DESPATCH #4

On Budgets, Gizzards, & Witchcraft.

Today was a slow-ish day at work. One of the obstacles, which both the director & board are keen to resolve, is that only one computer has the Quickbooks software. As well as being high-risk (subject to computer virus, or Millicent being away for example), it also poses practical problems. Over the next few days we will be uploading the budgets (by class & project) into the system, & then on Saturday I will be meeting with the Finance sub-committee to talk them through how to extract reports themselves. Before I leave, I’ll have set up different user profiles for the software, so as well as having access via different computers, both the board & the director will have viewing rights to reports without going through Millicent first. This is the plan anyway..

I caught up with Zoe this evening - of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen - who I met a week or so before coming to Ghana, sampling a taste of Ghanaian cuisine over at her pop-up restaurant at the Skyroom in London. Headed to the White House, a bar/restaurant not far from my hotel, we tried some of Mary’s gizzards & the odd beer. Can’t say I’m too fond of the meat (extremely chewy!), but the flavour embedded within it made it worthwhile: gingery, fiery & peppery. Chatting to a gentleman who works in Ghana during the week (managing Airtel, one of the popular telecoms networks here), we gained pointers on some of the top bars & popular hang-outs in Ho (to be honest, the “nightlife” seems fairly subtle, to say the least. I think a lot of people eat at home, & not too many drink.. Even this guy swore he would never go over a 4-bottles-of-beer limit; and the White House, promised as a lively hotspot by Brandt, was populated by I think only 3 other people..)

Bebeh, the local businessman, told us that one reason why the people of Ho were so friendly was the superstition of witchcraft that hung over the region. Steal someone’s girlfriend? Swipe a stranger’s bag? Then you’d better beware of your stomach swelling & the evil spirit taking hold. Witchcraft, as he saw it, was as real & omniscient as truth or religion. One time, he saw someone drop a coconut, & right before his eyes grew a tree, as quickly as you could imagine. Of course, from a Western-scientific point of view, we know this is impossible, but it almost brings to mind the old adage, if the tree falls in the forest & no-one is around to hear it fall, did it ever really make a sound? If one person hears it fall & tells another, does it then enter into history? Things become true if we need or believe them to be: or myth becomes truth, existing only through social discourse & semantics, rather than in the individual psyche. On questioning, Bebeh went on to say that no, he hadn’t actually seen the tree grow, but someone he knew did.

And to him? That’s as good as being a witness.