I left my brief vacation in Liberia, to start working in Ghana. I began with one week in Accra. It was the warmest time of the year, and I’ve never found heat so exhausting. Here, it wasn’t only the temperature. There was also a humidity, and the pollution of a large, dense city full of motorbikes and old yellow taxis that made the air stick in my throat.
But still, I walked. Almost everywhere. From the quiet residential area where I was staying, to the Ministries neighborhood downtown. I went from ministry to ministry, trying to track down the right data and people to talk to, for information and permits.
I was pointed in different directions, sometimes along quite questionable paths, not always correct, to find my way to the right department of a ministry. It was difficult, with street names rarely written out and offices having been relocated – but there was always a friendly man or woman on a street corner to ask.
And I always found my way to the right place, in the end.
Often, I was asked to wait outside the office of the person I needed to talk to, but I rarely had to make an appointment and come back later. I was just given a newspaper, and half an hour later, the person in charge arrived, looked at my introduction letter from SRC, and then happily assisted me with whatever I asked for.
Things might not have been that well organized at first glance, from an outsider’s perspective, but everything could be arranged on short notice and I got everything I needed. Data might not exist on everything I would have wanted, but any data that was there I could have.
And I just wonder how this would have compared with data hunting in Sweden. Most statistics you would be able to find online, for one, but if you needed to see someone, have an actual face to face meeting, I doubt it would have been possible to arrange even with a couple of weeks’ notice. Some of the ease might come from an increased service mindedness towards me due to my whiteness and papers from a European university, for sure, but it also seems like Ghanaian public servants have a more flexible attitude towards time. I guess that has both good and bad sides to it, but for me it worked in my favour. I got what I needed and more in the week I was there, with time to spare, and I am so grateful for all the friendly people I met at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Statistical Service and the Ministry of Fisheries.
Even so, I left the hostel in the mornings before the heat struck, willing myself to feel like on top of the world, and returned in the afternoons, sweaty and sunburned, feeling leached out and like I would never be able to smile like the nice white girl I was ever again.
Katja Malmborg 