I am following Mary through winding alleys between tin walls astride muddy paths. We dart across trickling streams traversed by wooden planks, we skim around carts and goats and children and we duck under awnings and underwear. The pathways are narrow and disorientating but I keep my eyes focused on Mary: she knows them like the back of her hand and moves with agility and speed throughout. For a moment I am reminded of Dickensian London. Not that I was there. We reach an opening: a market. The smell of fish overpowers me, living crabs in dirty buckets surround me; there is a cow’s head in one corner. Onwards.
We pass through a spot- a drinking place- and emerge beneath a crumbling colonial house inside a four-walled compound. The iron gates are ajar and Mary gently pushes them open. Quiet. There is an old woman washing clothes in the yard and a young girl measures fabric against the ancient window frames behind her. The sun is blaring. Mary exchanges pleasantries before asking if we can speak to Gloria. The woman nods and, with one gesture to her young apprentice, we are off again.
I am now following Mary who is following the girl who is looking for Gloria. My feet are damp from the mud; my skin is stinging from the heat, sweat and dust. I am in need of water. And then we arrive: a barn door, a flowered curtain. I am welcomed inside.
I have written about Gloria before. She is the character-actress, larger than life, with impeccable English. I have had to come to Gloria because Gloria cannot come to me: she got married last weekend and her tradition stipulates that she cannot leave her house for the week following her wedding. She sweeps the mountain of belongings from the sofa and invites me to sit down upon it. She leaves to get water and I look around the three square metres around me: a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing table, a carpeted floor. The walls are covered in pictures, the dressing table is littered with products, the cupboard is topped high with boxes: this is a home. Gloria returns with two sachets of water on a glass platter and then excitedly shows me her wedding photos. I was there. She was beautiful.
Gloria and Mary and all of the other female sex workers from our pilot project live in and around this neighbourhood: it is called Agbogbloshie by some, Old Fadama by others and Sodom and Gomorrah by many. Agbogbloshie is an illegal settlement housing some 50,000 inhabitants in the Northwest of Accra. It frequently hits international news for being the world's largest digital dumping ground and for its lawless culture of criminality. ‘Who dare arrest a rapist in Sodom and Gomorrah?’ the New Crusading Guide once wrote, ‘it is like the war of the Jungle, the fittest survives’. Al Jazeera recently described the slum as, ‘a socio-economic and environmental disaster’.
It is not hard to find information and condemnation of the ‘disaster’ that lies within Agbogbloshie: you can read a recent Guardian article here or see some shocking images here. I have spent much of my past week within the community and, yes, it has been incredibly tough at times: I have seen children being neglected, I have been surrounded by extreme dirt and pollution and I have encountered open illegal activity. The origins of the area’s nickname are evident: the living conditions are shocking. But eradicating Agbogbloshie is not an answer, nor is condemning it.
The courts have now declared Agbogbloshie ‘not fit for human habitation’ and the Ghanaian Government want to restore and develop the area. For eight years the inhabitants have been continually threatened with eviction. I do not want to go into the complex debate surrounding Agbogbloshie: the spotlight of the wider world is now too bright for emotional sentiments like mine. I do want however to acknowledge that this community is so much more than the den of iniquity it is portrayed as: it is a gathering of people, a collection of families and homes and livelihoods. Gloria is part of this community: a community who came to her wedding, a community who led me through the streets to her, a community who look after her children when she cannot. They do not deserve to be generalised as illegal slum dwellers and forcefully ejected from their homes, nor do they deserve to live on the doorstep of the world's electronic waste. They deserve better.
I fear for our women, their health and their happiness within Agbogbloshie and yet their lives have been built there: lives they are working hard to improve. Gloria has little but she has a home: it has curtains and tablecloths and glass platters for when guests come to call. She is a former sex worker but she has recently stopped selling sex and decided to marry her non-paying partner. She has a small business selling manicures and saves enough each month to pay back her loan and provide for her children’s present and look to their future. She now feels like someone, she says.
The irony of course is that most of its inhabitants do want to leave Agbogbloshie, but on their own terms. So I hope that, when the time comes- and the time should come- they will be empowered and enabled to do that. With their hearts and their homes in tact. And with their glass platters boxed in bubble wrap.
We pass through a spot- a drinking place- and emerge beneath a crumbling colonial house inside a four-walled compound. The iron gates are ajar and Mary gently pushes them open. Quiet. There is an old woman washing clothes in the yard and a young girl measures fabric against the ancient window frames behind her. The sun is blaring. Mary exchanges pleasantries before asking if we can speak to Gloria. The woman nods and, with one gesture to her young apprentice, we are off again.
I am now following Mary who is following the girl who is looking for Gloria. My feet are damp from the mud; my skin is stinging from the heat, sweat and dust. I am in need of water. And then we arrive: a barn door, a flowered curtain. I am welcomed inside.
I have written about Gloria before. She is the character-actress, larger than life, with impeccable English. I have had to come to Gloria because Gloria cannot come to me: she got married last weekend and her tradition stipulates that she cannot leave her house for the week following her wedding. She sweeps the mountain of belongings from the sofa and invites me to sit down upon it. She leaves to get water and I look around the three square metres around me: a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing table, a carpeted floor. The walls are covered in pictures, the dressing table is littered with products, the cupboard is topped high with boxes: this is a home. Gloria returns with two sachets of water on a glass platter and then excitedly shows me her wedding photos. I was there. She was beautiful.
Gloria and Mary and all of the other female sex workers from our pilot project live in and around this neighbourhood: it is called Agbogbloshie by some, Old Fadama by others and Sodom and Gomorrah by many. Agbogbloshie is an illegal settlement housing some 50,000 inhabitants in the Northwest of Accra. It frequently hits international news for being the world's largest digital dumping ground and for its lawless culture of criminality. ‘Who dare arrest a rapist in Sodom and Gomorrah?’ the New Crusading Guide once wrote, ‘it is like the war of the Jungle, the fittest survives’. Al Jazeera recently described the slum as, ‘a socio-economic and environmental disaster’.
It is not hard to find information and condemnation of the ‘disaster’ that lies within Agbogbloshie: you can read a recent Guardian article here or see some shocking images here. I have spent much of my past week within the community and, yes, it has been incredibly tough at times: I have seen children being neglected, I have been surrounded by extreme dirt and pollution and I have encountered open illegal activity. The origins of the area’s nickname are evident: the living conditions are shocking. But eradicating Agbogbloshie is not an answer, nor is condemning it.
The courts have now declared Agbogbloshie ‘not fit for human habitation’ and the Ghanaian Government want to restore and develop the area. For eight years the inhabitants have been continually threatened with eviction. I do not want to go into the complex debate surrounding Agbogbloshie: the spotlight of the wider world is now too bright for emotional sentiments like mine. I do want however to acknowledge that this community is so much more than the den of iniquity it is portrayed as: it is a gathering of people, a collection of families and homes and livelihoods. Gloria is part of this community: a community who came to her wedding, a community who led me through the streets to her, a community who look after her children when she cannot. They do not deserve to be generalised as illegal slum dwellers and forcefully ejected from their homes, nor do they deserve to live on the doorstep of the world's electronic waste. They deserve better.
I fear for our women, their health and their happiness within Agbogbloshie and yet their lives have been built there: lives they are working hard to improve. Gloria has little but she has a home: it has curtains and tablecloths and glass platters for when guests come to call. She is a former sex worker but she has recently stopped selling sex and decided to marry her non-paying partner. She has a small business selling manicures and saves enough each month to pay back her loan and provide for her children’s present and look to their future. She now feels like someone, she says.
The irony of course is that most of its inhabitants do want to leave Agbogbloshie, but on their own terms. So I hope that, when the time comes- and the time should come- they will be empowered and enabled to do that. With their hearts and their homes in tact. And with their glass platters boxed in bubble wrap.