Memo+22+Describing+Places+(Dan+F)

I will not be focusing a ton on Africa (Ghana) in my paper but it will likely come up a lot because that makes up a lot of my field experience. Ghana is one of the more well off countries in Africa, but it still has plenty of issues. While there is infrastructure and industry, a lot of the buildings are only half done because money will come in to fund construction and then they will run out with no hope of new funding. This practice litters the landscape with partially completed skeletons. It is very visible from above on an airplane. An example of the public service presence and effectiveness is the speed bumps in every town. Since police do not usually enforce speeding laws, the speed bumps are the only thing that keeps speed down (besides the horrible texture of the road to begin with). There are steep gutters on both sides of the roads filled with raw sewage. The side streets are mud and packed with people. There are public bathrooms but people still go to the bathroom in public occasionally. The houses are almost always in disrepair and any wealthy mansions have fences around them. All of the markets are out in the open and a lot of shops sell used things. The places that sell new carry cheap products from Asia that don’t hold up well.

The people of Ghana have a certain amount of conditioning. If you are not Black you are consider rich and will have to pay much more. To get real costs within country you often have to have a Ghanaian to negotiate and even then you will likely still pay more. Sellers constantly bombard foreigners and if you are not buying they often expect you to be giving depending on their age. Power tools are generally fake brands and extremely hard to come by, power outages occurs once ever two days on average, and water often runs out.

In a stove specific context, wood is still a primary fuel used along with charcoal, especially in rural areas. You can buy rocket style stoves on the streets for 5-15 cedi (2.50-750 American) but traditional fires and garbage fires are still around. Propane is a huge industry at this point and it is very easy to find propane stoves in the cities.