[Air-l] Ethnography, space and some more thoughts on Ghana.

[Theresa M.Senft]

As usual, I  find myself nodding in agreement with Don Slater, 
particularly with his observations about Ghana. Based on my (very 
limited) in Accra, and in the ethnographic spirit of "adding stories,"  
I wanted to submit some other data points   to Don's. Some of these 
relate to our discussions about how certain internet settings (hi 
Michelle)  become the new  "hot" cyberspaces. Others relate to space in 
the old-fashioned colonial sense of the term. Still others concern the 
crazy mixture of  for-profit and development spaces in Africa, 
especially where telecommunications is concerned.

In April of 2003 I left NYC for the BusyInternet Cener in Accra, Ghana 
(http://www.busyinternet.com) BusyInternet is a 100+ seat 
cybercafe/copy shop/conference space/bar located on Ring Road, which is 
the main drag in Accra, open 24 hours and always full of people. The 
computers are fast (even when one considers the whole joint has the 
bandwidth equivalent of ONE DSL line), surfing prices are reasonable, 
and the food at the bar is cheap. From daily inspection, I'd say the 
expat to local ratio is about 1:20, remarkable considering that due to 
mad inflation, the expats are the ones who always seem to have cash to 
burn on things like Internet use.

For the past five years, Ghana's relatively stable government and 
economy have made it a West African Silicon Valley of sorts for those 
who have managed to not piss off local officials (see the NYT coverage 
of the VoiP laws in Ghana). Many of the startup businesses in Accra 
arrived about three years ago, and a number were begun by ex-dot 
commers from the States and Europe. BusyInternet is among them. Busy 
was founded by Mark Davies (Welsh), Alex Rousselt (French) and Ellen 
McDermott (American), using Mark's earnings from CitySearch (later 
bought by Microsoft), which he also founded. With the exception of 
these three, however, all the other management, workers and investors 
at Busy are Ghanaian. Of these, two managers (the General Manager and 
the Director of Public Relations) and about 1/3 of the workers on the 
floor assisting users are women.

I was originally asked by Ellen McDermott if I wanted to come to Accra 
for two weeks (all the time I had, as I was advising at NYU) to touch 
base with some women's groups there, and see who might be interested in 
computer classes. The term they were using for all this was "community 
outreach." For better or for worse,  Busy operates as a FOR PROFIT 
business, and it would be naive to think  their "outreach"  didn't have 
a bottom line attached. Though all sorts of people meet at the Busy 
already to use computers, socialize at the bar and sit in the air 
conditioning (NEVER to be underestimated in Africa), there was a 
feeling that more could be done to get certain populations into the 
center for, notably women and children. In essence, Busy was trying to 
combine the classic development model of "get greater numbers online" 
with a hope that ultimately, these folks might also wind up potential 
customers.

When Ellen first approached me to go to Africa, I was excited, but 
worried. I had no prior experience in Ghana, and no experience with 
development in the traditional sense. I was uninterested in working 
with women's groups who weren't explicitly feminist, yet at that same 
time nervous that I might cause people more harm than good running 
around with my cyberfeminism hanging out everywhere. Ellen saw things 
differently. She thought my lack of training in the non-profit world 
would keep me satisfied with small-scale projects at Busy, compared to 
other people who always wanted to taken large-scale projects like those 
underwritten by groups like USAID . She also thought that whether they 
explicitly termed themselves feminist or not, Busy was a notable 
exception to the "boy/girl expat split" rule in Accra. The rule, coined 
by a journalist  I met there, refers to the fact that men seem to work 
almost exclusively in the for-profit telecommunications sector, while 
women dominate the non-profit, NGO  human services sector. Why not use 
Busy as a launching pad to help break that stereotype, she asked?

Ellen knew I had been deeply moved by the ideas I read _Banker to the 
Poor_ (about the Grameen Banks), particularly Mohammed Yunnus's 
assertion that he began his micro-lending project the day he stopped 
relying on his Ph.D. in economics and took 37 dollars out of his own 
pocket to help someone get started. I'm planning to visit the Grameen 
Technology Center in Seattle to get trained in a more "official" way as 
soon as I kill my dissertation. I also know that there are important 
criticisms about the ways in which certain micro-credit schemes can 
harm the women they purport to help by turning them into bill 
collectors for the transnational banking world. However, not being a 
transnational bank myself,  I was willing to put 100 dollars of my own 
money where my mouth was in Ghana.

According to Ellen, an hour of computer training at Busy was 10,000 
Ghanaian Cedis (roughly 10USD).If I was willing to put 100 dollars of 
my own money down, Busy would save the space and I could offer ten 
women scholarships to take a computer class. Then I would see what I 
could do next. Inch by inch, etc. With things broken into 
micro-installments like this, Accra seemed a more do-able plan to me, 
but sitting in NYC, I hardly knew where to begin locating women. 
Estelle and Amma, two of the managers at Busy, directed me to WISE, a 
local group whose philosophy and attitude I liked, almost immediately. 
WISE (stands for women's initiative for self-empowerment) provides 
counselling, advocacy, and job training for survivors of gender 
violence (http://www.wise-up.org). Begun in 1998 by Violet (Esi) 
Awaturi, WISE is a non-profit organization, partnering when appropriate 
with a number of other NGO's in Ghana and West Africa.

I called Esi on the telephone (itself an event), told her that I had a 
connection to BusyInternet, and asked if WISE might be interested in a 
scholarship so that ten women could take a computer class. If WISE 
liked the arrangement, I told Esi, I would set up ongoing classes and 
raise the funds for them myself. The only thing we needed from WISE 
were interested women."How fast can you get here?" Esi asked me. I 
think that might the the only time someone asked me to be quick while I 
was in Africa.

I understand the risk of coming off as a poor woman's Bill Gates, here. 
In my defense, I told Esi that if she wanted the money for something 
else, I would gladly donate it, but that my expertise and connections 
were with computer training. Esi replied that she'd rather work with 
someone who knew what they could bring to the table than with a 
well-meaning but unfocused person who 'wanted to help', and urged me to 
come on over. That afternoon, Esi, Frances Gwira (who helps Esi run 
WISE), Greg (who would be teaching the classes) and I sat down and 
talked about what WISE could use in the way of computer training.

I had already been working for a few days with children's groups at 
Busy, and had already stumbled a number of  instances of the colonial 
mind in cyberspace. For example: the simplest way to secure email 
addresses for new users is through Yahoo or Hotmail, and that's pretty 
much where we directed the kids we helped in Accra. On the sign up page 
for Yahoo, you'll see a pull-down menu that asks for your language and 
region. In Ghana, the official language is English, but although one 
can find English--US, English--Britain, English--Hong Kong, 
English--Singapore. However, a search for English--Ghana, 
English--Nigeria, or even English--Africa yields nothing.   Faced with 
this dilemma,  my ten-year old students, who have never known a time 
when England ruled Ghana, instinctively chose "English--Britain" as 
their default. When faced with the challenge of picking a screen name 
for themselves, boys chose (in order) names from the Bible, sports team 
names, or variants of their proper name. Girls chose (in order) 
variants on Lady Diana, variants on their proper name, or the name of 
their pet. Of course, the Lady Diana stuff is most striking here. No 
Spice Girls, no Kylie. How long ago did Lady Di, well, die?

  Because we were concerned that their very Christian caretakers would 
accuse us of  hooking kids up to a medium that did nothing but send 
unsolicited ads for penis enlargement, my colleagues and I tried to 
teach the children who came to our classes  tricks for avoiding the 
spam that accompanies free email  accounts.  Though many of the 
children dutifully did as told, a number of kids (mostly boys) insisted 
on knowing exactly what spam was before they opted out. Our most 
politic answer, "It is unwanted mail from strangers," backfired on us. 
Once the ringleader of the boys declared, "I want spam!"  the rest 
followed suit.  Yes, these are ten year olds, and yes as people become 
more sophisticated around Net use, their desire for online penis 
enlargement, uh, shrinks. Still, I hadn't  realized until this moment 
that a big part of the challenge we have facing us in the spam wars is 
the legitimate desire among people around the world for contact--any 
contact. We're talking about an entire country that speaks English and 
has internet technology and a reasonable amount of capital by African 
standards, who cannot even get  a freaking Yahoo mail designation. 
Should I be surprised that they'll take what they can get, even if it's 
spam?

As Don points out, email was pretty much the exciting part of the Net 
for these kids, especially those who had family working or going to 
school abroad. Although a few kids did send email to their friends 
sitting next to them, most were earnestly trying to compose letters to 
far-flung family, or to me, wishing me Jesus's blessings and so forth 
for my help.  That said, we did  introduce kids to the Web and showed 
them how to surf for things. In order, they were interested in pages 
about sports teams, pages about musicians, and the Google search 
engine. At the time, I was writing about the trip in my LiveJournal, 
and I very much wanted to get them started using that. I had even been 
hoarding my LJ user invite codes to give away. Once I got to the class, 
however, I realized that for all the talk about youth on LJ,  there 
really is nothing on there of interest to a ten year old. The staff at 
BusyInternet expressed some interest in LJ,  but even they abandoned 
their journals after realizing that you get blog readers primarily by 
having the time to read and respond to the blogs of others, not just by 
putting words on a page and waiting for the hordes to arrive. Although 
Busy employees did get some free time to surf the Web and thus read 
blogs, there was more instant gratification to be found in things like 
Yahoo chat, particularly when one could get access to the webcams 
(there were four, and always in use.)

When I went to visit the women at WISE, I thought they  would want the 
sort of Internet classes we were teaching children. However,  Esi and 
Frances--who already have Net access and a pretty nice Web 
page--weren't all that interested in that sort of thing. What they 
could really use--what might immediately benefit the clients- -were 
some rudimentary computer classes for their staff and counselors. They 
explained that although WISE had procedures in place for documenting 
cases, the quality of the documentation varied wildly, depending upon 
who the counselor was, and how good her word processing skills were. 
For instance, while many counsellors knew that photos went a long way 
in impressing upon police the severity of a client's case, only a few 
of counselors actually knew they could cut and paste digital photos 
into Word documents. Likewise, while their website looked professional 
and polished, it was chiefly the labor gift of a volunteer long since 
gone. Since the staff had no knowledge of HTML, the site had gone 
updated for a few years now. They worried aloud about whether the same 
thing might happen with their (first ever) database of cases, now under 
construction by a group of volunteer programmers. For the first time 
perhaps ever, I began to understand the obvious connection between a 
certain type of computer proficiency and women's advocacy. Esi and 
Frances explicitly requested classes on Microsoft Word and Excel, and I 
agreed to fund them.

To those who gasp at the "M" word, I have to say I was met with blank 
stares every time I mentioned licensing issues anywhere. Overall, the 
feeling in Accra--at least at smaller organizations--seems to be that 
you use whatever someone gives you and teaches you to use, end of 
story.

Ultimately, we hoped to offer classes for WISE's clients as well, since 
job training is part of their mission statement (women everywhere tend 
to stay in abusive environments if they are financially dependent on 
men), I thought we might offer data entry, word processing or "make 
your own business card" classes to WISE clients. Esi agreed that many 
WISE clients could benefit from computer training of some sort. As she 
put it, "Some of the women we work with say, 'I can sell my batik and 
my kenke to support my family', to which I have to respond, 'Accra 
doesn't need another kenke stand. Look where you are. Accra is an urban 
area, and its getting more telecommunications by the day. But to get a 
job at a call center you'd at least have to have some basic knowledge 
of computers."

At first, we thought about offering client classes at the WISE center, 
where there are four computers and we could bring some laptops. We 
wound up rejecting that idea. At WISE, there are opportunities to 
connect with other battered women, their children, and their advocates, 
and of course this initial "safe space" is critical. But if further 
modeling is to take place, it is necessary for women to witness other 
women working with computers in an environment with telecenters and 
help desks (where these women would most likely be seeking jobs) 
on-premises. Like many telecenters in Africa, Busy is a social affair, 
and this element would be lost if we moved the training to WISE. Even 
offering students a cold drink in the bar after class allows these them 
to stop being "clients" and instead just be women interacting with the 
place and its inhabitants.

  I want to take a moment to describe the joy and the weirdness of 
raising money for a project like this. As I mentioned earlier, WISE is 
a non-profit with tax deductible status in Africa (they are working on 
the paperwork for the U.S.) Ideally, they would like to be able to 
raise funds online. However, due to the fact that Ghanaian and Nigerian 
ISPs seem to be on a number of "danger lists" for fraudulent practices, 
easy online payment venues such as PayPal aren't options for them. Now, 
there are some organizations that orchestrate online fundraising for 
West African concerns, and WISE wants to get in touch with them, but 
that's pretty low on the to-do list at this point. As it stands, this 
is how I raise funds for classes as it stands (feel free to laugh; I 
do): I write to friends and acquaintances, given them a URL to a page 
on my web site: http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/WISE/computer.htm 
There, they can read about the program and make a donation via PayPal 
to my account here in the States. (Btw, I designed this page for WISE, 
and really don't want it on my site, but we haven't yet transferred it 
to the WISE site because they are still trying to figure out an overall 
plan for online fundraising, and don't want people to get confused 
thinking they are donating to say, the shelter, when the page I 
designed is just for the computer training.)

Once I raised enough money for a class, I transferred the money to Greg 
via a shared Fleet bank account. Greg withdraws the money in Ghanaian 
Cedis from the Barclay's bank in Accra, using his Fleet Visa card. Greg 
brought the cash to Busy Internet and booked the space (his teaching 
services are volunteer, so we don't pay for that.) Obviously this is a 
temporary measure. I really cannot expand fundraising until I figure 
out a more sensible system, but given the fact that I've only raised a 
few hundred dollars so far and that a long-term solution involves 
things like U.S. nonprofit status and tax law and blah blah, and at the 
time, Greg was there are ready to teach for free, so I went with this.

I wish I could report that the project was a wild success, but after 
about six classes,  WISE decided to  "re-evaluate" things (although 
encouraging me to stay active with the group.) Esi told me that 
although WISE was deeply appreciative of my efforts to help  ( I never 
met a Ghananian who wasn't deeply appreciative, or at least too kind to 
hurt someone's feelings) she felt that right now, there were just too 
many women with too many varying skill sets to be effectively taught in 
groups of ten. In email exchanges since, two suggestions have been 
floated for our next step:

A)  "ramp up" and organize a large-scale teaching initiative by 
courting development money (which would take us out of the small-scale 
model I had envisioned)  or

B) get someone like me to move to Accra and do hardcore volunteer 
one-on-one training to get staff and clients up to speed at their 
facility (which eliminates the sort of cross-pollination I spoke of 
earlier at Busy.)

We know there are probably answers between those two poles, but 
negotiating with women whose main concern is (rightly) caring for their 
clients is taking much more time than my New York self is used to. Plus 
there is, you know, my dissertation.

If you have read this far, I probably owe you a beer, and promise to 
never post something this long to the list again, as long as I live.

Best,
Terri

Theresa M. Senft
Auxiliary Adviser, Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Adjunct Professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program
New York University, 719 Broadway, Room 519
(212) 998-7333  email: terri.senft at nyu.edu