ghana: i want to be your friend

These are phone numbers and email addresses given to me by people I met or worked with in Ghana. Whenever a stranger discovered I lived in the United States, he or she would write down his or her contact information, saying, ”Call me, and we’ll talk,” ”I’ll stay with you when I visit America,” or ”I want to be your friend.”

Not one has heard from me. I was baffled. I still am. What could I have possibly done? What did they want from me? And most confounding of all: Why? I have my own ideas, but I’d rather not state them here. Make what you will.

“Ebenezer” – Accra, Ghana, June 2006

(The first. Ebenezer runs a phone booth outside the butcher shop. Callers pay him to use the two phones on his stand. He asked me if I were Chinese or Japanese or Korean; before I could answer, he said, “It doesn’t matter. We like you all.”)

(Chairman James, from the Liberian Refugee Camp in Budaburam, Ghana. He came to my rescue when I thought I was lost. He runs a small bus depot.)

(I met Williams on a minibus on my way to the Liberian Refugee Camp. He accused me of not trusting him because I was reluctant to give him my address in the United States.)

(A news reporter for Ghana TV. I met him on numerous occasions while working for The Daily Guide. The most handsome and charming guy I’ve ever met traveling abroad.)

(I tagged along for a story with a senior reporter named Alhaji and his cousin Mazuk. We were to interview a source, but because it was all very confidential, I was sent out of the room before the formal interview began. For close to two hours, I sat with the source’s secretary Georgina, who was supposed to keep an eye on me.)

(The Daily Guide’s 80-year-old proofreader/copy editor. During lunch one day, he was talking to himself about buying aphrodisiacs after work. He was close to tears when I said good-bye to him on my last day at the Guide.)

(The Daily Guide’s financial associate Fidele. The interns went to her for any and all on-the-job travel expenses. Among a few other women at the Guide, she bleached her skin. She is center in the picture below.)

Accra, Ghana, July 2006

ghana: one

“Welcome Visitor” – Accra, Ghana, July 2006

After this most recent trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, I feel the pull to write about my previous globe-trotting experiences — despite the fact it’s been a few years and memory is flawed. But screw all that, I’m an artist; I’ll make some of it up if I have to. Of course, I won’t. I like to pretend though. I think a good place to start is Summer 2006, Ghana. Hong Kong and China are of distant Summer 2005, and I should write those first, but damn it, I’ve been overloaded with Asia these past few weeks.

I spent Summer 2006 with my aunt and uncle (yes, they are Chinese) in Accra, Ghana. My uncle managed to wrangle a summer internship at a small, local newspaper The Daily Guide; at that time, I was attempting to pursue a career in journalism. I was lucky: The experience was indespensible. During the weekdays, I worked with locals, traveled to different towns around Accra, reported for a newspaper. During the weekends, I toured the country with my aunt and uncle. Like, Summer 2005 (of which I will write in another post), it was the perfect combination of true local experience and tourism.

The first day at The Daily Guide, a fellow intern asked me if I were a virgin and if I appreciated the music of P. Diddy and 50 Cent. Alfred Mortey was 20 and lived time zones away from New York City, and yet, we managed to connect, talking about sex and rap. Some things span oceans.

The second day, our supervisor Amos, whom we respectfully called Uncle Amos, told us to walk around the city on our own. There were no mini reporting assignments for us to bungle. No dull press conferences to attend. No senior reporters who wanted the two of us as baggage. He told us to walk around the city to “smell news.” Alfred and I departed, our notebooks under our arms, ready to sniff out a story about the local mafia, the heroin and prostitution rings, the corrupted high officials.

We visited the police office across town, and after being handed off a few times, we talked to a public relations officer. He led us to his office. The lights were off; the midday heat was just sneaking up. He had a story we could write, he said as he wiped his brow with a dirty hankerchief. He laid out the scene for us (slowly, as he could tell we were interns): a robbery-hijacking of a taxi cab in broad daylight. He spelled out the names of the players for us (repeatedly, as he could tell we were trying to catch up with our clumsy notetaking): Alhaji something.

I must admit I didn’t understand everything that he said; he had — did I mention? — a heavy African accent. Alfred and Uncle Amos had accents also, but I guess I didn’t notice until it became crucial to follow the details of gun calibre and street intersection for a story to be published in a city newspaper. It was only when Alfred and I began walking back to the Guide did I really understand the nature of the story. It wasn’t about the taxi driver or the robber-hijacker. It was about the Good Samaritan. (I guess I missed that whole part of the story.)

Alfred and I arrived at the office excited to write our article. But there were no computers available. We were given irregular, long, gray recycled paper to outline and write the story on. We wrote each objective sentence in simple, journalistic syntax. Who, what, where, when, how. Why. The headline, byline, lede were written multiple times as we arranged and rearranged subject, verb, object. After two hours or so, we delivered the draft to the 80-year-old proofreader, Uncle Roddy, who, within 10 minutes, returned it with handwritten corrections in the margins, instructing us to give it to the typists. (Few people knew how to type. Those who knew typed very slowly; most were astounded with the speed at which I typed.) We were done for the day.

We sat outside on the balcony, the balcony we would sit on every day that summer, and talked about our luck stumbling upon a worthy first story. At sunset, as the senior reporters were just arriving into the office to write their own stories, Alfred and I went our separate ways home, happy as clams, as Vonnegut would say.

The article was never published.

bangkok, thailand

(moment stolen for all posterity by hobinskii)

Imprimis. So I’m attempting this blogshit. In my defense for caving into this ludicrous cyberworld, I’m pretending it will do me some good to write a few paragraphs a day, considering how little I’ve written in the past few months. Mayhaps, as is my hope, one of these entries will inspire a personal essay, a story, what have you. Oh, this blog is also to promote my mediocre photography and my average writing skills. I do not claim any of this photography or writing as great, thought-out, and organized work. As long as this is all out in the open. Thanks.

I would really rather peck out a few paragraphs on my travels in Hong Kong right now, but this picture of me in Bangkok is all-too-suitable for a first entry. So, Thailand it is.

Thailand is not the first developing country I have visited. It is merely among others: China, Ghana, Mexico, Bahamas (more on these later; at least an entry will come out on each). Granted, the last two were for primarily vacationing purposes, not unlike Thailand, but there are similarities that cannot be overlooked simply because I only visited Cancun and Nassau. Thanks to my adventurous (at times, to the point of absurdity) father, I have seen not only the flashy tourist locations gushed about in travel pamphlets and by shallow travelers, but also the city/landscape of urban squalor.

(I will not go into intimate details of what I have seen at the moment. If you want superb descriptions of urban squalor, see, off the top of my head, Hugo and Dostoyevsky. If you want unexceptional photos of urban squalor, see through my own camera lens: Cancun, Cancun, Accra, Accra, Bangkok. I must admit, after going to Ghana, it’s been harder to take such pictures.)

The tourism industry has depended on the fact that few travelers, especially those on weeklong suntanning vacations, have seen the seedy underbelly of any particular attractive location. Even if there is some awareness of the poverty of these countries, tourists still travel to them. Ghana, perhaps least in terms of tourism, still thrives on the thousands who visit each season. When I was in Accra and its environs from early June to late August, I saw more stout, middle-aged, ignorant Americans than I expected. Of course, I only saw them in the tourist locations where roads were paved and air-conditioners were in every store.

Back to Bangkok. I suppose I must give a premise to this five-day trip. Originally, we were supposed to go to Guilin, China (idyllic images here). However, thanks to hobinskii (see “The Bane of a Traveling Midwesterner”), all of China was snowed in for the first time in 50 years. We, instead, decided to travel to Thailand, where it was a balmy 90 degrees. Because of the last-minute change, we were forced to join a godforsaken tour bus that was fully equipped with loudspeakers and two overly enthused group leaders, happily dubbed by hobinskii and me, Pinky and the Beast. Pinky, the local guide, was a petite Thai man, who spoke cautious Cantonese and frequently encouraged the members of the tour group to buy incense and flowers for all the Buddhas we visited. The Beast, the company guide, was a not-so-petite Hong Kongnese woman, who spoke rapidfire Cantonese and frequently laughed at her own horrible jokes over the loudspeakers of the bus.

The tour group only led us through, it seemed, the tourist areas, or better termed, tourist traps. Malls, flea markets, Buddhist temples. I enjoyed the trip, yet at every corner, there was a person attempting to sell me something I did not want. “Silk” scarves, incense, Buddha statuettes, etc. This is nothing astounding. This occurs at every tourist site, yet I do believe this is the first time I truly realized the force of the tourist industry. Buy, buy, buy. Consume, consume, consume. (Hong Kong, or as hobinskii calls it, “One giant shopping mall.”)

The first attraction after the three-hour plane ride from Hong Kong to Bangkok was a small amusement park, woefully called Dream World, with an equally woeful tagline, “The World of Happiness.” This Dream World was naturally surrounded by rice paddies, shanty towns, and what seemed like an abandoned railroad track. The world of happiness, indeed. The second attraction? Siam Paragon, an urban mall right in the middle of Bangkok.

As we rumbled down the highway on the tour bus, we saw billboards for zippy foreign cars towering over dilapidated homes. Nothing new, however, I suppose. This is in every struggling developing country. I certainly saw this in China, Mexico, Ghana, et al. Yet I knew I was somehow part of the problem as well. In all these countries, I stood as an outsider, as a foreigner who could afford to travel to such countries. How can one care about the issue of poverty when one always has the luxury of jumping on a jet plane and leaving? This is a question we all must answer for ourselves, but I was particularly provoked in Thailand, especially when Pinky related stories of distant kings who, after acquiring millions from the economy, built more than 40,000 temples, temples that later demanded already impoverished devoutees to give offerings of – wait for it – money in order to ask Buddha for – wait for it again – money. Religion as an instrument to oppress the poor? This again would not be the first time. (If it seems I’m pinning this all on Buddhism, which, by the way, I do not claim to know all the ins and outs of, I’m not. I was once a Presbyterian, and Protestantism is by no means clean.) But religion is a whole other post, so I will end with this image of Pattaya, Thailand, which is also a whole other post.

Pattaya, Thailand, February 2008

Business in the front, poverty in the back.