In the sub-Saharan African context, Ghana’s poverty level is relatively low.  With respect to the West, however, the level of poverty and standard of living in parts of Ghana is overwhelming.  I expected my semester in Ghana to be very different from any semester that I had spent in the U.S., but no amount of reading or information sessions could have prepared me for what I have seen.  It’s not that the things that I have seen here are brand new to me:  poverty exists in the U.S.  Anyone who has walked through areas of Philadelphia has seen buildings, corners, and scenes that look like they belong in the Third World.  However, in the U.S., these examples of poverty are less rampant. Unemployment, poor or incomplete education, low access to clean drinking water, hunger, high infant mortality rates, and crime are characteristics of poor communities everywhere.  But it is a different brand of poverty here in Ghana.  It’s everywhere, it’s in your face, it’s obvious, it’s unarguable, it’s unavoidable – and it’s the rule, not the exception.

In the U.S., the standard and price of living is much higher than in most of the world.  A Legon Journal of Sociology article defines the poor as “those living in households with per capita expenditure of less than 900,000 cedis (approximately US $100).  The very poor are those with per capita expenditure of less than 700,000 cedis.”  Imagine a household trying to survive on $100 per year in the U.S.!

In a place where money is so scarce, every penny counts.  It’s hard to get a job in Ghana, so most people hustle to survive.  And the issue really is survival.  Everyone has something to sell.  In Accra, you could probably do all of your grocery shopping on the way to the grocery store.  Bread, water, snack foods, ice cream, batteries, soccer balls, maps, screwdrivers, wooden carvings, chocolate, watches, clothing, towels, toys.  If you need anything, chances are that someone is selling it at an intersection near by. Medina market is lined with independent businessmen and women selling everything from food to carpets to electronics and household appliances. 

Enter the international students of the University of Ghana, Legon.  They come from the land of opportunity equipped with fancy clothes, expensive gadgets, and, most importantly, big budgets.  The roundtrip plane ticket alone costs nearly $2000, so those international students have plenty of money to burn.

Bartering is a way of life in Ghana; almost nothing has a set price.  The price a customer gets depends on his ability and willingness to barter.  We enter the marketplace and represent big dollar signs to everyone inside.  Their goal is to get as much money out of us as possible. Ours is a little bit more complicated. During a trip to Kumase, one member from my group spent 90,000 cedis (almost $10) on a small wooden toy, something that costs about $4 in the States, while another member managed to buy a large wooden staff worth upwards of $50 in the U.S., for 40,000 cedis (less than $5).  We know that they’re trying to hustle us, and they know that we know, so, for the most part, bartering has a light, playful tone.

During a bus ride to Cape Coast, a member from my group spotted a woman selling plantain chips in the street.  She got the woman’s attention and asked her how much she was charging for the chips.  “5,000,” the woman replied.

“Oh, that’s way too much,” interrupted another member from my group with a hint of satisfaction in his voice.  “It should only be 2 [thousand].”  The bus drove off, the woman was left without a sale and my fellow international student was left without chips.  And seemingly for good reason.  After spending a slightly more than two months in the country, I can confirm that the standard price for a bag of plantain chips is 2,000 cedis.  The woman on the street was trying to hustle an American, and she got busted.  But there is more to the story.  5,000 cedis is equal to about $0.55 U.S. Plantain chips should cost about 23 cents, but instead, this woman was trying to get 32 cents extra.  “Way too much?”  I’m not so sure.

It’s a common theme that I’ve noticed among the international community here in Ghana; we guard every last penny of our money much harder than we ever would in the States.  32 cents?!  During my freshman year alone, I found over $20 on the ground just walking around the University of Pennsylvania campus ($15 all at once, at one point).  Here, we argue with cab drivers to take 5 of us to Bojo Beach and back (a 5 hour commitment) for 80,000 cedis (about 9 U.S. dollars).  Then, we get to the beach and each of us spends 35,000 to enter, 20,000 on drinks, and 40,000 on a meal.  Jay-Z performed here last Friday.  Regular admission tickets were 600,000 cedis (about $67), but all of the international students who attended were V.I.P. and shelled out 1,000,000 cedis (about $111).  But 55 cents for some plantain chips is too much.

To be honest, I’m not completely sure why.  I do it myself and don’t completely understand why.  Perhaps it is because I come from a middle class background and, though I am rich here, am far from rich at home.  So I come to the Third World with a spending budget that has been drastically influenced by the exchange rate but an attitude that has not made the switch.  I still think the way that I do when I’m at home, and I know that I need to be careful about the money that I spend while I’m here because I won’t be rich when I get home, and, if I’m not careful, I might be poor.  It’s also the principle of the matter; no one likes being hustled.  We like to feel that we know what is going on and we like to show people on the street that they cannot con us as easily as they may think (“20 dollars for some Nikes?  I don’t think so”).  But when I saw my fellow oburoni (Twi for “foreigner” or “white person”) deprive herself of some delicious plantain chips over an extra 32 cents, a new idea popped into my mind: maybe we want to keep these people in poverty.

Children are everywhere in Ghana; unfortunately, affordable daycare is not.  If a woman has a young child and that child is not at school, the child is probably with his or her mother.  The woman selling plantain chips in the street was carrying a baby on her back.  When we barter, we often forget the bigger picture.  55 cents is nothing to us.  But to someone who survives off of one dollar per day, 55 cents is a lot.  Maybe she was trying to hustle the girl from my group, but what was her goal?  Was it to lure an unsuspecting American into shelling out a crippling amount of money or was it to get a little closer to being able to buy enough food for that baby and her older siblings to get through the week? 

Maybe we like the poverty.  Maybe we love feeling so rich.  Maybe we think that the floorless and windowless shacks that pass for homes here make a good background for a photo album cover.  If the poverty didn’t exist, how could we go home and talk about the courage and hospitality that the people of Ghana display in the face of such dire conditions?  All I know is that I’m starting to get a better idea of why Americans have such a bad reputation all over the world.

We come to Ghana.  We meet the people and snap pictures of the poverty. But when that poverty reaches out towards us and says, “Do you have 32 cents to spare?” we recoil.  We know the history.  We’ve been to the slave castles.  We know how the slave trade drained resources out of this land and used them to build up what is now our home.  We know that Ghana was once called “the Gold Coast.”  We know where that gold went; and we know that now that it’s gone, people have to struggle just to survive.  But most of the time, we don’t care.  Don’t get me wrong; it bothers us on a grand, theoretical, philosophical, and political level.  But in practice, we don’t care enough to dish out the extra 32 cents.

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