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Outer Space by Jaime Jacques : : : : : : : I am walking with the “brew captain”, down a dark, rubble strewn street, concentrating on sidestepping open gutters, following the conversation, and not spilling my perilously held glass of beer. We are on our way to Greece -- or so it is called because of the towering columns that mark the entrance of the house belonging to the family that sells the local brew- akpeteshie. Captain claims he will die if he doesn’t get his daily fix. He is pointing out special landmarks on the way. “That’s where I made love to my wife, that’s where we eat breakfast, oh and here, this is where the fat lady got stuck in the sewer.” Huh? He recounts the day that a woman accidentally stepped into one of the open holes in the sewer and once in, couldn’t manage to dislodge her leg. When Captain saw that she was stuck, he tried to help her. When he couldn’t get her out, he ran to get some welders down the way, who promptly showed up with their tools and got to work. It’s a story that illustrates Ghana. The possibility of calling the police or city works was not entertained because the idea that the sewer belonged to the city was absurd. “It belongs to us - it is our responsibility,” he said with conviction. A gaping hole in the sewer marks the spot where Captain and the welders spent an arduous hour trying to free the fat lady. The concept of public ownership of city space is firmly entrenched in Ghanaian culture, but it did not come without a fight. If the colonialists had had their way half a century ago, the city of Accra would have been a disproportionate grid of segregated neighbourhoods, the prime locations set aside for the wealthy whites and the dregs of public space left for native Ghanaians. An exclusive European neighbourhood was created, just east of the city limits. The next step in the plan of segregation involved revamping the city centre to create a wide-open space for a restaurant, country club, polo and cricket fields. Finally the elitist neighbourhood was to be extended to include a recreational centre, for members only. Enter Kwame Nkrumah: stalwart fan of pan-Africanism and the leading figure in the independence movement that swept through Africa in the late 50s and early 60s. Nkrumah led Ghana to become the first African country to achieve independence in 1957. One of the foremost points on his agenda: nix the segregated public space plan, and replace it with a map that created open spaces accessible to all, with a focus on promoting African unity. Nkrumah’s vision of free access to public space is like a chaotic inferno that never fully went out. Here, life takes place on the streets, in empty lots, on the beach, in deserted alleyways; essentially, anywhere space is not already being used. One fifteen minute walk home can take you past men and women bouncing and pulsating to the rhythmic sounds of highlife music, a gaggle of men watching TV on the side of the street, or a funeral in an abandoned lot with hundreds of mourners draining a vat of sweet palm wine. Of course, anyone is welcome to join in. Exclusivity isn’t in the Ghanaian vocabulary. “You are invited,” are the first words out of anyone’s mouth as soon as they have something to share. It’s as close to anarchic principles as I have ever seen, bordering on the dangerously absurd. If someone is seen stealing, all one has to do is bellow “thief!” and within seconds an angry mob will be ready to serve vigilante justice. Not always perfect or practical — nor is the extreme poverty throughout the country— but one overriding principle that echoes in the collective consciousness of Ghana is that of freedom. Here freedom is not just a word that is gratuitously thrown about in an attempt to justify a faulty democracy. It is something that that is lived, and manifests itself in the confident swagger of schoolboys taking over the street, or the incessant pounding of mammoth speakers set up for a last minute party. Women, men, and children grab one another and dance, laugh, and cajole as the occasional air conditioned Mercedes cruises by. The shiny expensive toys may belong to the politicians and diplomats, but in Accra, the streets still belong to the people.
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