You Can Hear Me Now

Texting in Aburi

Women's Work

Pokuase, Ghana
February 2012

I recently spent a week in Pokuase -- a village of 20,000 people about 20 minutes northeast of Ghana's capital city, Accra – where I met and interviewed some of the women and girls who benefit from the microfinance and scholarship programs of WomensTrust.  I went there to learn first-hand about the impact of WomensTrust's efforts to improve the lives of impoverished women and girls through education and entrepreneurship.

To my friends and family who have given their support to WomensTrust,  you have my deepest thanks and gratitude. I'm happy to report your donations have been well invested.

I left Pokuase humbled and inspired by the stories of the hard-working women I got to know there -- food sellers, seamstresses, small traders, beauticians, and shopkeepers -- who, with the barest of resources, have built livelihoods and sustainable incomes in a place where opportunity is scarce and illiteracy is high, especially among women, most of whom leave school by junior high. Several of the women I met never went to school at all. For all of the women I spoke with, self-employment isn't a choice; it's a necessity.

And it's astounding what a difference just a little bit of capital can make in their lives. Pictured here are some of the enterprising women I met in Pokuase who've received microloans from WomensTrust--loans amounting to no more than $50 or $100--that they have used to expand their inventory, improve their facilities, strengthen their purchasing power, negotiate better prices with their suppliers, and increase their profit margins--and incomes.


Feel-good stories? I found a lot in Pokuase. Meet some of the clients of WomensTrust who shared their stories with me. 

 

Mary Atenaba was a brewer of pito (a type of beer made from fermented millet) when she first came to WomensTrust in 2008. A succession of microloans from WomensTrust enabled her to open a small shop and expand her business to selling food staples like corn, peanuts, and beans. Six times a year Mary makes the 14-hour trip by bus to the Northern region to buy directly from the farmers there and transports bulk quantities back to Pokuase. Her customers include a local school and individual food sellers like Grace (below).

Grace Akor runs a chop bar in Pokuase that by 7 am is packed with young men starting their day with a homemade breakfast of Grace's banku and palm oil stew. Grace has been a client of WomensTrust since 2006, and has steadily repaid a series of loans that she's used to expand her menu, buy in bulk at better prices, hire another food preparer and build a small eating area for her customers.

Agnes Dziku, flour seller and WomensTrust client since 2010. The mother of seven children, Agnes, 52, never attended school and speaks only Ewe, one of the predominant languages spoken in Ghana. She is hoping to secure a larger loan from WomensTrust that would enable her to circumvent wholesalers and buy cheaper, larger quantities of grain directly from farmers.

Bernice Darkoa, a seller of second-hand clothing and housewares and WomensTrust client. She has successfully repaid several loans that she used to expand her inventory. Bernice, 29,  also never attended school, and would like to take classes to learn how to read and write.

Salome Attah (left) runs a hair salon in Pokuase and is training several young women in the art of plaiting. She used a WomensTrust loan to hire a local contractor to construct her shop from a shipping container, now commonly used throughout Ghana to house small shops and enterprises like Salome's.

Gladys Danquah, who repurposes remants of second-hand clothing. Here, at home with reclaimed fabric she will take to a tailor in Accra to fashion into new garments and sell in the local market. Gladys brought eight other women to WomensTrust to benefit from its microloan program. With futher assistance from WomensTrust, she hopes to open a dry goods store and hire an employee to run it.

Paulina Nyarko, a multi-year WomensTrust client who runs the only woman-owned hardware store in Pokuase.

Hannah is a new client of WomensTrust. Hannah had been a cook at the local orphanage, where her husband is also employed as a teacher, but had to leave her job after the orphanage prohibited married couples from working together. To help support their four young children, Hannah sold second-hand clothing in the local market. Three years ago, with the help of her husband, Hannah opened a small kiosk to sell staples like onions and herbs, rice, corn, and cooking oil, and a variety of canned foods and dry goods. Her first loan from WomensTrust (70 cedis, or about $43) enabled Hannah to expand her inventory and increase her purchasing power (and profit margin). She successfully repaid her first loan and recently received a second loan, of 150 cedis (about $90), to purchase larger quantities of products to meet the growing demand of her customers.

Where the River Meets the Sea

The city: High rise condos and new roads -- off-ramp on the
George W. Bush motorway, in Accra.

 

The village: Road to Nsawam, in Aburi.

Taking a call in Aburi.

Aburi is a small village in the mountains about 45 minutes from Accra, Ghana's capital city, where I am having breakfast at the patio restaurant in my hotel. Seated next to me is a trio of young, smartly dressed Ghanaian men, two of whom fiddle with their iPhones as the third flips open the case on his iPad and uploads a homemade video, which he invites me to watch.

My 2-year-old Blackberry Curve withers in shame.

On his screen, women in traditional long skirts and headwraps dance around a preacher in a black suit talking into a microphone.  "Come to church, Auntie!" the young man says to me. "We're already there!" I say.

The digital revolution has swept Ghana. At least a dozen cell phone towers are clustered in the center of Aburi town, looming over the old colonial architecture, churches and wooden kiosks of the small traders that line the narrow roads. 

More cell phone towers on the road north of town, signposts of the flood of foreign investment in Ghana's infrastructure: MTN (based in South Africa), Vodaphone (UK), glo (Nigeria), Tigo (Luxembourg), Airtel (India).

The collision of old and new: for all the techno-gadgets, the construction boom, the newly paved highways clogged with traffic, the shiny petrol stations and mini-marts, modernity has adverse side effects--pollution, overcrowding, climate change--while failing to solve humanity's age-old ills.

The lowly mosquito still outsmarts us. One-celled organisms--malaria, typhoid fever, yellow fever, meningitis, hepatitis--still bring us to our knees. Prepping for a trip to Africa requires a bionic fortification of vaccines and prophylactics that trick the body into a false sense of invincibility. As new medications stay one step ahead of the mosquito's immunity to them, their side effects become ever more extreme: weird, wild dreams, unbearable skin rashes, depressive episodes, hallucinations. Kind of like malaria itself.

After several sleepless nights, scratching away at a malarone-induced rash spreading from my neck to my knees, I was tempted to stop the pills and take my chances. But that night, watching the BBC on the tv in my hotel room, the lead story was a new study finding that 1.2 million people worldwide die every year from malaria--twice as many as had been previously thought, and a large percentage otherwise healthy adults.

We all have cell phones, and a mosquito bite can still kill us. I keep taking the pills.

Billboard for cell phone carrier MTN, near Accra.

glo, another cell phone carrier; in Aburi.

Off to Ghana

Off to Ghana tomorrow for 2 weeks, nearly 5 years since my last visit. The cab driver who took me to the consulate to pick up my visa today turned out to be Ghanaian. His family home was next door to the place I lived for 2 1/2 years while teaching in Aburi. He's been in New York 28 years. He told me people often remark that he hasn't lost his African accent. Piss me off, you'll hear the New Yorker in me! Ah New York, sometimes it's just magic.