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Have you ever wondered how it is to live in West Africa and, more importantly, how one West African sees another West African? Planning to make my first trip to a country within the Elephant Ear section of Africa, I set about reading up on the different countries in in that region. I wanted to know about the relative safety of being a visitor, the people, the food, the culture the fauna and the land in general.
In the weeks I have been reading up on the countries in West Africa, I have read up on about 10 of the 16 countries with special interest in Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Togo and Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
My ancestry routes back to Africa's west coast and it has always been among my aspirations to plan a trip to the Mother Land. I have been fortunate to come in contact with many West Africans and this began from my high school days at XLCR when I had a Lit. teacher from Nigeria. I think back with fond memories as Mr Ononuju fittingly took us through passages in the books: Things Fall Apart and The African Child. As a professional I again came in touch with other West Africans - mostly from Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. I observed that they all get along (at least here in the USA), and would have friendly banter especially during football (soccer) seasons. Their food taste so similar and their accent (to my Western ears) sound so close.
Though I am fully aware that there are many differences between the countries in terms of customs, attitudes, dialects, likes dislikes, mannerisms and colonial history, I always felt that it was easy for a West African to travel through West Africa and, essentially, assimilate! So it was with a degree of surprise when I read the following article of a Nigerian's experience in Ghana.
__________________________________________________ __
Wednesday, 26 January 2011 11:24
Iheoma Nwachukwu
At first, I enjoyed the looks people threw my way: the puzzled glances, the quick understanding smiles that forgave my incomprehension, especially on the flight into Accra when a small-eyed, quick-smiling, grizzled passenger pointed through the window, identifying a trapeze-shaped feature on the ground as Takoradi while I nodded cheerfully. (Looking back, I am not certain this was Takoradi at all.) Later, I would come to resent the stares, the quirks of habit (on my part) that frustrated any attempt to blend in with the population, the abundance of western tourists who regarded my country as a laughable destination.
I had come to Ghana to begin work on my short stories, as a Chinua Achebe Center Fellow. I was a guest of the Writers Project of Ghana, which had sent a representative to meet me at the airport. In addition to folding pairs of jeans and shirts into my brown travelling bag, I had folded prejudices, too, neatly into my mind.
The Ghana I knew was the one where penniless shoemakers and clownish ‘make-your-jerry’ hair stylists had migrated from; where teachers with funny accents (they said ‘kahm’ when they meant ‘come’) had run from because of the poor economy; where corpulent women who sold asiama and monkey tail in Lagos ghettoes returned to from time to time to replenish starving families with money made from local-gin sales. Nigeria was the big brother, the giant of Africa. My stay would be cock-of-the-walk-on-a-promenade, no problemo.
There were some immediate problems though. I could not speak Twi, and I made no attempt to learn. After all, I was here to write short stories, I told myself. What I would soon learn was that though English was the official language, Ghanaians did not always speak it on the streets. They more often spoke Twi. In short, I needed Twi to survive at the bus stations, on the buses, and to buy kelewele on the street corner!
For some reason, people could detect my foreignness and even my nationality (once, on a backstreet, a woman said, ‘Nigeria,’ in a merry voice, as she passed me.) This made me happy—let them know I had travelled here, a Nigerian. I represented my homeland in this West African country. The feeling was sui generis, possibly because I had never really been out of Nigeria before. I had never had to weigh my nationality in the scale of foreign eyes.
On buses, on the streets, I preserved a mask of incomprehension, eager for attention. On buses I was quite happy to let fellow passengers speak to the bus conductor on my behalf; I quickly pointed out to passersby that I was not Ghanaian; I exaggerated my awkwardness with cedi notes at the market.
And I was impressed with the people. They were quick to smile and were polite, always saying ‘mpacho’ (please) before every phrase. There were no brawls at bus stops; people boarded the buses without pushing. I kept thinking back to Nigeria: why did we seem to lose our minds when we saw a slowing bus?
Road users obeyed signs here. Power was reliable. The cedi was solid. The streets did not scare after dark. I was charmed: I now believed some of the impressive stories I had heard. I learned things: tro-tro for bus; matefor bus conductor; bus station for garage. The name of an alcoholic beverage, Kasapreko, meant ‘speak only once.’ You pronounced the name Nana as Naaa-nah for females and Nah-nah for males. A girl born on a Thursday was named Yaa. You called ‘master’ when you needed someone’s attention. Cats were a delicacy.
When did I begin to resent these things? I had come to Ghana with my idea of who Ghanaians were, how I appeared to Ghanaians, and how I expected them to receive me. I had not considered their opinions, what they really thought of Nigerians. In the year 2010, what was Nigeria to a Ghanaian?
We were seen as crooked and unreliable, greedy and grasping. The Nigerian was covetous and not to be trusted: an uncouth jabber-jaw who knew only how to party. This was shocking. I had come expecting privileges because I was from the biggest and most powerful country in the region. That meant nothing in Ghana. I had hoped for an acknowledging smile at immigration when I presented my passport; something resembling respect filling the eyes that looked on when I introduced myself. I hoped that Nigeria’s pivotal role in conflict resolution in Africa would lend me goodwill at the Internet café when I forgot my wallet and promised to pay later. No privileges. I was treated just like any other African.
We fool ourselves in Nigeria when we speak romantically of our regional and continental presence, our power, our might in the league of nations. The truth is that nobody gives a shitabout us. When we say ‘Nigerian’, they hear ‘criminal’.
Internet fraud has tainted the green and white. You feel the taint when you cross our borders. I felt it in Ghana. Everywhere, people said, ‘Nigerian scammers are giving us a bad name.’ ‘All the scammers in Ghana are Nigerians.’ ‘Nigerians can scaaaaam!’ Shame became my companion. Then anger: it took me several weeks to acknowledge the veiled opposition to Nigerians. ‘You’re the coolest Nigerian we’ve ever met,’ I was told, sort of a backhanded compliment. Perhaps they had expected me to be rude, a brawler, even something of a fraud.
At my hotel in Amasaman, I had made friends with some American students and their professors. On evenings when the yellow fence lamps would wink on and drench the ficus and oleander hedges, we would sit out on the lush lawn and talk. I found myself often defending my country. These people had come with their prejudices too—419, kidnappings, unbridled larceny, Abdulmuttalab the ‘pants’ bomber. Yes, there were kidnappings, and yes, there was internet fraud, I would admit, but kidnapping thrived only in certain states . . . Yes, I agree that even I wouldn’t visit a country where there was the risk that I would be snatched.
Internet fraud was as much a headache to Nigerians as it was to the outside world. Jobless graduates who frequented cybercafés, searching job vacancies online, were sometimes caught in police sweeps. And internet crime was high because there were no jobs . . . One fast-talking brunette, Sammie, argued that people in other African countries—she mentioned Benin—did not resort to internet crime when they had no jobs, a point which shut me up.
One October night on the lawn, I was chatting at a table with four other people: two Americans and two Ghanaians. Soon the conversation turned to cyber crime. The Ghanaians informed the Americans that Ghana was safe to invest in, safe to visit, not like Nigeria with its insecurity and fraud. Nigerians brought unfair competition to Ghanaian business. Every Nigerian in Ghana was a fraudster, the average Nigerian was a thief, Nigerians were responsible for sucking Ghana into a filth-hole, they concluded, rapping knuckles on the plastic table.
I thought: the emperor with no clothes on. The truth is, if Ghana hopes to effectively challenge its own problems, its people must tell the naked emperor within each person the truth, stop seeing themselves as victims. True, Nigerian criminals have swarmed into Ghana, but the Ghanaian authorities can do something about that, and if they don’t, it’s their choice.
One thing that struck me as odd was that while Nollywood actors were well liked and very popular in Ghana, ordinary Nigerians struggled for acceptance. Also odd was the way that foreigners—Americans, British, Germans—appeared to show less margin for bias, more caution in peddling stereotypes, than did Ghanaians.
Soon, it was time to sort out my papers. I had already spent ninety days—needing to spend a further thirty days ending in November—and I would have problems with immigration if I did not properly extend my stay.
I could not help but think of the hundreds of Ghanaians in Nigeria with their immigration status unverified. We take things for granted in Nigeria. Things do not work, not because there are no rules, but because we fail to see the importance of following rules. We say to ourselves: What’s the need? This job is not my father’s property. Chop and clean mouth biko.
I enjoyed my stay in Ghana. I tried not to sound too Nigerian in my speech, and failed. I moved with a weaving phalanx of hips at Aphrodisiac nightclub in Osu, picked shells at Kokrobite beach, whispered prayers at Elmina castle and bought a copy of Granta magazine at the cavernous and charming Accra mall. I developed a fondness for fufu and goat light soup, banku and okra. I hated shito sauce in anything. The girls seemed to be shaped from the same hip mould. They laughed and said I could take them back to Nigeria. I was well-behaved and courteous, and it was fun.
The only rough patch was that October night out on the lawn, when Nigeria and I were under attack. I lost my cool. I told the Ghanaians off. I used curse words. To their credit, the Ghanaians did not curse back, they just watched me and laughed.
Today, when I think about what the singular lesson of my trip was, I believe it was confronting myself as a Nigerian outside the shores of my country, realising that the little things we do within the confines of our borders are projected on an outside screen, a screen that the whole world watches, always, and painstakingly notes.
In the weeks I have been reading up on the countries in West Africa, I have read up on about 10 of the 16 countries with special interest in Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Togo and Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
My ancestry routes back to Africa's west coast and it has always been among my aspirations to plan a trip to the Mother Land. I have been fortunate to come in contact with many West Africans and this began from my high school days at XLCR when I had a Lit. teacher from Nigeria. I think back with fond memories as Mr Ononuju fittingly took us through passages in the books: Things Fall Apart and The African Child. As a professional I again came in touch with other West Africans - mostly from Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. I observed that they all get along (at least here in the USA), and would have friendly banter especially during football (soccer) seasons. Their food taste so similar and their accent (to my Western ears) sound so close.
Though I am fully aware that there are many differences between the countries in terms of customs, attitudes, dialects, likes dislikes, mannerisms and colonial history, I always felt that it was easy for a West African to travel through West Africa and, essentially, assimilate! So it was with a degree of surprise when I read the following article of a Nigerian's experience in Ghana.
__________________________________________________ __
Wednesday, 26 January 2011 11:24
Iheoma Nwachukwu
At first, I enjoyed the looks people threw my way: the puzzled glances, the quick understanding smiles that forgave my incomprehension, especially on the flight into Accra when a small-eyed, quick-smiling, grizzled passenger pointed through the window, identifying a trapeze-shaped feature on the ground as Takoradi while I nodded cheerfully. (Looking back, I am not certain this was Takoradi at all.) Later, I would come to resent the stares, the quirks of habit (on my part) that frustrated any attempt to blend in with the population, the abundance of western tourists who regarded my country as a laughable destination.
I had come to Ghana to begin work on my short stories, as a Chinua Achebe Center Fellow. I was a guest of the Writers Project of Ghana, which had sent a representative to meet me at the airport. In addition to folding pairs of jeans and shirts into my brown travelling bag, I had folded prejudices, too, neatly into my mind.
The Ghana I knew was the one where penniless shoemakers and clownish ‘make-your-jerry’ hair stylists had migrated from; where teachers with funny accents (they said ‘kahm’ when they meant ‘come’) had run from because of the poor economy; where corpulent women who sold asiama and monkey tail in Lagos ghettoes returned to from time to time to replenish starving families with money made from local-gin sales. Nigeria was the big brother, the giant of Africa. My stay would be cock-of-the-walk-on-a-promenade, no problemo.
There were some immediate problems though. I could not speak Twi, and I made no attempt to learn. After all, I was here to write short stories, I told myself. What I would soon learn was that though English was the official language, Ghanaians did not always speak it on the streets. They more often spoke Twi. In short, I needed Twi to survive at the bus stations, on the buses, and to buy kelewele on the street corner!
For some reason, people could detect my foreignness and even my nationality (once, on a backstreet, a woman said, ‘Nigeria,’ in a merry voice, as she passed me.) This made me happy—let them know I had travelled here, a Nigerian. I represented my homeland in this West African country. The feeling was sui generis, possibly because I had never really been out of Nigeria before. I had never had to weigh my nationality in the scale of foreign eyes.
On buses, on the streets, I preserved a mask of incomprehension, eager for attention. On buses I was quite happy to let fellow passengers speak to the bus conductor on my behalf; I quickly pointed out to passersby that I was not Ghanaian; I exaggerated my awkwardness with cedi notes at the market.
And I was impressed with the people. They were quick to smile and were polite, always saying ‘mpacho’ (please) before every phrase. There were no brawls at bus stops; people boarded the buses without pushing. I kept thinking back to Nigeria: why did we seem to lose our minds when we saw a slowing bus?
Road users obeyed signs here. Power was reliable. The cedi was solid. The streets did not scare after dark. I was charmed: I now believed some of the impressive stories I had heard. I learned things: tro-tro for bus; matefor bus conductor; bus station for garage. The name of an alcoholic beverage, Kasapreko, meant ‘speak only once.’ You pronounced the name Nana as Naaa-nah for females and Nah-nah for males. A girl born on a Thursday was named Yaa. You called ‘master’ when you needed someone’s attention. Cats were a delicacy.
When did I begin to resent these things? I had come to Ghana with my idea of who Ghanaians were, how I appeared to Ghanaians, and how I expected them to receive me. I had not considered their opinions, what they really thought of Nigerians. In the year 2010, what was Nigeria to a Ghanaian?
We were seen as crooked and unreliable, greedy and grasping. The Nigerian was covetous and not to be trusted: an uncouth jabber-jaw who knew only how to party. This was shocking. I had come expecting privileges because I was from the biggest and most powerful country in the region. That meant nothing in Ghana. I had hoped for an acknowledging smile at immigration when I presented my passport; something resembling respect filling the eyes that looked on when I introduced myself. I hoped that Nigeria’s pivotal role in conflict resolution in Africa would lend me goodwill at the Internet café when I forgot my wallet and promised to pay later. No privileges. I was treated just like any other African.
We fool ourselves in Nigeria when we speak romantically of our regional and continental presence, our power, our might in the league of nations. The truth is that nobody gives a shitabout us. When we say ‘Nigerian’, they hear ‘criminal’.
Internet fraud has tainted the green and white. You feel the taint when you cross our borders. I felt it in Ghana. Everywhere, people said, ‘Nigerian scammers are giving us a bad name.’ ‘All the scammers in Ghana are Nigerians.’ ‘Nigerians can scaaaaam!’ Shame became my companion. Then anger: it took me several weeks to acknowledge the veiled opposition to Nigerians. ‘You’re the coolest Nigerian we’ve ever met,’ I was told, sort of a backhanded compliment. Perhaps they had expected me to be rude, a brawler, even something of a fraud.
At my hotel in Amasaman, I had made friends with some American students and their professors. On evenings when the yellow fence lamps would wink on and drench the ficus and oleander hedges, we would sit out on the lush lawn and talk. I found myself often defending my country. These people had come with their prejudices too—419, kidnappings, unbridled larceny, Abdulmuttalab the ‘pants’ bomber. Yes, there were kidnappings, and yes, there was internet fraud, I would admit, but kidnapping thrived only in certain states . . . Yes, I agree that even I wouldn’t visit a country where there was the risk that I would be snatched.
Internet fraud was as much a headache to Nigerians as it was to the outside world. Jobless graduates who frequented cybercafés, searching job vacancies online, were sometimes caught in police sweeps. And internet crime was high because there were no jobs . . . One fast-talking brunette, Sammie, argued that people in other African countries—she mentioned Benin—did not resort to internet crime when they had no jobs, a point which shut me up.
One October night on the lawn, I was chatting at a table with four other people: two Americans and two Ghanaians. Soon the conversation turned to cyber crime. The Ghanaians informed the Americans that Ghana was safe to invest in, safe to visit, not like Nigeria with its insecurity and fraud. Nigerians brought unfair competition to Ghanaian business. Every Nigerian in Ghana was a fraudster, the average Nigerian was a thief, Nigerians were responsible for sucking Ghana into a filth-hole, they concluded, rapping knuckles on the plastic table.
I thought: the emperor with no clothes on. The truth is, if Ghana hopes to effectively challenge its own problems, its people must tell the naked emperor within each person the truth, stop seeing themselves as victims. True, Nigerian criminals have swarmed into Ghana, but the Ghanaian authorities can do something about that, and if they don’t, it’s their choice.
One thing that struck me as odd was that while Nollywood actors were well liked and very popular in Ghana, ordinary Nigerians struggled for acceptance. Also odd was the way that foreigners—Americans, British, Germans—appeared to show less margin for bias, more caution in peddling stereotypes, than did Ghanaians.
Soon, it was time to sort out my papers. I had already spent ninety days—needing to spend a further thirty days ending in November—and I would have problems with immigration if I did not properly extend my stay.
I could not help but think of the hundreds of Ghanaians in Nigeria with their immigration status unverified. We take things for granted in Nigeria. Things do not work, not because there are no rules, but because we fail to see the importance of following rules. We say to ourselves: What’s the need? This job is not my father’s property. Chop and clean mouth biko.
I enjoyed my stay in Ghana. I tried not to sound too Nigerian in my speech, and failed. I moved with a weaving phalanx of hips at Aphrodisiac nightclub in Osu, picked shells at Kokrobite beach, whispered prayers at Elmina castle and bought a copy of Granta magazine at the cavernous and charming Accra mall. I developed a fondness for fufu and goat light soup, banku and okra. I hated shito sauce in anything. The girls seemed to be shaped from the same hip mould. They laughed and said I could take them back to Nigeria. I was well-behaved and courteous, and it was fun.
The only rough patch was that October night out on the lawn, when Nigeria and I were under attack. I lost my cool. I told the Ghanaians off. I used curse words. To their credit, the Ghanaians did not curse back, they just watched me and laughed.
Today, when I think about what the singular lesson of my trip was, I believe it was confronting myself as a Nigerian outside the shores of my country, realising that the little things we do within the confines of our borders are projected on an outside screen, a screen that the whole world watches, always, and painstakingly notes.
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