Mile -26.2.  It’s pitch dark, and I’ve just arrived at the finish line on my moto.  The time is a few minutes after 4am.  It’s not that unusual for me to be awake at 4am on a Sunday morning.  Jokers, which manages to be both shady and upscale, was still packed with SUVs when I passed it on the way to the race course.  What’s unusual is for 4am on a Sunday to be “early”.

Mile -15. The shuttle provided from the finish line to the start line is hopelessly lost somewhere in Teshie.  Good thing, or else how would we know we were running a marathon in Ghana?  If we wanted a reliable transportation to a marathon, we’d be in Boston. 

Mile -18. The marathon is scheduled to start in 5 minutes.  We are still lost in Teshie.

Mile 0. We arrive at the start line in Prampram almost an hour late. They’ve delayed the start for us. We hop of the shuttle, and we line up almost immediately.  There is no time to use the facilities (sparse bushes, in this case.)  Luckily, unlike my male counterparts who can easily wee anywhere in Ghana, I know how to hold it—and I will, for 22 miles.

Mile 1. Everything is beautiful. It’s not hot yet, we run past a group of drummers playing for us, I’ve got my running mix on my mp3 player, and I am feeling strong.

Mile 4. “California Love” feels less appropriate running through the morning sunlight in the bush around Prampram than it does running through Jamestown after dark.

Mile 5.  Because the Accra International Marathon is small, each runner gets a lot of personal attention.  Trucks pass up and down the race course, handing us water out the window and making sure we are okay. I notice that one of the escort trucks is provided by an insurance company. I chuckle.

Mile 6.  Why are they giving us so much water?

Mile 7.  What, water again? Oh, no—the truck driving beside me actually doesn’t want to give me water this time.  They’ve noticed I am carrying medical tape, and a runner behind me has developed some bad blisters. I turn around, find the runner, and help him tape up his feet, and we both continue the race.

Mile 9. One-third done! Woot! But I’m not feeling so strong anymore.

Mile 10. Traffic police are stopping traffic to let each runner go through the roundabouts in Tema.  The police wave and yell encouragement. I wonder if the economic gain from the race outweighs the cost of the traffic disruption.

Mile 13.1. Halfway there! Wait, somehow that doesn’t seem so encouraging…

Mile 13.2. It’s my turn to strip off my socks and tape up some aspiring blisters.  I still need to pee.

Mile 15.  Where the f*** are all the banana ladies? I’m hungry, as I have eschewed the abomination that is energy gels.

Mile 16. I have 10 miles to go, and I feel completely out of juice, but there is no way I’m not finishing. I pull back. My strategy at this point is to concentrate on making it through to mile 20, and then hope for an adrenaline rush to get me through the last 6 miles.

Mile 17. I’m running right along a gorgeous beach, with a view down the coastline. Wait, I have to run that far. I consider jumping in the ocean and swimming to the finish line.  I bet it would be less painful. Even though the current is going the other way.

Mile 18. The route veers away from the coast. The breeze is less, and it’s hot as hell. Why aren’t they giving us more water? Can I buy insurance if the sponsor car comes by? Talk about adverse selection…

Mile 18.5. A man pulls up beside me in a car and tells me he wants to meet me.  I don’t reply. It seems more polite than the only other imaginable response at this point.

Mile 19. I seem to have alien foot syndrome. Spasms in my lower leg muscles are causing my feet to twitch involuntarily, making it hard to keep proper foot alignment as I run.

Mile 19.5. Finally, a banana lady! She seems confused about my desire to pay 1 GHC for 1 banana, and take off with it without a bag or my change, but things work out.

Mile 20. Time to give a wake-up call to my nutrition and transportation sponsors, Kris and Par.  The prospect of calling my friends while running has been a source of motivation for the last several miles. I call Kris, and he and Par are already at the finish line, along with my boss Jessica, who is also out to support me. I hope they brought plenty of beers, because it will be another hour before I get there.

Mile 21. What was I thinking? Too late to stop now though.

Mile 22. If you are going to run 22 miles to pee, you might as well do it in style. I stop at the Ramada to use the washroom.  I take two sachets of water from the station here, drinking one and packing the other in the bottle at my waist. 

Mile 22-26. There are no more water stations for the rest of the race, and the heat is stifling at this point, even with a breeze.  I’m glad I packed my water bottle; it lasts me till about mile 24. We are now on my home turf—I run through Teshie often.  The familiar terrain tricks my body into a more familiar pace, and I pick up speed a little.

Mile 26.2. I manage to finish, if not strong, at least without looking like I had to drag myself over the finish line.  Jessica, Par, and Kris are there cheering for me.  They help me find water, turn in my place tag, and generally not fall over.  I finished 9th among women, which probably isn’t saying much in such a small race, but I’ll take it.  They had out bags of jollof rice, which somehow seems right.  I celebrate finishing in the proper fashion, with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, much to the delight of the Rasta musicians providing the post-race entertainment.

After.  Par, my transportation sponsor, road my moto home for me.  Kris, my nutrition sponsor—he provided every calorie used during the race with the exception of the afore-mentioned banana—loaded me into his car and drove me home.  Jessica, Par and Kris all took photos for me.  A day after the race, I am pretty stiff.  I am not driving my moto because my calf muscle is too sore to shift reliably.  My tape did well with friction issues, but I have a few blisters, including one wrapping around my smallest toe, making that toe about double in size.  I’m hungry all the time. All in all, I actually think I got off pretty lightly, given that I was certainly underprepared, and the conditions were tough.  I estimate that I drank 5-6 liters of water during the race (That’s twice the recommended amount for avoiding hyponatremia. I don’t think the people who made that recommendation have ever run a marathon in Africa.)  The satisfaction of finishing a marathon was definitely worth it, and I think I’d like to give it another go.  Big 5 marathon, here I come?

PS. If you’ve read this far, you deserve to know that the bottle of Johnnie Walker was filled with apple juice.  A message to other JW fans in West Africa: break your bottles when you are done with them.  You never know what they can be refilled (and sold) with!

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

The pangolin, one of my favorite animals, recently made the news.  This unusual looking anteater is being hunted to extinction due to demand for its meat and scales, which are believed to, among other things, enhance sexual prowess in traditional Asian medicine.

Enforcement efforts have not been able to put a stop to the trade.   Although trade in these products must continue to be illegal, and these laws must be enforced, they will not be sufficient to stem this problem.  Here’s why:

·         Lesson from the drug war: fighting supply doesn’t work with products that have inelastic demand.  When demand is not very price sensitive, limiting supply just causes the price of the product to rise, giving more incentive for people to keep supplying.  Endangered species products for use in medicine likely fall into this category, as likely perceive these medical cures as a need.  According to the article, an entire dead pangolin used to be valued at $5; today the scales alone go for $250. Powdered rhino horn can be more valuable by weight than gold or cocaine.  That’s a pretty big incentive to break the law.

·         Economic conditions will continue to enable higher prices and more demand.  Rising incomes in China and South East Asia, the source of much of the demand for endangered species products, will further accommodate higher prices for these products.

·         Creating efficient disincentives in the source countries is difficult.  When deciding whether to break a law, economic actors compare the benefit of the crime with the penalty, weighted by the likelihood they will get caught.  In poor countries, the resources available for enforcement are limited, so likelihood of getting caught can be low.  Higher prices, driven by the previous two factors, can entice more sophisticated suppliers to enter the market, who are better at evading enforcement efforts.   In cases where suppliers are poor, penalties such as fines may be ineffective, because the supplier has little to lose.

·         Endangered species parts might be non-normal goods—meaning that higher prices actually raise demand.  In the case of medicines, a higher priced medicine might create a larger placebo effect, for the same reason people who know the price of an expensive wine tend to rate its taste more highly.  In the case of luxury goods, the scarcity of the product, and fact that it is illicit, might actually increase the prestige associated with owning it.

These factors imply that to put a real stop to endangered species products trade, we must address the demand side.  There are a couple potential approaches:

1.       Try to shift the demand curve left.  This involves decreasing the number of people demanding the product, or decreasing the amount of product that each person demands.  In order to do this, you have to convince people that they don’t need these products, or that they are inferior to other options.  Intense education, shame campaigns, and social pressure to embrace modern medicines might be approaches to achieving this.

2.       Make demand more elastic by increasing substitutes.  If you cannot convince people they don’t need these products, you might still be able to make demand more price sensitive if you can convince them that other substitutes can suffice.  Endangered species parts might be replaced with parts from more common animals in traditional medicine recipes.  This might be achieved by working with practitioners of traditional medicine to promote recipes that don’t include endangered species parts.  This strategy, however, runs the risk of transferring the over-demand to other species.

Any strategy aimed at demand is incredibly daunting, as it involves changing long-held cultural beliefs and behaviors, practiced even among the highly educated.  And some traditional medicines work:  ma huang, traditionally used to treat colds, contains pseudoephedrine,  the active ingredient in many over-the-counter cold medicines, and Artemisia, another traditional medicine, is now a standard component in most malaria treatments.  It is not easy to convince people that while their age-old belief that Artemisia cures malaria is true, their age-old belief that anything remotely phallic increases sexual prowess isn’t.  Though if you think a pangolin looks phallic, you are probably long overdue for an STD screening.

The Ghanaian press recently published a story claiming that 90% of police officers in Ghana are alcoholics. Despite the hyperbolic headline, the actual statistic in the text is a bit more ambiguous-- it says that 90% of police have medical conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular or heart disease that can be linked to alcoholism.

The best part of the story? The police service try to reassure the public that police officers are tested before being sent to other countries for peacekeeping. I take this to mean that if they send 10% of police abroad, then we must have 100% boozed cops here in Ghana.

The Ghana Driver's Manual gives the following advice:

Beware of pedestrians. Take extra precaution when approaching fruit trees. Children are more interested in fruits than in traffic.

I will say, when traffic consists of a white girl on a moto, this is patently false.

Eliot Spitzer writes that the state of American men's tennis is a metaphor for the state of the U.S. economy. The article isn't well executed-- he makes a detour into causation vs. correlation just to take a dig at deficit hawks.  (Maybe we wouldn't have a demand problem now if we hadn't been spending beyond our means for years and years??) His final point is somewhat valid though-- America is less dominant in tennis and in the world economy because other nations have made gains, and the competition is stiffer, and that's a good thing.

What I take from this is that it is no longer the default that white American men will stay on top. (Spitzer glaringly fails to analyze the state of American women's tennis.)  Neither a Grand Slam trophy, nor a big screen TV and two cars, are the inherent right of an American man. Like everyone else in the world, if we want to succeed, we need to make ourselves competitive.

I am now the holder of an official Ghanaian motorcycle driver’s license.  I feel like a bit of my inner (or not so inner?) rebel has been lost, but as consolation, I ended up paying no more than the official 34 GHC fee and a 1 GHC dash to get it, so I feel like I am still pretty bad-ass.

Corruption at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority in Accra is brilliantly orchestrated.  Applicants never pay a bribe directly to an official.  When applicants come into the office, officials direct them to a handler.  The handler, who is in no way officially associated with the DVLA, helps the applicant through the process—he assists with getting passport photos, filling out paperwork, and sending the applicant to the correct offices.  The handler knows the process in and out, and has friends in the various offices.

The handler keeps the process as opaque as possible, often meeting with officials without the applicant present.  The handler makes it a point to pay the applicant’s fees without the applicant present, hiding the true cost of the license fee.  The handler then asks the applicant for a sum larger than the true cost.  If asked about the discrepancy, the handler will say that the extra is needed to dash the DVLA officials so that they will process the application the same day.  Presumably, the extra is actually split between the handler and the DVLA officials. 

The beauty of this system is that no one can ever be caught for corruption.  If an applicant complains, the only person who has ever asked them for extra is the handler, who is not affiliated with the DVLA and is just taking a fee for helping the applicant with the process.  The handlers will never complain about the DVLA officials, because they make their whole living off the system.  

So how did I get off with a 1 GHC dash?

I was smart, but I also got lucky.  Before going in, I asked around about the cost of a moto license, so I knew it would be in the range of 30-40 GHC.  Then I got assigned a handler who far overplayed his hand—he asked for 200 GHC to cover the cost of the license—lucky.  I got lucky again when I said the price should be “30 to 40 Ghana”, and he thought I said “34 Ghana”—which turned out to be the exact price of the license.  At that point, he pulled me aside, and admitted that the license cost 34 Ghana, but said I would need to pay extra to dash the officials to get the license that day.  It’s possible that he may have actually slowed down the process on purpose; we hopped around to a lot of offices.

I decided to call his bluff.  I started loudly talking about how I wanted a receipt for everything, and how I couldn’t trust him, because he had just tried to tell me it cost 200 GHC for a license.  Exclamations and tongue clicks—Ghanaian sounds of disapproval – began emanating from the crowd around us.  One woman poked the handler, asked “200 Ghana? For a license?!” and shook her head reprovingly.  “Okay, okay” said my handler, and he ushered me back inside.  A moment later my paperwork was approved.  My handler and his brother the DVLA official shook their heads ruefully and speculated out loud about how I had known the price.  

After seeing the receipt in my paperwork, I paid the handler the 35 GHC for the 34 fee. He left without giving me change. I thought he would be back, and I would have given him a small tip for his help, but apparently he was afraid I would start yelling about 200 Ghana again, and he left me to complete the process on my own, which I did with no trouble.  He kept the 1 GHC change—but I kept his pen.

Here are tips to help avoid be extorted for money in Ghana:

1.       Do your research. Know what the process should be, and know how much fees should cost.

2.       Use the “R” word—receipt.  Since receipts must be turned in, the amount listed there is the official price, and total receipts must equal total cash turned in. Always ask for a receipt to make sure you are paying the official rate, and that the money you pay goes to Ghana, not someone’s pocket.

3.       Hold on to your important documents.  Once your passport, license, or other difficult-to-replace document is in someone’s hands, you will have to convince them to give it back. And they may hope you will convince them with cash.

4.       Be willing to spend time rather than money.

5.       Be willing to call bluffs.

6.       Don’t have tons of money on you.  It’s hard to extort someone for more than they’ve got.

7.       Know when a dash is okay.  If someone is truly doing something extra for you, outside of their normal job, or if the dash is actually to compensate a handler for their assistance, it can be appropriate.

Ramadan is coming up, and in Northern Ghana, that means a large portion of staff, partners, and survey respondents will be going without food and water during daylight hours.  If you aren’t Muslim, sometimes you forget that other people are fasting, or to be unaware of how this may affect their work and schedules.  Some rookie mistakes I have seen:

·         One of our interns wanted to do something nice for the office, so he brought in donuts at 2pm- prime hunger time for many fasters.

·         A friend of mine was working with a Ghanaian staffer, and noticed she wasn’t eating anything.  Feeling bad, she proceeded to offer the Ghanaian shares of everything she ate that day.  It wasn’t until later that she realized the Ghanaian must have been fasting.

·         A staff member scheduled a lunch meeting with partners.  The partners came without complaint, and the staff member was chagrinned when none of them ate anything and she remembered it was Ramadan.

To avoid being a jerk to hungry people during Ramadan:

1.       Find out when Ramadan is.  In many cases, the beginning and end of Ramadan are set locally, based on sighting the moon in that location.

2.       Set schedules that allow people to break fast in their accustomed manner.  This usually means being at home for sundown.

3.       Don’t push food on people.  It’s fine to offer, but if someone declines, try to remember that they may be fasting, so don’t keep offering all day.

4.       Be aware of the effect that fasting may have on energy levels and mood.  Most fasters will do the work they need to without complaint, but think twice about asking people to work late.

5.       Remember the people who aren’t fasting.  Don’t assume people can skip lunch breaks.

6.       Don’t pity the fasters.  Ramadan is a month for celebration, and most people fast gladly.  They won’t mind you eating in front of them, especially if you aren’t wafting the fumes from your super-smelly food at them.

7.       Consider trying to fast, if only for a day.  It will show solidarity and make you more sensitive to those who are fasting.  I fasted during Ramadan in Tamale last year.  This year, I will be fasting in Accra for as long as my Tamale team is in the field. 

If you decide to try fasting, here are some tips:

·         Don’t give up early. The first three days are the most difficult. Get through those, and it gets easier.

·         Eat before sunrise.  Even if you aren’t hungry, make yourself do it. It will help you get through the day.

·         Don’t fight the hunger.  The more you try to ignore it, the more you will focus on it.  Accept that it is there, and learn to function with it.

·         Recognize your moods.   Be aware of how fasting is affecting your mood.  Work on changing your reaction to hunger, or be on guard against letting the mood affect your behavior towards others.

·         Be aware of your health.  Consider whether you want to include water in your fast, especially if you work in hot environments or exercise during the day.  Muslims fast if they can; young children, pregnant women, and others for whom fasting could pose a health risk are not expected to fast. 

·         Don’t stay up drinking all night.  A hangover is no fun when you can’t have pizza.  This is especially important if you aren’t drinking water, as you can easily get dehydrated.  

·         …Unless you also stay up eating all night.  I spent one night last Ramadan at a friend’s house mixing drinks and cooking a new meal every few hours, till the sun came up.  The next day was the easiest day of Ramadan.

The text reads:

• Don't disturb the driver
• Your safety is our concern
• We will take you there safely
• We are dependable

I guess it never hurts to be in the biggest vehicle on the road.

In Kusa, a mosquito bednet is called a "doomsdog".  The literal translation is "mosquito room".  The words in several other Northern Ghanaian languages are similar, translating to "mosquito room" or "mosquito house".

Apparently, this terminology can lead to some confusion. I recently heard a story about a farmer in a net distribution program. He was visited by a program officer conducting random checks to see if the net was in use.

When the program officer arrived, he found the net hanging outside, and the man sleeping in his house, netless. When he asked the farmer for an explanation, the farmer gruffly responded:

"Ahcht! These stupid salimingas don't know anything.  I hung the net and all the mosquitoes still come to me.  The mosquitoes don't go to their room at all!!"

One of the most common hazards for moto drivers in Tamale, Ghana, is animals on the road. Learning how different animals will behave when a vehicle approaches is one of the key ways to keep safe driving moto in Northern Region.  Here is what you can expect:

In the diagrams below, the red represents the location and velocity of objects on the road at time 0. (Yes I know these can't technically be simultaneously measured but give me a break I am a social scientist.) Red points indicate zero velocity. The black represents the probable location of these objects during the time it takes the moto to move through that space on the road, with darker lines represent higher probability of the object being in that space.

Lizards are all over the place in Northern Ghana.  Mostly they sit around and do push-ups or clamor over your walls making a racket. Occasionally they decide to cross the road. Their quick, flick-y movements may make you jump, but don't worry-- they will go straight across, and they are quick enough that the probability of lizard guts on your tires is low.

Even the white Toyota Landcruisers favored by overly-pampered, well-funded development workers won't go up against a cow in the road, and the cows know it. They won't move except under duress of a slipper wielded by a small boy. You will have to go around them. If they are many, be prepared to honk your horn in vain while they decide which side of the road they really want to be on.

Goats are the ideal animal to encounter on the road in Northern Ghana. Street smart and properly aware of their place in the road hierarchy, they will run away and off the road at the approach of a vehicle. The exception: goats often like to sleep on highways at night. Beware of groggy goats when driving early in the morning.

While goats are the ideal animal to encounter on the road, sheep are bane of Ghanaian drivers. Dismally stupid, they will invariably run directly into traffic. An experienced motorist will, counter-intuitively, plot a trajectory behind the sheep. The difference in behavior between sheep and goats makes distinguishing the two a key survival skill in Tamale. Remember: tail up, goat; tail down, sheep.

After a chicken perceives an oncoming vehicle while crossing the road, its velocity can be modeled with a random walk, plus a constant increase in speed of averaging 1 ft/second. Use this formula to calculate the most probable route of the chicken, and avoid it.  Alternatively, just keep going. A chicken ain't no cow.




In all seriousness, take care to watch for animals when driving in Ghana. If an animal is on the road, your first priority should be the safety of you and the people around you-- don't try to stop for a chicken or lizard if it would endanger you or others. If you hit and kill an animal of economic value (goat, sheep or chicken), and the owner is around, you may have to compensate the owner. Typical prices for strong, adult animals are 5 GHC for a chicken, 35 GHC for a goat and 50 GHC for a sheep (another reason sheep are the bane of drivers.) However, a sincere apology may be suffice. I heard about a man who hit and killed a goat, and after arguing with the entire village for an hour, was allowed to go on his way-- after he promised he would never ever hit another goat.