The Man from G.H.A.N.A. …..

Greetings to All from Mim, Brong Ahofu Province, Ghana.

I am writing this from the relative comfort of my “Bungalow” situated in the “Management Compound” (never thought I’d see those two words used together!) here in Mim. Where the hell is that exactly, you may be asking yourself? Well it is about 100kms due East of Kumasi (Ghana’s second biggest “city”), and about 80kms South of Sunyani. Any help…? Ok then, it’s fairly close to the Ivory Coast border, and about 200kms Northwest of Cape Coast, a town on the Gulf of Guinea, from where many an African slave left on an all expenses paid trip to the USA and the Caribbean just a few hundred years ago…

For those of you who are geographically challenged, it’s in West Africa, for goodness sake!!!

The Red Dot marks the spot ! Mim, Brong Ahofu, Ghana...

I arrived here last week, and spent the first two days being feted by amongst others, the Minister of Trade and Industry, the Forestry Commission, and other dignitaries connected to the Pepera family. The Chairman, Kwabena Pepera is an ex Minister of Foreign Affairs, and at age 90, is still as sharp as ever! I also had my photo taken for publication in the local rag, to herald the arrival of the “dynamic new Managing Director of Scanstyle”….unquote!! The fact that I was wearing a pair of jeans and a golf shirt didn’t faze them at all, but they dug a black tie out from somewhere and made me wear that for the photo shoot… My Interpol photo would have been just as good…

My hotel was located a short distance from the Accra Mall, which has a Shoprite, Truworths and a Game… Strolling down the aisles, I was amazed at the prices of things here…. R36 for a 500ml of Sunlight Liquid and R320 for a 750ml bottle of Bell’s… two things I thought I would be using rather a lot of… A box of dog biscuits costs a mere R123 a box! Clearly Ghanaians are not in the habit of spoiling their mutts!

I flew up to Kumasi on Friday, and after a slight altercation with the customs and immigration officials at the airport. I had to explain that 42kgs of luggage was not “excessive” considering how eagerly I had been welcomed to Ghana by none other than the Minister of Trade and Industry… Name-dropping in Ghana brings amazing results!! I settled into my seat midway down the aisle. The flight was interesting to say the least… We spent the entire duration of the flight dodging thunderstorms, but on arrival above Kumasi, there was no longer place to hide…

The plane plunged towards the ground, lightning flashing all around, driving rain and booming thunder accompanying us all the way down…. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the passengers, and I decided to forego the seatbelt, as whatever might happen, I was determined to be the first one at the door, assuming there was one when we landed… What seemed like only seconds before we actually landed, the plane broke through the clouds and swooped down onto the runway and made a rather bumpy landing… A number of passengers wiped tears from their cheeks while pushing and shoving to get off the plane… A memorable arrival in Kumasi, if ever there was one…

After a three-hour drive to Mim, much of it in the dark, we arrived at the gates of Scanstyle, and I was taken up to my bungalow. It had been painted and fumigated the week before and reeked of a mixture of thinners and pesticide. Every piece of furniture, as well as the wooden floor had been varnished, and when I tried to move a chair, it was firmly stuck to the floor… The house looked much better than it had during my visit in December, many of the broken and damaged bits having been replaced.

Asahri, my butler, cook and general factotum, presented me with a pork stew and a glass of Star beer to welcome me to Ghana.

“I have made you some chop, sah…” he proudly announced, and with a flourish whipped a grubby dish towel off the plate below… Remembering the last few meals he had made for me in December, and the resulting GGS (Galloping Gut Syndrome) that took over three weeks to subside, I gingerly worked my way through the meal…

My first plate of chop (food) in Mim…

That’s better…!

He then took me on a tour of the house, pointing out where all the light switches were located and how the taps worked…. Yes, there is a trick to getting the hot water to come out of the correct tap! He opened the fridge and proudly displayed the “white man’s food” which he had procured for me; onions and tomatoes, cabbage and carrots, two dozen eggs, a small tin of coffee and a bag of sugar… He apologized for the fact that there was no bacon, as he did not have money for bus-fare to go to Goaso, a town about 40kms away, where he assured me bacon was available at the “Lebanese supermarket”… He had also scrounged knives, forks and spoons from the other bungalows, as well as a few bits and pieces of crockery. There is no fresh milk in Mim, and very few people bother with the stuff! There are however small tins of Ideal Milk on sale in the market at a wallet numbing R12 a tin, and I used that just to give the coffee some “colour”… As for cheese…. well that will involve a three hour trip back to Kumasi…

My Bungalow in Mim’s “Management Compound”…

The house is filled with very dark furniture and the lighting is of the 40-watt variety, so reading is a bit of a problem… They say the night is darkest just before you step on the cat, but here you are more likely to step on a gecko or, what one night sounded like a large Simba chip, and on finding the light switch, discovered the remains of a VERY large cockroach…

Wind whistles under the eaves and strange noises abound… Just as the bush babies stop their gymnastics on the tin roof at night, the squirrels take over, heralding the changing of the guard and the start of a blistering new day. Pied crows and cattle egrets in their hundreds hop and stroll through the compound, the crows coming right up to the kitchen door to look for scraps…

On walking into the kitchen on my first morning, I was confronted by what I thought was the mother of all cockroaches (it turned out be just one of her younger daughters!), which I clouted with the back of a scrubbing brush….twice!! My first smack having caused the cockroach only mild indignation… These buggers are tougher than most…!

These critters are everywhere…!

I spent the weekend wandering through the factory trying to familiarize myself with the production process, but the factory is so badly laid out that just as I thought I had it all sussed out, I’d be confronted with yet another machine tucked into a corner, but seemingly well used… It’s going to take a lot of time and effort, not to mention money (which is in short supply!) to make this factory an efficient one…

The temperatures vary between 30 odd degrees at night and about 40 degrees in the late afternoon. Sweat pours off my forehead as soon as I leave the air-conditioned offices, the heat settles on your shoulders like a weight. Trickles of sweat run down my lower back and keep the waistband of my jeans sopping wet… The rainy season is about to kick off, and we have had a few light showers, that last for on a few minutes and then pass on. But yesterday, the 12^th of March, the rain arrived with a vengeance! For over an hour, Monsoon like rain pelted the area. Water poured through the roof in some of the departments in the factory, which saw people scurrying about trying to cover product with sheets of plastic. Naturally, the power went off and the factory was plunged into darkness…shades of Pigg’s Peak!!

My crate of food and other household items hasn’t arrived yet, as the container in which it was loaded has not been unpacked in the harbour of Tema… I am assured that it will be here “small, small”… which in these parts means “soon”… I was informed this morning that “a staff member in Accra had been despatched to the harbour with a “gift” for the customs agent”…. Hopefully this coming weekend will find me unpacking all the goodies that I envisaged needing here.

Each bungalow is equipped with a DSTV decoder and the subscriptions have to be paid on a monthly basis in cash…no debit orders here! A pickup has to be sent all the way to Kumasi at the end of each month…the cost… an eye-watering R720.00 a month! And then there are only half the channels I am used to getting… No Mnet, mostly News and Sport channels, as well as Nat-Geo and Discovery… It’ll just have to do!!

The lounge… The bookcase is waiting for all my books to arrive….

This morning, the 12^th of March, I was summoned to the log yard, and advised that there had been an “accident”… On arrival there, I was told that a large pile of logs was displaced by a passing grader, and rolled onto and over the chainsaw operator, who was working close by. All I could see of him was an arm on one side of the log, and a leg on the other. He was loaded onto a pickup and rushed to hospital about 25kms away. There was no point in the rushing, as I knew he had passed on when the log rolled over and onto him. Not an auspicious beginning to my tenure here.

The remainder of the employees do not seem very fazed by this event, and within minutes were going about their work as if nothing had happened… Seems life is cheap in these parts…

You can imagine the damage one of these would cause if it rolled over you…

Flags fly at Half-mast in Scanstyle, Mim…

I decided to shut the company at 2.00pm as a sign of respect, and sat about in my office going through all the possible ways in which this accident could have been prevented. I was expecting a full-scale investigation to begin, but was later advised that there would not be one at all!! The Police arrived to ask a few questions, and that was that! No labour department, no official enquiry…nothing…. Work as usual…

I received a letter from the Chairman of the Board (the Seriously “Old Man”), which I would include here for you to read, but it has been scanned and the file is too large…(any advice??) It’s a bit of a laugh, but also leaves me fairly clear on what they are expecting me to achieve here… Amongst other things, he says…

”….Ronnie has my clear mandate and support to instil absolute and unyielding discipline and efficiency into our operation in Mim. Disloyal, incompetent and inefficient workers will be weeded out to enable the rest of us to continue on the long hard road to prosperity…. If anybody finds his new regime in Mim “too hot to handle” then he may leave the company with my full blessing…”

I seem to have come with a reputation of sorts! Have the Swazi’s been speaking to him, do you think??

I will continue to write as and when I am able, to keep you up to date with my progress here…

Until then,