New Office in Tamale, Ghana

We at IPA in Tamale, Ghana moved into our new house/office a few weeks ago, and our arrival has caused quite a stir in the local community.  Unlike many foreign non-governmental organizations, we aren’t working in a plush air-conditioned compound on the outskirts of town. Instead, ours is a fairly modest (though perfectly comfortable) house in a real urban community. We are surrounded by traditional round clay-walled houses, by goats and guinea fowl roaming in the streets, by calls to prayer from numerous local mosques, and by crowds of excitable children 18 hours a day.

People have been quick to make us feel welcome here. We are all getting pretty proficient in the daily greetings in Dagbani, in working out where to find the best kenkey (a kind of rubbery ball of fermented maize, usually eaten with groundnut soup) and in timing our visits to the egg sandwich man to avoid the morning rush. (Anyone who has spent time in Ghana will realize I am using the word “rush” in a relative sense.)

This week, our new office really came to life when we held a three-day training workshop for candidates to market our new rainfall insurance policy to farmers in the region. The day before the training, we considered postponing because we thought we didn’t have enough candidates for the work. But the next morning we were overwhelmed: we had planned for ten trainees, but 21 arrived. Most of them were university graduates, and they competed vigorously for the chance to do four weeks of tough work in rural areas for very modest wages. That alone taught me something about the employment situation here.

With so many good people to choose from, we had to prepare a practical assessment for the last afternoon: each person would be given the chance to present the insurance policy to a real farmer, to see how well they could do it. Though we're living in a big city, most of the men here are farmers first, even if they have other jobs as well. A quick discussion with our next-door neighbor, Issahaku, was all it took to round up a party of friends and neighbors. I asked them to come to the house at two o’clock, but was very conscious that people in Ghana rarely show up on time (or at all) without multiple reminders and cajoling. I’m not just being flippant: I went to a Ghanaian colleague’s wedding in December, and I was the only one of the dozen or so people from the office who arrived in time to hear the exchange of vows. Yet, on the day of the practical at precisely ten minutes to two, Issahaku had fourteen people lined up on benches under the mango tree across the street. Within minutes, each of our trainees had taken a farmer to sit in a shady spot nearby. More benches appeared from Issahaku’s house when required (carried on the heads of small children, of course), staff arrived from the local office of the Ministry of Agriculture to act as assessors, and I was left just to observe.

This was a tense moment for me and my colleagues on this project. We have put weeks of hard work into designing an insurance policy for farmers, but this was the first time we had presented the idea to normal, average people in the street. The neighbors knew this was just an exercise, and I was worried they wouldn’t take it seriously. But no: they all listened intently to the trainees – for an hour or more in some cases – and asked tricky questions. Some of them did the whole thing twice. At the end, I gave our farmers each a packet of biscuits and a small carton of fruit juice to thank them for their help. I was worried that these things (which you can buy at any local store) were an inadequate way of showing appreciation, but I should not have been concerned. After giving us so much time and attention to learn about an insurance product which they were not actually going to receive, these people came up to me and thanked me for giving them the chance to participate. I guess it was interesting for them to find out what it is that the foreigners living in their midst really do. But it was also humbling to see just how much these relatively poor people were willing to do for us without expecting a personal reward.

I spend too much of my time in Ghana negotiating with suppliers and bargaining for purchases large and small. It was nice to be reminded of just how generous people can be with their time out of no other incentive than curiosity and a desire to feel included.