Boyz II Mensah

Finally, a day off.

Yesterday I collected most of the rest of my surveys, and I actually met my target (I know I revised it downwards, but maybe I'll leave that out of my actual thesis, jk) for respondents and interviews (I swear I will get my money's worth out of this voice recorder one way or another...), so today I've been chilling in my hotel room (hey, I got to watch X-Men II this morning!)/internet cafe as well as starting the data analysis.

Data analysis is a bit rough right now as I need to figure out how to code weird responses.

Some examples:
Q: How many times have you attended religious services in the past three months?
A: Hebrews 3:19-24.

Q: Do you receive a rent subsidy from your employer? Please circle: Yes | No
Respondent then wrote: It is too damn small. I can barely afford a kiosk.

Thomas, my research assistant, also provides some fun commentary:

Q: How many children under the age of 18 do you have? 7
Q: How many children aged 18 and over do you have? 4

Thomas: Man, no wonder this guy took so long to return the survey. Look how busy he is!

The joys of survey research. I'm back in Accra on the 21st, and I'll be spending that week hunting down data from profs and government ministries, as well as continuing the analysis. Fun stuff.

Anyways, my research may sound very quantitative, but there have actually been quite a few enlightening discussions with people I've been seeing, whether in the formal setting with the voice recorder or at the restaurant over a drink.

Two port staff I've gotten to know particularly well are both named Mensah; one is the port's personnel manager, who I will refer to as Mr Mensah, and the other is a port messenger/my adjutant research assistant, who I will refer to simply as Mensah. Basically one is at the top of the ladder, and the other is at the bottom.

Mr Mensah really likes to talk with me about the social and political differences between the Ghana and the US. He entered the port staff at the age of 19 in the late 1970s as a simple messenger boy, lived through the many coups d'etat in Ghana's history, and rose through the ranks to become the port's second-highest officer. He's seen how weapons secretly imported from abroad (USSR, US, China, etc.) through the port system helped fuel the Jerry Rawlings coup(s) amongst other sorts of unrest throughout the country's history.

During those years, West African ports were very poorly managed and security was rather non-existent. Many port workers were enticed by foreign shipping lines to leave that mess of a country and become shipworkers, see the world, find better opportunities, etc. Most of Mr Mensah's friends left Ghana with these shipping lines, and he hasn't really seen them since. The few he's talked with now long for their homeland, but are basically trapped with their companies, have no families and what not. And they said he was crazy for staying--though, given the politics, he may well have been.

When he started working at the port, Mr Mensah had only finished high school. Port workers work 10 hour shifts: 8am to 6pm is the day shift. And it is hot. Ports in West Africa are not like European or American ports. West African ports are labour-intensive: a lot of the goods are moved with backbreaking labour (they do have some cranes/forklifts, but not enough) and the system is not exactly computerized. An aside: one of Ghana's main exports is cocoa, which is shipped unprocessed in these sacks that workers load onto ships after they've dried out for a bit. Unprocessed cocoa is seriously one of the foulest things I have smelled in Africa. And it smells almost everywhere in the port. The first few days I was at the port I thought some kind of sewage line had broken or it was just the smell from the open sewers lining the road. Nope, it was cocoa. It smells a lot nicer processed. In developed countries, ports are more "capital intensive" and there are far fewer workers around. And no smell of unprocessed cocoa.

Anyways, because he didn't want to spend his life as a messenger, Mr Mensah went to technical school. At night. After his 10 hour shift. After doing mandatory overtime when his bosses needed him. Imagine: probably no electricity, poor health services, a government that kills all opponents. Most everyone else would hide at home or get drunk when night came.

But he stuck with it. Eventually earned a university degree. Earned a scholarship to study management in the UK. Rose through the ranks. Became a port officer. And now has a family and is the second-highest official. He says he loves Ghana and its way of life, and would not want to move to the US. But he tells me that his experiences have taught him to admire the US for making its people work hard and be responsible for themselves. In Ghana, you often rely on your larger family as a support network, something which he thinks has led much of the country to be lazy. And lazy people sitting around can lead to bad political outcomes ...

Mensah the messenger has a slightly different perspective. He complains of the management: they treat him like a slave, doing things like washing their car, shining their shoes, sweeping the floors, etc. He has a technical school qualification, can read and write fairly well and yet is subjected to this treatment. He says he is also assigned to random jobs that the management doesn't have time to deal with. Like being my chaperone around the port.

When I first met Mensah, I thought he was just fresh out of school and starting a career at the port from the entry level. He looks very young, he's shorter than me and doesn't appear to need to shave. He shares a desk with 2 other guys, also messengers, and, as mentioned above, doesn't exactly get much respect from the management.

It was only later that I found out he was actually 33. And had been a messenger for 7 years already. He felt that he was stuck. He didn't want to be the messenger/servant for the rest of his life.

But it's not like he's not doing anything about it. He works 7am to 6pm, 6days a week, and like Mr Mensah he goes to school at nights. But sometimes he's late to lecture because a manager needs his car washed or some other random duty. So that holds back his progress. But there just aren't enough openings at the port and expansion (look below at my land tenure post) doesn't yet seem very likely.

His family has also been through a lot. He tells me how his father was tortured under the Rawlings regime when he was just a young boy, and how his parents always told him to never support that party (the current NDC). Thomas supports the NDC's presidential candidate, and he and Mensah got into a heated argument about that a couple days ago. People in Ghana are still very much afraid of the NDC because of its past atrocities, despite there being some new leaders. Politics is also, though very much under the surface now, divided along ethnic lines. For instance, the Ashantes I've interviewed often point the finger at the Ewes and vice versa. Thomas thinks people should look beyond the past and support the more qualified candidate (which is certainly the NDC's man) for president, and then vote for whomever for their MP. But Mensah says it would be shameful for him to support the party that tortured his family. He grew up hating that regime. And I think a lot of Ghanaians share that sentiment.

Mensah wants to rise through the ranks and eventually make it to the US. But first he needs to help out his brother, who's just started at the port following school. I initially felt pretty annoyed that Mensah would call me like 5 times at the end of the day to figure out when/where I was doing dinner, because I would then be compelled to buy him dinner and a beer (it was fine the first few times...). But I noticed he never ate the food in front of me. It was for his brother. And suddenly a few cedis doesn't seem to be all that much.

I guess I really can't complain.