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| Wahab Investor, and Kamal, Owner - Chendiba Enterprise in Tamale, Ghana |
I've put most of this part of the trip into a 12 page chapter which I can't post by blog here, at least not yet. Here's the rundown. We were always planning on going up to Tamale, Ghana, in the far north, closer to Burkina Faso than Accra. But my host, Wahab, was contacted with sad news last Thursday AM. That morning, his father had passed away.
Muslim funerals don't dally, and we had to drop some plans (to visit MakerSpace in Agbogbloshie on Saturday, and to meet Emmanuel Nyaletey on his flight from Atlanta) and to head north in a hurry.
In a nutshell, Tamale has lots of recycled scrap. The age of the scrap is proof of the UN 2013 Report that said 85% of the "e-waste" found in African dumps (like Agbogbloshie) was productively used by African consumers for years and years prior to discard.
If that means used goods should be banned, we should consider banning bicycles, used everywhere in Tamale, and imported by the thousands and thousands into Tema Port. Because after repairing and using and using, they eventually wind up here.
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| A witches brew of Huffys, Schwins, and Panasonic bicycles |
Tamale is very different from Accra. If it was 1930 in the USA, Accra would be New York City, and Tamale would be Arkansas. The young men (labelled "scrap boys" - a "boy" term that makes my skin crawl when I use it) burning wire and scrapping metal in Agbogbloshie are mostly from Tamale environs. We were quite lucky, in fact, to have been brought to Agbogbloshie by Wahab and two of his cousins from the area. After an initial scowling at the cameras, those young men of Agbogbloshie were engaged in conversation with the three visitors in their mother tongue, and came to shake our hands.
