Anchors Aweigh

On Wednesday, I was able to deploy 41 pilot surveys throughout the Port of Tema area. Now I had never really thought about this before, but ports are incredibly busy, complex operations. This is the gateway for Ghana's--and much of West Africa's--free trade: cocoa, lumber, agricultural exports; American, European, Chinese imports. It's crazy just how much movement is going on, and much of the maritime terminology (today's cool word: stevedoring ... a rare Spanish (estivador) to English crossover). It's funny how terms like globalization, foreign direct investment, industrialization and economic development are just thrown around like candy, and we don't really think about the actual physical and logistical processes involved in making those things run. Really quite amazing. Even back in the States, it's boggling to think how the market allocates things from foreign markets (which are more than half the complexity), to their ports, across the oceans, into our ports, offloaded by the stevedores (who may work for private firms), loaded onto trucks owned by other private companies, driven into the heartland of our country, placed on the shelves of our supermarkets, bought by us and turned into tomorrow night's leftovers. That could be your $3 block of imported cheese. Or your Starbucks coffee.

At Tema Port (fun fact: it lies on the Prime Meridian!), I met again with the general manager, and he made a bunch of introductory phone calls for me, allowing me to deploy surveys to the four different areas: Headquarters, Golden Jubilee Terminal, (the actual) Port of Tema and the Fishing Harbour. All in all a massive operation, but this guy was incredible and has been a major help to my project. I consider myself quite lucky, especially since before I left I knew there was a very real probability that I would be able to collect no data whatsoever (which is why archives exist!). Pretty good start and I didn't even have to spend all day there. Oh, if you didn't notice my title is a pun on my methodology (anchoring vignettes) as well as my use of the ports. It's probably more funny to me.

I was about to publish this post, but I almost forgot to mention that I nearly got arrested by the Ghanaian Customs Service. So apparently the Fishing Harbour has had problems with refugees coming over from Cote d'Ivoire, Togo and Nigeria, so security is tighter there (though I don't think there are many ... ummm... fairer-skinned refugees from those countries ... just saying...). As our car (with official escort!) was about to leave the Harbour, a guy with military camos and a shiny sidearm ordered us to stop and demanded to see the white man's (yeah, that's me again) papers, meaning my passport. I was with an official from the Ministry of Ports as well as the private secretary to the Headquarters General Manager, but this guy was pretty obstinate, even belligerent. Luckily I had my passport, but I handed it over with much trepidation, fully expecting that he'd need to "make a photocopy". But he handed it back and chastised me for ignoring his English. I had half a mind to ask for his identification (he had no badge or sleeve/shoulder stripes), but I figured getting shot in Africa wasn't worth it. Oh my Ghana.

I can't remember if I did anything that night. Oh well...