My week with Oti began on Monday morning. We sat in traffic along High St, the main east-west road in southern Accra. Except for the first half mile from the house, High St is one lane in each direction. We were behind a tro-tro, the Ghanaian equivalent of public transportation. If it was like any other tro-tro, it was an old, rickety van whose inside has been gutted and filled with narrow rows of bench seats. Like most tro-tros, it was overflowing with people. Arms dangled out each side and the exhaust pipe wobbled under the rear bumper. It sent out a continuous stream of thick black particulate smoke; and whenever it inched forward it belched forth a big filthy plume. The unmistakably sulfurous, acrid, choking stuff wafted lazily through the car’s interior. The unconditional tolerance for this pollution (drivers never close their windows to keep the smoke out, very rarely comment or even grimace) makes me angry then depressed. If they don’t feel compelled to react—by rolling up the goddamn window—to that kind of direct assault on their health and well-being, how can they possibly be expected to _________ (insert some ambitious, well-intentioned goal here)?

But this isn’t that kind of posting.

I keep meaning to clock it, but I think the drive to work is about 4 miles. Most days it takes 25-35 minutes. Traffic here is fantastically unpredictable. Not completely so—the probability of hitting traffic is not the same every minute of every day—but, maddeningly, weekdays between 7am and 7pm it is always around 80%. Of course there is local wisdom about rush hour: 7-9am and 4-6pm, they say, are the worst. And maybe they’re right. But somehow, exactly one day out of each week there is no traffic on the way to work, and exactly one day out of each week there is no traffic on the way back. Which days these are is impossible to forecast. Further, the flow of traffic doesn’t seem to depend on things like accidents, stalled cars, obstructions in the road, or presence of traffic cops directing at intersections. Obviously there is no traffic report on the radio; actually I just chuckled out loud at the thought of it—that would imply the (impossible) existence of 1) a local newsradio station, 2) a privately-owned helicopter, 3) listeners who cared to know.

Thus, choosing to drive during the day means choosing to gamble with your time. And the residents of Accra seem completely indifferent to the outcome. Here it is important to clarify that they are not indifferent between winning and losing something of value; rather they don’t perceive the stakes (i.e. one’s time) to be valuable in the first place. So their astounding equanimity in this case comes not from non-attachment, but from an aversion (inability?) to thinking of time as a scarce or non-renewable resource to be utilized. If I spend four hours driving ten miles today, then that’s what I did today. There is no thought of what I might have done today, had I not sat in traffic—no awareness of opportunity cost.

Lady Macbeth says, “What’s done is done.” Ghanaians add, “So why think about it?”

This pervasive attitude touches many aspects of life and conduct. What comes to mind now, though, are:

1. It dramatically changes the relationship between planning and execution. Almost separates them entirely, actually. Plans are, at best, a loose suggestion. The only way I’ve found to be sure an action will be carried out in accordance with some design is to remind the actors of the design throughout the process. (Note: then it’s not “planning” per se, but instruction.)

2. It lends a quality of autonomy to most actions—things just happen, or they don’t. Thus, the passive voice pops up everywhere. If George is supposed to enter 50 surveys into the computer on a given day, our conversation will likely proceed as follows:

“Hey George, how many have you done so far?”

“I have done eight.”

“Wow. You have a lot more to do, huh?”

“Yes. I hope they will be completed.”

1+2=3. If things cannot be planned in advance, how can one have expectations? And if actions are perceived to occur on their own, then who are the agents? No expectations + No agents = No accountability.

On Tuesday I told Oti to plan to pick me up at 4:30pm from work, unless I called to tell him to come earlier. At 4:45 I called to see where he was, and he hadn’t left the house yet. “But we agreed that if I didn’t call you should come at 4:30. And I told you that if it would be another time, it would be earlier. So how could not have left by 4:45, since we said 4:30 would be the latest possible time?”

“I was just waiting for your call.”

“Well, I think I will take a taxi, then, since you haven’t even left the house yet.”

“No, I am leaving right now. I will reach in 20 minutes.”

By 6:30 (only six times as long as he predicted) Oti had arrived. Turns out, after we talked at 4:30 he got into a discussion with his grandmother; then he left around 5:15 and hit traffic.

I told him that I would be clearer in the future about exactly what time he should come to pick me up; and that if he was going to miss his given time for any reason, that he must call me and tell me, so I could know. “Yes. I will do that,” he said.

Wednesday we arranged for 4:30. At 4:15 I called for an update. He still hadn’t left the house. “I was planning to leave the house at 3:30 but my friend called me and told me that the traffic was coming since 2 and it was so bad. So I know that if I went to pick you, I will not make it by 4:30. So I have been waiting until the traffic is finished. Then I will be able to come quickly.”

“Since you have not yet left the house, I will take a taxi.”

“No, I’m coming right now.”

When he arrived at 6:30, after repeated calls in which he was “very close—reaching in five minutes,” I told him why, given yesterday’s conversation, I was upset. “I am so sorry. I was planning to call you at 4:30 to tell you I will be coming later. And as I was coming the traffic was too slow. Then the car ran out of petrol and I had to walk to take the gallon.”

I wondered if, in one of my calls, he had said he’d arrive in five minutes while walking back through the creeping traffic to the gas station with an empty gallon jug in his hand.

“What will you do differently next time?”

Confidently he said, “I will come earlier.”

And, just like that, our discussion about calling, today’s plan about 4:30, any and all dissatisfaction, was completely and utterly erased. You could just see it.

Had it been any other week I probably would have tried to be stern, and would have taken a taxi on the afternoons when he was terribly late, then deducted it from his weekly pay. But this was Oti’s birthday week, a time for leniency. On Thursday he turned 24. So Monday morning I proposed that, if he wanted, he could get a few friends together and I would take them out for dinner, anywhere he liked. He seemed thrilled at the idea; he really wanted to do it! So at the beginning of each subsequent car ride I asked him whether he had decided on a place or a group of people to go with. “Oh, soon soon. By the afternoon/tomorrow morning I will decide.”

On Thursday Oti arranged to pick me up at 7:30 to go to dinner, location and attendees TBA. At 7:30 he arrived with his friend Obi, and we went to pick up his girlfriend Millicent. When we pulled up in front of her house a few minutes later Oti told me that they had been fighting the day before, so he wanted to make up with her and have her come to dinner. “I’m coming. Five minutes,” he said as he walked into the house.

Obi and I sat in the car for the next two hours. At some point I asked him if this waiting frustrated him. “It’s a long time,” was all he said. I felt slighted and even thought badly of Oti while we were in the car; I felt as if I had offered him something really nice and he wasn’t paying it any mind. At 9:45 he emerged arm-in-arm with Millicent.

“Well, I don’t think many restaurants are open now, but if you still want to have some dinner we can go anywhere you like.” Oti decided on a big fast-food place called Papaye, and we set out. We were about a half mile from Millicent’s house when the car ran out of gas and coasted to a stop on the side of the road. It was smooth, lazy, quiet coasting, and as we glided to a stop, I thought “Perfect.” But then, all at once, the sarcasm was gone. Actually, it was perfect, absolutely perfect, and it couldn’t have been any other way. It was almost like someone put a blurry film into sharp focus. Do you follow?

So we celebrated Oti’s birthday by pushing the car a short ways down the road to a gas station, waiting twenty minutes for it to be filled, then having sausage-on-a-stick and a beer at a spot beside the gas station. Oti and Millicent shared a sausage and kissed while they ate it, like Lady and the Tramp with a spaghetti strand. They were radiant.

The obvious clichés apply: it’s not where you are, but who you’re with; etc. But there is much more to this story. Most of this posting is criticism, and I think it still stands. There are many, many hurdles to positive change (timidly, “development”) here. The part about ignoring opportunity cost can even be applied to the above paragraph—what meal might Oti have enjoyed, if…? But Oti’s and Millicent’s radiance, and all our satisfaction, was and is undeniable. Thus, there are at least some tradeoffs to be acknowledged. Expectations can be met or fallen short of. Agents can succeed or fail. Accountability implies winners and losers. I’m tempted to say that these are facts of life, and must be acknowledged; but many Ghanaians think—and live—differently.