Holy Mole!

Sarah explaining the Sheep system

If monkeys are not afraid of humans, it’s because they know they can easily steal cookies from our pockets.

Cheesiest of my elephant photos

[20 days before the course prototype]
[2 days since summer midpoint]

I just arrived from the Mid-Placement Retreat (MPR), a 6-day period where all the summer volunteers and I went to the Mole National Park, in the north. The goal of all this was to take a breaktime: put on the tourist hat and snap hunt some baboons, elephants antilopes and wildbhores.
It was also about seing old faces, all with tanned skin, bony cheeks and excitement in the eyes. Something grew over the last 2 months, and I’m not talking about the beards. It was a patchwork of celebration and intense workshops, where we discussed our placements, our focus as a team, our vision as an organisation.

Talking to people made me realize that I wasn’t going in the right direction with my course. Yes, my understanding of how to teach business skills is there, but the format I initially chose is too lengthy, imprecise, unattractive. So now, I’m aiming for a format that has less content, but is more guided, and probably more effective.

The MPR also made me realize that others are doing some really good shit.

Take Guillaume and Ryan, from the Governance and Rural Infrastructure team (GaRI): they are working on Internally Generated Fund (IGR). The idea is that if people are paying for their services, as opposed of being funded by donors, the government will have more accountability to its people, and therefore the services will improve. But the system is broken: people are not convinced about giving few cents to somebody with no official papers, taxe collectors are not aware of the new fees, and the government is not using the money to pay for local services.

Or take Sarah and Naomi, from the AVC team: they are working on the lifestock market. Ghana imports more meat then it produce, yet raising goats is probably more lucrative then cultivating maize. So what is preventing a bigger market? It’s partially because people use goats here more as a fast emergency cash for their fields, or as charity for somebody in need in their family, or for gifts in funerals.

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Should Ghana invest more in tourism?

Somehow, this question came up, during the MPR. There’s definitly an opening market for “eco-tourism” – when white people pay a lot to get lost in a forest and experience cultures. I’m not the only one asking it: just before I left, there was an article in the Daily Graphics, Ghana’s biggest newspaper.

On one side, you got people saying it will be good for the economy. Europeans and Americans are ready to pay much more for a toured visit in the jungle then the urban ghaneans, who probably don’t see the purpose. The proof is that when we went to Mole, there was only Salamingas and Afro-Americans. It can also be good for the environment: with the money, the government has interest in protecting the park from braconneers or industries, if he wants to keep the tourism in place. Wild life is preserved, deforestation is prevented.

But on the other side, you got people saying it will actually be a bad investment. Once the government improves infrastructures and access to the forests, it opens the door to multi-national tourism giants, against which the local small motels can’t compete. And then the money leaks out of the country, except for the few down-the-ladder jobs it creates. It can also lead to bad decisions. Take Mole National Park as an example: indigenous people formerly living on the territory were expelled at the inauguration time.

I guess like everything, there’s pros and cons, social costs and benefits. But there’s one reason why eco-tourism is a little turn-off for me: the message it sends to the people here. I feel there is something wrong in the image of white people chilling by the pool, going for a golf game, playing tennis, while the black people wait on tables and do the cleaning. It brings back memories from the colonial time…It’s so hard to fight the idea here that Ghaneans have to wait for white people to help them, and tourism wouldn’t help that.

I believe there’s much more benefits in investing in agriculture. If he works hard, a cocoa producer can see his farm grow, and his life condition as well. There’s must a great sense of accomplishment when he sales his first batch of dried cocoa grains. On the other side, I’m not sure there’s that much social advancement for the cleaning lady of a multi-complex resort.

And you have the right to agree, or disagree. I’d be really interested in knowing your opinions on this! 🙂

Julien