I was shocked when, a few months ago, two good friends of mine coyly said to me, “So what did you gain from the dollars you gave to the John Kerry campaign?” What? I exclaimed, aghast. Did they have secret access to my bank records?
“No,” they replied, grinning gleefully. “Just the Internet. We googled you and found out a lot of things.” With my laptop close by and handy, I quickly searched Kwei Quartey and sure enough found not only the embarrassing (in retrospect) Kerry contribution in 2004, but to the DNC and Kucinich campaigns as well.
Yes, those were the days…financial support for the Democrats, money to MoveOn.org and the like, anti-war marches in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and even London and Stockholm. I called Congress people and Senators the way they say you should do to make your voice heard. Four years on, what’s the difference? We’re still at war. Our troops, some of them still teenagers, are dying for what, exactly? And the rest of the mess? Well, let’s see…we have a bumbling President who is extraordinarily disengaged from his country, believes he is King and ignores the citizenry, a VP who must surely be the devil incarnate who has famously replied to an interviewer who pointed out that two-thirds of Americans think the war is not worth fighting: “So?” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypeZjeOrY4) and who manipulates the strings of little Georgie, the dancing marionette. The Democrats whom we thought would actually do something when elected into the majority in 2006 but have turned out to be a bunch of craven yes-people with the spines of the average amoeba, led by amoeba-in-chief Nancy Pelosi who postured and puffed her pseudopods and in the end simply shriveled up…need I go on? No, you get the point.
Actually I haven’t quite gotten to the point. Bear with me - I got a little carried away. Call me disillusioned or bitter, doesn’t really matter, the end result is that I have stopped donating to anyone or anything if the chance of making a difference is small, and I think I’ve seen enough instances of that. Not the DNC, not any of the candidates and not online activist groups. Finished. Done. Kaput. I will focus on things that I think have some prospect of helping, and to those who have the least and need the most. Micro-loans to farmers in Africa, domestic and international charities, local charities like Aids Project Los Angeles and so on. And above all, my emphasis has shifted to the needs of Accra Academy, the secondary school I attended when I lived in Ghana (http://www.accraacaalumni.com/). So much is lacking there that the task of getting the place up to speed after years of deterioration is gargantuan. I talked about it in a previous blog (”Back to School”) so I won’t go over it again, but suffice it to say that I’ve discovered, along with some of the other “core” alumni, that fund-raising is incredibly difficult. I’m giving as much as I comfortably can, but boy, do we have a long way to go.
Following the February-March rewrite of Wife of the Gods about two weeks ago, I sent in the official manuscript to Judy Sternlight, my editor at Random House Publishers. It was great to receive an email from her with the golden words “I am happy to accept your revised ms. of Wife of the Gods.” This is the last rewrite before it goes to the copy-editor (also written “copyeditor”). Judy, whom I would call my “editor-in-chief”, was the first one to read my submitted manuscript. She looks more for content than the mechanics of the manuscript. For instance, she might suggest that I make a particular character clearer or more relevant, or she might question the point of a particular scene. Judy is a wonderful editor, and I can’t recommend her more highly. She’s sharp as a laser and she doesn’t miss anything. But she’s also very patient, perceptive and understanding, and I know she puts in some super long hours at RHP.
The job of the copy editor can be said to involve “five C’s”: to make the copy (another word for the manuscript) (i) clear, (ii) correct, (iii) concise (iv) comprehensible and (v) consistent. The last one, consistent, is important in case the writer might have corrected or changed something at the beginning of the story but didn’t take the correction all the way through. For instance, if I changed a character’s name from “Jeff” to “Jonathan”, I might have missed changing one or two “Jeffs” later in the manuscript, which would have the reader scratching his/her head and wondering, “Who the hell is Jeff? When did he suddenly show up, and why is he behaving exactly like Jonathan?” I liken it a little to the “continuity person” on a movie set. S/he has to be sure that if an actor was holding a champagne glass in the left hand in the scene, that he doesn’t switch it to the right when they film a later in the scene.
So I’ll then work to iron things out with Judy and the copy-editor, and then we get to the stage of the galley proofs. Proofs are the preliminary versions of publications. The word “galley” comes from the days of hand-set type that was laid out in metal trays called “galleys”. Page proofs are the near-final stage before final publication. Some publishers release paper galley proofs to reviewers, magazines, libraries, bookstores, etc. In the end, I will do so much rereading and rewriting I’ll be sick of the book by the time I’m done.
It surprises people that so much has to be done to produce one book. I’m amused when people learn I’ve just submitted a novel for publication and they ask me if they can get in on Amazon. Well, you will be able to - but you’ll have to wait till next year! The book can’t magically be written overnight and be in the bookstores the next day. It just isn’t physically possible. The most understood analogy is a movie. From submission of a screenplay to its appearance on the screen/DVD, there are thousands of steps, not the least of which is filming it. And sometimes, not everything filmed is even included in the final movie. In that process of making the movie, there are all the people that make the stars look good - the stunt actors, grips, continuity people, the director, producers and on and on.
This is why we have the interminable lists of “people I have to thank” at the Oscars, because the star couldn’t have done it without them. In putting out a novel, there’s a similar list and it most certainly includes the writer’s literary agent, “readers” at the literary agency who help decide if a novel has the right stuff to go forward, the editors, and all the people who contributed to research along the way.
In my case, there will be many to thank, and you will see that on the acknowledgements page of Wife of the Gods, but suffice it to say at this point that Marly Rusoff (www.rusoffagency.com), a fantastic agent and warm, sensitive woman, was a godsend to me, and in turn I would not have found her were it not for Beverly Martin of Agent Research and Evaluation (http://agentresearch.com/). That’s to start. I’ll get to the rest later - you know, God, my family, the next door neighbor, my boa constrictor Spike….
Five in the morning the alarm goes off. There’s only one purpose for which I would be waking up at this suicidal hour and that’s to write. Five AM is a good time for me (even though a Youtube video of me staggering out of bed might be quite comical) for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that I am most creative early in the morning when it’s quiet. Sleep is conducive to creativity too. A lot of ideas for plot, characters, and so on come during sleep, and the solution to a problem in the story that existed the night before may be resolved the following morning on waking up - that easy. At the other end of the day, I am more or less useless when it comes to creativity. The exception to that is when I’m on a deadline to finish a manuscript or rewrite, at which point I may be forced to write till midnight or so. Sometimes the deadline (mostly self-imposed) is so dire I have to be up at 3AM after getting about 4 hours of sleep in.
The other major reason for waking up so early is my “other job” - i.e. medicine. Being a physician is what still pays the bills. My clinic generally starts at 8 AM, so if I want to get in some writing for the day, it must be before I start the medical bizz. As far as the practice of medicine goes, I’m fortunate that I only do outpatient work and don’t take hospital call. If I did, my writing would suffer terribly.
I do love to write, although it’s difficult to express exactly why. It’s not the same as savoring a good meal or drink, nor of enjoying a thrill sport or a concert. It’s less tangible than that. Who knows what kind of chemical processes are going on in the brain as the creation of stories and characters proceeds? There must be some kind of “pleasure neurotransmitter” being released. Otherwise why would I be eager to wake up in the morning to writing? Evidently there’s a physiological reward process that keeps me coming back. I know for certain that having a novel in active creation or in the editing stages puts me in an excellent mood, and when I’m not writing I may be irritable or morose. So it’s therapeutic? I suppose so. Maybe writers write because they feel better than they would if they didn’t.
Make no mistake, though, writing for me is solitary and isolating. I am sure there must be gregarious writers, but I’m not that gregarious to start, so add the writing to that and you have even more withdrawal. When a deadline approaches or I am very excited about how the book is going, I may turn down invitations to social events - sometimes very tantalizing invitations too. A weekend of writing may mean waking at 5 AM and writing till 9 PM with only a break for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I may not make phone calls or answer them if I really don’t have to. The fear I always have is that people might eventually stop inviting me anywhere once they get tired of my refusals! Marital status, children? Single and none, respectively, so that pretty much takes care of that. I have to hand it to writers who are also parents. I don’t know how they do it.
Lots of questions come up about the process of writing a novel. I say “novel” not to suggest that questions don’t also come up about non-fiction, but just because fiction is what I write. Apart from the time of day and frequency of writing, which I’ve talked about above, another is, “Should I always try and write something every day, no matter how small?” I’ve heard it said by other authors or in writing classes that you should. I don’t personally believe there are any “rules” in this game. When you are “into” your novel, you will WANT to write every day. At the very start, those daunting first few pages when you are feeling your way, you may not feel compelled to put something down daily, and if there’s nothing to put down it may be futile trying. In addition, if the setup for your novel is not satisfactory and you don’t feel stimulated enough to write every day, it may mean that the setup has to be dumped and started over. In other words, your not “putting something down” might not a problem with you as such, but with the novel itself. But if you DON’T write every day, don’t let one or two days become a week, a month, 2 months.
What about writing classes or groups? I think they can be useful in the beginning stages of writing. I started writing (uh, quite a few years ago) at a UCLA extension class run by Marjorie Miller, who was at Bantam Books for years, and then continued with her private writing group for about 3 years, which I enjoyed tremendously. However, it is a group activity for a craft that is ultimately solitary, and eventually one must cut the cord and forge ahead on one’s own.
I’ve also heard it suggested that when you’re away from your computer, carry 3 x 5 cards around with you and jot down ideas that might suddenly come to you. That’s fine, I suppose, but if it’s such a good idea, wouldn’t you remember it? What about outlines? Should you or shouldn’t you write outlines? There’s not “should” or “shouldn’t” about it. Some people feel insecure if they don’t have an outline. I don’t use an outline early in the process of creating a story, but later on, as I think of things that will or might happen later on in the book I write them down as a kind of checklist (Capricorns like me love checklists.)
Type directly or handwrite and then type? For me, there’s no way I could write long-hand and later type it. That’s a colossal waste of time for me, and have you ever seen a handwritten page where one has tried to rephrase, replace and correct words? Come back to it and it’s impossible to decipher what’s going on with all the crossing out, arrows, scribbles etc.
To get published, do you “need” an agent? I say yes. Without an agent, the chance of getting through the firewall at a publishing house is small. What about “vanity” or subsidy presses where the author pays for the printing costs? Don’t do it! You think you are going to have the “satisfaction of just having my book out there.” Well, after you’ve paid all that money, you’re going to feel less and less satisfied. Worst of all, no agent or publisher will recognize your vanity press publication as worthy of mention. Trust me - I learned this the hard way. DON’T DO IT!
Yes, it is agonizing having your work turned down repeatedly by literary agents. I used to keep the rejection letters and then I wondered what the point was. You have to be dogged and stubborn about submitting and resubmitting - and remember Hemingway’s rejection letters to keep you going! One day, you’ll get that letter with the heavenly words, “we are interested in your work and would like to see the entire manuscript.” Even that is no guarantee, but when that happens you know you got close, and next time you may hit the bull’s eye.
I feel it. To varying degrees we all feel it at some time or another, and in my case, all the time. I call it diasporan guilt. The word “diasporan” will light up on any decent spell-check. Consider it hereby coined. Diasporan Guilt is a feeling of remorse, discomfort or conflict over having left one’s country of birth for greener pastures. In other words, from a developing/poor country to the comforts of Europe or the United States.
I once heard a shopper at a supermarket in L.A. loudly berating the manager over the failure of the store to carry her particular brand of cocoa sugar-frosted loophole bran flakes, or whatever it was. She carried on and on for five minutes to the hearing of practically everyone in the store, and I thought to myself, “She needs 7 days in an African village where she has to walk two miles just to collect some water in a bucket and she will never complain about not finding her cereal again.”
Yes, a stay in an African country like Ghana - and even more so in the many countries poorer than Ghana - can put it all in sharp perspective. In Accra, I was uncomfortably aware of how aghast the driver of my rental car must have been at my ability to withdraw from an ATM in one fell swoop the kind of money he wouldn’t make in three months. Many of the ubiquitous street laborers and traders live on less than a dollar a day and we are talking about walking the equivalent of miles in the hot sun with staggering loads balanced on the head. There are “truck-pushers” who lug cart-like contraptions loaded with scrap metal or other junk across town for four to six hours a day and get precious little for it. Walking one night around the streets of Kaneshie, a district in Accra, I was amazed at the number of people sleeping on the streets. I imagine if you earn 90 cents a day hawking miscellany like DVDs and hairbrushes and you don’t have any charitable friends or relatives in town, the street is where you stay.
But then, Mr. Bleeding Heart Liberal crybaby, you say, if you were living in a country in Ghana, you would probably be among the socio-economic group who’d be riding around in an air-conditioned sedan anyway, so what’s the difference? That may be so, but there is a difference. The effect of an engineer or doctor is monumentally greater pound-for-pound in a developing country. It’s about the relative need and the urgency of response. There are various estimates of population to doctor ratio, but in Ghana and other places in West Africa it’s around 33,000:1 (worse in poorer areas) and in the US it’s about 400:1. The well-known “brain drain” is very distressing, and mine is one of those brains. I have read that within the second year of leaving medical school, 50 percent of every graduating class leave the country in search of greener pastures, while 80 percent leave by the fifth year. Is that really possible?Not only that, the panoply of truly ghastly, deforming and fatal infectious diseases in Africa makes some of the patient visits to my Los Angeles urgent care seem ludicrous in comparison.
I can hear the question in my mind from those of you who’ve been paying attention and haven’t nodded off (yet): “In that case, why don’t you go back to Ghana and treat some worthwhile diseases and stop whining?” It’s not an invalid question, and I never said I wouldn’t consider it.
Meanwhile, there are some ways to assuage my guilt, even if partial. One would be working for a month or two at a time in Ghana in medically underserved areas. I can close my eyes and land my finger on any spot on the map. Sole doctors and doctor groups arrange these trips all the time. Another is to pick a project and support it either singly or through fund-raising efforts, as I intend to do with my alma mater, Accra Academy. This makes me feel better, so does that mean it’s really a little selfish? Maybe so, but it isn’t worth the psychoanalysis.
One thing has to be said: Once you’ve left the country of your birth, gone away and come back, you will always be regarded somewhat as someone who left the country - even if it’s appreciated that you DID come back. In the case of my brothers and me, it’s even a little bit more complicated by our mixed parentage - Ghanaian father, African mother, naturalized American citizens, American passports, childhoods spent in both the US and Ghana. We sit half and half on two chairs at once (one butt-cheek per chair), and it’s not always as comfortable, or simple, as sitting on just one.
ACCRA
FEBRUARY 15, 2008
These are my favorite photos on my Ghana trip
Nana (the younger one) & Victoria - two friends I
made
You sense some of the strain on the face of this street vendor.
Like others of his kind, he walks up and down between
traffic lanes selling anything from pencils to shampoo.
After 12 hours of trading, if he is lucky, he will
make a profit of 90 cents. Many of these traders suffer blinding
headaches by the end of the day, especially those
who carry cold goods on their heads.
The bright face of Sammy, the little boy next door,
atop his uncle’s shoulders.
This schoolboy, Kofi, was on his way to
school one morning and allowed me to
take his photo. His expression captivates me.
He seems very serious, yet tentative, curious
but uncertain. Wonderful portrait, if I do say
so myself.
Energy transfer. That’s Superman on his bike
pushing the truck.
This is a bit of a gross-out for me. The dark objects
hanging in the tree are not some kind of fruit, they
are thousands of bats in scores of trees lining one
of the main boulevards in Accra. I have to confess,
bats give me the creeps.
February 13, 2008
Every morning in Accra, you can see hundreds of children headed to school. They are Ghana’s future. There’s something hopeful embodied in these kids with their backpacks.
February 14, 2008
In Ghana, as in many emerging countries, the juxtaposition of old and new, poverty and plenty, can be startling. Here are some photos I took in Ghana representing these kinds of contrasts.
Transport for the masses
Transport for the few
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Street market (Madina)
Supermarket (Accra, Shop-Rite)
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Traditional medicine
Modern medicine 
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Man power
Machine power 
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Traditional dress
“Western” dress
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Man-made colossals
Natural beauty
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Where the poor live
Where the rich live
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Outdoor work
Indoor work
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Hood electronics for sale
Mall electronics for sale
February 9, 2008
With my driver Newton at the controls, we started out early Saturday the 9th to the Eastern and Volta Regions of Ghana.
That’s Newton.
Many of the scenes in my novel Wife of the Gods take place in Ghana’s Volta and Eastern regions, so this journey was going to be like tracing the path of Detective Darko Dawson, the protagonist in the book. Someone has been murdered in a rural town in the Volta Region and Darko is sent by Accra’s Crime Investigation Department to investigate.
Darko’s first order of business in is to go up to the Volta Region Hospital, built by the almighty Volta River Authority (VRA) that runs Ghana’a hydroelectric Akosombo Dam (built on the Volta River). The VRA gets things done, and it also decrees who gets power cuts and who doesn’t when the water level of the level of the dam falls.
The most important town just before Akosombo is Atimpoku, where the Adomi Bridge, also known as the Volta Bridge, was built in 1955/56 to span the Volta River. Fifty kilometers away from Atimpoku, the sign says. In the background, a small village and a wealth of palm and banana trees, which make up a large portion of the forestry here.
Villages line the roadside mixed in with lush green, even though this is the dry season of the year.
Atimpoku, featured in my novel, is a transit stop for many, so not surprisingly it’s a trading spot. Traders mob any vehicle that stops there, trying to sell bread and other foodstuffs. One product is tiny crisp-fried fish called “one-man-thousand” because one person can buy thousands of them packed in small plastic bags.
Here’s the Adomi Bridge from one end.
Here it is taken from the River. Very pretty bridge.
Watching the river and people in fishing boats on the river is very relaxing…
…but we really need to get going to:
This particular hospital has a scene in Wife of the Gods. It is a well-supplied hospital headed by the tireless Dr. John Nkrumah Mills, who is on call 24/7/365. When we arrived that Saturday morning, he was on his way to attend a funeral and was dressed resplendently in traditional ceremonial robe, or “cloth” as it’s usually referred to. Black, dark reds and browns are common colors for funerals.
I went to the funeral with Dr. Mills. It so happens there is a funeral scene in my novel! So I thought I might as well. Newton, not a fan of viewing dead people, stayed clear. There was a service held in both English and the local language for the deceased, Simon Anati. He was a faithful Senior Hospital Orderly at the VRA Hospital who suffered through a painful cancer that metastasized throughout his abdominal cavity. Despite being underneath the erected canopy during the service, I was sweating profusely from the heat.
The most interesting part of the funeral in a somewhat macabre way was the burial, in which the coffin was dropped lopsided into the grave and it was a devil of a struggle trying to straighten it out. Talk about tragicomedy.
After they finally settled the coffin in, someone proceeded to destroy its gold trim and emblems. Some local custom, I wondered? No, much more pragmatic than that. It’s a common defense against grave-robbers. They won’t steal a damaged coffin.
Anyway, enough of that. We went back to the hospital. It is a quiet, community hospital with low-slung wards and green lawns and trimmed hedges. VRA money keeps it well supplied and maintained. 
Dr. Mills took me around the wards, the well-stocked pharmacy, and the morgue. He also had to drop into see a car crash victim who was being taken care of by a junior physician, as well as welcome six visiting University of Virginia medical students. U of V has a successful ongoing exchange program with the VRA Hospital and other medical institutions.
As Dr. Mills gave me the tour, it was obvious to me how revered he is in the hospital and the wide area communities it serves. People greeted him with respectful, admiring smiles, even with a slight bow or curtsey. For obvious reasons Dr. Mills also seemed to know practically everyone for miles around. After all, you’ve either been treated by him or know someone who has. Being Dr. Mills also has its privileges too. Lunch with him was on an exclusive floating gazebo along the Volta River shore. As my tour of the hospital came to a close, the day was getting on, and Dr. Mills accompanied us to the Volta Hotel that overlooks the Akosombo (Volta) Dam. All six turbines are functioning at the moment, compared to last year when the water level was severely down and two turbines had to be shut down.
It was time to say goodbye and a sincere thanks to Dr. Mills for showing me around. I took a refreshing shower, and then feeling ravenously hungry, I went to dinner in the hotel dining room. I had a scrumptious chicken salad followed by succulent prawns in a wine sauce. Full and content, I went to bed in a lovely, cool hotel room.
Accra
February 6, 2008
There is an impressive number of buildings going up in and around Accra. Ghana now has around a very decent 6.2% real growth rate (2007 est.) The U.S. est. 2007 growth rate was 2.2%, Hong Kong’s was 8%. Unfortunately Ghana’s deficit was a whopping 7.8% of GDP in 2006.
I snapped pics of a number of buildings. Many of them are glossy and glassy. Let’s pray these buildings will be fully occupied and not symbols of waste.
National theater: from one angle
From another angle
Fiesta Royale Hotel - I didn’t stay there
Some hunk of gleam whose name or function I don’t know
Reflecting a lesser building beside it
Actually this building belongs to Ecobank - Canon
pays to put a banner on the roof. I wanted
to go to the top for a panoramic view of Accra,
but security wasn’t too happy about that idea.
I like the “step” design here. I was curious about the
open windows. I think that’s only temporary until
the building is completed. This one is still being
finished.
Behind high security bars and barbed wire, the massive
$60 million Presidential Palace goes up, hopefully to be ready
for the inauguration of the new president when elections
are held later in 2008. It is controversial because of its
high price in the face of so many pressing issues in the
Ghana, not the least of which is poverty. At the same time,
the present President’s residence, Osu castle, was used as a
slave trading center during the slave trade, and is therefore not thought at all
appropriate as a Presidential residence. Indeed, many
visiting heads of state to Ghana have refused to stay there
as guest of the President of Ghana.
And this, in my opinion, is the loveliest building in Accra, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, that
opened just in July 2007. Plant managers will need to work hard to keep his luminescent building in its
present pristine condition
There’s a throat-clutching scene in Wife of the Gods set in Madina, a teeming suburb of Accra about 8 miles from downtown. I paid Madina a visit on a hot Saturday afternoon. The air was hot and filled with noise and traffic exhaust.
The market was teeming.
I wondered how you could find anything in this literal jumble sale.
People and tro-tros alike share the road
Equally confident and comfortable in his environment, a young man strides past the market stalls.
I liked this sign because in fictional Wife of the Gods, the scene that takes place in Madina is at a “herbal institute just like this one. 
Ghanaians have a flare for all kinds of business everywhere. Nail and beauty salons are among the favorites.
On the other side of Madina behind a high security gate is another side of life : a large house, a paved driveway and three high-end cars
Accra Academy is the secondary school I went to in Ghana. I met many wonderful schoolmates and teachers there. The level of education was high, and the school was well kept up. But over the years, Accra Academy has had some very mixed fortunes, some of them not so good. In general it has not been a well-endowed school and most of its funding is now governmental, which as one would expect is spread thin. So for example, there has been the addition of a new Business block of classrooms and an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) block, but at the same time, there are not enough computers in the ICT course (they need about 15 more).
The library has no computers at all and is virtually unchanged since I left, dusty, miserable and practically useless.
One new government-supported dormitory hall is going up, but an alumnus-funded hall has been stalled over the last three years because of lack of funding. The student population is now about 1700, give or take - more than twice as many students as when I was there, and the present 2 halls are massively overcrowded with inadequate toilet facilities.
I had been asked to address the student body on Friday, February 8th. I had imagined giving the address in the assembly hall, using a microphone. Boy, was I wrong. The Assembly Hall is at the moment a mess while it’s being used as a clearing house for old books that have been in storage. The students buy anything that interests them at the cost of a Cedi (almost exactly one U.S. dollar).
So assembly was called outside in the open air in front of the steps of the school with the playing field as a backdrop. Like teenagers all over the world, they found it difficult to assemble at more than the usual slouching pace. “Come on, come on!” the assistant headmaster yelled, “we don’t have all morning. Hurry up!”
At any rate I soon found myself facing 1500 odd students and wondering how on earth my voice was going to carry to the back rows. I had prepared a speech the night before but would not be using any notes. It’s distracting and off-putting to the audience.
The assistant headmaster stood on one of the side slabs along the steps and introduced me with a story that had made me more famous than I knew: When I was in my final year at Accra Academy, a royal python was found coiled up in the desk of one of the first-year students (the snake likes cool, dark spaces). The senior biology students knew it was harmless and took it to the biology lab, but the biology teacher said he didn’t have suitable food (primarily live mice) for the reptile, so it was decided to release it into some brush nearby. Somehow the python found its way back onto the main road of the school, and a group of junior students, unaware that the snake was harmless, began to stone it.
At the time I was in Chemistry class, which looks out onto the road, and when I saw the defenseless creature being stoned, I was furious. I cannot stand to see animals or children abused. So I charged out of Chemistry class, and judging from the way the story is told to this day, I must have gone pretty ballistic on the students as I told them to back off. I then picked up the python, managed to find a canvas sack to put it in, and kept it in my car under the shade until the end of classes, after which I took it to the Zoology Department at the University of Ghana, where the snake expert was only to happy to house it.
So this story has been told repeatedly since my departure, and indeed it is also one of my favorites, but I had no idea how well it was remembered. The other item of introduction the asst. head mentioned was that I was one of only about 3 students who drove to school, which led to a raucous student response somewhere between cheer and goodnatured cat-call.
In my address, I talked a little about my life path from Accra Academy to where I am now, speaking within the theme of grabbing opportunities as they appear, and in particular education is one such opportunity. I used some football (soccer) analogies as well, thinking it appropriate in the context of the present soccer Africa Cup of Nations. I think my voice carried quite well to the back. The students listened attentively except during the few jokes I cracked when they were very interactive in the typical student fashion. They’re the same all over the world. After that I went down and shook some hands in the front and middle rows, with many of the students clamoring to shake my hand and calling out in protest if I missed anyone. I felt like a politician!
One of the teachers then took me around the school grounds and I saw firsthand some of the problems I mentioned above. Then I met with the headmaster and we discussed some of the needs of the school. The list is so long it is difficult to know where to start, but it is both sad and inspiring how they are making do with the little they have and with the number of students they have to deal with. It is true there’s an Accra Academician spirit. You love the school no matter what.
In the evening, a really nice reception was held for me, and I met some of my classmates, all of whom are doing well: doctors, dentists, engineers and teachers. All the usual speeches were made, but I am keenly cognizant that words are useless if they are not made into actions. An interesting aside was that it was my mother, who also attended the reception, who was responsible for my entry into Accra Academy. I had not been happy at the first school I had gone to in my first year, so she arranged for me to make the move to Accra Academy, after considerable arm-twisting and persuasion of the then headmaster.
Plate 1. Front courtyard of Accra Academy. The fountain
pool with its lilies stopped working long ago. The distinctive
red tile that was used on the roofs when I attended the school have been
replaced with cheaper and nondescript materials.
Accra Academy is a senior high school. Students enter
at age 15, preceded by 3 years of junior high, and go
directly into science, arts or business tracks.
Plate 2. Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) block. ICT is a compulsory course for all
senior high schools, yet Accra Academy does not
have enough computers for a full ICT class.
Plate 3. Exterior of one of the overcrowded dorms
Plate 4. Inside the dorm. See what I mean?
Plate 5. View of the playing field, where I infamously
ducked a soccer ball while playing in a match instead of
heading it. My reasoning? This skull contains my
brain and is not designed to bounce round
objects off its surface.
Plate 6. The assembly hall, closed for the moment
because it’s being used as a clearing house for old
books.
Plate 7. A mural painted by an alumnus, based on
Ghanaian proverbial stages of life, childhood and
parenting.
Plate 8. Yes, pigs. Part of the Animal Agriculture
course. Students taking this course learn pig and chicken
farming and the animals also bring in some income to
the school. Pigs are prolific. Up to 14 piglets per litter,
weaning is at 3 months and the sow is ready to conceive
again. Only one male is needed to “service” several females,
and in one day he can perform multiple times for 2 hours
each episode. Good grief. I have a new respect for pigs.
Plate 9. And here are the chickens. So many eggs
the school is having a hard time keeping up.
Plate 10. View of the science block, outside of which
I once rescued a Royal Python from certain annihilation
by its most common natural enemy, man - in this case
first-year students who didn’t know the poor thing was
harmless. The science block still has the trademark
red tile roof.
Plate 11. New dormitory hall under construction with
government funds.
Plate 12. Dormitory hall started by one of the alumni
year groups but stalled in 2005 because of insufficient
funds. It is one of the many school projects awaiting rescue, and the
alumni are the only hope. The government will not
complete a building started with private funds.
Plate 13. The boys of Physics class
Plate 14. Getting more ebullient by the minute,
they wouldn’t let me leave without taking
one more.
Plate 15. Okay, just one more. I know I’m a welcome
distraction, but you rascals really need to get back to work.
February 5, 2008
ACCRA
I’ve been getting in touch with a few contacts pertinent both to medicine and to my novel, “Wife of the Gods”. Fortunately I have made connections with some alumni of my secondary school, Accra Academy. One of them, Dr. Osei (for privacy considerations, some names in this section have been changed) had told me he can get me together with a detective from CID. This is important because the protagonist in my novel is a detective in Ghana’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID)
Dr. Osei met me Monday morning and we drove off, not in a Benz or BMW, but in an American style Toyota truck with the air-conditioner full blast. Dr. Osei was amused when I told him that in the States I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid and am in principle anti-SUV. “You’re probably a member of GreenPeace too,” he quipped.
We went off to the Cantonments Police Station where we were to meet the CID detective, but he wasn’t in and he wasn’t answering his mobile either. We found another detective though, eating a rather delicious-looking meal of chicken and rice (I was pretty hungry at the time) and he chatted with me for a bit. I wanted to go to CID Headquarters, which was not very far away, and the detective suggested we try speak to the Deputy Director General, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Yeboah. When we got to CID, we gave the receptionist the message that two doctors were here to see Mr. Yeboah, and then we sat and waited for a while. The CID building is a tan-colored building stained by the years and the elements. It begs for a paint job. Stairs run up the side of the building, which is some seven stories high, and along the center as well. I thought we were in for a wait and a half, because you do that a lot in Ghana, but it wasn’t very long until we were ushered into Yeboah’s cavernous and very nicely air-conditioned office, whereas most areas in CID are not so.
Yeboah is a good-looking, soft-spoken man with a sincere affect and engaging smile. He’s also extremely busy. I felt a little like the drug reps who come to my office when I’m trying to see patients. Now the shoe was on the other foot and I was “bugging” Mr. Yeboah. Nevertheless he was very gracious as I assailed him with questions about the police system and how it might apply to “Wife of the Gods” and the murder that takes place therein. I must say, I learned a lot. I had been hoping I might be able to shadow a CID detective but Yeboah vetoed that for liability reasons, and he did it with a nice smile and a twinkle in his eye.
That was all for Monday, but the next day, I met with Edmond V. of International Needs, Ghana (ING). For years, this organization has concerned itself with the plight of a group of women called TROKOSI, which means “wives/slaves of the gods” (some debate on this: could be “child in service of the divinities”). Practiced in isolated areas of Ghana’s Volta Region on the eastern border of the country, it is a custom in which a girl or young woman is “given” to a fetish priest at a shrine in order to atone for a crime committed by a family member even generations ago. The girl enters into servitude of the priest for as long as he feels he has use for her. Some of the women grow old and die at the shrine. Going back to the family is practically impossible. Opponents say it is nothing short of slavery, the fetish priests strongly deny it. It is technically against the law in Ghana, but to my knowledge no one has yet been prosecuted for it. This practice forms the background against which a murder takes place in my novel, hence the name “Wife of the Gods.”
Edmond V. told me he would arrange for me to meet Patience W., who has studied this phenomenon extensively for ING. I was hoping it could have been this week, but today is Friday and it hasn’t happened, so we are looking at next week. I get the feeling that arranging this is going to be tricky, if it happens at all.
So it has been a partially successful week. Seeds were sown, but nothing has sprung up yet.
ACCRA
Off to the University of Ghana Legon campus some 10 miles out or so from central Accra, and after that to Madina, a teeming town bordering Legon and sprawling over the sides. For the two weeks I’m staying in Ghana, I hired a rental car with a chauffeur (in Ghana you have the option of self-drive or chauffeur-driven) by name of Newton, who told me he was available at “any time of day or night, even 2 o’clock in the morning you can call me and I’ll be there.” Newton, of gentle disposition and unflappable nerves, has one major food dislike: fufu, which is yam or plantain pounded with small amounts of water until it becomes a soft, tenacious mass. Newton swears he has never eaten the stuff (despite persuasive attempts by his parents when he was a kid) and never will.
On the way out of town, we ran slap bang into impossible traffic. As people become more affluent in Ghana, this promises to become even worse.
BUMPER TO BUMPER ON RING ROAD
The only thing that can save Accra is some kind of rail system. The Chinese will probably provide the money for that if it ever gets built, because the Chinese are after Africa’s rich resources in a big way. They are already building Ghana’s gargantuan new Ministry of Defense. Ministry of Defense? Uh-oh, I don’t much like the sound of that.
THE NEW CHINESE, UH, GHANAIAN, MINISTRY OF DEFENSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
We finally got out onto the open road. As we headed out, we took a route that was to be one of many pleasant surprises I was to get in my travels. The highway we took was most definitely not in existence when I was a boy. It was a single-lane, bumpy, often crumbling road in permanent disrepair.
SILKY SMOOTH HIGHWAY
The University of Ghana was founded in 1948. It’s architecture is distinctive for its orange-tiled roofs. My mother and late father were both professors here. Here are a series of photos of the place.
PARTLY BUILT ON A HILL, ONE SECTION OF THE CAMPUS IS CALLED “LEGON HILL”. THIS VIEW LOOKS DOWN FROM
ABOUT HALFWAY UP TO THE TOP TO THE FRONT GATE SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND
MOM WALKING PAST NO. 26, LEGON HILL, OUR OLD HOUSE. THE BOUGAINVILLEA IS STILL THERE!
PAPAYA - OR “PAWPAW” AS IT’S CALLED HERE - GROWING RIGHT INSIDE THE PATIO
THE HOUSE OPPOSITE # 26
MY FAVORITE MANGO TREE - YOU HAVE TO GET TO THE MANGOES BEFORE THE RED FIRE-ANTS GET TO YOU
SOME HOUSES ARE FRAYING A LITTLE AT THE EDGES, BUT NOT THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S AT THE VERY TOP
OF THE HILL! IT’S IN PERFECT SHAPE
THE WOMEN’S HALL, VOLTA HALL, WHICH HAS A SCENE IN MY NOVEL WIFE OF THE GODS, TAKES THE PRIZE
FOR MOST ATTRACTIVE COURTYARD
FASHIONABLE VOLTA HALL RESIDENTS IN SUNDAY BEST
BALME LIBRARY CLOCK TOWER THAT STILL CHIMES LIKE LONDON’S BIG BEN
GROUNDS BEHIND THE BALME LIBRARY
UBIQUITOUS ATM’S
HIV AWARENESS ON CAMPUS
JONES-QUARTEY BUILDING, NAMED AFTER MY LATE FATHER, PART OF THE COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
MY PRIMARY SCHOOL
And that was it for our visit to the U of G campus. Then it was off to the wilds of Madina - a very different world from this!
ACCRA
Well, I really must tell you about football, i.e. soccer, fever. (The generally accepted origin of the word “soccer” is that it is a contraction of the word association, as in Association Football in 19th century England). Today, Sunday, same day as the Superbowl, is the soccer match between Ghana and Nigeria at the quarter final stage of the All Africa Cup of Nations XXVI. Realize that football is the most popular sport in the world, the USA being prominently excepted. Soccer fever is even more intense than what we have before a Superbowl or major basketball game. Think flying flags is uniquely American? Check these out:
GHANA FLAGS ON PARKED CAR
DOUBLE FLAGS FLYING ON CAR WHIZZING BY
SUV FLAG
Crazy hats, shirts and jerseys, Ghana flag wrist-bands, caps, headbands and other merchandizing - it’s all here. Talk about face and body painting - I saw some photos of bare-chested men completely painted from head to midriff and wearing blond wigs!
GHANA FLAG T-SHIRTS ON SALE
There has been a traditional soccer rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria, so the lead-up to this match was intense. The predictions were generally 2-0 to Ghana, and everyone’s braggadocio had me worried that Ghana was going to take a fall from their pride pedestal. But in the end, Nigeria was defeated and Ghana erupted with cries of jubilation. The match was televised on big screen at the Busy Internet, so I did get to see some of it and I must say Ghana’s second goal (against Nigeria’s one) was brilliant - and I’m no soccer buff!
I managed to stay up through the day. Our house standing on property of my father’s, is located in an area of Accra called Kaneshie. Later on my mother had a second house built behind it, where we stay while the caretaker, Aba, lives in the front house. She has two kids, a girl and a boy, Nana, 5, and Jojo 3, respectively. I brought them each an outfit from the States and Jojo lost no time in putting it on as well as his military camouflage shirt. He wants to be a “soldier” when he grows up. 
JOJO, MILITARY COMMANDER
JOJO AND NANA
JOJO IS THE TOUGH GUY. THE OTHER ONE IS ME
Jojo and his sister are sometimes a little too much for my Mom with their boundless energy. They constantly come to the door and call out her name, “Aunty Pearl! Aunty Pearl!” After they got a little rambunctious in the house and driving poor Mom to distraction, so I took them outside to play to allow Mom return to sanity. In between the two houses are a startling number of people hanging around, and apart from Aba’s husband and her two children, I have no idea who they are. Undoubtedly many are extended family, but Aba also does some trading out of the yard and so some of it might be business related. Aba and the family do all washing by hand, and all clothes are hung on a clothesline.
I was now well and truly sticky and the first order of business was to have a shower - COLD. Trust me, in this weather a cold shower is a beautiful thing and a good way to stay cool. We run the fans all the time but leave the air-conditioner till the night. Remember electricity is a precious commodity here, and blackouts do occur. Like the Colorado River, the water level of the Volta River that powers Ghana’s Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam, is way down. Since I’ve been here, there’ve been no blackouts, but I remain respectfully in conservation mode - short showers, and turn the light off behind you.
Next? FOOD! I was famished. Aba the caretaker had made us some delicious kontomire stew, which is made from cocoyam leaves and palm oil - fish or chicken can be added. By the way, palm oil is highly saturated, which is probably why it tastes so rich and good. Non-fat diet for 6 months when I get back to the States!
After this, I took a taxi to an Internet cafe, this one called Busy Internet, from where my blogs will originate. The facilities are just fine, with lots of terminals as well as Wi-Fi and a room for laptops. The place is usually packed, at least during the day. Next door is the Busy Cafe, whose food I haven’t sampled yet.
Speaking of food, what kind of food do Ghanaians eat. There is generally starch of some kind - yam (not what we call sweet potato), rice, plantain, fufu (yam or plantain pounded to a smooth, tenacious consistency) and so on, with a stew, e.g. palm oil, groundnut (peanut) stew, kontomire, etc. Another popular meal, often sold by roadside vendors, is “red-red”, which is ripe fried plantains and black-eyed peas prepared with…yes, you guessed it, rich, red palm oil. This is a cheap meal and popular for lunch among office workers. If you are “unbeanz”, i.e. unemployed, you can survive on this meal.
Last night I bought some kelewele, ripe plantains chopped into cubes and deep-fried with ginger and red pepper. It is heavenly. Like I said, non-fat diet for 6 months.
The
flight to Accra was terrific and the flight crew members were riotously
funny. As we descended in the aircraft around 8 AM, visibility was
reduced by a brownish haze (rather like Los Angeles smog), which
surprised one of the flight attendants who had never done a flight to
Ghana. As one of the other seasoned attendants correctly explained, it
was the effect of the Harmattan winds. The Harmattans are dry, dusty
trade winds that blow from the Sahara Desert south to the Gulf of
Guinea from November to mid-March. The winds drop a micro-fine layer of
dust on everything - you can even feel it on your skin - and when it
gets very bad, it can even block out sunlight and cause what is known
as Harmattan haze.
At
Kotoka International Airport, where we landed, I had a pleasantly
painless and rapid transit through customs. The baggage carousel was
smoother and quieter than in US airports! I had been dreading some sort
of prolonged interrogation by customs officials and an invasive
examination of the contents of my luggage, but far from it. The first
official actually smiled and welcomed me to Ghana, and then I walked
straight out without anyone requesting to see my bags. For a moment I
thought I was doing something wrong - it can’t be this easy,
can it? When some uniformed man stepped up to me just before I exited,
I thought, “uh-oh, this is the trouble I knew was coming.” But he only
wanted to double check that my luggage and ticket stickers matched - or
that’s what he said, anyway. It was mighty suspicious though, when he
asked me if I had a little “something” for him, i.e. a tip, or “dash”
as it’s called here. For checking my luggage tags? I don’t think so. I
brushed that away.My
mother was waiting outside the airport for me with Solomon, the taxi
driver she hires for periods during the day, and her face lit up when
she saw me. There’s always that slight anxiety that your loved one
somehow didn’t get on the flight. The air was very warm and close,
rather that sharp and searing. I instantly began to pour with sweat.
Before going home, we detoured to a friend’s house, and on the way
there I tried to figure out where I was. Remember, it has been about 20
years since I’ve visited. Some spots came back to me, others didn’t.
The difference is the degree to which new buildings have gone up.
Traffic is a kind of controlled chaos with right of way entirely
dependent on the goodwill of other drivers - except at traffic lights
and intersections that have traffic policemen directing the flow. There
are really no rules except be good enough to give way to another driver
as he or she tries to cut in. Taxi drivers make liberal use of their
horns, and taxis, recognizable by their yellow front and side panels,
seem to make up almost a quarter of all cars. The vehicle exhaust on
the street could choke a rat, especially when you’re in
bumper-to-bumper traffic. If you don’t have air-conditioning, you’re
obliged to breathe it because you can’t possibly roll up the windows
without perishing in the heat.
The
other means of transport for the masses is the “tro-tro”, minivans that
hold a dozen or so people and are often of dubious roadworthiness.
For the well-off, Benzes and BMW like anywhere else, but SUVs have made an obvious entry in the realm of flash.
Meanwhile
it seemed mobile phones were almost as ubiquitous as taxis with persons
of every stripe with a phone glued to his or her ear. I saw one dusty,
ragged young guy looking poor and downtrodden except he was chatting on
a mobile. That had me reassessing him and wondering what the story was.
The phone was costing him so much he couldn’t afford clothes?After
leaving our friend’s house, Mom had to make a stop at a supermarket -
she is a shopping machine no matter what country she’s in. The
supermarket had something from everywhere - sardines from Spain, wine
from South Africa, and huge bags of potatoes from I don’t know where.
Many of these things can be produced in Ghana, but the effect of
“opening the markets”, as the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank often imposes on developing countries, has the effect of foreign
goods wiping out the local competition. Practically every item was
available, from corn flakes to olives to soda and orange juice, just
not in the vast variety and quantity as in the States.
On
the way back home Solomon stopped at a Standard Chartered Bank so I
could get some cash from the ATM - and by the way, they’re called ATM’s
here too. The monetary unit is the cedi, equal to is 97 cents or so,
and that makes the conversion very easy.
THIS STANDARD BANK IS ALONG RING ROAD. SEVERAL GLASSY, GLOSSY BUILDINGS LIKE THIS ARE GOING UP ALL OVER TOWN
so on to home. It was only about 11AM. Was I going to be able to stay
up till tonight? Not only was I jet-lagged, I had foolishly stayed up
during the flight watching a movie, so I had only had 4 hours of sleep.
Ghana’s capital. Ghana sits at the lowermost rim of the West African
coast on the Gulf of Guinea. I’m at JFK airport at the
moment, waiting for my flight this afternoon at 4:30 PM. I got to the
airport at 11:30 this morning. Why so early? I have a habit of checking
in anything from three to six hours before my flight. Some people think
I’m nuts, but I’m not. Okay, maybe a little neurotic - I’ll give you
that.
prevent my baggage getting lost, however. Yes. Every traveler’s
nightmare: my suitcase was nowhere to be found when I landed at JFK.
After a very long evening of back and forth between terminals and
between JFK and my hotel, the suitcase was finally found. Two friends
of mine came in from the city to meet me and very kindly drove me
wherever I needed to go in the chain of confusion.
Ghana (see more in the “About” section) A naturalized US citizen by my
parentage, I was born in Ghana to a black American mother and a
Ghanaian father. My novel Wife of the Gods is set in Ghana.
I’m going there wearing two hats. One as a physician to check out the
state of things in health care and hospitals in Ghana, the other as a
writer. In Wife of the Gods, a murder takes place in a rural area against the background of an old custom called trokosi. Practiced
almost exclusively in the Volta Region on the eastern border of the
country, a family “gives away” a young woman to a fetish priest to
atone for a family crime, often committed by an ancestor.
is one organization dedicated to eradicating the custom. Opponents of
trokosi say it enslaves young women and submits them to physical and
sexual abuse. A story about trokosi was run on 60 Minutes some
years ago. The fetish priest, a revolting little guy, claimed that all
his several wives are “treated well.” One of my goals is to meet face
to face with one or more of these wives as well as a fetish priest.
That should be the highlight of my visit.