Beekeeping Development in Ghana Part II — The Elephant in the Room
Sometimes there’s an elephant in the room, sometimes you’re in the elephant’s room.
The elephant is just across the clearing, maybe 15 meters away, it squares up facing me flapping its large ears.
“It’s trying to make itself look bigger to intimidate us” Osman, the ranger, in forest green uniform with a long rifle strapped to his back, informs me. “It wants to come this way so it wants us to leave”
“I don’t think it needs to look any bigger!” I reply taking a few more photos as I retreat backwards away from the elephant. It actually makes a shooing motion towards us with its foreleg.
I am of course in Northern Ghana, where I’ve been for a week already, and in this case at Mole National Park. But, while I’m backtracking away from an oncoming elephant let us backtrack a bit before we get there.
Trial by Fire (or at least smoke)
The week (beginning May 30th) began with the second group of fifty young adults to be trained in beekeeping.
“Who here can speak English?” my local colleague asked them. Surprisingly nearly all the hands went up.
“Oh, okay, who here can’t speak English then?” he asked. …no hands went up.
But then we realized there was an obvious problem. So my colleague asked in the local language (Mampruli) who didn’t speak English, and four hands were raised. It was then decided to seat those four together so the translator could just translate directly for them.
And then I tried to begin my training but we ran into a funny problem I’ve encountered before. While they may speak English, they can’t understand me even if I try really hard to speak slowly. Its a combination of the way words are pronounced and word choice itself — just to use two examples that spring immediately to mind any small amount of something is not little or small but “small-small” and any large amount is usually “plenty,” and when you’re giving people new information, and you’re not using the word they expect to hear and pronouncing the word you are using in a manner different than they’re accustomed, they quickly start to find it hard to follow.
So my translator (and lexicographic purists will have been itching to tell me verbal “translation” is done by “interpreters” not translators, but I use the word “translator” because it’s what most people expect), who confusingly has the same name as me (Chris/Kris) translated my English into their English and then someone else would translate for the remaining four.
The group was good, attentive and asked good questions. Already better than the prior group which had asked nearly no questions and I had found it hard to avoid running through the material at an overly brisk pace. But just in case, I had already asked to rearrange the schedule to have a field visit on the first day as an ice breaker/teambuilding exercise — because nothing gets a group together like being chased around by bees together!
Unfortunately in all the confusion, a critical piece of equipment was forgotten. After we’d driven half an hour and everyone was suiting up I asked “Hey, where’s the smoker?” it turns out no one had brought one. It’s vitally important to blow smoke on bees to calm them down. After looking around for something else that could be used we found the chicken feed dispenser you see being carried like a church censer in the above picture.
This actually worked very well for calming the bees … but unlike a normal smoker its uncontrollable stream of smoke also frequently got in my face and I suffered more from the smoker than the bees, at times trying to instruct my trainees with tears streaming down my cheeks from the smoke stinging my eyes.
The rest of the week proceeded well, the trainees interested and attentive, the field visits productive and without further forgotten smokers.
Wild Drumming
One of the last evenings in Walewale, I was out visiting some friends around town. This involved zipping around the town at night on my friend’s motorbike, the onrush of air felt cool and refreshing on the warm evening, and it was fun to see the slices of casual life we zipped past. People still perusing market stalls at 8pm, shopkeepers sitting by their shops patiently waiting for a few more customers. People talking with their friends. Even a group of guys sitting around playing a simple board game on a low table beside the road. While talking to one of my friends we were visiting I heard steady drumming coming from not far off. Your classic, cliche, “African drumming.”
“What’s that drumming?” I asked.
“Oh there’s a dance troupe practicing over there, would you like to go see?”
“Yes!” and so we walked over. It was actually not even 50 meters, before coming around a house there were about two dozen people dancing by firelight. They were organized in about three groups of eight, by age — the oldest group being late-teens and the youngest group being maybe 10–12ish. The drummers were adults and the drums appeared to be made of calabashes (huge dried gourds).
I’ve seen local drum and dance troupes on many occasions before when they’ve been booked for opening or closing ceremonies of events but coming across them “in the wild” so to speak felt decidedly more authentic.
An Inexplicable Failure of Cultural Understanding
At the end of the week, we relocated two hours south to the town of Tamale — which sadly has nothing to do with the delicious delicious Mexican food of the same name, though the name makes me think cravingly of it.
In our new hotel, one of the first few mornings there was another white person eating at the restaurant. I don’t really treat those who share my appearance of ethnic origin differently from anyone else but he struck up a conversation with me as I was leaving. He had apparently been here in Ghana off and on for over ten years now and appears to be here to promote better grain storage solutions with mobile storage silos he sells.
A little later we were exchanging a few messages on LinkedIn and he asked if I was interested in seeing some of the local dining options and such, and I said that as my colleagues and I were unfamiliar with the area we’d love to be shown some places. So we made plans for that evening. I specifically asked if I could invite my colleagues, and he said sure.
So we all met up (he and I, my driver, photographer, and general administration/logistics guy (Williams)(I.e. three of my staff). The restaurant was just a few minutes away. Nice and elegant, and I was excited to see something other than West African cuisine as a break from the daily — it had an Indian chef (and owner?) and lots of Indian food on the menu.
I happily ordered something similar to butter chicken, and some garlic naan. Our new friend (let’s call him “Kevin”) recommended some specific dishes to my colleagues, everyone was getting along great and enjoying the meal.
Finally, it came time to pay. Though I thought maybe “Kevin” intended to treat us all, I didn’t want to seem like I was presuming to assume that, so I took my wallet out first and asked if they accepted cards … which it turns out their machine wasn’t working.
And then “Kevin” gestured at my local colleagues and said something along the lines of “Okay it will be 100 cedis for each of us.”
I was shocked. You don’t take locals out to eat and not pay for them. It’s just not done. Quickly before they could have heart attacks I butted in with “Oh I’m paying for them.”
“Okay well then let's see” “Kevin” carefully tallied up his portion of the bill “Okay it’s 125 cedis for me” and handed me the cash. I covered the remaining 361 ($32) cedis. We returned to our hotel and went our separate ways without further incident.
The next day Williams took me aside with a serious expression.
“Did you know that was going to happen last night?”
“No!” and I explained my perspective, that I had always intended to cover them unless this other guy was treating us all. Williams confirmed it was every bit as shocking for them as I suspected.
To explain this, at its most basic level the restaurant could have been easily anticipated to be out of their price range. Even in the States, if myself and someone else invited out some other people who make so much less than us, say we were wealthy business owners and the other guy invited me out with my working-class staff and we went to a very fancy restaurant, obviously it would be absurd to drop “their share” of the bill on them.
But on top of that while America has an ethos of everyone standing proudly on their own two feet, and Australia even more has a “don’t be a tall poppy” ethos; a lot of Africa has a “big man” / “bwana” cultural ethos. If you are well off, you are a big man, and you are expected to show generosity to those around you. There are pros and cons to this — on the one hand everyone has a social safety net of their local community, but people also get dragged down by it. But the pertinence to the immediate situation is that we who are assumed to have a great deal more income than the locals are automatically assumed to be paying for things we invite locals to.
Or as Williams explained “We could have paid for ourselves of course, we just maybe wouldn’t be eating for the next week”:: nervous chuckling:: “We need to plan for that kind of thing.”
“He was really nice” Williams continued “but if he invites us to dinner I don’t think we’re going again, even if you’re paying because just, it was awkward and uncomfortable for us that he did that.”
What baffles me about this is two things. Firstly that after living here for almost ten years he could make such a cultural misunderstanding. Secondly, it was wholly unnecessary! I had taken my wallet out and expressed an intention to pay, he could have just handed me his portion and I wouldn’t have said anything and the guys wouldn’t have particularly noticed.
And the guy seemed to have been hoping to make some kind of networking connection with me that could have directly or indirectly led to business opportunities, but by alienating my staff he therefore firmly alienated himself from me.
The following weekend we embarked on the three hour drive to Mole National Park. There a ranger, Osman, joined us in the back of our pickup and we went on a little safari (Ranger rate is 15 cedis ($1.32) an hour).
My safari point-of-reference is the famous safari parks of East Africa (eg the Serengeti). Compared to those the landscape wasn’t as open and there weren’t as many big animals, but in the forests and open woodland of Mole we saw a wide variety of birds, several species of antelopes, baboons and a number of large warthogs.
The elephant was spotted by another safari group and relayed to our guide. One of about 600 in the park, we were told this one was a 40 year old male named Major. I thought maybe his tusks had been removed to deter poachers but was told his had broken off in a fight with another male elephant.
Just outside the entrance to the national park one can find the oldest mosque in Ghana, founded in 1421 and listed by the World Monuments Fund as one of the world’s 100 Most Endangered Sites.
Official local tour guides in Larabanga Mosque polo shirts were waiting on hand to give us a short tour around the building and tell us about it. Non-muslims are not permitted inside but I could look through the doorway, from where I couldn’t really see much.
No Africa trip is complete without a flat tire and we got one. We had a spare but as we were passing through a village at the time our driver just took our tire for immediate repair and soon returned (via motorcart)
The adventures continue, tune in next time wherein I get seriously accused of witchcraft!
