How I Met the Ho Municipality Police Chief

Continued from "Negative Culture Shock"

If you recall, my SIM card turned up stolen on a Monday. This is the same day that I went down to the cellphone shop to yell and generally raise hell like the uppity white woman that I apparently am. After lodging my complaint the shop owner asked for a few days to deal with the situation. I left him my bill with the phone numbers dialed from Ghana and the promise that'd I'd call the police myself if something wasn't done.

When I returned on Wednesday it was to discover that he'd tricked a woman from the number list into giving up the identity of the person using my card. The person turns out to be a young man that can't be over the age of 19. I know this because I've met him. I've met him because the police arrested him Monday afternoon and left him to sit in a cell until I returned because Lawrence (store owner) had lost my phone number and couldn't find me.

After arriving at the police station and meeting this kid I watch a series of detectives yell, "I know you have the chip! You stole it from Lawrence!" at him while he responds "I threw it away when it stopped working. I found it on the ground." It's a movie about a drug bust gone horribly wrong.

I was shuffled upstairs to the police chief's office with Lawrence. Mind you, all the way through the police station Lawrence is stopping to chat with friends, investigate cellphones and taking orders for future cellphones. It quickly becomes apparent that he's practically best buddies with every police officer in Ho. The same is true with the police chief.

The police chief plops me down in a chair directly in front of his desk. His office is packed with huge pictures of him with crowds of white people. It appears that he's been to many, many UN sponsored training sessions. Later I will discover that this has made him bitter towards us yevu.

Immediately after sitting down he starts to talk over my shoulder and address only Lawrence who is sitting behind me. He's talking in Che, which I don't understand, obviously. He's complaining about volunteers and how we only come here for sight-seeing and to smoke cigarettes. I know this because Che borrows many words from English including sight-seeing and because he gestures with his hands more than you would believe. (Ghanaians, in general, are horrible at being clandestine.) Next he starts in on my tattoos. Not as people typically do in the US, but as in "Why are you stealing black culture? Tattoos are black culture." I've no idea of how true this might be, but I answer him with some nonsense about it being part of my Native American culture which he gladly accepts and comments that I do, in fact, look Native American. Next he moves on to discussing my love life. I tell him I'm married, which I often do, and show him the ring I wear around my neck on a chain- which is technically my father's, but whatever. He tells me that regardless, if I'm here for 2 whole months I need a Ghanaian boyfriend. He goes even further as to say that I need to "taste black flavor," before returning home. You've got it, the chief of the motherfucking police has just said this to me while supposedly investigating a theft case.

But wait, there's more. After our introduction he invites the parents of the boy they arrested for the card up to the room. He exchanges some sentences with the mother in Che. She cries a lot and leaves the room. I ask him what the hell they had just talked about as this is my case and I'd like to stay informed and he scoffs and tells me that he doesn't have time to translate for me, I'd better ask my, "friend Lawrence" later and shoves us out of the room.

I ask my buddy Lawrence and he explains that the police chief has given the family less than 24 hours to come up with 400 GHc. Mind you, these are farmers in a country where rent in the villages rarely exheeds 3 GHc per month. Mind you, I'm here as an aid worker. I may not be deluded enough to think I'm saving anybody, but I'm certainly not here to extort some poor farmers because a rich business owner that happens to be friends with the police doesn't want to compensate me for his stupid mistake. I explain this to Lawrence on the way out but he reminds me that this isn't my case anymore, it's his. He says we'll just wait until the money arrives tomorrow and give it back if need be.

Thursday, 12:00. I return because the chief told me to come at 11:30 and nobody in Ghana is ever on time. He giggles and says "Oh who told you to come at noon? The detective for this case won't even be in until 2. Come back later." I can't come back later because I'm traveling to Takoradi so I leave it with Lawrence who promises to drop charges and take care of things while I'm gone. I don't exactly trust Lawrence, but nobody at the station listens to me anyhow so I'm not sure what else was to be done.

When I made my final visit on Monday things appeared to have been resolved. The mother of the culprit was very happy as she'd been unable to sell her farm to get the 400 GHc anyhow. Lawrence is supposed to set up a meeting, which I would normally avoid but I think I'll go through with it just to be sure he didn't take the 400 from her and tell me it'd been settled.

I've gotten very used to be a minority to the extreme in this town. I've lived here now for six weeks and when you're fully immersed in something you get used to it, no matter how strange. Besides, I hail from Durham, NC not the Great White North ;) Even so, on the streets of Ho I'm a novelty or something silly. I'd yet to experience being a minority when I want to be taken seriously in a culture already lacking in appreciation for the independent woman. I can be witty about it now but at the time it felt like nothing I've experienced before. Not that I've ever not respected being such a visible minority in the United States, but now I can much better respect the anger that comes along with it. I'm not angry, but if this happened every time I attempted to visit the police for my entire life I can't say I'd feel the same.

But worry not, I'm still having the time of my life. I adore this country and the people here. I'm just at the point where you start to better appreciate the complicated relationship between Africa and Westerners.

I got an even better understanding of that during my trip to Takoradi by getting my purse stolen right off of my arm directly behind a castle where more then 300,000 slaves died during the slave trade. The police in Cape Coast make the chief here seem far more manageable, and as luck would have it I got to visit both of them in one day. I'll update about that later. For now there's work to be done. I've still got people to save through my generous work at the NGO, afterall.