Green Card or Bust

Last month, as Black Friday (try explaining that term to Ghanaians) commenced and the Christmas shopping season began, another season drew to a close. I’m not referring to Ramadan, although that also ended on Friday with the festival of Eid al-Fitar, a national holiday in Ghana and most Muslim countries. I’m instead referring to the end of the 2009 US Diversity Visa lottery registration window. A little-known program of the US State Department, the visa lottery allows citizens from countries that are “underrepresented” in US immigration totals to register online for a visa “drawing.” It’s the only lottery I know of where applicants pay only after they win. Instead of applying directly to the US embassy in Accra, people fill out their basic information online, which is sent to an electronic processing center in Kentucky. (I guess they wanted to make it as reminiscent of the American heartland as possible.) Some shadowy and mysterious computer selects 100,000 – 110,000 names from over 16 million applicants each spring. The “chosen ones” are automatically granted visa interviews if they can pay the visa application fee (a steep $750 USD) and complete the required medical forms (another $300 USD or so). From those who interview, the ever-vigilant visa counselors whittle down the list to 55,000 or so recipients, who receive US green cards for anywhere from 6 months to 5 years.

It is a self-consciously named process, transforming what feels like a lottery for many applicants into a literal one. Most of the Ghanaians I’ve interviewed on the subject feel the normal US visa application process is slow, opaque and confusing. After filling out the official forms and soliciting invitation letters, Ghanaians might be called to sign up for an interview, which is usually available only several weeks in advance. Ever sought-after, visa interviews are scarce, especially for those who live outside of Accra. Many applicants are left frustrated by their inability to even receive an interview, believing the US collects application fees in order to fund its aid programs in Ghana. “We’re paying for our own roads,” one internet café owner remarked to me.

With its promise of an anonymous lottery, the DV process seems (perhaps only marginally) fairer and more certain to most Ghanaians, and they sign up accordingly. Last year Ghana had the highest number of DV recipients of any country in the world – over 8,000 citizens managed to secure green cards.

With such demand for visas, it’s inevitable that local entrepreneurs would find some way to capitalize on Ghanaians’ high hopes for an American green card and their generally low level of information about how to get it. “Migration connectors,” operating at cafes and as private individuals, charge people a small fee to register for the lottery, educating those who don’t know much about the process, taking regulation-size photos, and entering applicants’ information into the internet portal.

Their signs and banners adorn balconies, walls, street lamps and taxi cabs around town, some professionally produced and draped decorously between two buildings, others printed on crumpled office paper and taped to doorways. During “the season,” as many call it (the program ran from Oct. 3rd to Nov. 30th this year), it’s hard to amble down a street without a DV announcement, so ubiquitous they seem. I’ve collected a couple of choice examples for you.

Hanging in front of the largest internet café in downtown Kumasi, this sign was as good as it gets - large, prominent, and professionally printed:


This one, alas, was not so: the printer clearly ran out of enthusiasm before he could manage to capitalize "Take part and be a winner!":


The owner of this cafe, apparently wanting to dodge all those pesky questions from customers about how many passport pictures they needed for the application, took the straightforward route with his notice:


My favorite, however, is this one at the Ghana post office headquarters in Kumasi:


It reads with a faintly adversarial tone if you put the emphasis on the right word, as if to say “It's ON, US visa lottery! You just try to turn me away!”

Some signs of the season are particularly unmissable, the initiative of several entrepreneurs whose sole business during October and November is registering people for the DV lottery. The employees have the process down to an art, streamlined to churn people's applications through the system like industrially-produced butter. You can't read it very well in this photo, but rest assured that the legs of the tent below read "Visa Lottery," and that the people inside have been waiting for an hour to send their information forth to Kentucky:


There are even competing tent factions, with drama befitting any epic tale of profit, greed, dreams of the future and trans-Atlantic journeys. One operator alleges that another stole his tent idea and choice set-up location, cutting his customer base in half this year.

Not all of the banners are so visible. Others are more muted, and more insidious. “Call for visa help, 020____” read one handwritten note stapled to a light post at my local tro-tro stop. Some use the lottery process as a front to capture the identities - and the cedis - of would-be Americans, holding their personal data hostage or extorting applicants. Unscrupulous operators will help clients apply for free, but direct the announcement packets to their own addresses if the applicants win, refusing to turn over the documents necessary for the interview until they receive several thousand dollars. According to one widespread rumor, someone took this approach with the entire National Youth Employment database (a registry of recent graduates looking for work), entering their data into the system without their knowledge and extracting money from the unsuspecting visa winners. Despite general enthusiasm for the DV season, it's these stories which make people understandably suspicious of “people going around with their creepy little cameras,” as one person described it.

Lest you wonder why I, too, have been going around with my "creepy little camera" for these pictures, a disclaimer: I centered the first part of my Fulbright research on the DV process in Ghana, since it's one primary connection between the internet and migration. (That is, if you'll remember aaaaaall the way back to my first post, the topic I'm allegedly here to study...) Now that the application window has ended for the year, I'm almost done with the first part of my research, save for analyzing the remainder of the internet cafe user surveys I distributed and conducting interviews with a couple of officials at the embassy. I find I miss the spirit of the period, however. It had a vaguely carnivalesque feel – advertisements in the newspaper, on the radio, at various cafes and more unexpected places (the back of a tro-tro seat?) warning passerby “not to miss this opportunity,” as if invisible hawkers were selling tickets for dubious games with ridiculously large prizes. Luckily for me, Christmas season is now in full swing and has a similarly festive vibe, with the substitution of colorful tinsel for banners and Boney M. 70s-era Christmas CDs for radio advertisements. Even for those hoping to go abroad, there are, after all, many things to celebrate at home.

In honor of Thanksgiving...

...I thought I would introduce two additional members of the Boampong family, whom I insensitively overlooked in my first post.

This lovely lady is Julie. The Boampongs name all their cats Julie, so she's actually more like Julie IV. She's not as peaceful as her picture suggests - she dislikes human touch, and runs from anything that approaches her. Her distrust probably stems from experience, however - sadly, her kitten was killed by the family dog last week.



Squirming in my arms is Julie's sister Julianna, who is much nicer than her wriggling would suggest. She's a cuddlebug and an attention seeker, and if you scratch her beneath her chin she'll be your shadow for the rest of the day.



P.S. For those of you who suspect that this post is intended to provide a brief update to stave off the clamoring masses while I write the next (longer, more legitmate post), you would be 100% correct. Research has kicked into high gear, and I've been a bit preoccupied for the past couple of weeks. I just returned from several days of interviewing in Berekum, a small town in the Western region of Ghana with a high population of migrants. Now I'm in Accra, the capital city, to gather with my American kinfolk to observe the Thanksgiving ritual. But now the postscript is longer than the actual post, so I'll comment more on both trips soon...

Perhaps I typed too soon...

Two weeks ago (it's been awhile, I know) I wrote that things were looking good for Ghana. They still are, with one key exception. If Ghana's football team was on fire, unfortunately so too was its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Last Thursday, the entire 10-story building went up in flames after either 1) a faulty air conditioner wasn't properly fixed or 2) three security guards set the building ablaze. (Which one of the two it was remains under investigation.)

The situation is disheartening for Ghanaians, to say the least; it will cost the government millions of dollars to repair, or more likely rebuild, the Ministry. But it's also personally disheartening, because it destroys my last mental defense against the dark forces of confusion and incompetency. Whenever I encounter some systemic breakdown, whether a near-crash on a tro-tro traversing a major road that has been "under construction" for four years or a shortage of malaria prophylaxis at one of Ghana's biggest hospitals, I comfort myself with the thought that “if it were something really important, it would be dealt with.” Well, I've spent the past week trying to think of things more important than saving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it's a short list.

The whole situation illustrates on a massive and destructive scale the same inconveniences that many Ghanaians deal with on a daily basis, usually related to some sort of government or public service delay, shortage, breakdown, misinformation or outright incompetency.

First of all, the blaze could not be contained because one of Accra's two firetrucks is under repair, and the other – actually located in a smaller city down the coast from Accra – lacks a working extendable spinning ladder, so firefighters were unable to reach the blaze. Second, it was nearly impossible to get enough water to the site to combat the flames. There's a water reservoir next to the Ministry specifically for that purpose but the pump was not working, probably because it was not consistently maintained.

As the flames went up and the building came down, spectators bemoaned two things. First, the loss of valuable office equipment. In most developed countries, office equipment would be an afterthought, the kind of trivial misfortune only insurance accountants would worry about. When you realize how difficult and expensive it probably was for the Ministry to obtain those copiers, printers, and computers, however, the tragedy of it all becomes more apparent. Second, very few of the Ministry's documents were backed up electronically. Thus some 52 years of historical and policy archives have been reduced to ash that will mix with red dust and float across the city, covering some unsuspecting tro-tro passenger who would never imagine that his shoes bore the only remnants of Kwame Nkrumah's notes to foreign dignitaries.

If you'd like to read more, here's the article: http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=4831



On Tuesday the Chinese government "offered to help” rebuild the Ministry, just as it has “offered to help” Ghana renovate its regional airports and redo its roads. (How kind of them!) The symbolism of the Chinese rebuilding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is rather striking – could there be better (or more directly observable) evidence of the influence China is trying to exert on Ghana's foreign policy?

I promise that not all news from Ghana is so negative, despite the tone of my post. I spent this weekend in Accra at an interesting and hopeful OpenAccess conference focused on increasing access to ICT infrastructure and research. Since everyone spent much of the conference typing furiously on their computers, I could have written another post already, but you'll have to wait a couple of days nonetheless...

Ghana's Gone Wild

One consequence of waiting so long to update my blog is that my prospective post headings have changed drastically. “Desperately seeking exercise” has morphed into “Bought jump rope; now learn tricks from host sisters.” “Unhappy stomach prevents eating” was exchanged for “Possibly gaining weight due to potato and palm oil consumption.” And – finally! - “Epic search for internet modem” has been replaced by “Found internet modem; immediately became obsessively conscious of data usage.”

The original title for this post has also changed. Last Wednesday marked the one-month anniversary of my arrival in Ghana, and since then I've both settled down and crisscrossed the country literally from one border to the other. I intended to write about the days I spent traveling to Ghana's northern regions, but that deserving topic was eclipsed by the events of last Friday – namely, Ghana beating Brazil in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup.

For those who don't follow soccer (or football, as it is known everywhere else), next year South Africa will host the World Cup. (It seems crazy that anyone wouldn't know this already, but I believe I'm biased by the thousands of commercials and radio advertisements that deafeningly remind listeners every 2.6 seconds.) The Cup, which is being hailed by sportscasters and citizens alike as “Africa's Cup,” brings with it a number of smaller precursor events, such as the Confederations Cup, also held on African soil. The Under-20 Cup (meaning the team is limited to players 20 years or younger) was the last major event before the big show next summer, and some think it serves as a preview for which teams will be successful in the forseeable future, even though only a few of the Under-20 members will play for their countries in 2010.

After a suspenseful and high-scoring run to the finals, Ghana met Brazil for the second time in 20 years. Just before halftime, one of Ghana's players went out on a red card, and so Ghana spent much of the second half deflecting Brazil's shots on goal. They did so successfully, however and the game went to penalty kicks, with Brazil nearly taking the trophy before Ghana's Emmanuel Agyemang-Badu won the game with a low corner shot.

I live next to a “spot,” or bar, so the noise when Agyemang-Badu's ball hit the net was deafening. I probably would have been able to hear the celebrations even if I weren't so close to the action – the street was filled with revelers waving the Ghanaian flag, dancing, drinking, and beating on improvised plastic-tub drums. We faced a near impasse driving home to the house where I sleep, and were able to move through only after the dancers had jostled the car and (jokingly) made sure that I wasn't Brazilian. I think I'll have to buy a Ghanaian jersey to guarantee my safety in the future...

Though things have calmed down considerably since then, any mention of "Ghana vs. Brazil" to taxi drivers, store owners, or water vendors will still spark a huge grin and a reply of "2010!" Ghana's hopes for a rosy football season only add to expectations for an optimistic future; next year will also see the first oil revenues from the recently-discovered Jubilee Field, and potentially other developments like new roads and additional broadband capacity from a new fiber optic internet cable. As one of my favorite Ghana-bloggers, Ethan Zuckerman, put it on Monday morning, "things are looking good for Ghana."

Touching down and touching base

Akwaaba (welcome!) to my blog! Thanks to the generosity of Congress and J. William Fulbright, I've embarked on ten months of research on information and communication technologies, social networks, and migration in Ghana.

I'll spare you the literature review for now (that's for a later post, drafted on some rainy, muggy afternoon when everyone shoves off work and stays inside), but Ghana has both one of the highest rates of cell phone coverage in Africa, and also one of the highest rate of international migration, particularly in certain professional fields. Already I'm reminded why I proposed this topic to the Fulbright committee; nearly everyone I've met has a direct relative working or living abroad. My host family alone has two aunts who live in Canada.

I'm partnering with Young People We Care, an organization based on engaging youth in policy and especially development issues, particularly in what Michael, the director, always refers to as “new” development issues – climate change, migration, and corruption. I'm also living with Michael's family in Kumasi, a city in central Ghana that's the former capital of the Ashanti Empire (more on that later).

It's an extended family, so quite large – Paulina and George are Michael's parents, and they are the matriarch and patriarch of large families themselves. Michael has one older brother named Kofi, who lives in the family house, as well as three cousins on a long-term visit (two years!) from Canada, one nephew, and two distant relatives who help around the house. That's just in one home! George and Paulina are building a second, much larger home that should be finished by December, but until then they'll be cramped into a small space. I am therefore sleeping at Paulina's mother's house, several miles away from the "main" family home, which includes Paulina's two brothers, one of their wives, and three lovely ladies named Lina, Muni, and Arama. They are all shy but very kind, and have offered to give me Twi lessons every day when we get home from work. I haven't progressed very far, but even a simple "medase" (thank you) elicits a smile from most people in my day-to-day interactions.

Part of the family: George, Michael, Paulina, Gideon, and Kofi

Nearly every Ghanaian has two monikers, one “official” and one “traditional,” or based on the day of the week you were born. Some people prefer to go by their “Christian name,” as they say, and some by their traditional one – and some toggle between the two based on who's talking. My Ghana name is Adwoa, since I'm a female who was born on a Monday. I was hoping for Kofi after Kofi Annan, but alas, no luck. The house isn't big enough for two Kofis anyway.

I'm hoping to start interviewing tomorrow. My first victims are the owner and manager of the internet cafe where I've been crashing during the day for the past two weeks. Steered there by Michael's friend Michael Adu, who's helping the manager network the place, I implored the employees to take pity on my internet-less state, and they let me use their wireless for free. I will repay them with detailed personal questions about their ICT usage and migration history.

When I'm not emailing my heart out, I work out of a converted grain container in Michael's family's yard – the official office of YPWC, now that they've let the lease on their former office lapse. Here's what it looks like:

I offered to write “YPWC” on the side with a sharpie, but Michael politely declined.

One much-welcomed development since my last trip is that Ghana no longer suffers from rolling power outages, so I have consistent power for my laptop, fan, etc. It makes research a bit easier than it would be otherwise, since I don't have to search for outlets to charge my computer. (Although its six-hour battery life is definitely a plus...)

I've spent these past three weeks doing mostly logistical work, reading articles and e-mailing people about my research project. As it turns out, Michael did his own senior thesis several years ago on migration outcomes from one of the central regions of Ghana, so he already has contacts there whom he offered to put me in touch with. His parents also have many friends and relatives who have migrated, and they have offered to take me to Salaga, a Northern city notoriously located in a "communication dead zone," to interview people and distribute my questionaire there. In addition, I'll have the help of YPWC affiliates in several Northern regions, who've offered to help me solicit subjects.

So I've got many good leads, although accompanying them is the responsibility of producing good research. Finalizing a timeline for 10 months of research seems much more daunting here than it did in the US... but you can watch it in real time over the next months. (It's like reality TV for academics!) I'll keep you updated!