Max Alexander

by No City: An African Adventure Bright Lights

  He returned half an hour later with a blister pack of Oxycodone tablets. “Wow, that was easy,” I said.

  “The pharmacist definitely gave me the once-over,” said Whit. “He wanted to know what it was for, and it probably didn’t hurt that I’m an obruni.”

  “Yes, because obrunis are never drug addicts. How much do I owe you?”

  “Two cedis.”

  “Jesus. This shit sells for like eighty bucks a pill on the street back home. It’s a wonder this whole country isn’t junked up.”

  “Well, like I said, I don’t think they hand it out like candy.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t remember much of the next two days. I floated off into opium dreams and stopped thinking about kidney stones or malaria pills or boar bristles on my ears or anything else that keeps mere mortals awake at night.

  6. The Black Star

  One night in the fall, Whit and I dragged Charlie and Afi to a musical performance at the National Theatre of Ghana. According to the full-page color ad in the Daily Graphic, The Black Star was a musical tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s venerated first president and, as leader of the first post-colonial state in sub-Saharan Africa, the father of African independence. It was the centennial of his birth, and celebrations were planned around the country. Over the years, Nkrumah’s flame has burned both bright and dim for Africans. In the early 1960s, Ghana under Nkrumah became the center of a new back-to-Africa movement. Many black Americans, including Maya Angelou and W.E.B. DuBois, packed up and moved there. (DuBois became a Ghanaian citizen and died in Accra in 1963 at age ninety-five, the day before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He and his wife, the writer and activist Shirley DuBois, are buried at Accra’s Osu Castle, but you can’t visit their graves; the heavily guarded castle is the home of the president and closed to the public.) Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, and Malcolm X came to pay homage to the new leader.

  But Nkrumah’s vision of a united Africa never came to pass. At home, his centralized, socialist economic reforms failed miserably, although he did improve the country’s infrastructure and educational system. Nkrumah himself was an ascetic, gnomelike man with a broad forehead and receding hairline that gave him the look of a black Mao Tse-tung—an unfortunate physical comparison in light of his increasingly oppressive policies. Facing dissent, he jailed opponents without trials, banned political parties, and clamped down on the press. Although he never sank to the sadistic brutality of so many later African leaders (and was apparently uninterested in personal enrichment), he was well on his way to dictator-for-life status when, while visiting Hanoi in 1966, he was deposed in a CIA-engineered coup, despite his avowed nonalignment. (“We face neither East nor West; we face forward,” he famously said.) Until his death in 1972 he lived in exile, a symbol of Africa’s lost opportunity. In Ghana he was essentially written out of the history.* By the late 1970s, however, Nkrumah’s legacy was getting a polish—perhaps because he seemed like Churchill compared to the despots who succeeded him across the continent. Today he is lionized all over Africa as one of the great statesmen of the post-colonial era, a galvanizing if imperfect visionary.

  As it turned out, the advertisement for The Black Star was somewhat misleading. Far from being a musical celebration of Nkrumah, the performance was in fact a revival of a 1970s satire of the rise and fall of a fictional Nkrumah-like leader, set in a make-believe African country. The play was written by the Nigerian-born, Chicago-based dramatist and painter Uwa Hunwick (whose husband, John Hunwick, is a distinguished British scholar of Islamic Africa at Northwestern University) and first performed by the same Ghanaian acting company that was putting on this new version.

  Surely one strikingly different aspect of the revival was its production in the ungainly National Theatre, an upside-down concrete soufflé built by the Chinese and opened in 1993. This ambitious folly of a building was commissioned under the Rawlings regime—one of those all-too-common African public works projects that are meant to demonstrate Big Ideas, but without nearly enough thought given to practicalities.

  Indeed, as the anemic turnout that evening demonstrated, Accra nightlife, once a sprawling incandescent quilt of clubs, theaters, galleries, and intellectual dinner parties, from Osu to Asylum Down, was long past its bedtime, so to speak—a victim of austerity programs and the very real concern, under a variety of oppressive military leaders, not to flaunt wealth or social status. Oblivious to these dreary modern realities, the government ordered up a cultural palace so over-the-top that its operating expenses alone virtually guaranteed vacancy.

  Inside, the theater was conceived in a style that might be called African Outerspace Modern: a vast, raked orchestra below two soaring, cantilevered mezzanines, apparently made of whipped meringue. The ceiling was almost high enough for indoor baseball, although David Ortiz would have to swing hard to hit the mezzanine rows from the stage. The designers of this cavernous pile did not seem to understand that balconies are supposed to allow for greater intimacy at higher elevations; starting the mezzanine rows at the very back of the orchestra, as opposed to stacking them over the stage, serves no functional purpose. On either side, private VIP boxes hovered like alien UFO pods, their tenants concealed behind tinted (and perhaps bulletproof) glass.

  I am certain that the air-conditioning contractor could have bought an island nation with the proceeds from ducting this equatorial Caracalla. Not that any tenants, which currently include the National Symphony Orchestra, could actually afford to cool the place. On the night we attended, mosquitoes buzzed around the stage lights, and the theater was about as comfortable as a rain forest, which come to think of it is what much of Ghana is. But at that point in my African sojourn, air-conditioning had become like grated black truffles—a luxury you might be lucky enough to experience every now and then in life, but hardly anything you expected on a daily basis.

  We arrived right on time for the seven-thirty performance, bought our general-admission tickets (twenty cedis each, about the cost of a movie), and strolled into a nearly empty auditorium. I counted forty-one people in a theater that I estimated could seat two thousand. Then I remembered we were in Ghana, where nothing starts on time. “The people are still coming,” said Charlie reassuringly. “The show will not start until at least eight, maybe half-eight.” And sure enough, by the time the curtain rose just after the hour, a couple of hundred more people had wandered in. Still, the auditorium was perhaps 80 percent empty.

  The houselights didn’t dim until well into the first musical number, which is when the ushers finally decided to pass out programs. And the stage lights didn’t come up until after that, so the performers had to work in the dark for about ten minutes. I don’t think this was organized for dramatic effect; Ghana is just like that. It’s the same casual approach that guarantees no two diners at a restaurant table will receive their meal at the same time. In every restaurant in Ghana, you get the sense that you are the first customer the establishment has ever served and they are inventing the whole table-service thing on the spot. I suspect stage production is not too different.

  Lighting glitches aside, the production began auspiciously enough, with an expressionistic dance of writhing bodies on the floor that aptly suggested the birth of African independence. The offstage orchestra was minimal—an electric keyboard, drums (both Western and African), guitar, and horn—but reasonably accomplished. (It would be a sad night indeed when you couldn’t muster some talented musicians in Ghana.) And the story itself had all the elements of good tragedy: a visionary leader who starts to believe his own hagiography, overreaches, alienates his people, and finally flees in disgrace. Along the way, he imprisons his brilliant and passionate treasury minister for speaking truth to power, unaware that the young man is his son. The son dies, and the nation is again enslaved—this time under a succession of native despots and generals.

  Several of the musical numbers were memorable, others less so; I had hoped for less Broadway schmaltz and more African rhy
thm. The cast was all over the map; a few standout performers could easily have held their own on the New York stage, but others were more at the level of community theater. The most disappointing aspect of the evening was the stage production. The set design consisted of a few white columns meant to evoke palace architecture and a small map of Africa tacked to the rear wall. Costumes were equally uninspired—a true mystery considering the elaborate and beautiful handmade outfits I had seen in Jonas’s remote church. Three hanging microphones could barely pick up the actors; in such a vast auditorium I had to strain to hear, and we were in the sixth row. I told Whit that the whole production had the feel of a high school musical, but he said his kids’ high school had put on better musicals than this.

  The two-and-a-half-hour play was performed without an intermission—another curiosity, given the existence of a beer stand in the lobby. Wouldn’t a troupe so obviously cash-strapped try to maximize revenue by pushing refreshments during an intermission? It was the sort of no-brainer Western business decision that just doesn’t come with the culture here. By the end of the night I felt sad that this was as good as professional theater in Ghana gets. I wanted the country to do better—just a better-funded production of The Black Star would be a good start. When you think about it, a lively urban cultural scene in one of Africa’s most democratic and prosperous countries would seem achievable. But in row six of the National Theatre on a Saturday night in September 2009, it felt about as likely as Nkrumah’s pipe dream of a united, prosperous Africa.

  A final tragedy: to make room for the construction of the National Theatre, authorities razed the intimate and legendary Ghana Drama Studio, which had been founded in 1960 by the Ghanaian playwright Efua Sutherland. (A replica has been built on the campus of the University of Ghana, just outside Accra.) Over the years, under Sutherland’s guidance, the Drama Studio housed the Drama Studio Players; a full-time traveling company called Kusum Agromba; the Workers’ Brigade Drama Group; and a workshop for children’s literature writers. Those would have been the days.

  7. Satanic Lizards

  Ghana’s freewheeling press is often described as “lively,” an unusual choice of word considering the country’s editorial fixation on death and depravity. Newsstands here carry dozens of local tabloids, many of which would not seem out of place in an American supermarket checkout lane. SATANIC LIZARD STALKS PASTOR POLITICIAN! was one of my favorite summer headlines. Even the more reality-based publications are nakedly partisan, with blistering allegations that one political party or another has unleashed violence and disorder on an otherwise pastoral land. They make Fox News seem—well, fair and balanced. Then there is the gore factor: spectacular car accidents and unspeakable crimes get major play, an obvious attempt to drive sales at the newsstand and in traffic jams, where street hawkers hustle the latest headlines to bored drivers. Despite the content, as a journalist I often found myself wishing the U.S. print media were as thriving as Ghana’s.

  In early September, the press had a field day when Ghana Police arrested a sixty-five-year-old American man after he allegedly videotaped eight children, some as young as three, performing fellatio on him. Authorities believed the man, Patrick K. La Bash, was a major international child porn producer. On a website business directory, La Bash was listed as a Ghana-based business consultant with a PhD in English literature, as well as an author, acting teacher, motion picture producer (well, yes), and former Marine. The day after his arrest, the Daily Guide devoted most of its front page to the banner KIDS SUCK WHITE PENIS FOR FOOD, MOVIES. Above the headline were four graphic close-up photos pulled from the seized videos; other than black bars over the eyes of the children, nothing was left to the imagination. This charming cover was prominently displayed at newsstands all over the country. In America, of course, printing such images (to say nothing of displaying them in public) would constitute a crime in itself; there is no acceptable editorial context for reproducing child pornography. But this is Ghana, where journalistic standards, like so many aspects of the culture, are baffling. To its credit the Ghana Journalists Association later condemned the Daily Guide’s coverage: “The GJA is deeply saddened that three weeks after winning the Best Layout and Design Award at the 14th GJA Awards, the paper has tarnished its reputation with this unprofessional presentation.”

  At any rate, police said La Bash lured the children into his home with the promise of “toffees” and DVDs, an allegation that shocked me by its familiarity. For Ghanaian children, simple pleasures like a piece of candy, or watching a Disney movie, are rare luxuries. The children in our courtyard literally jump in excitement when we give them a banana; a serving of ice cream might as well be Christmas. One Saturday afternoon, Jan and I set up a “screening” of Finding Nemo on my laptop (we had no TV), and our dining room was packed with eager kids. It became sadly easy for me to imagine a predator luring Ghanaian kids.

  The wheels of justice can spin rapidly in Ghana. Just one month after his arrest, La Bash was sentenced to twenty-five years’ hard labor—in effect the rest of his life. One imagines the catalog of fiction does not contain a living hell as grim as a Ghanaian prison labor camp, or an occupant more deserving of its charms.

  In fact, the whole culture of child rearing in Ghana makes it easy for sexual predators to operate. Children are taught to respect and obey adults, no matter who they are. It is not uncommon to see people on the street blithely order a strange child to run an errand. Indeed Kevin would often do this, drafting some passing “small boy” (as the invocation invariably begins) to run off in search of this person or that thing in the course of Burro business. The fact that the child didn’t know Kevin from King Faisal hardly mattered: in Ghana, if a grown-up tells you to do something, you must do it. This rule extends to sanctioned forms of abuse like hitting children, which is also tolerated from strangers.

  That year, an eight-year-old schoolgirl was caned to death by her teacher. The girl’s father told a newspaper, “The child was caned in the head, the back and the spinal cord so the brain was injured and blood from the brain ran down through the throat and to the chest, that is the cause of her death.” Ghanaian authorities arrested the teacher—pointing out that only “head teachers” are allowed to cane students.

  The day after the American pedophile was arrested, I witnessed Joyce, the aunt of Savannah with whom we had made fufu, slap Kwabena across the face hard enough to send him sprawling. She is not related to him. Kwabena, who has a rebellious streak unusual for Ghanaian children, hit her back; he is learning to solve problems with his fists.

  It is possible to condemn African domestic abuse and still appreciate African family values, just as Ghanaians might appreciate American democratic institutions but not the Central Intelligence Agency that toppled their first leader. It is possible to see Mena, who stoops over soapy buckets of laundry in deafness and old age but is surrounded by caring family, as having a better life than my own mother, who does nothing all day in a nursing home. It is possible, I decided, to appreciate Kwame Nkrumah as a brilliant catalyst for African independence despite his political failings. It is even possible, as Nkrumah said, to face neither East nor West, but forward.

  1. Stop Means Stop

  The offices of the local bank, a leading microfinance organization in Ghana, were on the top floor of a modern five-story complex in downtown Koforidua. There was, of course, no working elevator, and the stairs were outside. With the temperature in the nineties and humidity near the dew point, Whit and I were soaked and gasping as we reached the entrance to the bank. Outside the door, a wall was covered with illustrated posters—cartoon characters and slogans that are supposed to motivate or inspire you, like you’d see in the break room of a factory. One poster showed a farmer in ragged, patchwork pants standing with his goat. Next to him, a man in a necktie was holding out a bag of bank notes. The farmer was turning away from the money. The poster said: “Do not take a loan if you do not need one.” We pushed open the door and recoiled from the icy blast of a
ir-conditioning as if hit by a fire hose.

  Walking over from the Burro office, Whit had explained that the bank made loans to local farmers, merchants, and other small businessmen—anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand cedis—for seed, fertilizer, equipment, inventory, and other capital costs. He had an appointment with the branch manager to discuss several ideas, including financing for agents to build Burro franchises, financing for customers to spread their battery costs over a year, and partnering with the bank to identify potential agents in villages.

  “He will see you now,” said a woman behind a beat-up desk, motioning to a side door.

  We opened the door and found the manager asleep at his desk. Hearing us enter, he bolted upright and began pretend-typing at his laptop. “Come in, please,” he said, straightening his tie. We sat down and Whit explained Burro, then delivered his pitch for partnering with the bank. “It’s a very good idea,” said the manager. “Please come back on Monday and discuss this with my field representatives.” The meeting was over.

  “In other words,” said Whit as we tramped back down the stairs, “stop bothering me with something that might resemble work. Actually he seemed pretty responsive. We couldn’t really have asked for more out of a cold call—especially if the field rep meeting comes off.”

  The bank manager was an archetypal white-collar worker in Ghana. Although most Ghanaians—from farmers to market ladies to entrepreneurs like Charlie—work incredibly hard, for some citizens a college degree is seen as a ticket to a job with benefits and no accountability in an air-conditioned office. I make this observation without condemnation. As the Tunisian-French writer Albert Memmi put it in his influential 1957 book The Colonizer and the Colonized, “One can wonder, if their output is mediocre, whether malnutrition, low wages, a closed future, a ridiculous conception of a role in society, does not make the colonized uninterested in his work.” In the aftermath of Memmi’s book, the African has thrown off the yoke of the colonizer. But as the last half century of African history has sadly demonstrated, independence has not wiped the slate clean. It will take time for Africans to find their place in the modern work world.