National Broadcast Law Stakeholders Workshop
on friday i took a little suitcase to work so i could leave at lunch for sogakope. i walked to the bus station from my office using a terrible little map my boss had drawn me on a small piece of paper and went the wrong way. i would have walked for hours in that direction if i hadnt run into a guy i recognised from some meeting at work on the street. his name is francis and he works for the ghana newsagency which is like a newswire or something. anyway he was very friendly and walked me to the bus station, which was in the complete opposite direction from the way i was going.
the bus was about three hours late arriving, which is pretty normal around here. nothing is ever on time and nobody really worries about it. everything always shows up, sometimes it just takes a really long time. it was a pretty interesting ride. i sat next to a monk/missionary from the ivory coast. i dont know the name of the religion he was a missionary for, but it was an indian one and he taught meditation and yoga. yogi something? i dunno. his name was mantra somehting something. he repeated it a few times but it was long and a few days ago so i forget it.
anyway, you wouldnt think that i would have much to talk about with a man from the ivory coast, dressed in long flowing robes, who practised some indian religion, but he had been posted in los angeles and chicago by his organisation for the past five years so and was just back visiting west africa for a month or so. he turned out to be a really cool guy. he taught me about how reincarnation works and what the mantra "ohm" means. he can never see his family anymore, can never marry, eat meat or do a lot of other things, but he was very down to earth somehow and not preachy at all.
when we stopped in the town of sogakope, the bus was rushed by like twenty people all selling bread. this is also quite normal in ghana. every stoplight, highway rest stop and town is full of dozens of people selling things to passing motorists. i said good bye to mantra and had to fight my way through the bread people off the bus and walk three kilometres back down the highway and another kilometre down a dirtroad to get to the hotel. everyone i saw was very friendly and very confused as to why i was walking. i guess most obrunis get driven places in sogakope.
the hotel was like a resort. it was right on the volta river and had a group of peacocks that roamed around the grounds. reeeally loud birds. the food was really good and the drinks were free for conference people. i had air conditioning, hot water, a tv and a bathroom to myself for the first time in a month which was pretty sweet. i was one of the only people to arrive on friday night so the resort was pretty empty and i had the whole place to myself.
saturday morning the conference started. it was pretty terrifying. i got in for breakfast at 7am and was the only white person and the youngest by over twenty years, which is what i expected i guess. but i still felt really out of place. the conference started with presentations about the need for a broadcasting law in ghana and a summary of previous cvonsulations with stakeholders. being a stakeholder is a pretty good life. the presentations were a bit boring but there was a lot of free food and drinks and the open forum parts of the conference were really interesting because people would get really passionate and argue about really ridiculous things.
in the afternoon i did group work. before we started the organiser of the whole workshop approached me and said that nana, my boss had promised that i would make lots of input, which i hadnt yet because it was so intimidating and there was lots of yelling. so i felt obligated to make some comments in our group. my group was pretty prestigious. on my right was the director for all of legal drafting in ghana, to my left was the director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, and across from me was the director of the ministry of information. and then there was me the intern from the small human rights ngo. somehow i managed to build up the courage to say some stuff about canadian broadcast law and how similar principles should be used in ghana and the group agreed with me and included some of the things i said in our final recommendations. so i earned my keep to some extent and i think i staisfied the organiser.
today, sunday, the whole thing ended around two oclock everyone went to this little room to sign some forms for the conference organisers. i didnt really understnd what i was signing until they handed me an envelope and thanked me for coming. the envelope, everyone got one, was full of cash. i was being paid for coming to the conference. they called the money a "transportation fee" but it was the equivalent of about 100$ and transportation only cost me about 4$. so it was like a payoff for coming to the conference which apparently is common practice in ghana. i couldnt believe it. there were like 50 people at the conference and five thousand dolalrs in ghana is a lot of money. i was thinking that this money could definitely be put to better use. but i got a drive back to accra with a guy named peter who i got to know over the weekend and he said that it was very normal and that although there are some ethical issues around the practice it keeps workshops like these running. otherwise no one would come. its pretty sad.
the bus was about three hours late arriving, which is pretty normal around here. nothing is ever on time and nobody really worries about it. everything always shows up, sometimes it just takes a really long time. it was a pretty interesting ride. i sat next to a monk/missionary from the ivory coast. i dont know the name of the religion he was a missionary for, but it was an indian one and he taught meditation and yoga. yogi something? i dunno. his name was mantra somehting something. he repeated it a few times but it was long and a few days ago so i forget it.
anyway, you wouldnt think that i would have much to talk about with a man from the ivory coast, dressed in long flowing robes, who practised some indian religion, but he had been posted in los angeles and chicago by his organisation for the past five years so and was just back visiting west africa for a month or so. he turned out to be a really cool guy. he taught me about how reincarnation works and what the mantra "ohm" means. he can never see his family anymore, can never marry, eat meat or do a lot of other things, but he was very down to earth somehow and not preachy at all.
when we stopped in the town of sogakope, the bus was rushed by like twenty people all selling bread. this is also quite normal in ghana. every stoplight, highway rest stop and town is full of dozens of people selling things to passing motorists. i said good bye to mantra and had to fight my way through the bread people off the bus and walk three kilometres back down the highway and another kilometre down a dirtroad to get to the hotel. everyone i saw was very friendly and very confused as to why i was walking. i guess most obrunis get driven places in sogakope.
the hotel was like a resort. it was right on the volta river and had a group of peacocks that roamed around the grounds. reeeally loud birds. the food was really good and the drinks were free for conference people. i had air conditioning, hot water, a tv and a bathroom to myself for the first time in a month which was pretty sweet. i was one of the only people to arrive on friday night so the resort was pretty empty and i had the whole place to myself.
saturday morning the conference started. it was pretty terrifying. i got in for breakfast at 7am and was the only white person and the youngest by over twenty years, which is what i expected i guess. but i still felt really out of place. the conference started with presentations about the need for a broadcasting law in ghana and a summary of previous cvonsulations with stakeholders. being a stakeholder is a pretty good life. the presentations were a bit boring but there was a lot of free food and drinks and the open forum parts of the conference were really interesting because people would get really passionate and argue about really ridiculous things.
in the afternoon i did group work. before we started the organiser of the whole workshop approached me and said that nana, my boss had promised that i would make lots of input, which i hadnt yet because it was so intimidating and there was lots of yelling. so i felt obligated to make some comments in our group. my group was pretty prestigious. on my right was the director for all of legal drafting in ghana, to my left was the director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, and across from me was the director of the ministry of information. and then there was me the intern from the small human rights ngo. somehow i managed to build up the courage to say some stuff about canadian broadcast law and how similar principles should be used in ghana and the group agreed with me and included some of the things i said in our final recommendations. so i earned my keep to some extent and i think i staisfied the organiser.
today, sunday, the whole thing ended around two oclock everyone went to this little room to sign some forms for the conference organisers. i didnt really understnd what i was signing until they handed me an envelope and thanked me for coming. the envelope, everyone got one, was full of cash. i was being paid for coming to the conference. they called the money a "transportation fee" but it was the equivalent of about 100$ and transportation only cost me about 4$. so it was like a payoff for coming to the conference which apparently is common practice in ghana. i couldnt believe it. there were like 50 people at the conference and five thousand dolalrs in ghana is a lot of money. i was thinking that this money could definitely be put to better use. but i got a drive back to accra with a guy named peter who i got to know over the weekend and he said that it was very normal and that although there are some ethical issues around the practice it keeps workshops like these running. otherwise no one would come. its pretty sad.
today when i got home no one was around so i took a long walk through some neighborhoods i hadnt been through before. i went to the ocean near my house for the first time to see it for myself. everyone says its gross and not worth seeing btu i wanted to see the water anyway. i should have stayed away. it was kind of in a slum and the beach was literally covered in garbage and goats eating the garbage. it was basically the neighborhood dump. to make matters worse i saw about a dozen people squatting down the beach bareass naked. its a huge public toilet. so i decided to go home.
posted by Z at 10:26 AM
2 Comments:
So you got a small Ghanese fortune in return for providing some insight into Canadian broadcast laws learned from your Dad, eh. I should work on getting an invite to next year's conference.
In all seriousness, it sounds like everytime you do something so simple like take a bus, a story emerges. Or maybe I'll meet a monk from the Ivory Coast on the #7 cruising down Main Street today too...ya never know. I'm sure you have had so many of these types of encounters that don't even get consideration for a blog entry.
Hell you once paid $75 bucks for nap and a lunch...a hundred doesn't seem all that much.
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