Straddling two worlds

Everywhere there is evidence that Ghana is in the midst of change. A country it seems still very much of villages, it is being forced to find a place for the modern world alongside the old. The two coexist everywhere, reminding me of that awkward age at which our daughter Lily started carrying a purse but only as a place to keep her candy.

Passing a village of mud huts, one sees sprouting from between the crude structures, like stray dandelions, bamboo poles on which have been fastened simple TV antennas. On the road, like a metaphor for the country itself, a truck carrying shiny, brand-new Caterpillar tractors honks at the slow-moving truck in front of it whose bed is heaped with piles of green bananas.

Dogs and stray goats wander the street beside boys talking on their cell phones. A woman hacks open a coconut with a machete below a sign extolling the convenience of the BlackBerry. The examples abound.

Perhaps this is nothing new for Cape Coast. The first to be colonized and long-time hosts to a series of foreign visitors from the developed world, its residents are not strangers to the strange and miraculous. Such things have been arriving from outside for generations, be it the Gatling gun or the MP3 player.

This experience has also nurtured a tireless entrepreneurial zeal among the city’s residents. Everyone has started a business or is searching for capital to get one started. And many do not limit themselves to a single enterprise, pursuing opportunities for economic advancement on the one hand, while making room for community-minded projects on the other.

Yesterday alone I met three young men who claim to have foundations in the works designed to benefit their own. One also makes jewelry, the other coffee at his coffee shop near the Cape Coast Castle. A third is an artist who assured me he is a man who “wants to take care of himself like any man.”