Traveling Beans

City of God-Ghana

Like Many cities in the Global South, Accra has a a "shanty town"...or Ghetto as they're known back home in the States. This little part of Accra is called Jamestown, the first British Settlement in Ghana. Jamestown is home to the dispossed, marginalized, voiceless, ignored, and discarded. It's were the bruden of Neo-Liberal policies weighs the heaviest and where the exploitation of the Global South is the most visable.

Jamestown, like many of the "Ghettos" here in Ghana, has been ignorned by the government. There is a lack of running water, lack of housing, lack of sanitation-which leads to health issues. And as if to let those living in Jamestown that they don't matter, sweage is allowed to be dispossed on the coast next to the Jamestown, contaminating the water that many of the citizens fish from.

Logically, the lack of jobs and capital causes frustration, desparation, and sadness. This is what one would expect from Jamestown. Yet on my one visit there, and must stress it was only one visit, I didn't see faces of dispair. It's not like people didn't have anything to be sad about, but it seems like there was just more to be happy for.

Music blasting from sound systems filled the air with sweet rhythms, causing the little ones to gyrate, hop, skip, two-step, shake their buts all up and down the crowded street. The smell of delicious sweets, meats, and home made dishes let all know that dinner would be ready soon. As the sun set, people came out to fill their buckets with water so that they could take bucket baths over the drainage ditches that line the streets. While some might see this as humilating...and even embarassing, nakedness was clearly nothing to be ashamed of in Jamestown, and it even inspired playful water fights. Life in Jamestown, although difficult, is not sad. No, it's colorful, magical, and beautiful...the way that life can be when people can be when they're at their best. Children laugh easily, friends share readily, families give love freely. This is how Jamestown makes it, while it waits for the government to pay attention to it and give it's people the respect they deserve. Although the government has turned it's back on Jamestown, God surley hasn't. Like many of the people say, by the grace of God, they live on.

posted by Radio Ríos @ 3:19 AM