Thoughts on Accra

I often try to place Accra within the context of Africa as I know it (from only a short trip to Kenya last year). I used to describe it as an African capital city, but also a coastal town. Or, "more similar to Mombasa than Nairobi". But the more time I spend here, the more I realize that it's not very similar at all to Kenya. Accra has neither the exoticism of Mombasa's mixed African and Arabic cultures nor furious extremity of Nairobi's vital urban center and equally vital shantytowns.

Accra is rather a sprawling suburb of mixed communities, each with its own micro-culture. There's no "bad part of town" and no city center. It's a place characterized most by its lack of extremes. It has never felt particularly unfamiliar or even very foreign.

I try with this blog to deliver unexpected and (I hope) intriguing nuggets of Ghana's culture as fodder for the imaginations of my readers (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) when they picture my life here. But the very fact that I find it more interesting to seek out and identify differences over similarities betrays the fact that Accra is not that strange. As often as it's the differences that make life interesting here, it's the similarities that make life easy.

RFAG #4: Ghanaians Make Good Nicknames

Random Fact About Ghana #4: Ghanaians are prolific nicknamers.

On ever survey we administer, one of the first questions is about their nicknames, as it's often impossible to find someone with knowing the "neighborhood name". I ran into some great ones today: "Papa Tailor" was one, and another was "Emperor" (his other name is Laud).

In addition to Obruni (which will be the subject of it's own RFAG), some of the common names I've been called are:
* Tallah (because I'm taller...)
* Long John
* Peter Crouch (Apparently I bear a resemblance)
* Obruni Coco (A favorite of the school children in La Paz, it translates to "Red White Man" - I'm not sunburned, so I don't really get it...)

I don't only read the NYT...

If I have more than 15 minutes available, I read my igoogle headlines. Today was a great day for my google reader feeds:

First, there's completely ridiculous marketing by ethanol makers. I remember writing a paper in 2004 for my Environmental Analysis class saying that ethanol was a bunch of subsidy-dependent hype that was, if not worse, at least not better for the environment. Public opinion is starting to catch up, and ethanol lobbyist are trying to reframe the debate: the claim is now, well we may not be better than conventional oil, but we're sure better than shale oil! Give me a break.

Next came an article in the Washington Post on email signatures that is surprisingly aware of good study design:

Brownstein asked his research team, StrategyOne, to catalogue the most common e-mail closing lines with an online poll. (The sample of about a thousand Internet users came from a nonrandom pool of respondents, so these numbers are rather more food for thought than hard data.)

Major credit to the Post writers/editors on that one.

Finally, the Freakonomics blog links to a time article on the 50 worst cars of all time. And Steven Levit shares an amazing anecdote:

In talking with an auto executive a few years back, I got some insight into how disasters like this happen. I asked this auto executive how his company decided between the 10 or 15 concept cars that the design teams proposed.
His answer: The five most senior executives at the company looked over the possible vehicles and picked the ones they liked best!

If that's true, it's completely out of this world, especially compared to how Google makes decisions.

The list of cars is impressive, and includes this gem. A 1986 version of the H2, which really got me thinking about the similarities between the eighties and aughts -- high oil prices, low growth, out of control financial markets, and a financial/real estate crisis at the end of the decade. Will the teens now be another period of low oil prices and high growth?

I read the New York Times (online)

If I only have 15 minutes to relax in a day (like today) I read the New York Times. Here are some articles I enjoyed over the past couple of days:

* It's a good time to invest in Africa (I am!)
* A rather different take on happiness
* I like M&E, and education, but also worry about tests

Not-Quite-So Goodwill?

I've been spending a lot of time in the field lately visiting tailors for the Returns to MSE Management Consulting project. I've found the older tailors to all moan about the same thing: They just can't compete with secondhand clothes.

Secondhand clothes are sold en mass at the "Dead White Man's Market" (why else would you donate your clothes?) for almost nothing. Tailored clothes are transforming into a status symbol, as cheap "Milford High School X-Country" t-shirts take over the bottom of the pyramid market.

(As an aside, every Obruni (white person) has their own "craziest secondhand clothing I've seen" story, usually involving a guy walking a goat and a jersey from an arch rival high school. My story: a security guard near my house was rocking Solomon cross country ski boots. Little metal toe clips and all. Damn proud of 'em, too!)

It would be hard to argue that people shouldn't be allowed access to cheap secondhand shoes, shirts, and pants, but spending time with the tailors, it's easy to appreciate how protectionist sentiment develops. So before you bring that next load of goods to the Goodwill, think of the tailors!

...then bring it anyway... I'm (pretending to be) an economist, after all.

GFAG #3: People Carry Crazy Things on Their Heads

It's true -- people carry some weird stuff on their heads. There's even a word for it in Twi: "suo", meaning to carry on one's head.

Here's a list of the craziest things I've seen carried on a head:

* A basket full of puppies
* A tree (the whole thing)
* A table. While riding a bicycle. Down a dirt path. (Full disclosure: It was my friend's table -- I only saw the picture)
* A full grown man (This was in London, actually. They were street acrobats, but African, so I think it counts.)

And by far the craziest thing I've seen carried on a head:
* A baby in a bucket

I'm on the IPA Blog

I took another crack at posting on the IPA blog. Given the chance, I would definitely rewrite the first paragraph. Take a look and let me know what you think.