Abogbloshie and the third Branch

Thursday morning I asked Isaac to pick me up from Venus coffee shop. A short walk up a backstreet from my lodgings at Mummy’s place takes you to Oxford Street. Oxford Street is pretty much like its equivalent in London- if it weren’t for the lack of pavements, busy flow of traffic with unchecked exhausts and street vendors in addition to shops and restaurants.Oxford Street, and the surrounding area, called Ossu are where you are most likely to find foreigners. There are some recognisable chains like KFC, but mostly foreigners from all over the world have chosen here to set up independent restaurants. You can find a host of delicious food but can also expect to pay at least five times what you would for local food. We enjoyed a very tasty meal last Saturday at a classy Italian restaurant with a lantern-lit outside garden, but we paid 30 cedifor a pizza, compared to the 3 cedi I spend on red red, rice and plantain for my lunches.

I arrived at the main office in Santa Maria as usual and was told I would be visiting the office at Abogbloshie market. It takes a long time to drive anywhere in this city and sometimes I feel like I spend as much time in Isaac’s car as anywhere else. At traffic lights sellers come displaying anything from chewing gum to board games and bubble blowers to drums or t-shirts. Occasionally beggars, who unfortunately are usually old or physically disabled, move between vehicles hoping for a few cedi to get by another day. The typical African setting of women balancing clay pots on their heads walking along dirt tracks in serenity has progressed to women weaving through the traffic bearing baskets of kitchen utensils, including spatulas, tea-towels and pans resting upon their heads, or metal bowls piled high with sachets of water. They serve as a reminder that however countries or cultures evolve, they will never develop in quite the same way.

I knew we were getting close when the roadsides started to get more crowded with street vendors and fruit sellers, people choosing handmade leather shoes and cheap imports from China. We crossed a bridge; the river widened as it flowed into the distance. Several meters from the bridge in the centre of the river lay a huge pile of rubbish. There were coke bottles and plastic wrappings, nondescript items and patches of dirty cloth. It was piled so high that when the tower couldn’t grow anymore some rolled down the back and started to form a new tower and so on.  Some rubbish was burning on the river in the background which produced an uncomfortable aroma. The banks of the river were covered in flakes of rubbish that were making their way down towards the floating heaps.

It was already quite late, about 11:00, by the time I arrived so I joined two field officers- two young girls- Abigail and Serwaah. The office manager introduced Serwaah as one of their best mobilisers of new clients. She looked only about 20 years old and had a wide smile but was too shy initially to say much. I was told Serwaah had a lot of clients to get through and we would have to move quickly. She was training Abigail how to meet clients, complete log books, collect savings and deal with loan clients. We moved through the market sharply. It was a huge expanse of stalls with vegetables everywhere in neat heaps on tables, wooden troughs containing red onions, sheets on the floor with small-time sellers offering just a few scraps. There were rows and rows of plantain and small shacks selling tins of tomato paste, sachets of Milo and some strawberry drinkmade in Ghana or toiletries imported from Russia. I struggled to keep up, curious to get sight of everything and not wanting to trip over table legs, muddy my feet in drains, or push past people through the narrow rows.

Only on the market did I realise why Serwaah was good at mobilising.Most of her clients were men who all seemed to smile a lot, or stretch out and rub their arms nervously when she came around with her big grin across her face. I had fun; lots of people were talkative but no one harassed like on the beach. My days have been better with the younger field officers and more relaxed than when I go out with the older ones or those in higher positions of authority. But the young ones are good at their jobs and their good people skills give clients confidence. I was surrounded by men selling plantain telling me about their dealings with FR.

Since up until now I’d only met fairly neutral, placid, savers or disgruntled customers, it was motivating to finally interview those with success stories. One man in a tiny wooden shack next to a dirty drain exuding a grimy smell built machinery for grinding corn. Since taking a loan with FR he had been able to buy bigger premises, where he would move to soon, and begin to sell more products. I met a man who had used his loan to buy an engine for a trotro and started a lucrative share taxi business. He was applying for a second loan in order to buy a second vehicle together with his savings. 

Several things have struck me about the role of field officers since starting with FR.One, to have mobile banking at all seems extraordinary. I tried to imagine in the UK every time I wanted to withdraw or deposit money phoning someone at the bank to come and give it to me or take money from me. Secondly the sheer number of field officers that are required to journey out to all corners of the city and meet with clients seems an enormous resource compared to the three or so clerks that sit behind protective glass at Natwest branches back home. Thirdly, I find it remarkable that this process happens daily. Surely weekly or even monthly savings would be acceptable and greatly reduce running costs for FR, saving vital funds for future loan customers. I asked the trotro driver if he would be happy to deposit savings three times a week instead of every day. He explained that field officers must come every day because there isn’t a savings culture. He said it wouldn’t work because people would just spend the money on the first day and have little to deposit the next day.

We sat down at one lady’s stand in the market on a mini wooden bench. We had to wait some time because her stall selling banku and other nibbles was so popular she didn’t have time to spare. Next to her stall was a huge poster advertising hair braiding. I bought some oranges from a lady opposite us. Abigail took the oranges and with a knife began to peel them. I know I don’t know everything, but I thought I knew all the ways to eat an orange. First it’s skinned with a long knife until only the white layer remains around the orange. They then slice off the very top but leave a bit so it acts as a flap. To eat it you enclose your whole mouth around the gap and squeeze with your hands whilst simultaneously grabbing at bits with your teeth. When you encounter pips you spit them on the floor. It’s actually quite a refreshing method when you’re thirsty, it’s hygienic and your hands remain clean. The only trick is perfecting the method, which I haven’t, to avoid getting a face bath.

The lady eventually came over and I learned that a loan had enabled her to build a wooden structure in the market from which to sell her snacks. This had greatly increased the size and popularity of her stall. She was talking about opening a sister shop on the other side of the market. Serwaah has agreed to help me collect client data as a company record and for producing the FR annual report.

As we walked through the market to return to the office we passed a lady with a metal basin on her head turning on a tap with one of her free hands. The mouth of the tap was built up high so she didn’t have to bend down or remove the basin in order to fill it with water. When the basin was full she moved off and weaved back through the stalls to her stand. We arrived at a section for yam selling. There were so many of them, almost a far as the eye could see, it was like a party of yams. How did people know which ones to choose? Yams are great big brown elephant feet, hairy tree trunk-like root vegetables.

When I went to meet Isaac, Abigail revealed he was her dad. This information was new to me. I was surprised to be hearing it for the first time. Isaac had mentioned he had children but I assumed his daughters were young for some reason. He never mentioned one was with FR. She was very sweet and modest, and had been helpful all day. It didn’t really surprise me that Isaac’s child should be like this.

I got home early for once and went for a jog.It’s not a bad way of gaining bearings for your surroundings. A left turn out of Mummy’s courtyard and at the end of our street is a main road. I crossed it, and with my nose to the sea, ran down a dirt track. Somewhere along the road the lethargy kicked in and I stopped next to a lady carrying water on her head. She explained that she lived at the church just ahead. When we reached it, the church yard had a pretty blue-washed picket fence surrounding it, with a simple white cross standing in the middle. Behind the church, waves crashed against the bank and made for an atmospheric setting, and the grey blue sky swirled in the background. Through the churchyard I found the beach and ran onto the sand. A boy sat to my left digging holes. I closed my eyes and breathed in the same salty air that reaches the beaches of Brighton and Hove, Hastings and Camber Sands. When I opened them, I saw tracks in the sand and followed them up to where three pink and black grubby pigs were snuffling around in a pile of rubbish.

That evening I had planned to make dinner for everyone and so had purchased some vegetables and other bits in the market to make a pasta sauce. The others arrived one by one back at Mummy’s and soon we were gathered in the kitchen. Leonard came home with chocolate and announced it was his birthday, which made me glad we were preparing something and heightened the pleasant, and now celebratory, atmosphere. It was quite a procedure, not least because nothing was clean and the water was off, so Leonard had a system going washing plates and utensils outside. Kati was making a mega salad with mounds of peels collecting on plates around her. I was boiling water on the electric plates without a kettle and balancing the frying of Aubergines, garlic and onions. I showed Sonja, the American Peace Corps volunteer, who’d just come to the city after spending two years up north in a village in the Ashanti region bordering Burkina Faso, how to peel tomatoes with boiling water. She got through about fifteen of them. We eventually sat outside under the stars to a magnificent feast- after the collaborative effort- with baguette and olives from the supermarket.