Poverty Part 2 Ghana

Here in Toronto, people are astonished when I tell them that I encounter more panhandling in Toronto than I did in Ghana.

In my encounters in Ghana, I encountered many people trying to hustle me to buy their products, or to hire them as drivers, or imploring me to hire them as guides to one attraction or another. While at times the endless entreaties were mildly annoying, most people responded well to a polite "no thank you" or "maybe later". These sorts of experiences can be no more defined as panhandling as can any Coke commercial. When I responded favourably to these offers I always got value back. People who complain about "begging" in Africa often lump this group into that category, but to me this is the free market at its purest.

Being a tourist on my own, I was an easy target on the street. Surprisingly though, I was never really panhandled in Ghana in the same way that I am panhandled in Toronto. Only twice did people ask me for money on the street, and on both occasions the people that asked me for money clearly had serious physical challenges and their circumstance was truly gut wrenching to me.

In a country that has limited resources, it is people like these who fall through the cracks. On a more positive note, the people of Ghana seem to have such a strong sense of pride, dignity, family and community that many people in this situation are properly cared for as a matter of course, at least to the best ability of the caregivers, given their limited resources.

The other type of panhandling that I encountered was much closer to the cheap hustlers that I see on the streets of Toronto. While the need is legitimate, the stories are not. Most of these hustles revolve around school fees or soccer uniforms and almost all are conducted by young boys.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that Ghana has no school fees until the post secondary level, yet many young men ask for money for school fees.

The other issue of soccer uniforms just makes me laugh. I encountered this hustle so many times that I started to imagine all of the young male children in Ghana playing soccer in the nude. That concept took a weird turn when I actually saw a boy of eight or nine years old playing soccer naked with his clothed friends in Cape Coast. My guess is that it was laundry night and his rather limited wardrobe was drying on the laundry line, but who knows?

Next post in this series will be about looking at different types of poverty and the idea that poverty is not just a monetary issue. Some of the richest people I know live in another form of poverty.