Anna in Accra: A Different Type of Freedom

It didn’t take me long to realize that, as a white girl, I’m in the minority here in Ghana. It did take me awhile to get used to it, though. Now I notice when I see another white person walking down the street. Who are they? What are they doing here?

I don’t know when I became acclimated to such nuances of life here. One day I walked outside without realizing that I had stepped into hundred-degree weather. Then I stopped marveling at the bright tropical vegetation that replaced the New England forests I was used to. After that I tuned out the high-pitched squeak of the Fan-Ice carts pushed by local men selling plastic packets of ice cream. I became accustomed to the odorous burning trash that wafts through streets and into windows.

I have lost the impulse to buckle my seat belt when I enter a car, since in the vast majority of vehicles this feature has fallen apart. I don’t blink an eye when I see a woman with a baby tied to her back bend down and haul heavy amounts of food onto her head, although though this would make American moms faint from fear. One slip could send the platter toppling onto the child.

Here in Ghana, people don’t live their lives walking on eggshells like they do in America. Nobody fears getting sued, and people take it upon themselves to look after their own well-being. If you’re worried about falling out of the speeding trotro with no door, either don’t get on it or hold on tight. If you fall, people will help, and you do not blame them for your stupidity.

Obsessive regulation permeates every corner of my life in America. Now, I feel like a teenager who has just moved out of her overprotective parents’ house and into her own freedom: realizing that this is what life is. It is a beautiful thing to see people’s everyday lives functioning outside of the control of a government.

I’m not saying it’s entirely good, because there is definitely a benefit to having safe strollers and health inspections. But when life becomes one long attempt to adhere to government codes it loses the purity and freedom that comes from independence and self-reliance. America was founded on liberty, but through the quest to develop as a nation has ironically stripped the freedom of everyday living from its citizens.

The Pikworo Slave Camp in Paga, Ghana. From this site in the North, slaves were marched to the coast in the South. During their stay here they performed many labor-intensive tasks. When we went to the slave camp it was about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, in the blisteringly bright African sun. The camp itself has not been tampered with too much, and does not have bars and plastic coatings like it would in America. Instead of feeling like I had stepped into a museum, a recreated version of the truth, I rather felt like I had glimpsed the reality of the slave camp.