Networks and Needs

Wednesday August 11th 2010

Q: If you had to pick one thing about Ghanaian life, culture etc. to bring back to Canada what would it be? In other words what can Canada learn from Ghana?

I’d like to start by saying that this was a really tough question for me to answer, for a multitude of reasons for that I’d prefer not to raise online. If you want to explore this question further, simply find me and ask when I’m back in Canada and I’ll be thrilled to continue the discussion. Also, hat tip to Duncan and Kaitlyn, both of whom helped me sort my thoughts out on this topic prior to posting.

A: Social networking: a phenomenon millions of Canadians think they know a lot about. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn— those places online where “friend” is more of a verb than a noun. In this post I want to talk about a different kind of social networking. One in which the friends are live and animated, the networks encompass entire communities, and the purpose of the network is multifaceted.

In Ghana, social dynamics are extremely important, and community member’s lives are often highly intertwined. Extended family networks are much more integrated into one unit than in Canada– it’s as fundamental as the physical layout of compound households. Multiple families live in the same place, so right away you have many people relying on each other every day to accomplish tasks. Kids grow up fast here, and are given responsibility at a much younger age than in Canada. On any given Saturday at my compound, you can find every member of this multi-family household sharing the burden of weekend chores. Young children will be fetching water and fanning charcoal stoves for the women who are making lunch, teenage girls will be washing everyone’s clothing from the past week. Often, 1 year old baby Akwa runs around, largely unattended, giggling and playing. When she gets into trouble or starts crying, it’s never her mother who rushes over– it’s Jessica, her 7 year old cousin. Jessica spends a disproportionate amount of time taking care of Akwa because both her mother and grandmother are too busy tending to other aspects of the household to do it themselves.

Social networking here is like weaving fabric. The more people you involve in your network, the more threads you weave into your social fabric and thus the more resilient and reliable that fabric becomes. One of the most prominent driving forces behind social networking here is financial security. Most people don’t have bank accounts with savings to draw on when someone dies, when someone is sick, or when a big purchase needs to be made. More often than not, you visit members of your community and they help you deal with these types of situations. People generally feel that what goes around comes around. They’re obliged to help their community members out now, so that when they need help down the line they’ll be able to receive it. Playing into the needs of your social network doesn’t always have to be in the form of leading money. It’s just as equally when a store owner hires his nephew instead of hiring whomever has the skills bests suited for the position, or when church members choose to patronize fellow church-members shops, regardless of the fact that those shops may have poor selection or low quality goods. People here depend on each other for success, and for better or for worse, that isn’t perceived as a weakness.

Most of the Ghanaian’s I’ve met have an inborn sense that values community, whereas in Canada I think we put limited emphasis on social fabric. It’s more like social patchwork, where the patches generally only encompass our immediate family. Someone in Canada is largely free to act however they wish in response to risks and shocks, taking into account the needs and wants of only their immediate family. This provides a greater amount of space in which the individual can realistically act without repercussion— people can change professions, move to far away places for school, or take time off from work to focus on other areas of personal development with their actions only directly affecting their immediate family.

I’m not trying to say that in Canada we should learn to let 7 year old children babysit toddlers or that we should start distributing our personal wealth to extended family members. However, I do think that there are lessons we can learn from communal living. People here don’t try to do it all, to be everything to everyone, to control each and every aspect of their lives. Social networks share burdens– be it a weeks worth of washing, school fees, child rearing, or funeral costs. In Canada, we’re quick to try to do it all– in our own personal cars, with personally hired babysitters and nannies, with pre-made dinners and individually wrapped lunches. Maybe if we slowed down enough to really know our neighbours, colleagues, and community members we’d find that we can improve each other’s lives by sharing the weight of our commitments. Maybe efficiency doesn’t always have to mean doing things on your own.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

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