“You’ve gotta drive by the mall.” I tell my UBER driver. “If you follow the GPS it’ll take you onto the military base.”
I knew from experience. Just the day before our UBER drive had driven me onto Burma Camp, a military base in Accra. I don’t know if it was the hat or the tattoos, but the guard waved us onto the base, giving me a salute on the way in.
“Every military base in the world feels the same,” I tell my professor Lisa Heyamoto as we drive onto the base, “I can smell them from miles away.”
Prior to coming to the University of Oregon I’d spent nine years in the US Army, maybe the gate guard could smell it on me. It’s something that stays with you your whole life, I’ll never escape it.
As we passed rows of military housing and mess halls, you could tell our driver was uncomfortable. Eventually the road dead ended into a large green metal wall, dividing the base from the community outside.
“I don’t think we should be here” remarked my UBER driver. I agreed, so we turned around.
The next day I knew to take the back road to get me to work, my internship being in a new part of town. Buildings popping up left and right along a brand new road that could be anywhere in America. Large, modern, buildings lining either side of this new road built by the previous president of Ghana, President Addo.
“Nobody lives here.” The next days UBER driver informs me, “no Ghanaian can afford to live in these.”
The area was once part of the military base, but has slowly turned into new residential projects. Doctors, lawyers, politicians all claiming their piece of the city. My driver remarks that only ex-pats (foreigners working in Ghana) and the upper echelons of Accra can afford to live in this part of town. If there’s a new road there’s bound to be a politician living in that part of town.
The company I’m working with here in Ghana is in the middle of tackling government corruption in Ghana at the highest levels. And since I’ve started working here, it has me thinking about my own country. Before coming to the University of Oregon, I lived in Austin, Texas for many years. Once, a small college city, now the newest and hippest city for the who’s who to come and live. Thanks to SXSW and tech money, the city has been flooded with people from all over the country, bringing their money and pushing out native Austinites from neighborhoods they’ve inhabited for generations. Sure, the city looks shiny and new for all the new-comers, but at the expense of whom?
It’s the same everywhere in the world. The haves and the have-nots. According to the UBER driver, in this area the haves are the obronis (the Ghanaian word for westerner or person who adopts western culture). The rich get richer, and the poor stay right where they are. Things aren’t so different, even a world away.