cover their expenses and general inconvenience. These penalties are often a percentage of the contract price. The higher the price, the higher the penalty.

And in this theoretical string of seemingly senseless and impossible deals, what if the officials were signing in full knowledge of their co-contractors' dubious history or prospects? What if they even were in cahoots with them to share the spoils once the deals reach the headlines, there is public outcry, and the Parliament refuses to confirm the deals or rescinds them? What if pocketing a percentage of these penalties were the main motivation behind these so-called miracle deals (after a few weeks in the limelight and self-aggrandizement)?

Although this is all purely theoretical, the concerned, careful citizen may want to think about it and ask their government to provide verifiable background information on all the contractors entrusted with helping to build their country's development. Although nobody in their right mind would hope this theory to prove true, the concerned citizens of any country of the world would certainly do a service to the motherland by demanding that the standards of disclosure be improved.

Of the relevance of school teachings

2010-04-24T08:22:00.007Z

One thing that strikes me as odd is that most students seem to memorise lessons just to get a "pass" mark at the next test and then hurry to forget all about the notions learned, instead of finding practical uses for them in their daily lives.

Although I didn't enjoy my years of studying management for various reasons, I did grab a few notions I keep using to this day and made them so much part of my everyday reasoning that I seldom stop and think "hey, that useful bit? I learned it formally in school 20+ years ago and see how it comes handy now again!"

Now that I hear a lot about the relevance of what is taught (or rather, the lack of it) in schools everywhere and in Ghana in particular, I've decided to give it a serious and organised thought and pick at the most useful habits, ways of analysing a problem and dealing with everyday situations I can trace back to what was, I can assure you, a very dull period of my life. I intend to write a series of posts which I hope will help give students motivation to look beyond the next test and the grades they need to get a "pass" in the subjects they're studying to detect what materials have the potential of being lifelong props for their whole thought system.

The last two posts (First come, first served and Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts) are the first in this series. Please keep coming to this blog and see what's new here and how old school teachings can be useful in your everyday life.

Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts

2010-04-20T11:15:00.006Z

Although this business management technique seems to be slightly more difficult to comprehend than the previous one (First come, first served), it actually makes the management of tasks and organisation of work much simpler.

Let's start with a general definition of PERT:

"PERT is a method to analyze the involved tasks in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to complete the total project."

Simply put, make a list of things to do to bring about a desired result, and how long each of them will take. This is something each one of us can and should do, be it in our personal or professional lives, in order to get a clearer idea of steps to our goal and predictable speed of achievement.

Let's draw a table where Column 1 would be titled "Task", Column 2 "Duration", Column 3 "Prerequisite."

Once this table is complete, we will want to get a better, graphical idea of the timeline and tasks that can or should be run concurrently. An exemple follows.

We'll then draw a network diagram, also called Gantt chart (developed by a Mr. Gantt), described by Wikipedia as follows:

"A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e. precedence network) relationships betweek activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line as shown here. "

For simple projects, a piece of paper, a pencil and an eraser will be good enough. For more complex situations, there are numerous software which will help you draw a chart from organising next Sunday's festive lunch to developing a new airplane. You may try your hand at one for free here. Another interesting source is here. These are not recommendations and I don't endorse either of these companies or their products. These suggestions are inserted only for illustration purposes.

Although PERT and Gantt are old news in most of the world, they still provide robust project management methods. I'm sure trying them will open you to a whole new world of possibilities and make previously insurmountable projects a collection of streamlined, easy to manage smaller tasks.

Readers, I will appreciate your feedback here. Please let me know whether you think this article opened new possibilities for you and how you intend to use them. Conversely, if you don't think these suggestions useful, please let me know why, and what would be a better way of tackling project management in your line of business.

First come, first served

2010-04-20T10:56:00.004Z

In an attempt to provide constructive suggestions to improve customer service, which some would agree is rather lacking here, I will offer here short posts describing principles that can be applied easily in all areas of business, be it in street hawking, trading, or utility hotline management.

The first of them is "First Come, First Served". Wikipedia explains it as:

"a service policy whereby the requests of customers or clients are attended to in the order that they arrived, without other biases or preferences. The policy can be employed when processing sales orders, in determining restaurant seating, on a taxi stand, for example. In Western society, it is the standard policy for the processing of most queues in which people wait for a service."

It seems to me that applying this principle strictly will help bring more order in most businesses, relieve the operators and attendants of the headache of conflicting priorities and alleviate the public's frustration.

Readers, I would like to get your opinions on this. Do you think it a good idea? If not, why? And what would you suggest instead?

Commenting is not complaining

2010-04-18T11:36:00.002Z

A very long absence, due to my doubts about how useful it is to discuss everyday topics in this blog or anywhere else, when more often than not commenting on situations is considered disgraceful complaining.

I've therefore decided to give it another try, this time with what I believe could be workable suggestions. Exposing an issue AND suggesting improvements. Time will tell if it works. Readers, I thank you in advance for your constructive criticism.

The "National Cake"

2009-09-21T16:49:00.021Z

Having a professional interest in words, I probably pay more attention to their choice in all sorts of communications. That's why something has been bothering me for a few days now.

The first time I read the phrase "the national cake" in connection with Ghana was on Minister of Information Ms. Zita Okaikoi's profile on Facebook.

I am the Minister for Information- Ghana. A young and active Lawyer born in Accra, I believe in Social Democratic ideals as the bedrock on which the national cake and development can be equitably distributed for all Ghanaians.

Her starting a page on Facebook elicited mixed comments, and I am not about to discuss her choice here. What I find deeply disturbing is the inference one can naturally and, worse, often unconsciously, draw from her describing our country as a "cake" that is to be "distributed" to all.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but cakes are not part of our daily diet and we mostly eat them in festive occasions. When was last time you shared cake with a large crowd? At a wedding, a birthday party maybe? I bet you prepared for the occasion, knowing that there would be food aplenty and everybody would be in a jolly mood, stuff themselves with delicacy, have a great time, and it will be an all-round carefree and enjoyable day.

Let's think about it again. If Ghanaians are to receive shares of the "national cake", doesn't it mean that Ghana is all but a big free-for-all buffet, where everybody is welcome to stuff their face for free? Isn't it what the audience will remember of the figure of speech?

After much pondering, I told myself, let's not make a huge issue of a single phrase. Surely, this will have slipped from an aide's pen unbeknownst to Minister of Information Ms. Zita Okaikoi. This cannot be an official stance.

I therefore researched the phrase "national cake" in relation to "Ghana", using a very popular Internet search engine. I couldn't believe it when I got more than 45,000 hits. Browsing the various hits, I zoomed in on the official Ghana government website. There again, I got far more hits than I was comfortable with: 45 occurrences of "national cake" on our government's website alone. I then narrowed the search to "john atta mills speech "national cake"

In a Daily Graphic article reposted on the Ghana government website on 20 April 2009, our President is reported to have given assurances of a permanent free-for-all atmosphere in Ghana:

The President gave the assurance that he will ensure that the national cake is shared fairly and equitably among all Ghanaians, adding that no region will be sidelined in that regard.
“We want to make sure that this country gives back to its people the investment they made in us,” he emphasised.
He said the people of the Volta Region deserved better and that it is fair that they demand their fair share of the national cake.

In another write-up posted on the same Ghana government website (undated), the author, implicitly endorsed as the voice of the government, by mere dint of being published there, writes:

To reduce poverty there is the need to rally behind the current NDC administration to make its promise of a “Better Ghana” a reality in order that the poverty level is significantly mitigated. Every individual must have a renewal of mind characterized by repentance towards bribery and corruption. This is the only way to ensure a fair share of the national cake among Ghanaians and ensuring equitable distribution of justifiable infrastructural development devoid of “kalabule” from any quarters.

In politics as in other jobs where communication is key, each word should be weighed carefully before being uttered, or written. Surely, our President, as well as our Minister of Information, being lawyers, are aware of the importance of each word. Conveying the notion that our country fellows are to receive more forcefully than they are to serve sounds very wrong to me. Encouraging the Ghanaians on this path seems particularly wrong today, with Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah's selfless qualities being extolled publicly and privately.

Political communication practitioners should work carefully at impressing desirable values into the population's minds, and should actively refrain from slips of the tongue (or the pen) capable of having severe and lasting consequences. Political communication is about working on the minds of the audience, with and without them realising it, to mould their mindsets and thoughts for them to, collectively, behave in the desired way. Being careless about the choice of words can, obviously, result in muddling the message irretrievably.

Founder's Day

2009-09-21T08:55:00.004Z

Today is a holiday in Ghana. Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the great visionary and first president of independent Ghana, would be 100 today, had he lived.

So many things have been written everywhere about Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah that I won't add yet another hagiography saluting the great man.

A great man he certainly was. He had an acute sense of what Ghana and Africa needed, and he was determined to make it happen regardless of the cost to him. A dreamer he was, but -and that is what made him so peculiar- a do-er he was too. If two words can sum up what he was and what he stood for, they would be: a patriot and a visionary. He worked relentlessly at achieving what he considered his beloved country, and his continent, needed.

Now, I am more than a little disappointed that we decided to honour the great man with yet another holiday. Here was a man whom we recognise as instrumental in whatever significant progress Ghana made in the twentieth century. Here is the mastermind behind the very idea of African Unity, whom we implicitly and explicitely celebrate already with the African Union Day.

Today, our country, and Africa in general, is not visibly nearer to being a developed country than it was when Dr Kwame Nkrumah died 37 years ago. The engine is stalled. It sputters now and then, but never roars anymore and we are not going anywhere fast, or -some would argue defeatedly- at all.

Yet, our deciders found it fitting to offer us yet another day of sitting around omo tuo and a beer, or [insert your preferred holiday food and chilled beverage] all day. This, in itself, sadly shows their lack of vision.

Tomorrow again, omo tuo digested and beer-induced burps squelched, we'll sit and stretch our hands, hoping others will lend us money and foreigners will come and invest in our country.

What if, instead of flattering a very human tendency to laziness and carelessness, our deciders, driven by a real vision for their country, had launched a nation-wide selfless, community-serving activity? Plant a tree, clean the beaches, clean the street gutters,... There are so many things that need to be done to improve our lives, our environement and our country, and it seems so sadly strange that we should celebrate such a pro-active person as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah by doing... NOTHING.

Wake up, my dear country fellows! your country won't develop without your participation, on foreign loans and foreign investment only. Stop selling it cheaply for yet another day of idleness and sweetness of life.

Expatriate Ghanaians should behave as ambassadors of their country

2009-08-18T12:53:00.005Z

This morning I spent a little time reading the press online, and one article caught my attention and got my blood boiling fiercely within seconds. Its title was:

Ghana says thanks to Randolph Y for old sneakers

Excuse me if I appear to be spitting in the broth, but how pathetic is this?

Hand-downs are not new (no pun intended) but this is pushing it a bit too far. If we like to stretch out our hands so much, couldn't we at least come up with a more dignified and more efficient way of channelling these probably well-meaning and sincere people's charity? Or am I being overly touchy? Beggars can't be choosers, they say. I believe we don't have to be beggars. Let's put together decent proposals. Those of us who have lived in developed countries all know that Westerners with a genuine desire to help less developed countries abund, but most have no idea what the actual needs are or how to proceed. Let's help them help us efficiently, if we really want their help.

The issue, as I see it, is that those of us who live abroad, no matter why they left their country (most of them to further their studies and acquire a valuable international work experience), should not forget that in the country where they chose or happen to reside, they are Ghana. For most people they meet day in, day out, they are as close an experience of the real Ghana as they will ever get. Whatever they say, do, like, or dislike, will be taken at face value as emblematic of what Ghana says, does, likes, or dislikes.

Projecting an image of undignified beggars, taking with bent knees and bowed head a few pairs of used sports shoes to help their country develop, is all wrong for a variety of reasons, but mainly because:

they convey the idea that GHANA is so poor a pair of second-foot shoes will actually make a difference;
they confirm the already far too widespread prejudice that GHANA (and Africa) has neither ability nor will to look at any kind of bigger picture;
they are not using the fine education they suffered so much to acquire to put up decent proposals, using their in-depth knowledge of their host country to present development projects in a way that is understandable, acceptable, dignified, and enticing.

This all boils down to the basic issue with underdevelopment: we have to change our mindset. Stop believing we cannot do better than begging. Stop believing any help is better than no help at all. Stop acting for today's chop money without consideration for the bigger picture.

Obi mfiri εsono akyi nkɔbɔ aserewa boɔ.
One does not leave an elephant to throw stones at a sunbird.
(Don’t permit a small thing to lose you a large one.)

Turn your perceived disavantages to advantage

2009-08-12T08:48:00.007Z

Deε n’ani akyea na ɔhwε toa mu:
The one who has crooked eyes looks into a bottle
(Some disadvantages can be turned to advantage)

One of the objections I hear most when encouraging people to work towards their own success, whatever success means to them (it does NOT have to be money), has to do with being somehow handicapped and hence, being bound to fail.

Nation-wide, individuals and –worse– public figures blame “the government” or “our poverty” for their lack of success. I’m not here to apportion blame, and will rather concentrate on these perceived weaknesses that we can turn to advantage.

I’m jobless: you have time to do things other people can’t, or won’t. That’s a definite and immediate advantage. Look around. Identify a successful person you want to emulate. Offer them to do something for them, even menial tasks, so that you can observe them, day in, day out, and pick some of their values, routines, habits, that explain their success and that you can make yours.

I’m broke: some jobs don’t require lots of capital. Plus, capital is not only money. It is land, manpower, skills… You may have one of several of these assets and don’t value them. You may procure some or several of these for free, and neglected to do so. Think about it again. Thinking is free. Don’t leave any stone unturned. What do you have to lose?

I am skill-less: nobody is skill-less. Think about what makes you believe you are skill-less. What is this specific skill that you wish you had and makes you think so low of yourself? Do you really need to acquire it? If so, devise a way of acquiring it but then, after careful analysis, maybe you don’t absolutely need it. Which other skills do you possess that you could turn to profit (again, this is not all about money, profit can be a lot of other things)? The world is diverse and would be severely unbalanced if everybody had the same set of skills. Just because you admire someone who has a certain set of skills doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be whole until you acquire them. Concentrate on what you do best and improve your skills in this area. Quality doesn’t remain ignored long. If you excel at what you do (know-how) and work at making it known (selling your skills) with integrity, looking at the long-term rather than trying to make quick chop-money for today, you’ll be on the path to lasting success, you’ll have self-respect and attract other people’s respect too.

There are numerous other reasons someone can give for not succeeding. For each one of them, be it lack of physical strength, neighbours' ill-will, or peer/family pressure, you need a revolution of the mind. Quit avoiding obstacles (usually by doing nothing, for fear of something worse than the current nothing-ness happening to you), and work towards using them as stepping stones. This is the way forward: change your mindset from one of impotence and dejectedness to one of proactive, positive and constructive thought.

Proverbs are full of insight and excellent principles. We tend to only see the negative aspects of tradition and it's often considered as a hindrance to 'progress'. Not so. Again, this is all a matter of how your mind is set. You are on a course to success, and you'll want to use wisdom from different sources to get you there.

After everything has been said and done...

2009-07-12T14:37:00.008Z

I'm not much attracted to celebs as a rule. In fact, I tend to find it slightly ridiculous to almost worship a mere human being for their looks, art or even their brains. That is to say how much I suffered through the demise of Michael Jackson, then Barack Obama's visit to Ghana, trying to avoid an overdose of tributes, laudatory comments and what I see as downright craze.

Despite my disinclination to follow the crowds, and although I am probably one of the very few people in Ghana who didn't buy the newspapers this week and didn't watch a single minute of Obamania on the tube, I read with interest Mr Obama's speech to the Ghanaian Parliament.

One sentence stands out:

Africa’s future is up to Africans.

After everything has been said about the need for international aid, the right to compensation for the harm done by slave traders centuries ago, the unfairness of the terms of contemporary global trade, etc., time has come for a change: let's DO something about our future. Mr Obama promised that the US of A will help those of us who work at their own, their country's or the continent's development, but the first step has to come from us:

"these things can only be done if you take responsibility for your future."

These are the two sentences I want to remember of Mr Obama's visit to Ghana. I hope that beyond the craze around the event, our rulers, lawmakers, as well as the ordinary people of Ghana will ponder over this speech and find in it the necessary inspiration to take things in our hands and build our own prosperous future.

Everything has been said. Let's do something about it now.

The Augean Stables can and will be cleaned

2009-06-22T19:37:00.007Z

Yesterday I read two articles and found them very interesting, all the more so since they were about the same small and seemingly un-newsworthy district of Bongo, abutting Burkina Faso, in the Upper East Region, itself the last but one region of Ghana both in terms of size and of population.

The first article to catch my attention explained how the local Directorate of Education took the bold step of striking against those teachers who disgrace their job by resorting to absenteeism, lateness and drunkenness during school hours. The sanctions apportioned included suspended salaries and demotions.

Another article also dated Sunday, 21 June 2009 focussed on communal labour and how the Presiding Member of the Bongo District Assembly intended to make people's participation in communal labour mandatory and again, apportion sanctions for those who wouldn't do their share for the common good of the society.

If the first initiative has already had practical results, with 24 teachers already found lacking and sanctioned accordingly, the second one seems to be still a project.

The fact that officials in this far away (from the capital) district of one of the northernmost regions of Ghana decide to make these bold steps almost at the same time renewed my belief that the moment has not come yet and never will come to throw in the towel.

Corruption, lack of morals, and lack of civic-mindedness are widespread human flaws, which does not mean they should be accepted and left to flourish. Quite the contrary.

That Mr. Francis Agyeere, District Director of Education, in the first case, and Mr. Emmanuel Nsoh Atindana, Presiding Member of the Bongo District Assembly, in the latter case, have taken such bold steps to clean their local version of the Augean Stables is highly commendable. That each of them, in his own area of responsibility, decided to tackle the seemingly formidable task before them is extremely encouraging. These two gentlemen and, I believe, a lot of others, love their country, are dedicated to making it the best within their means and areas of resoponsibility, and started acting upon the vision they had of how the situation should be and will be, if tackled in an appropriate and efficient manner.

Despite the many valuable heads of cattle we keep there, we left our stables get so filthy that a lot of fainter-hearted people than Heracles will abandon the idea of cleaning them as impossible. That's what we all do when we decide that despite the many fine people inhabiting our country, we -each one of us being a steward of the common property- neglect it for so long that the ills and rots of corruption, laziness, lack of morals and of civism creep in and pile up so high that we would rather sit and weep on our wasted riches than tackle the task of cleaning and buffing and shining it anew.

Please read or re-read the story of the Augean Stables and how Heracles cleaned them,

not only using his great strength, but using his brain to plan this challenge.

Please think about our own Augean Stables, start planning how you can clean them, put the plans into practice, and persevere.

Like the mythical Heracles, we can and, with perseverance, ambition and foresight, we will clean our stables of the muck and turn stinking waste into a fertilizer for all the surrounding fields.

The way forward: believe

2009-06-15T22:01:00.007Z

For the few decades since I started scrutinizing the way Africa and, notably, Ghana, has been doing in terms of development, one thing struck me repeatedly: a substantial share of the people, from all walks of life, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, urban or rural, don't really seem to believe their continent, their country or themselves can achieve anything close to Western success. A few of them profess they don't want Western-style development, but most acknowledge their yearning for the kind of comforts it gives. Yet, most of them seem to find normal that Africa should be persistently lagging behind all the other continents in terms of basic needs like food, health, and education.

Henry Ford is said to have coined the sentence:

"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right."

Let's give it a little thought: how can we really expect to achieve anything, small or big, if we don't believe we will? Doesn't it make perfect sense that the first step to any achievement is how much we believe we will achieve it?

Take the Roman Empire. Yea, right, that was long ago, and only touched the Mediterranean fringe of our continent. Yet, around two thousand years ago, this city-state had visionary leaders, individuals who believed what they couldn't see, who had a vision so compelling that they actually moved thousands of people (and mountains) to make their vision come true. They built bridges on such mighty rivers as the Rhine. Stone-covered roads, laid on proper foundations, ran to every corner of the empire, allowing trade to prosper (and taxes to be generated). Where human settlements needed more water than the local resources supplied, they built channels to carry water from elsewhere to where it was required. Emperor Claudius even had a tunnel built through the hills to carry water from a lake into Rome. Sometimes though a valley could lie in between the place from where the water came and where it needed to go. Here the Romans simply constructed bridges for the channel to cross the valley: these were named aqueducts and can still be seen today.

What was possible around two millennia ago certainly should be much more easily achievable today. Reading about the bridges Julius Caesar built in 10 days for the first, "a few days" for the second, on the river Rhine in 55 and 53 BC respectively, I cannot help thinking about remote areas like our Ghanaian Afram Plains, however aptly dubbed "the food basket of the country", for example, where teachers refuse to go because the district is only accessible by canoe; where people die en route to the nearest hospital (by canoe too); where helpless farmers lose the most fertile lands they've been farming for generations to foreign investors and are made to abandon farm work in mid season because of the uncertainty on whether whatever is grown there still does belong to them or to the foreign investor.

What did the Romans have, two millennia back, that we don't have today?

They had skilled and ingenious engineers. So do we. The Ghanaian universities are considered among the best in West Africa; American students travel to Ghana for their year abroad programme; Ghanaian students attend universities everywhere in the world and learn about state of the art techniques and technologies.
They had cheap manpower. Ghana has a lot of unemployed and underemployed youth. Hands are plenty. Lots of them lack direction, leadership, a civic mind, and dedication to a task the achievement of which they could proudly claim to have contributed to. With proper channelling of all these youthful energies, there is little that cannot be achieved in the interest of the nation.
They had enormous willpower, driven by extraordinarily influential leaders, so compelling it trickled down to the confines of the empire, to the most remote military, administrative and tax outposts and officers (by the way, yes, they had taxes: a steady supply of money that kept increasing the more they made every region of the empire accessible and able to trade; feeding and funding more infrastructure works).

Leaders. Visionaries. Far-seeing people, who believe their vision is achievable if only they put their minds to it.

Of the whole array of assets the Romans had, the lack of visionaries seems to be the one obstacle hindering Ghana's progress. What we have, mostly, is rulers; stewards, at best; but leaders and visionaries are yet to emerge.

Visions are what electoral promises should be made of. Once a government is voted in, some of these promises tend to fade off and get conveniently forgotten, swept under the rug, even retracted. In the name of "realism", we tend to accept quite easily that promises are routinely broken, that what looked like blindingly bright visions during the campaigns was only wool being pulled over the eyes of the voters, and that few of the promises which led people to vote for a candidate will ever materialise. What it proves is that we, the citizens, as well as the would-be leaders, never truly believed in what we were promised or promising.

We, the citizens, but also the people "at the top", need non-partisan, impartial log-keepers of the government's programme and achievements. This post is published today on www.promisestoghana.com, which, in essence, is such a logbook. I can only commend the excellent initiative, the admirable dedication, and the huge work behind this website. Long life to it, and thanks for making this wonderful tool available to us.

Efficient communication

2009-05-25T12:02:00.003Z

Today I read an article that gave me a lot of food for thought. It was about something very dear to my heart: the availability of basic infrastructure to all. By "infrastructure", I mean roads and electricity, but also schools, health services, and hygiene (tap water, waste removal, etc.).

I was therefore quite glad to read about small town water projects sponsored by DANIDA in certain parts of the very underserved Kwahu North (Afram Plains) District, namely Memkyemfre and Kayere near Donkorkrom.

The following:

At Memkyemfre, the [Eastern Regional] Minister [Mr. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo] urged the community members to take good care of the project because it was constructed with other people's money. (1)

prompted me to write this post.

Indeed, it is very commendable that foreign aid organisations help underserved communities have access to clean water. However, the catch in aid is that it comes from outside, is brought, built, donated by people the local community never set eyes upon before the project and will probably never see again after its completion, and communication of the kind shown here only serves to reinforce the alien nature of the effort. There is no local ownership of the project.

What is it all about? For something to work at the grassroots level, that is, where it is needed and will hopefully be used, it must be appropriated by said community. Reminding the recipients that someone else paid for it may have been said with the best intentions. Surely, the honourable Minister wanted to impress on the community how important it is to take good care of a gift. However, this kind of utterance can very well have the very unwanted effect of people never considering it as theirs.

What do we do with things that don't belong to us? The best case scenario is that we keep it very carefully so that if and when the rightful owner comes, s/he find it almost as s/he left it. If need be, we will guard it and prevent everybody from touching it out of fear of it being spoiled.

The other scenario is that we won't care about something that cost us nothing, we'll use and abuse it and when it's spoiled, either we will revert to our previous makeshift ways, or we will go and demand that the donor repair or change it.

Empowerment is what we need to make real progress. Empowerment is about including the local community at every step of the project, from collecting ideas about the actual needs and the best place to install the infrastructure, to constructing the project, learning how to regulate its use, and how to maintain and service it.

Empowerment is the opposite of making the community stand in awe on the sidelines. Empowerment is not tantamount to being ungrateful. Empowerment is about using this aid as a stepping stone for community improvement. Being grateful doesn't mean that you have to go back to the donor again and again when you need something else. The best show of one's gratitude is to be able to display that one can use what is being donated effectively and incorporate it into one's array of tools to go farther and achieve bigger, longer-term goals.

It is unfortunate that this communication seemed rather to aim at glueing the community to a specific point in time (aid) instead of a continuum called 'community development'. Development is a dynamic, evolutionary process. We won't achieve anything of substance if we keep waiting for aid to come to us, no matter how warm our demonstrations of gratefulness are whenever we receive such aid.

(1) Ofosu Ampofo Inspects Small Water Projects, By Samuel Opare Lartey, Afram Plains, Donkorkrom. - The Ghanaian Times, Projects/Developments, Wed, 13 May 2009

Please define "top"

2009-05-22T16:57:00.004Z

This morning I read an article on this Top UK Security Firm visiting Ghana to help solve our problems with drugs and other violent crime.

Like a lot of people in Ghana interested in public interest news, I heard on the radio and read that

Government's efforts at fighting the narcotic drug menace and illegal armed trafficking received a boost on Tuesday as officials of Yahuda Security Management Consulting, a top United Kingdom security firm arrived in Accra to assist national security agencies. They would discuss with national security officials wide-ranging security matters, international trade in drugs including cocaine, illegal arms, armed robbery and links to possible terrorism.(1)

The situation in Ghana has become a matter of concern for all patriots and we can only be glad that this administration decided to give it its full attention. I could only regret in passing that these experts had to be brought in from the UK instead of Ghana training her police force to international standards and giving them the means to accomplish their mission successfully.

What woke me up seriously today was another post on the Internet revealing that this "Top United Kingdom Security Firm" appeared officially out of the blue only two days ago. Indeed, a search on the UK Companies House's website revealed to this vigilant citizen (and I was able to verify it) that this "top" firm was only registered on May 20, 2009.

Let's be serious for a minute. This is a company that did not exist only two days ago. The Companies House's website shows when there has been a change of name or restructuration, so it's unlikely that this company existed under another name or legal form before May 20, 2009 without it appearing on this website. How could the President of Ghana or any person of his entourage, while on an official visit to the UK last week, have met representatives of this company, and based on what compelling information did such representatives convince their interlocutor that their company was ideally positioned to help Ghana in this very sensitive job of getting rid of drugs and violent crime, let alone terrorism?

The CEO of this startup (which is the most positive designation I can imagine for such a firm) is a Mr Tetteh, so I suppose he is a Ghanaian living in the UK. Why he didn't register in Ghana instead of the UK is not very clear. Since the company was non-existent when he allegedly met the President or a member of his entourage, he could easily have chosen to register in Ghana (paying taxes to the mother country is a nice civic gesture too).

My hypothesis (and I'm sorry it's the only one that comes to mind right now) is that it sounds so much better, richer and more impressive to say "Top UK Security Firm" than "Ghanaian team with international credentials" (they do have credentials, don't they? Has anybody checked this? Has the Ghanaian High Commission in London done its homework on this?). The unsavoury underlying idea is that UK is key, and "top" only reinforces the obvious: an obscure UK outfit tops a Ghanaian one any day. Sad, very sad.

We, members of the public and taxpayers, are supposed to say wow, and ahhh, and clap our hands in ravishment of being graced with a Top UK Security Firm coming to solve our problems, while this story has all the makings of yet another scam to rob the taxpayer of their money in the form of obscure fees and kickbacks going to line nicely the pockets of whoever engineered this umpteenth trick that is being played at Ghana's expense.

Whether one wants to give this administration the benefit of the doubt and believe that they were merely gullible (and sloppy, for not having checked this company's existence), tricked by the all powerful "UK" rattle being waved in front of their collective nose, or this administration is as guilty as others before it of giving precedence to their own pockets before Ghana's interests while giving a leg up to a member of the Ghanaian Diaspora, this story is very disappointing. We, as a country, need to urgently change our mindsets so that we serve Ghana first, for the greater good of all. Only then will we earn international and self-respect, and bring real lasting, sustainable change to our country's situation which so far was a "fate", but can and will become a "destiny".

(1) Top UK security experts arrive in Ghana - GNA, Accra, May 19, 2009

Let's not grow Jatropha

2009-05-08T19:59:00.008Z

One thing makes me wonder if we ever learn from our mistakes or ever will: why on earth would our mature, seasoned and thoughtful leaders want to embrace the new biofuel fad with so much enthousiasm?

One of the reasons why the developed countries decided to look for alternative sources for their much needed fuel was to reduce their dependency from imported oil products. Let's not be naive and believe the first and foremost reason was concern for the well-being of our planet. We'll continue to consume till we drop, collectively. Or till the planet suffocates completely. This cynical view is what the worldwide, globalized economy relies upon.

So why would Ghana be so urgently interested to grow biofuel plants now, when oil is being found in the Ghanaian waters every other week, or so it seems? Even if this booty is finite, won't it at least buy us a little time? Why welcome with so widely open arms President Lula of Brazil's project of growing sugar cane on a massive scale in Ghana to produce biofuels, when Ghana imports every single cristal of sugar she uses in food and beverages?

When people (scientists and environmentalists) started being critical about using crops fit for human consumption to make fuel (like corn, sugar cane, and soy beans, for example -- but we had already bought into this wonderful project Lula painted in so flattering colours for us), Jatropha curcas was touted as the 'miracle' wonderplant that would grow where nothing else thrives and even fertilize the soil where it grew.

Where the shoe pinches, is that

it’s already clear that, while jatropha can indeed grow on lands with minimal water and poor nutrition, “if you plant trees in a marginal area, and all they do is just not die, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a lot of oil from them.” (...) “If you grow jatropha in marginal conditions, you can expect marginal yields,” says Vincent Volckaert, the Africa regional director for D1.(1)

Are we back to the main argument of the anti-biofuel crowd? Oh yes, we are right there: the whole problem is that food crops will be displaced to allow large multinational companies to use prime land for biofuels.

This is not just a bitter fantasy of progress-adverse or eternally disgruntled people. The new biofuel wave is already lapping against our agricultural lands. Tens of thousands of acres are being requested (and obtained) by big companies --none of them Ghanaian-- in Ghana.

Their argument that

only land not needed for food crop production would be used for the cultivation of jatropha(2)

is a severe insult thrown in the collective face of the more than 20 million of Ghanaians (2000 census figure), since

the country imports almost everything it eats. The country produces only 21% of its rice and about 42% of its maize requirements.(3)

Considering these figures, it is extremely difficult to understand exactly what can be deemed "land not needed" and based on what criteria large tracts of it were allocated to these projects.

The modern, globalized economy and its wizards tell us to stop fretting about growing our own food and to import whatever we need. It will be provided to us (nevermind the price, in terms of monetary cost or destroyed livelihoods to local farmers), as long as we grow what we are told to grow, sell it abroad as a raw material and take gratefully whatever price the buyer will condescend to give us. Does it ring a bell? It's not surprising: We've been doing that since colonial times and 52 years after we won our "independence", we are still begging to eat.

Let's use the newly discovered oil to buy us time to turn around our mentalities; to change the way we use our lands; to feed our fellow citizens --and especially our kids-- with healthy, plentiful, locally produced food; to educate them to be able to stand tall and face suppliers and buyers alike on a more equal footing, especially psychologically and morally; to learn how to use state of the art technologies so that Ghana can produce and process herself what she needs, including in terms of alternative energy, instead of giving up her heritage for lack of any ability to exploit it profitably.

Obi bεma wo a, nte sε woama wo ho.
If someone says that they will give you something, it is not like providing for yourself (Self-sufficiency is best). (4)

(1) Hailed as a Miracle Biofuel, Jatropha Falls Short of Hype, by Jon R. Luoma
(2) & (3) Indian companies also enter biofuel business in Ghana, by Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
(4) Bu Me Bε - Proverbs of the Akans, by Peggy Appiah, Kwame Anthony Appliah, Ivor Agyeman-Duah

Spintex Road at Rainbow: shoddy work again?

2009-04-24T09:51:00.005Z

Following-up with the Spintex Road works... I went yesterday and was surprised to see that the works were over and the road open to all types of vehicles. Here it what it looks like, seen from opposite Housemart.

On the face of it, there is nothing but reasons to rejoice: job completed fast, brand new road. Looking closer, though, one can notice that the surface gravel is very thin indeed and the laterite beneath is already beginning to show through.

One can see other weak points which may yield soon too:

Note that the resurfacing exercise was completed less than a week ago. The same methods as previously were used: very sparse scattering of gravel, then sprinkling of liquid tar. The picture below shows the method, as seen from the side of the road:

Last week, I expressed doubt about the treatment of where this new section transitions with the older one. I am afraid this part will erode fast. This is what it looks like now:

Lastly, I was surprised to see that the storm drains, which were built a few months ago, have been hammered down in several places. I reckon the reason is to make the flow of rainwater drain quicker, but I question the method:

I will keep following up on these works. I hope I'm wrong and the road will last. I'm afraid it won't, though, since the method used was the same that didn't work only a few months ago.

Countrywide "loss of electricity supply", a/k/a "lights off"

2009-04-22T15:52:00.006Z

I've been monitoring the electricity issue for a few days now and finally found an article published online a mere 4 hours ago by modernghana.com.

It transpires from this that the power cut sustained Monday night was not local, not even affecting the whole of Accra, but countrywide.

GRIDCo (I haven't been able to identify a website for this company) apparently issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon, explaining the event as

an explosion in equipment used for measuring power flows and a resultant fire outbreak, which affected other nearby equipment.

This led to the loss of all generating units and some transmission lines within the National Power System(1)

Better late than never. We now have an explanation. We are also warned of more power cuts to come:

GRIDCo has requested the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to reduce supply to consumers in Accra by 50 MW in order to prevent overloading on the two operating lines to the Achimota substation.(2)

Although the specifics are not disclosed, chances are that we'll have staggered cuts for an undetermined period of time, that is, while

GRIDCo is working around the clock to restore the line to service within the shortest possible time(3)

What about the power cut of last Friday/Saturday? A mere dress rehearsal? Are we to understand that there are 2 different issues: this accident, which GRIDCo felt inclined to communicate about, albeit quite late, and other "regular" power cuts?

(1), (2) & (3) "Ghana Grid explains widespread power outage in Accra, Tema"; modernghana.com, April 22, 2009

A very loud silence

2009-04-22T13:03:00.006Z

This morning I bought Daily Graphic and The Statesman, thinking I would find some mention of the long power cut we suffered Monday night, either in the form of an article or of a press release published by VRA, ECG, or whomever is supposed to be in charge. No such thing.

Instead, the first page of Daily Graphic showed in caps and bold, white on black letters:

Energy sector needs $10bn (to finance initiatives in next 5 years, says minister)

I won't waste too much time asking why dollars, when we have our own cedi. Yes, the cedi erodes every day but still, it's our currency, the one in which most of the audience of this paper earns a living and makes expenses day in, day out.

The article, which continues on page 3, describes what the Energy Minister, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, disclosed to members of the media yesterday.

Dr Oteng-Adjei noted that the vision of the energy sector was to assure universal access and choice of modern energy forms to all Ghanaians, which was intended to be achieved by 2020.

He said the ministry also envisioned a sector that would contribute significantly to national revenue and economic growth by becoming a net exporter of oil and power by 2012 and 2013.(1)

That every Ghanaian will have access to energy by the year 2020 is commendable. There is no doubt it will help development tremendously. Exporting power as soon as 2013 is excellent news too. What I don't quite get is how this will be achieved in less than 4 years. More specifically, how the country's power generation capacity will be almost trebled so fast.

He said at the inception of the new government in January, the installed operational power generation capacity in the country was 1,810 megawatts

The objective of the government, he said, was to achieve a target of 5,000 MW of installed power generation capacity in the medium term, as that level of capacity would enable the country to supply adequate power to meet growth in national electricity demand and also for export to neighbouring countries.(2)

I would rise and applaud at such wonderful news if I were not bothered by a terribly pedestrian question: where will the money come from? To understand this point better, let's get back to the beginning of the article:

He said while the government would continue to inject funds into the sector when available, a major policy shift was to encourage energy sector institutions to raise a substantial portion of their capital investment requirements on their own without recourse to the government.(3)

That gives me pause. "When available"... In clear, there is no definite budget earmarked for that project, and energy sector institutions will get whatever surplus, if any, there is when everything else is taken care of. "On their own"... The balance of this indefinite amount granted by the government has to be procured on the market. What these few lines seem to mean, to me, is that there is close to no money at all to execute this "vision". Isn't it pure wizardry?

It won't escape the reader that this meeting was held the very morning after the latest night-long power cut which, I'm told, affected most of the ATMA (Accra Tema Metropolitan Area); yet, not a single word was said about it. Is there a consensus about not asking uncomfortable questions (the blatant failure of our system to provide uninterrupted, quality power would definitely come like a fly in the ointment of this extremely attractive picture of Ghana in only 3-4 years time)? Or are people of the media avoiding to state the obvious, routine, "normal" situation of highly unreliable power supply?

This is scary. We, as a country, seem to find it "normal" that we don't have power for 10 or 20 hours on end. We, as a country, as exemplified by the people of the media, our Minister of Energy, and the communications people of VRA, ECG and maybe GRIDCO (they do have communications people, don't they?), in this instance, have already resigned ourselves to unreliable supply, appalling service, and non-existent communication. This string of deceptively good news, and the way they are reproduced indiscriminately in the media, is all the more shocking and saddening.

(1), (2), (3) Daily Graphic, Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lights off = Development off

2009-04-21T21:31:00.004Z

This morning, my better half (currently in Britain) told me to listen to a programme titled Nana Online, on a Ghanaian Internet-based radio: http://www.hotdigitalradio.com/. One of the topics was the power cuts we've had over the last few days and, notably, last night, which seems to have affected all the ATMA (Accra and Tema Metropolitan Area).

I wish I could have listened to it myself, but unfortunately Vodafone (ex GT Broadband) has been playing up and with my nerves for the last few days. This morning I spent almost two hours on phone with their hotline and, from terribly unstable, my connection went down altogether. Well, this is another topic, albeit not totally unrelated to my concern(s) of today.

In my area (Baatsonaa), the electricity first went off at 6.30pm yesterday evening, to come back one hour later. I had only started rejoicing when it went off again and we went to sleep in the dark. Light came back fleetingly at some point (I'm not sure if it was once or twice) during the night, then back on for good at 4am this morning.

As readers may remember, this was not the first long powercut this 'season' (although I certainly hope there is no such thing as a powercuts season like we have a rainy season).

Last Friday and again last night, I checked the time when electricity went off and came back on and noticed that it is cut off on the hour or half hour and is put back on likewise. Sharp. I therefore think we are not dealing with random, unscheduled cuts, the kind that could occur in case of material breakdown.

A quick visit to VRA's ("Four Decades of Reliable Power Supply") and ECG's websites show that neither company felt they owed consumers any explanation. It's remarkable, indeed, that neither has a "Press Releases" section. They are not communicating and don't seem to have any intention of communicating anyway.

The feedback message I left on ECG's website last Sunday is unanswered so far.

Beside the sheer annoyance of these powercuts, the lack of communication, the disregard for the consumer, my concern is the following:

How can any country develop without reliable electricity and water?

Individuals are all affected, to various extents, by the lack of electricity or its unreliability. The lack /unreliability of electricity means lack of fridges, freezers, fans, etc., or their short life span, due to power surges or brownouts; the same goes for lighting devices, which break, fuses blow, etc. The consequences in terms of individual development are several:

People lose their household appliances and therefore their investment, and are in fact made poorer by this persistent situation;
The lack or inefficiency of various conservation means lead to food spoilage, reduces the amount available per person -leading to hunger for the poorer- and exposes everyone, from the newborn baby to the elderly, to various digestive disorders, illnesses, and death;
Light-lessness means that schoolchildren and students cannot study as much as they may want or need, or have to do so in exceedingly difficult conditions.

The impact on the economy at large is many sided: loss of opportunities, loss of investment, loss of workdays, need to tie-up investments in an alternative power supply (generator) which is expensive to run too, failure to attract investment, inability to run a company reliably, to keep the costs of production competitive internationally, etc.

"Electricity for all" and the "Right to electricity" are slogans sweet to the ear. Realistically, we seem to be very far from achieving the first; and little more than a handful of idealists believe in the second.

I believe that money is not the main issue. The easiest explanation is that we suffer because we are poor. However, I think it is only part of the explanation. We suffer because we lack vision. We suffer because we lack a holistic approach. We suffer because we don't really believe, deep down, that things can be otherwise. That we can deal with our problems. That it is up to us to define where we want to be in 10, 20, or 50 years from now and to devise a path to reach this target. Then we'll work all the more happily and relentlessly that we'll have taken our future in our own hands, for a change, and above all b-e-l-i-e-v-e that we are able to succeed.

Water at last!

2009-04-19T10:43:00.003Z

Rain started this week. I don't know if there is a relationship between the rains and mains water, but I had the lovely surprise this morning, while tapping my tank gently (a habit formed over months of dryness of taps and ordering of trucks to provide for this essential of life), to realise that it was full!

This seems trivial, but it is the first time since December 2008 that my tank fills from the mains.

I should not even have to mention it. Water supply should be a given. Especially when you pay your bills on time every month. Whenever I forget, I find the following statement on the next bill (a GHS40 (GBP18.91, USD27.97, EUR21.45) lump sum):

"Pay at once to avoid disconnection"

Can you see the irony in this?

Powerless

2009-04-19T09:51:00.004Z

I know this will not help the opinion a few of my readers have of me. Yes I'm Don Quixote in drag and keep exposing things everybody else knows are "the way things are done here". I am fully aware of this too, actually. What I don't and sincerely hope I won't accept in my lifetime is that they are "normal" or that I (or anybody else) should live with it, put up with it, resign myself to it.

This week was marked by two events:

the onset of the rainy season: we've had three downpours since last Monday, which is good news as far as I am concerned, since Ghana is very much an agricultural country.
the onset of what I hope is not a season of long powercuts.

"Lights off" have taken a dramatic turn with cuts lasting anytime between two and twenty (yes, 20!) hours. The Daily Graphic publishes every day an update of the level of water in Akosombo dam. My understanding is that the lower the level, the more conservation we need to tide us over till the rains come to increase the level again, the idea being that we don't want to run (completely) dry in the meantime. Since I haven't bought the papers lately, I set out to find the information online.

VRA (Volta River Authority), whose

primary function is to generate and supply electrical energy for industrial, commercial and domestic use in Ghana

indeed have a website where they publish daily updates of the water level in the dam. As of yesterday, April 18, 2009, the level was said to be 257.34ft, versus 248.13ft on the same day last year. The minimum operating level being 240ft, it seems that we are still above it and in better shape than last year at the same period. How comes, then, that we suffer such protracted cuts?

Since the VRA's website includes neither a "press releases" page nor any public interest notice about interruption of supply forecasts, I went on to the ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) website, since the company's mission is

[to] provide quality electricity sevices to support economic growth and development in Ghana

in the hope that they would provide information as to why we should put up with the inconvenience. I was disappointed again. The website seems mostly to be there to inform the consumers about the various rates and ways they can pay their bills. In fact, ECG seems to devote quite a lot of time and energy to make sure that we, the consumers, perform our part of the contract, while their concern for their own performance appears far less obvious.

I found a page called "Feedback" where I posted the following:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my concern with the protracted power cuts sustained this week in my neighbourhood (Baatsonaa, Accra). In particular, the whole area has been without light between 7pm Friday 17 April 2009 and 3pm Saturday 18 April 2009.

Could you please explain the reason for these power cuts and whether we should prepare to face more interruptions of supply in the foreseeable future?

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Yours faithfully,

E3AYO

I hope it won't come too much as a shock if I tell you I won't hold my breath waiting for their reply. Any website where the current date is stated as

Monday, October 19, 2009

is highly suspicious of being manned by incompetent and/or negligent people.

A last word: ECG's stated vision is

"To be among the leading Electricity Distribution Companies in Africa in terms of Quality, Safety and Reliability."

I only wish. Actually, I'm not really interested to know how ECG fares in comparison with other African electricity distribution companies. I just want reliable light.

Ghana road works

2009-04-19T07:43:00.001Z

Someone who read my previous post about roads in Ghana asked me whether I was visiting Ghana for the first time. No sir! I think he meant that I should know by now that this is "the way it works here" and that I should be "reasonable" and stop complaining about it or fighting the situation. With due respect, I think this gentleman was as wrong as one can be. Yielding to warped reasoning or practices is the worst thing one can do. In my opinion, a concerned citizen's duty is to denounce what doesn't work and expose the harm corrupt persons, at all levels, are doing to this country.

So, at the risk of being considered naive, I will keep commenting when I come across bent practices.

Yesterday I took the small section of Spintex Road I described in a previous post and saw people and machines hard at work. I didn't have my camera with me and had to take pictures with my mobile phone, hence the lesser quality of today's pictures, for which I apologise.

Grey gravel was being spread out and packed down. My laywoman question is whether one shouldn't be more consistent about it, especially at both ends of the section being reworked. Won't this part be weaker if not strictly delimited, the depth of gravel the same as on other sections of the road and the packing as strong as elsewhere? I'm just thinking alout here. As I said, I don't know a thing about road surfacing.

In several places, the laterite soil could be seen through the gravel. Won't this lead to foreseeable structural weaknesses later on?

Finally, and sometimes I feel like laughing it off, storm drains were put in place several months ago and when the soil was spread out, both laterite and grey gravel were pushed in the drains, filling them in parts, and several labourers were busy shoveling them out. Doing and undoing is still working and I understand they are paid by the day. As far as they are concerned, whatever the job is, it's still paid work.

Last night we had a very big rain again. I wonder how far the labourers had gone into freeing the drains from soil and gravel and what this section of the road looks like now. I'll try and make time to go and have a look today, if my (untarred) street is passable.

More comments and pictures soon!

Clean water for all: the impossible challenge?

2009-04-15T09:12:00.013Z

Ghana, and Accra in particular, is said to be filthy. Having travelled in many West and Central Africa countries, I can say that relatively speaking, the situation is not that bad. But then, nobody wants to compare themselves with the worst situation possible and anybody seeking self-improvement should set ambitious aims and work out a plan to achieve them gradually. The same goes for countries.

I am always a bit uneasy about recommending the masses to apply basic principles of hygiene when I know full well that tap water is not a given in this country and even not in its capital city. Contrary to our honoured Vice-President Mahama, I don't think Accra's filth is a laughing matter:

Vice President Mahama, making a joke about the level of filth in Ghana, ...(1)

This widespread filth is a public health hazard, Mr Vice-President. I think it's unfortunate that you find it funny.

My main topic today was however not rubbish collection (or the lack of) but a related hygiene-threatening concern: the lack of running water in Accra. According to the operating company itself (Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd (AVRL), a private company contracted by Ghana to manage the distribution of water), the network was never designed to supply the Accra Tema Metropolitan Area (ATMA) as it is now.

First, average water supply in ATMA is about 82 million gallons per day from Weija and Kpong Treatment Plants. In contrast, demand is over 150 million gallons per day, which leaves a deficit of nearly 70 million gallons per day, even in the best of times.(2)

This means that even working at capacity, tap water production can only satisfy about half of the demand. That is, "in the best of times" which, as we all know, are not a daily occurrence.

The operating company goes on to explain that they are not the only ones to blame for the acute shortage we witness day in, day out in Accra:

When there’s a mere five-minute power-cut, it takes at least five hours to restore water flow. Therefore the impact of these occurrences on water supply is enormous.(3)

How many five-minute power cuts have you suffered since, say, December 2008? I chose this December 2008 mark because it is when I started buying water every week for my household. We haven't heard or seen the water flow at all from mid-December 2008 till March 2009. Since then, we have had two days with water flowing from the mains. If this explaination is right and is not just a diversion exercise engineered by AVRL, it means that each tiny power cut sends us five hours back in the queue at the pump, figuratively speaking. Since I've read this press release a few months ago, I've been more attentive to power cuts and noted that, on average, we've had 2-3 cuts a day, of 2 to 20 minutes usually, sometimes up to 6 hours.

The implications of this persistent shortage are several. The first one is that our youth spend an inordinate amount of time fetching water. I am sure you noticed the youth with 4 empty containers is wearing school uniform shorts. Energies that could be much better used doing something productive or improving their education are wasted every day.

The second one is that there is no way hygiene can prevail when it is so expensive (not only in financial terms, but also in terms of time and energy spent) for people to procure enough water to wash their hands as much as is recommended, have water available to flush toilets, wash and rinse the dishes properly and thoroughly, etc.

Another scandal is that even public hospitals experience water shortages. AVRL maintains that they provide continuous supply to public health facilities, and that any shortage is due to the hospitals' installations themselves.

“AVRL does not ration water to Korle Bu due to the strategic importance of the hospital,” Nana Yaw Barnie, communications officer for AVRL’s Accra-West Region.

“The water problem at Korle Bu on Monday was caused by the hospital’s difficulty in pumping water from its own private water reservoir to the various blocks,” he said.
“When AVRL supplies water to Korle Bu, it first goes into a reservoir from where the hospital itself pumps to the locations it deems appropriate. This has always been the practice,” Barnie said. “And on Monday there was enough water in the hospital’s reservoir.”(4)

I had occasion to visit the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where newborns in need of intensive care are treated) at Korle Bu in February, 2008 and saw Polytanks sitting in the corridor leading to it and orderlies filling buckets from these tanks to supply NICU. Due to personal painful moments, the idea didn't occur to me to take pictures of the scene.

Reading AVRL's press release, though, it seemed to me that this problem was restricted to Korle Bu teaching hospital. I'm therefore surprised to read that an association of Indian women in Accra felt necessary to donate a water tank to another public health center at Ridge.

The president of the association, Mehek Mohanani, during the presentation, said the group paid a visit to the hospital sometime ago and realized that the water reservoir serving the Unit was not adequate.(5)

Certainly if the water supply had been continuous and adequate no such charitable deed would have been necessary?

Our country wants to develop and leave behind the "least developed nation" status to become an "emerging country", and even one of the new "tigers" of the 21st century. We cannot seriously hope to achieve this without being able to ensure proper sanitation for all. Health issues are and will continue to be in the foreseeable future one of the factors that impede development.

I sincerely hope this new administration will give health and sanitation a serious look and deal with the most pressing issues. Let's stop joking about our future and work at achieving our development goals.

According to the UN Millennium Development Goals initiative,

Promote hand-washing and treatment of home drinking water.
and
Prevent and provide effective treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and other infectious diseases.(6)

are part of MDG 4, Reduce child mortality. Poor quality water (the kind we buy by the gallon in the absence of filtered tap water) is one of the most important factors in diarrhoea and kills numerous babies, children and even adults. Others are made weak by it and cannot work as much as needed towards the improvement of their individual situations and that of Ghana in general.

Ghana is committed to the achievement of the MDGs. Clean water and hygiene for all are an intrinsic and necessary part of her success in that area.

A last word. I've just discovered that AVRL launched a call centre. I am not sure whether every person paying a monthly bill without receiving a drop of water should call them until they perform their part of the contract. Click here to read their press release.

(1) http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=158272
(2), (3) http://avrl-ghana.com/pages/posts/advertiserrsquos-statement--avrl-explains-recent-acute-water-shortage22.php?p=5
(4) http://avrl-ghana.com/pages/posts/press-release--avrl-denies-korle-bu-water-shortage24.php?p=5
(5) http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=7505&section=1
(6) http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/newsroom/Goal%204%20FINAL.pdf

Ghanaian road safety

2009-04-14T13:20:00.008Z

Road safety has been a big topic in the Ghanaian news lately. Part of the many people expressing opinions blame it on the disregard of drivers for the road regulations and the state of repair of their vehicles, while others point to the dismal state of the roads to explain, at least partly, the many accidents we seem to read about in the papers every day. I think both claims are perfectly valid.

On April 2, 2009, I mentioned, in a post elsewhere, a specific section of Spintex Road that was recently resurfaced with a handful of gravel and a drizzle of liquid tar:

There is a stretch on Nungua link (the part of 'Spintex' between Coca Cola and Nungua junction) where potholes are a permanent fixture. What's funny (not so funny) is that they are not always the same. Heavy vehicles come now and then, scrap the surface, pack it down and about 3 weeks ago even sprinkled gravel and sparingly poured what looked like liquid tarmac on the gravel. It lasted all of 3 days and we are back with holes getting bigger and bigger and the red soil showing through the 'tarmac' (who are you kidding? I assure you the whole resurfacing was not more than 1/3 of an inch deep). Navigating through and around potholes is an art that requires concentration and the shortest lapse can send you into the car coming from the other way. Not mentioning the reflex action of flooring it once you are back on a half decent surface.

We all have dozens of similar examples. Is it really a deliberate policy to resurface roads in this very "temporary" manner? Or is there a budget for a decent resurfacing and after everyone even remotely involved has taken what they consider their rightful share this was all what remained for the work proper?

Last week, this section was cordonned off and traffic was diverted to allow for more "improvement" works.

As you may know, we had our first rains of the season in Accra yesterday and guess what: yesterday, this section (cordons removed) was back to its previous bumpy unsurfaced state. I am sorry I didn't take pictures of "before" and "after" but will go today and keep taking pictures, say every week, to monitor the situation. I don't exactly know where to post them in order to alert whomever can really have an impact. Any suggestion is welcome.

Today, surprise: heavy vehicles at work, again. I would be enthousiastic if I hadn't seen them several times over the last 18 months with no lasting results.

On a more positive note, I found myself stranded in Aflao yesterday after night fall and had to join a big bus (50+ seats) to Accra. It took us 5 solid hours, via the Keta road (the more direct road via Akatsi being a 50km nightmare) and many road blocks. I was impressed at how prudently and safely the driver behaved and abode by road regulations. Good behaviour is not very newsworthy but I felt only fair to mention it.

The following gives me no reason to rejoice though: I'm sorry to report that the driver and mate seemed to have to give something at every single road block on the way.

And the winner is...

2009-01-03T13:35:00.007Z

This building is what all the contestants in the last Ghanaian presidential elections had in their sights. You may contend that only one won in the end. I believe that despite a few bumps on the last stretch of the ride, Ghana as a whole won these 2008 elections.

Is it really important which individual will be the tenant of this brand new palace for the next four years? Not to me. Neither should it be to real patriots. What is at stake is so much more than one party checkmating the other. What is at stake is Ghana's development. Her possible leaving "least developed country" status to join the club of emerging countries, on the back of the soon-to-flow-in oil revenues. What is at stake is the improvement of whatever positive has already been started by the outgoing administration, the trimming of less inspired decisions, and groundbreaking on the many economic and social issues that remain to be tackled.

No matter which candidate we supported until yesterday. Today a whole new challenge lays before us: it is our role, as patriots, to put to rest partisan differences and do our collective civic best to cooperate and, through unswayed vigilance, make sure that our leaders won't yield to temptation and let a few sticky fingers stray in the oil kitty.

In December 2008, Ghana was saluted by the international media and observers for the outstanding example of a living democracy she gave to the continent and the world.

We can rest assured that the way Ghana handles this new oil riches from 2010 onwards will be under close scrutiny. If she proves to be as economically rigorous as she proved to be politically mature, it would be a first in African oil producing countries and a new example for all.

Ghana is a country of firsts: wasn't she also the first African country to gain independence in 1957? With the right leadership and devoted patriotism, she now can be the first to emerge from poverty. We too can say:

Yes we can!

Somebody dies... and I find it hard to feel sorry

2008-12-23T08:29:00.006Z

Another human being dies, and my first thought is "it's a good thing".

Heartless? Hardly. But my heart goes to the millions of people who had to suffer under his rule, for this man was a dictator, of the "non-enlightened" type, one of those we seem to have an endless stock of on this continent. One disappears, and another emerges. Less than 24 hours after this announcement, the constitution is "suspended". Another captain saw his chance and decided to seize it.

1984... Ahmed Sekou Touré, Guinée's first president, dies. A week later, Lansana Conté stages a coup and seizes power.

2008... 24 years later, Lansana Conté, Guinée's second president, dies. People who had been champing at the bit for years proved ready to seize the occasion the very same day.

A coup is undisputably wrong, but the hypocrisy of "the rule of law" most African strongmen touted after the democracy puppet show of the 1990s make it an option not less viable than following the constitutional route. In Guinée notably, there is no way credible elections can be held within 60 days. It seemed so easy to amend the Constitution to allow the current ruler to be re-elected forever, yet nobody with legislative powers seemed to find desirable to amend the least realistic articles, which could very well become a problem once put to test.

Fortunately, other countries seem on the road to sustainable democracy. Ghana will have its runoff elections this coming Sunday. Nothing is ever perfect, but this country is trying hard. And apparently succeeding.

Important people ask me for favours

2008-12-07T14:15:00.005Z

Hey, who would have thought I knew people high up? More to the point, that people high up are courting me for favours?

As you probably know already, Ghana is choosing a new president and new lawmakers today. I was very surprised to receive the following on my mobile phone:

Sender: AkufoAddo

Text: Do you Believe In Ghana? Vote for me,Nana Akufo-Addo on 7th Dec for quality education,jobs,healthcare and a brighter future for our children.God Bless Ghana

Now this is interesting. I would never have thought somebody as important as Mr. Nana Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate and, if I read the signs well, soon to be president elect, knows me or knows of me and values my modest person so much that he would text me to ask for my vote.

I'm terribly flattered and, had I been a Ghanaian, I would willingly have participated in this voting exercise. I may even have voted for him, out of sheer gratefulness and loyalty. After all, he was the only candidate to reach out to me.

Being a cynic and a bit paranoid too, I however wonder where Mr Nana Akufo Addo got hold of my mobile phone number. Did he (or his campaign) try all possible mobile phone numbers sequentially? Did he (or his campaign) buy listings from the mobile phone company? Doesn't the Ghanaian law frown upon this? Is it legal in Ghana to buy subscribers lists?

This is democracy in the making. International medias wow and ahhh about how advanced Ghana is in the exercise of democracy. Would they be as impressed by consumer protection as they are by Ghana's political maturity?

Running madly... in circles?

2008-11-26T08:21:00.009Z

It's been a long time... Not that I had nothing to say, rather that I found it difficult to arrange my ideas in a coherent way. So many things happen every day, in the world at large and in my own life. How can I make sense of it and decide what would be most sensible as the next step forward?

We Western privileged people with a telly or a radio and the tiniest ability to understand what the newsreaders are saying know that the whole world economy is in turmoil. Everywhere, there is fear and apprehension: will I lose my savings? will my employer let me go? what about my retirement? my lifestyle?

Most of this is due to the fact that collectively, we've built a lot on sand or even in the air: speculation was rife... and still is, which magnifies the repercussions of every single event.

Since the West got rid of the immediate concern of feeding people on a daily basis, it has been forgetting gleefully about the basics of life: work, earn (not win!) money, have a roof over one's head, feed one's family, provide for their health and education. The workforce has become a commodity, it's now considered much more clever to make money through investment/speculation than through hard work, a house is just another gamble, health and education funds are being played around with to make the quickest, biggest buck possible.

To me, what we Westerners have been doing... and today's result is perfectly summed up here:

Do you think I'm jesting? Think again.

When everything else fails...

2008-05-28T20:19:00.006Z

... it's nice to know that there is One Who never fails. Of course, this mechanic flunked his grammar tests and failed to repair your truck, but take heart, breathe deeply, and read a few verses.

To me, an appropriate choice would be Psalm 119.50. Those of you who suffered in the hands of a wicked (strike: incompetent) mechanic know that in times of distress, you need superior comfort. No matter what happens to your ride, don't give up hope and remember: only He will never disappoint you (this rule suffers no exception, not even the mechanic a non-motorist just pitched to you as the best one around).

Read on... After all you've nothing more pressing to do, have you? Remember, you're on the roadside, the bonnet is up, steam is coming out (of under the bonnet and out of your ears) and you've just given up on the above mechanic. Cheer up. This one is exactly what you need:

Of course, you won't be able to actually call the specialist (noticed the obliterated phone number? maybe a disguise to avoid attracting repeat customers? I'm told popularity is sometimes a burden) and I have no clue what "warshing" could possibly be, but while you wait, you can rejoyce (either because the specialist was located, is at work and you're hearing promising grunts coming from under the bonnet, or because you've finally found out what really matters in life...) and go straight to reading Psalm 100 and Shout for joy!

Disclaimer: this post is not intended as an endorsement of the above vendors and the author accepts no responsibility in case of faulty repair work performed by said vendors.

Wonders shall never end

2008-05-15T20:31:00.001Z

Just at the corner of my street... I never saw it before, so it is probably new...

Shall he, now?

I was always told Jesus was brought up by a carpenter, so who am I to disbelieve His Father might be a tiler?

Nobody here will find this sign even slightly funny, but I have the nagging feeling I've slipped into the Twilight Zone.

Madam, the egg moved

2008-05-15T12:10:00.002Z

I know I'll sound like a cynical colonialist but here goes...

Yesterday I found that there were fingerprints on the fridge and asked my (new) househelp to clean it. She took it upon herself (laudable initiative) to clean the top of the fridge too. There she found a cardboard tray of eggs where there was only one egg remaining.

Instead of taking the one remaining egg, shoving it into the fridge, discarding the useless tray and cleaning the fridge top, she pushed the tray until the obvious happened: the remaining egg landed not too elegantly (well, flat out) on the floor.

Or that's what I guessed after she came to my home office door saying, in a half pitiful, half panicky voice: “Madam, the egg moved!”

Yes, we are in an animist country, not too far from voodoo shrines... She certainly had nothing to do with the egg moving and crashing on the tiles, surely the egg took it upon itself to commit suicide in my kitchen.

I found it VERY hard not to laugh openly. But it would have been uncharitable, considering how panicky she seemed.

We are not of the same species

2008-05-15T12:06:00.003Z

Remember my previous experiences with Moringa oleifera (leaf powder, brewed like tea) and Cyperus esculentus (a/k/a tigernut; vegetal milk + powdered almond-like residue)?

Since I like experimenting almost as much as eating, an idea crossed my mind: why not bake a cake that would be almost-but-not-quite a Matcha green tea almond cake?

Here we go then. Let's start with the ingredients:

175g (6oz) soft butter or margarine
125g (4 1/2 oz) sugar
3 eggs
250g (9 oz) self-raising flour
100g (3 1/2 oz) powdered almonds (I used half grounded tigernut, half grounded egusi (shelled squash pips) instead)
2 tsp Matcha green tea (I substituted Moringa leaf powder)
5cl milk (tigernut milk, of course)

Brew your tea in the hot (but not boiling-hot) milk. Mix all the ingredients in the order above, adding the tea+milk mixture last.
Bake in a pre-heated oven for 15 min at 180°C (356°F), then 40 min at 160°C (320°F).

Here is the result:

The kids found the colour so off-putting that they wouldn't taste it. Too bad for them, hurrah for me! One thing puzzles me though: they don't seem to believe we are of the same species. I mean, they don't really expect me to drop dead eating my concoctions but they won't believe that what agrees with me won't poison them either. Life with teenagers is so strange at times...

The ultimate cake tin shop

2008-04-07T09:55:00.005Z

One of my hobbies is baking cakes. I even toy now and then with the idea of a change of career. Of course, I do use state-of-the-art silicon cake "tins", but if I had to revert to the old aluminium ones, I know where I would buy them:

It's just opposite the place where I pay my broadband connection. This is a true Ghanaian business. A few years ago, there was only corrugated tin available here and cake tin makers had to hammer the sheets flat before giving them their final shapes. I am not sure it's still the case, but even starting with a flat sheet, it's skilled and inventive work.

Ovens are also built locally. I'll post a picture here soon.

My beautiful bed

2008-04-02T07:33:00.004Z

After seven months of dithering, I finally found the perfect bed for my huge bedroom. I couldn't opt for an ordinary bed, which would have been lost in this immensity. I'm only slightly exaggerating: I measured its area at 62sqm, that is about 667sq ft (inclusive of dressing room, bathroom and terrace).

Last week I saw a nice carved bed on the roadside, but after enquiries, it appeared that it was king size, whereas all the mattresses here are only doubles. The carpenter told me he had a double bed in the making and showed me rough planks he had only just started carving. Nonetheless, I liked what I saw and decided to put a downpayment on it.

The bed was delivered yesterday and look at how beautiful it is!

The carpenter who did it is an artist, I think, even though he calls himself "just" a carpenter. There are quite a few wonderful discoveries one can make here. I guess it is why I love this country so much.

A word about "fair trade": I did not discuss the price. I know it is standard procedure and it labels me as a "foreigner" when I do not, but I found the price he quoted "fair", and thought it was a good thing if he felt that he made easy money and I that I made a bargain and obtained a beautiful, unique work of art.

The quicksands are swallowing me

2008-03-28T16:31:00.004Z

How dit it all begin? Not so young and supposedly experienced, I thought I could help my neighbour, that he would welcome my help, that we would work at it hand in hand and that in a not too remote future, we would all rejoice at being alive and well, better for the stimulating cooperation we would have experienced...

Today, I am much more circumspect. Having pursued my dream to exhaustion, I have now more questions than answers:

1. Does my neighbour feel the need I, as an outside observer, think has to be fulfilled?

2. Does my neighbour want to be helped and, if so, am I the help he desires?

3. Am I qualified to help him? What superior experience/know-how/skill do I have that makes me fit to help him?

4. Do my values remain valid once I cross the threshold of my neighbour's house? Does what I perceive as valid for me have the same value in his context? Is there anything like universal values? If so, which are they?

5. What if the statu quo were actually the wisest option?

Help. I need help. Everything is getting blurred and grey. Must be oxygen deprivation now that the quicksands are well above my head.

Politically correct or culturally sensitive?

2007-05-18T13:15:00.000Z

You may wonder why I haven't mentioned by name any of the African countries I allude to here. Well, let's say I am a seriously deranged person, who has suffered several traumatic experiences of citizens of the said countries accusing me, because I dared describing a situation as I lived and felt it, of hating their country and its inhabitants.

My experience is that people have culturally-ingrained traits, on top of their individual personalities. There may be rogues in "the friendliest country in West Africa" (I'm told it's Burkina Faso), but overall, all people I know who visited, stayed and even lived for some time there have very mild comments about the country and its inhabitants. On the contrary, when I told people (even expatriate citizens of my current host country) about my intention to move there, they told me "you will suffer". And indeed, I do, although I must hasten to say that I've also made what I hope will prove very long-term friends.

Discovering someone else's culture doesn't mean that you have to forsake yours, live like them or espouse their views. This opinion might be misinterpreted for despise or hatred, especially by people who know no other culture than theirs and genuinely believe there is nothing or not much "wrong" with it. It is possible they are perfectly right. The issue is not that one culture is "good" and another "wrong". One is mine and another is not. There is no judgment in this, just bare, sometimes unsavoury, facts.

Like "integration". Nice dream. Even a utopian like me had to stop believing in that. Being allegedly bi-cultural, I am supposed to be the perfect synthesis of both my father's and my mother's cultures. Stop dreaming. If you see me from afar in a crowd, you'll immediately spot me as the "odd one" in the picture. Too tall, slim, fair-skinned for the African countries where I live; too tall and dark-skinned for the European country where I was born and brought up. And that's even before I move or utter a single word.

Inside, I feel like a zebra. Outside, I look like a zebra whose stripes were blurred by someone who carelessly wiped my coat while it was still wet.

Castles in the air

2007-05-18T11:47:00.000Z

When my father was about the age I am now, he used to say he would retire at 45. I found it a mightily good idea. After all, who said a self-employed person should wait till 60 to retire if at 45, they have saved enough to be able to live happily ever after?

I wish I could do the same, but I have to acknowledge that I won't have squirrelled away enough by 2013 for it to be a serious proposition. However, I think that after more than 20 years of hard work, I am entitled to change my way of life a bit and enjoy nice surroundings, non-essentials like a sea view, etc.

Water is very important to me. Were reincarnation my thing, I would think I used to be some kind of marine animal in a former life. Being rather matter-of-fact, I'll just say I like the look and feel of water, which has a calming effect on me, helps me relax and be serene.

One of my most positive character traits is that I don't get easily discouraged by seemingly impossible dreams. If you apply enough pressure, most obstacles will yield. That's my belief, and I may be about to be proven right.

A few years ago, I spent 2 years in my preferred African country to date. Unfortunately I had to relocate to Europe for health reasons, but after having recovered and spent 2.5 years elsewhere on the continent, I long to go back to this place. I have been considering this new move for more than one year now, and went for a fact-finding trip last October. I was a bit apprehensive, because I had so fond remembrances that I was afraid reality wouldn't be up to par with my recollections. I shouldn't have harboured such doubts: the actual thing was even better than what I remembered.

There, less than 7 miles from the capital city, lays a wonderful house, complete with swimming pool and kids' pool, own beach, several terraces, poolside bar and barbecue, etc. I visited it and found it almost as wonderful as it seemed from afar. The beauty of it was that the then tenant was to vacate the property by end July 2007.

I was informed that the landlord didn't want to rent anymore but sell. There was no way I could come up with the money, but I saved the real estate ad in my favourites and within months, discovered that the tenant would go by end May instead of July, that the property was on the market for rental again, and that the price had dropped by $300. I got in touch with the the landlord, told him I was still very interested indeed, and racked my brains to find a way to come up with what he was asking (1-year rental in advance, plus a $2,000 deposit). While I was thinking hard, he sent another email saying he was prepared to offer another $150 cut on the monthly rent.

So in about 6 months, thanks to the drop of the US dollar and successive price reductions, my dream property had become quite affordable indeed: for the same price, in Paris, France, I would be able to afford a one bedroom, one sitting room 40sqm apartment in a not-too-good neighbourhood.

Of course, the property will cost much more than a Parisian apartment in maintenance. But again, it was built as a guest-house and even though it hasn't been operated as such for the last few years, its potential is tremendous. I decided that I would therefore re-open it as a guest-house and offer to share my little eden on the beach, for a fee. This should at least take care of the maintenance. I would also be able to meet people, with no strings attached.

Who knows? Maybe life can actually be as good as you can dream it?

Entrepreneurship

2007-05-16T03:40:00.000Z

If you knew me a tiny bit, you could probably say that I don't yield to facility. Sometimes (often, actually), I wonder whether I should rather acknowledge I don't easily yield to reason. Take this: when I first visited my father's country 30 years ago, I fell in love with what I discovered and decided Africa was the continent where I would live when I grew up. Well, I did grow up and since 2000, I have been trying to make this dream come true.

You would think that fulfilling a child's dream means living happy ever after. Forget it. I find it mightily difficult to function here. Not moving to Africa as an employee or even a volunteer, with a company or a NGO having paved the way for me and providing a safety net in case any problems arise, means that I often come head-on with any type and amount of issues, and that I have to face them alone: I decided to create a company which, in itself, is a challenge, wherever you do it.

Doing business in Africa is a whole different world. You encounter ways of doing things you weren't prepared to face and which, frankly speaking, seem very odd at times. It is likely that I made a lot of mistakes, some of which I am probably not even aware of. I know I keep blundering again and again.

Let's face it: when you come from Europe or North America to set up a company, chances are that those you will meet in the process (officials, partners, employees, etc.) will take it for granted that you have come to take advantage of a cheap and pliable labour and make a lot of money on their backs. If it is not your case, it will take a lot of time (if not forever) to overcome some of those people's prejudices.

The blame is not all theirs: most people won't consider expatriating unless they can make a bundle in the process. Well, being an utopian, I went with quite a different agenda. I intended to give work to young African graduates and help them make a transition, as smooth as possible, between their formal training and the international markets at large. Because I tested dozens of candidates, literally from Tangiers, Morocco, to Cape Town, South Africa, I knew there was quite a gap, which I set out to bridge. It was at the same time a training programme and a job that I wanted to offer.

2.5 years later, I can say I haven't made a bundle, quite the contrary. I'm not surprised, it was not my aim. Of course, it would have been nice to do good and get rich at the same time, but not very realistic. I spent the first 18 months sleeping between 2 and 5 hours a night only, because of the staggering amount of work involved when you want both to help people increase their skills and have a usable output to deliver to your international clients (who have no idea of your dreams or circumstances).

A lot of what you are going to read in this blog will tell you about my professional experience of the last 2.5 years and nice (and less nice) asides. Why am I doing this? To warn the utopians that reality is not always rosy? I knew it wasn't and it didn't deter me. To let off steam now and then? Probably. To stop boring my friends to tears with accounts of my trials? Possibly.

It's so unreal...

2007-05-15T19:39:00.000Z

My friends (I tend to call such whoever suffers my ramblings for any amount of time) often tell me your life is so weird you should write a book. Well, being environmentally-conscious, I decided against having trees felled to satisfy my narcissistic urges in favour of going the Internet way, although I wouldn't bet that whatever goes between my fingers here on the keyboard and you reading these words doesn't have an even worse impact on the environment. No kidding. "They" say there is nothing like a free lunch. Chances are "they" are right once again. Take my word for it: I am often the one ending with the bill at the end of the meal.

To begin with, I'm a very unreal being. Verging on the virtual. Almost. Remove 6ft2 of a 38 year old slim and honey-skinned personable woman and you have your virtual being.

What's so unreal about it is that, in this time and age, my self-description is absolutely true. That's when life becomes difficult for me to comprehend: I discover that seemingly simple things like truth have a relative aspect to them and that whatever is valid in one environment may be completely irrelevant in another. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't belong to two very different cultures and, even worse, if I didn't insist on living in the one I didn't grow up in.

Well, that's me in a nutshell: I'm in a muddle, trying to find the way out and stubbornly refusing to grasp the obvious pole out of my self-inflicted pond.

It has its good side: I learn a lot. The other side of the coin is, there is no safe ground anywhere around me. I just have to waddle through, knowing I'll get wet, hoping I won't drown in quicksand.

Having sketched the context of my hectic and exhausting life, it's time to tell you see you soon for more about my good and bad experiences, and everything in between...