"Ghana is Easy," but "Life is War"

Sometimes, not having electricity is a blessing in disguise. I was originally going to blog about the first quote in the title, but having to wait allowed me to encounter the second, and I think a comparison between the two is much more interesting than either one on its own.  What I find so striking is the fact that both of these statements were made as a general description of what it's like to live in Ghana.

Scenario #1: Tuesday evening (Oct. 19), Jamie and I were walking through the community, trying to meet parents of Manye's students, and explain our first project, a School Improvement Team comprised of parents, teachers, and students.  Sammy, one of the teachers at Manye, was accompanying us to act as translator; despite having English as their official language, many older Ghanaians only speak "local" languages.  We had spoken with a few of these when we arrived at the next house, only to find one particular guardian (the aunt of 2 students in JHS) was a loud, talkative woman named Joy who spoke American-accented English, a result of the 23 years she spent living in NJ, NY (she graduated from Syracuse) and IL. It was so refreshing to have a "high-speed" conversation and to be perfectly understood.  In the course of the chat, which like many of our conversations here focused on our adjustment to life in Ghana, Joy, the aunt, made the comment that "Ghana is easy".  She meant that it is relatively (and surprisingly) easy to find any Western luxuries here -- you just have to know where to go in Accra.  Relative to Ghana, most other African nations are less developed (especially in rural areas) than the 'Greater Accra' region where we stay, and on the walk back home, I realize that she's entirely right.  With internet cafes accessible on foot, guaranteed access to clean water, with American chocolate and clothing just a car ride away, Jamie and I really haven't been living the toughest of lives.  Even as annoying as it is to do without electricity... to be honest, it really hasn't inconvenienced us; it just makes us feel more hard-core. But we're not...

Scenario #2:  Friday evening (Oct. 22), Jamie and I were in Accra, having just finished our weekly Twi lesson (this one was, helpfully, on bargaining in the marketplace), we went to spend the evening with our friends Jimmy and Faisel.  First, Jamie and I watched their dance group rehearse, and then we just hung out and talked. Faisel and I talked a lot about education and children in Ghana, and he told me that he's working hard now ("hustling" to be exact), so that when he has kids, they'll have a better life, and better education, than he has had.  He said that when he was younger, he liked school a lot, but when money got scarce and his parents couldn't afford school fees, he realized that he spent much of his time during school thinking about feeding his family instead of studying for class.  Eventually he dropped out, and since then been what you would call an small-time entrepreneur, constantly trying to 'get by' and help out his family and friends.  This is when he made his comment that "Life is war, man" -- he didn't mean violent or bloody, because Ghana has been pretty safe and stable for at least the past decade; he meant that it's a constant struggle to survive and move forward. My first reaction to his casually stated philosophy was to giggle from disbelief.  Freshly removed from the East Cobb and Dartmouth bubbles, I still see the world as being full of opportunities, not challenges.  But I quickly realized that my point of view is, in itself, a luxury, a result of my family's and my country's economic success.  I've never met a challenge that I feared was too great (except maybe one or two poorly chosen courses at Dartmouth), and that has given me a confidence in myself and my future that I don't see among young people here.

So who is right? Is life in Ghana easy, or is it war? Coming here from the States automatically provides me with a standard of living that is completely foreign to most of the people with whom I interact, even when I seem to be "roughing it".  The coexistence of two such disparate views says more to me about privilege and income inequality than any list of genie coefficients or economic theory. It also solidifies my personal vision of international development and why I want to pursue a career in that field.  I want to help create a world where fewer children grow up having to choose between food and education, a world where fewer children think that life is war.