Rock Bottom

While I was up north, I met with a Canadian priest who has lived and worked in northern Ghana for more than 30 years. Now he runs the Tamale Institute for Cross Cultural Studies and has become a trained "diviner."

Going for a divination is a lot like having your tarot cards read, except it looks into the past instead reading the future. Most people go to the diviner when something is going wrong and they want someone to peer into the past and see what they did to cause one of the ancestors or spirits to punish them.

The diviner puts some bibs and bobs and cowrie shells into a little bag, gives them a shake or a toss and empties the bag onto the ground or table. Then he interprets them, meaning the magic of the cowries is that they can lead the diviner to the series of questions that may unlock the secrets in the person's conscience of what's causing them anxiety.

I could really use a little read of my recent sins to get the spirits back on my side.

I have recently rented a house down by the beach, in a little slice of Accra known as "La." Ghana has this screwball custom where tenants pay their entire year's rent up front. Everyone does it -- I've talked ot cab drivers lately who say they have to live in rooming houses because they cannot scrape together enough to make a year's deposit on a room in Accra. The country director for JHR told me they were told by a landlord in Kumasi that if they wanted the apartment, they'd have to pay eight years in advance!

Essentially, that meant scrounging around for $7,800 US, meaning my brother reluctantly let me dip into my retirement fund to extract some much-needed cash.

Getting the money here was like the story line for an aspirin commercial. I hired my favourite taxi driver -- and the most reliable and generous person in my life right now, my best friend, Bercy (you will meet him when he comes to Canada) -- to escort me through the day so there was no chance of being robbed. My darling brother called Visa to make sure they would let me have the money and they agreed, so long as I left five per cent with them. I had made arrangements at the forex and ensured that Pearl, the landlady, would be home when I came with the money.

But when I got to the bank, they would hear none of it, saying they could only give me $500 a day.

I was directed to the next teller. She directed me to a man who sat far, far behind the counter. He demanded my credit card and passport. I explained that I had already contacted Visa and could not understand why the bank was telling me something different, when the authorization had come from Visa. He told me it's bank policy. But why!? Why?!

The man told me he would see what he could do and wandered away to nose in on an altercation with another customer. If a butterfly had fluttered past, I'm pretty sure he would have chased it, so long was his attention span. He sat down at a desk for eight seconds, picked up the phone and came back 17 seconds later (after stopping quickly to nose in on yet another customer altercation) and told me he had worked hard and bent the policy and could offer me $2,000.

Thanks, I said, but I was after $7,000.

He nearly had a seizure and railed to anyone in the bank who would listen about how this white woman did not appreciate all of his hard work. "Do you want me to cancel this transaction?" he said menacingly. "You don't want this $2,000 I got for you?" "What transaction?" I said, which made his head blow off and orbit the room.

I walked down the street to Standard Chartered, who told me they could give me $3,000 and the reason is that if they give anymore, they get in trouble from the Bank of Ghana. Well then. There's an explanation, at least.

So, down to the forex bureau with my backpack full of 23,770,000 cedis. In 20,000 notes. I had made arrangements at the forex and had called them that morning to make sure the money was there and had called a second time to request a receipt be ready with the serial numbers written on it, as my landlady is paranoid about counterfeiting.

But when Bercy and I arrived, not only was the cash not there, there was no sign of a receipt. An hour later, we were at the landlady's, who looked crestfalled at the $20 notes included in the bundle. "But I like hundreds," she pouted.

Bercy and I started this little adventure at noon. It was now 4.30 p.m. I was becoming the living embodiment of Murphy's Law.

Did the same thing the next day, but got up early and decided to go when the bank first opened at 8.30 a.m. Essentially that meant I got all the same frustrations, plus the added bonus of having to wait a half hour for the bank employee in charge of Visa transactions to show up.

By Day 3, I decided to take a break from the bank and go fridge shopping instead. I had a bit of a showdown with a friend over the brand new fridge that was left in the house and had lost. It was a new and novel experience not to get my way and I didn't like it one bit. I really don't want it repeated.

So Bercy came at 8.30 a.m. and we headed to Makola market, and after three stores, it became clear I was too cheap even for Makola and Bercy decided it was best to hit the second hand stores on the outskirts of town. The fridges and other electrical items there come in shipping containers from Europe. Some of them are pilfered from people's trash piles and refurbished by brilliant African mechanics.

We picked out a little fridge no bigger than me. It was $200. The guy told us we'd have to wait while they filled it with freon. So I bought some "pure water" and Bercy and I sat in the car talking about religion and the UN and Kofi Annan and soccer and everything in between.

Two hours later, the fridge was just cooling down and I was heating up. By the time we delivered the fridge it was 4.30, meaning my sole accomplishment of the day was buying a fridge. Gives me a whole new respect for Sears.

Four days later, I was back at the house divvying up the last of the furniture and pulling things off the walls ready for the painter, when I opened the fridge door and noticed that while the light was on, it was like a sauna in there.

Bercy came to my rescue, but we were unable to fix it. I called the number on the receipt -- which came with a week long guarantee -- and got someone who spoke no English, who passed me on to someone who slurred his words and shouted in my ear.

Bercy came the next morning at 8 a.m. and by 9 a.m. we arrived in Teshie at the refrigerator store, where we were told the mechanic had not arrived and they had no power anyway, so we'd have to leave it and come back tomorrow.

I asked whether we could call to make sure it was ready. The guy pointed to one of the numbers I had called the night before. "That number doesn't work," I said. He started waving his hands in my face, patting my arms and shoulders and telling me it does work. I told him to stop touching me and that I'd also called this other number, who did it belong to? Turns out it was the mechanic who shouted at me the night before. The owner told me he would ask him about it. I was feeling pretty annoyed by this point anyway -- having gotten nearly no sleep the night before after getting some bad news -- and told him that I would like an apology for the inconvenience of having to come back and for having been yelled at.

"This is what I'm telling you," the guy said, again waving his hands in my face, grabbing again at my arms and shoulders.

No, I said. I've been keeping track, listening closely even, and the word sorry has not actually passed your lips.

The guy exploded, the gesticulating would have put an Italian to shame. I lived in Europe for 20 years, don't tell me how things are done! You would never do this in Europe!

I was taking steps backward to avoid the physical onslaught and finally hissed: "Stop touching me. Right now.

I don't care how long you've been in Europe. I don't care about Europe. I'm here, in Africa, standing in front of you, asking you to treat me with a little respect."

At which point, I burst into tears.

Not delicate, gentle, droplet down the cheek tears, but full-on hysterical sobbing tears.

Everyone collectively recoiled in horror.

Africans don't cry. They just don't. They might shed a tear or two at a funeral, but they could slam a door on their finger, witness their husband cheating on them, hear their child take the Lord's name in vain, hear that they've tested positive or whatever else might upset a person and never, but NEVER, shed a tear.

Bercy hustled me to the car. "Don't cry," he said, looking stricken. "Don't cry. Stay strong. Be strong within you. I'm here. Don't worry. Don't cry."

The more he tried to comfort me, the harder I cried. I cried all the way home. I cried as we loaded up Orla's couch. I cried as we carried it home.

And man, I thought "white woman with blond hair" got me a lot of stares. That's nothing compared to "white woman with blond hair and puffy, red-rimmed eyes." I expected to hear a report about it later on Joy News, such was the interest.

When I got to the house, the landlady told me the painter had not arrived. She sighed. I sighed. "I'll be so glad when this is over," I said. She laughed. While I was gone, she'd decided there were two leaks in the roof and all the doors needed sanding and polishing, the garden had to be reseeded and the windows should be replaced.

Eep.

On the upside, a stranger stopped and gave me a lift today. And my contact lenses are fitting well, now that my eyes aren't so dried out. And I do not have cancer. Anymore. And this from my mum: "Oh dear, I'm sure you're exhausted from everything that's been going on in your life lately. Try to put things in perspective - you're healthy, have work, and this is just a bump in the road of life. Wish I could give you a hug. Consider yourself hugged."

Which, of course, just made all the other people at the Internet cafe recoil in horror at me crying, again.

Light(s) Out

Ghana's rainy season has been markedly dry this year and the Akosombo dam, which provides power to Ghana and two other West African countries, has dipped to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. This is not good news: it is only the tail-end of the rainy season (okay, really, it's the start of the dry season -- hotter and hotter each day -- but everyone seems to refer to it as "the tail-end" because it's still raining) and already they're rationing power.

It needs to rain in Burkina and northern Ghana in order for the dam to fill properly and since Burkina is terminally dusty and dry, I'm not sure there's much hope for improvement. When I was in Tamale, it pissed rain in an utterly surprising way. Two days of the 10 I was there, it poured, poured, poured rain, and there was nothing to do but sit by the window and marvel.

When it rains at home, it’s timid and meek, sometimes unpredictable, often sustained over long periods of time and usually given to showers that fall neatly down in drops that are easily shielded by an umbrella. Here when it rains, it just goes for broke, turns on all the taps and lets the floods go. It has a noise and a rhythm and is usually unpredictable. In Liberia, where it rains every day, it comes without warning and goes just as quickly, sometimes before the sun has gotten out of the way. Because almost every building in Accra – and most cities in Africa, for that matter – are domed with corrugated steel, the rain takes on a kind of echo, falling heavily and banging out a rhythm.

The rain in Tamale, which came loud and fast and long, lasting more than four hours at a go, first started with splotches the size of quarters and quickly fell so heavily it was no longer possible to distinguish one drop from another. Then it began blowing in from every direction and just when you thought it was at its heaviest and the streets had been cleared and the sewers were raging and the rain was sluicing off the roofs in rivers, it found more holes in the heavens and came down even harder, moving in visible sheets that blurred neighbourhoods and completely obscured the tiny bit of landscape I could see from my room at the guesthouse.

Regardless of the rain, we're already doing something called "load shedding." That means that every two days, it's "lights out." It's also, as far as I'm concerned, the way of the future. Pretty soon there's not going to be any country that doesn't do "load shedding" to stave off "brown outs" and whatever other fantastic euphemistic language they come to mean "too many consumers, not enough power."

When I was in Uganda, the power rationing was actually more severe. One day you got 12 hours in the day, the next you got 12 hours at night. We planned our lives around it, had dinner at Rohini's when the power was on and when it wasn't, we went to the spot or out to a restaurant around Bugolobi Flats. (Such a great name; right up there with Ouagadougou.) It's nearly the same here, except that I have no money right now and am not making it to the drinking spot. Instead, for the past two "lights out" nights, I've sat in the dark, reading by candlelight, cursing the power outtages and my serious lack of friends in my adopted home. It's been, shall we say, depressing.

I find the rotation much better than the old way -- "dammit the power's out!" and having no idea when it might flicker back on -- but still, it's not ideal. The spots are probably doing booming business and no one is seriously crabby yet because the ngihts are still cool enough that you can sleep without a fan or AC. But come December, look out. Oh, look out. The traffic is sometimes terrible, because even though everyone knows when the power is going to go out in a certain area, the cops are not keeping up with replacing the lights with traffic cops, so it's always a bit of a snarl around some of the major intersections. (A typical picture is to see every car nose to nose and drivers frantically waving and screaming bloody murder at one another. Again, may I just say: it's called a queue and sometimes it makes life easier.)

The day time power outtages are actually somehow more obnoxious, mostly because I find it impossible to get anything done while I'm counting down the minutes of battery I have left. Plus, the Internet doesn't work from home when the power's out. And lately the phone has been blinking on and off, costing me at least one assignment.

Sigh...

Sunshine Journalism

I'm not sure there is a worse insult someone can hurl at a white person in Africa than "racist." I'm not sure there's a worse insult someone can hurl at a white journalist working in Africa than "racist." In plenty of circumstances, it's probably deserved, but having been on the receiving end -- taxi drivers occasionally throw out "racist" when you're negotiating a fare -- it smarts, terribly, when you see yourself as being in love with the continent, the people, the culture and others see you as filled with hate and superiority.

While some readers might snort at the idea that I worry how I write about Africa, it's true. I worry about feeding into the idea that Africa is scary or dangerous or violent or starving. This blog doesn't always reflect that, it's true, but at the same time, I think it gets the idea across that often the most violent person on the continent is me with low blood sugar on a hot, sweaty day spent crushed up against fellow passengers during a long overland journey.

During my stint in East Africa, I wrote hardly any "good" news. I wrote mostly about AIDS and the orphans it leaves behind. I think it's a major crisis that's just being ignored and I would have to be the most hard-hearted SOB to stand by and write sunshine stories while there is so much suffering that is going so ignored.

Still, that's one of the reasons I chose Ghana. There is plenty of "bad news" here -- infant mortality rates and unemployment and illiteracy and poverty -- but there is plenty of good, uniquely African news here too.

This week I sat in on a "Rebranding Africa" conference that aims to improve the image of the continent on the world stage. It was pretty comprehensive, looking at everything from the way local media paints their home to the way international journalists portray the continent to the way diasporans represent their homelands to the way NGOs and charities feed into the idea that all children here are half-naked with bits of rice stuck to their cheeks and flies scratching around the corners of their eyes.

It was at times infuriating; at times inspiring.

The delegates talked about how to counter bad news with good. How to get powerful messages of success to the journalists who usually write about war and famine and disease. How to harness the power of the Nigerian film industry and turn it into something every African can be proud to call their own. How to get blogging. How to take on the Economist, a publication that was uniformly panned as evil.

South Africa has this amazing campaign on right now to "brand" itself as a nation of possibilites. It's capitalizing on its global image as a country with an incredibly painful history that has managed to face the truth and reconcile and build, beautifully, on the shared strengths and amazing character of its people. The brand's boss, Yvonne Johnston, showed these video clips of sweeping clifts and amazing sunsets and wild animals and colourful people and vibrant cityscapes and traditional dress and women walking with bowls on their heads and children dancing and... all the things that make Africa great. I was tearing up.

Another man gave a presentation about the negativity of the media, beginning with a clip from the Economist, something filed around the time of the Congo's election, which said many people didn't really know what they were voting for. There was a quote from a woman saying she didn't really know who was running or who she would vote for or even whether she would vote. She was identified as Monique, a smoked-monkey seller in a remote jungle town.

Initially, I screwed up my forehead and stared at the guy. What is wrong with that? The woman is what she is, should she not be quoted because she didn't give her last name? Because the quote makes her look uninformed? I wasn't really sure what he was getting at and it was starting to make me angry how he kept referring to it as perpetuating negative African stereotypes.

Then he said, "I don't imagine the majority of Congolese people eat monkey meat, but this journalist has just reinforced a tired stereotype about the way Africans live."

My heart sank. He definitely had a point. And my inability to recognize it strikes me as the worst kind of racism. The unconscious kind. The kind that is so subtle and ingrained, the person committing it doesn't even know they're doing it.

It's food for thought. The paragraph said "most" people don't know what they're voting for. So why not ask a popcorn seller, or a boy selling PK? Why not say she is a mother of three? Why not identify her in another way? Her comments are certainly valid and she really does sell monkey meat. But should the journalist have tried harder to find someone who represents the mainstream?

It's all a good debate.

Maybe I'm thinking about this more and more because an article I wrote for the Star drew *major* criticism from Toronto's Ghanaian community. The foreign editor forwarded me an email from a woman who lambasted the article and called it a perpetuation of the Star's racist agenda. She was irate that I had besmirched the reputation of the Asante king. (The story was about a cocaine commission underway here; two lines referred to the fact that the Asante king's name has been mentioned at the hearings.)

Or maybe it's because as of next week, I'm going to be working with Journalists for Human Rights again. (Yes, I'm a huge hypocrite. But don't stop loving me. I need the money.)

Bewitched

I am in the earliest, tentative stages of looking at writing a book (how's that for a sentence that hedges its bets?) and spent the past week up in northern Ghana doing some research. Two years ago, when I was working with Journalists for Human Rights, we visited a camp for women accused of witchcraft about three hours outside of Tamale. We literally flew in and flew out. It took us two days to reach the camp and we were only there for about three hours before we had to push on.

While we were there, we met Hawa Mahama, an 80-ish year old woman (age being a fluid and not-so-important concept) who had lived at the Gambaga camp for 12 years. She was banished from her home village by her brother, who accused her of being a witch after her nephew woke from a dream in which he saw her trying to kill him.



Her story haunts me. When people ask me about the kinds of stories I write, I always think of Hawa, the emaciated, nearly-blind woman we met at the witch camp, who was cursed a witch in a ritualistic sacrifice involving the enigmatic chief and a charmed chicken.



It is difficult from a Western perspective to understand the African belief in spirits and sorcery and witchcraft without sounding belittling or condescending, without resorting to stereotypes or cliches. It is difficult to articulate what makes the African people -- and I say Africans because in the research I've managed so far, there is a strong belief in witchcraft in virtually every corner of the continent -- what makes the African people so in tune with the forces around them. The best explanation I've had comes from two different people: firstly, that for most Africans, the world exists in two spheres, the seen and the unseen. And secondly, the African mind philosophizes in the concrete and needs an explanation as to "why" something happened. When no concrete explanation can be found, the spiritual will do.

In the past few days, I've visited an earth shrine, where the chief consults a shrine dedicated to the ancestors to determine whether a man or woman has witchcraft. He brews a concoction that dissolves their power. It's his job to monitor the mood of the spirits and to make sure the ancestors have been remembered and honoured in an appropriate way. After much joshing about my husband and my bride price, I was invited back in February to help with the bi-annual sacrifice.

The next day, I visited Nyani witchcamp with a Catholic catechist who works closely with the community to meet their basic human needs. It is taboo in this particular village to "chase" people, so it has over the centuries, developed a reputation as a sanctuary. There are nearly 600 people living at the "camp" -- essentially a village unto itself -- who have been accused of witchcraft. Again, they consult with a fetish priest who takes them to the shrine and puts the question to the ancestors. If they confirm the person has witchcraft, a concoction is brewed that not only robs them of their powers, it makes those powers somehow reverse, so if they practice witchcraft again, they die.

(The family of the fetish priest told me they are paying for their own kindness. While people can seek sanctuary in Nyani, the land is stretched beyond its capacity and there is virtually no industry and too many elderly people who require food and care, but have neither the strength nor the money to pay for it. When I asked what they needed the next time I visit, the boys thought for a moment and then asked for a football.)

One of the women I interviewed was there because her husband's other wife accused her of witchcraft. One woman was there because her son felt she must have worked the black magic that killed his son. Another man said he came to the camp looking for something to break his witch powers -- which he did not know he had until people started blaming him for the death of his nephew.



Because I am thinking about writing about witchcraft in Ghana in increasingly modern times -- its causes and implications, its limitations on development, its tension with women's rights and empowerment, its manifestations in "spirit children" and urban settings and charismatic Christian circles -- I went north to visit the four witch camps dotted around Tamale, as well as interview some of the players who work with the women and their accusers.

That meant meeting Simon Ngota, a social worker who spent nearly 20 years working with the blind on agricultural projects before moving to Gambaga to work with women accused of witchcraft. He has been in Gambaga for more than 12 years and through his thoughtful interventions, more than 315 women have returned home to their villages.

This is an astounding figure and an astounding accomplishment to a "problem" that has no easy solution.

In his little blue office, decorated with anti-lynching posters, are three big placards of fading photographs. One was a close-up shot of Hawa and as we talked more and more about Simon's strategies for working with communities and convincing women to go home, I asked about this woman, calling her by name, much to Simon's delight.

Her village was the first that Simon visited when he took up the post at Gambaga. There were six women at the camp from that village, a clear sign that all was not right in the village. He took off his shoes and knelt before the chief and explained that dreams are natural and sometimes deaths are natural and while we might not always be able to explain why someone got malaria or why a child died too soon, it isn't always witchcraft that's to blame.

The chief would not be swayed. No matter how often Simon visited and no matter how hard he tried, the chief still called the women wicked and refuse to hear of them returning to the village. They cause disharmony, he said, and scare the young men into leaving for Kumasi and once they're gone, there's no one left to farm.

But Hawa is now home. She left more than a year ago, her things packed into the back of the battere Operation Go Home pick-up.

What happened? The chief died, and with him the stigma and memory of a long-ago dream that cursed a woman and robbed her of 12 years with her children and grandchildren.

Under the Rainbow

“Ghanaians are a unique people whose culture, morality and heritage totally abhor homosexual and lesbian practices and indeed any other form of unnatural sexual acts."
-- Minister of Information and National Orientation, Kwamena Bartels, announcing that an international conference for gays and lesbisans scheduled to take place in Accra would not happen on his watch.

Ghana's gays battle AIDS underground
Group speaks to one man at a time on dangers of HIV Homosexuality is against the law in African nation
Aug. 21, 2006
KAREN PALMER
FOR THE TORONTO STAR

ACCRA, Ghana—Azumah Nelson looks for a certain sway of the hips, a girlishness in the way a man gestures or smiles, a kind of subtle flirtation that gives away his preference for men.
He knows the effeminate ones will lead him to others.
Nelson, a self-acknowledged "effem" with chiselled cheekbones, curly eyelashes and a theatrical enchanté sort of handshake, is fronting a rather dire campaign in the gay community, approaching one gay man at a time with a warning.
"We try to tell them that the menace is out there, that right now the menace is in Ghana," he said.
That "menace" is AIDS.
While the fight against AIDS in the West has always included the gay population, the prevention message has never really reached Africa's gays and lesbians, largely because they are nearly invisible on a continent where homosexuality is mostly illegal.
"The problem has not even been talked about and because it has not been mentioned, they think it is not a problem at all," said Mac-Darling Cobinnah, founder and executive director of the Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights in Ghana.
Based on media reports, as well as posters and billboards sponsored by the Ghana AIDS commission and UNAIDS, he said, gay Ghanaian men and women got the impression that AIDS was confined mostly to prostitutes and cheating husbands and wives.
In the absence of formal prevention messages aimed specifically at gay men and women, Cobinnah's group has gone underground to spread the word. Only South Africa and Kenya have made similar efforts to reach out to the gay community.
Five pairs of men, including Nelson, work as peer educators selling condoms and lubrication in five neighbourhoods across the West African nation's capital, targeting men they know or suspect are gay.
The work is not without hazards. Ghana, a politically stable but economically impoverished West African nation, is serious about sending an anti-gay message: two men discovered with gay pornography were sentenced to four years of hard labour in prison, and bail for a woman recently arrested for lesbianism was set at more than $1,000 (U.S.).
The funding for the centre's peer educator training came from a somewhat surprising source, the United States Agency for International Aid, or USAID, the official aid distributor for a country where gays are staging their own fight to widen their rights on issues such as marriage and adoption.
A small organization like the Centre for Popular Education, whose volunteer base is about 30 men and women, might be able to do more if large and powerful agencies like UNAIDS — the United Nation's agency charged with preventing the spread of the disease — took the lead, he said.
"No one talks about it and the experience all over the world shows that men who have sex with men are most at risk," Cobinnah said.
"They always hide behind the law. They never want to talk about such issues," he added. "For some people, it's just ignorance. There's no law saying you can't talk about such issues."
Still, talking about homosexuality can be fraught with danger: exposing oneself as gay can lead to violence, as can wrongly identifying another man as gay.
The message is simple, said Nelson.
In fact, it's a spin on the usual A-B-C (abstain, be faithful, use condoms) campaign, and pairs condom use with the introduction of lubrication meant to make homosexual sex both more pleasurable and less likely to result in blood transfer.
(In a separate program, women are taught how to fashion their own dental dams out of locally purchased condoms.)
Statistics show it's working: the peer counsellors figure they've spoken to nearly 800 gay men in five Accra neighbourhoods, twice the target number the program hoped to reach. They've also sold nearly 18,000 condoms and more than 500 tubes of lubrication.
The demand for lube is the most obvious sign the message is getting through, Nelson says. When its price in stores was raised recently, counsellors were besieged with requests for cheaper tubes of the gel.
It's unclear how many gays in Ghana are infected with HIV. Overall, the country's AIDS rate is 3.1 per cent, a relatively small number compared to countries such as South Africa or Botswana, where more than 20 per cent of people are infected.
But because the gay community is largely hidden, it's difficult to track figures Since homosexuality is illegal, the Ghana AIDS commission does not collect statistics about sexual orientation.
"We know there are deaths weekly. There are a lot of funerals amongst the gay population," Cobinnah said.
"They cannot be linked to AIDS, as there is no research to support it, but every week we have to attend a funeral of a gay in one of the regions."
A study conducted among more than 150 gay Ghanaian men in March 2004 showed the men considered anal sex safer than vaginal sex. They were also generally uneducated about sexually transmitted infections like gonorrhea and HIV.
In some ways, the campaign is lonely work. Azumah Nelson is a stage name, used only for work as a peer counsellor. Cobinah also sometimes uses a pseudonym. He struggles to keep the program going; in fact, it runs out of funding in September.
"If a member is arrested for selling condoms or lubrication, we don't have the means to represent that person in court," he said. "We don't even have enough funds to operate."
Selling condoms is not illegal in Ghana, but recently police have used carrying condoms as grounds for an arrest for prostitution.
Officially, Cobinnah's group is devoted to human rights and advocates for more than greater freedoms for gays and lesbians.
Its small office — painted purple and surrounded by shanty homes, beauty parlours and makeshift auto body shops — is decorated with dozens of posters, some warning against the spread of AIDS, others opposing domestic violence, some pushing for greater rights for women.
If the plethora of rainbow flags weren't a clear tip-off, the DVD of Queer as Folk playing in the corner would be a sure indication of the organization's pro-gay tilt, yet many of the group's neighbours have no idea of its work or stance.
"It's not so much hidden as it's underground," he said. "We're trying our best to come out and be visible."