ABSTRACT
I had been conducting ethnographic research in the very most southwest strip of Ghana, in the region of the Nzema,1 since 1989. In 2002, I left the Fort Apollonia guesthouse in the coastal town of Beyin and moved into a raffia hut in the village of Old Kabenlasuazo, in a narrow tongue of land between the ocean shore and the Domunli lagoon. Roughly 200 people lived there by cultivating, fishing and manually extracting coconut oil. The latter, which was the most common activity among the villagers and one of the most profitable in the Nzema area,2 was managed by young men between the ages of 15 and 35. Old Kabenlasuazo was a very poor community, with no drinkable water or electricity, like many others in the region. Fishing was not always favorable, and when fishermen pulled their nets ashore, a crowd of kids threw themselves at the fish escaped from the nets in the attempt to catch them with tin bowls. The oil makers, helped by some women and kids, hand-pressed the coconut oil from fresh copra from just-smashed nuts. The fruit of two weeks’ worth of hard work between two to three people, amounting to a 45 gallon barrel, could return roughly $120 for an $80 investment – the proceeds thus come to less than $40. The elderly in charge of plantations received the proceeds from the sale of coconuts at the end of the season, and the per capita income would not be more than $300 per year. In the spaces between plantations, women would cultivate manioc and other vegetables in small areas. A large number of pigs, fed with the oil-making residues, were kept in designated fenced areas under the palm trees. Chickens and sheep roamed the village, together with some sparse cats and a couple of skinny dogs. In those years, I drove a car that would often break down, and having it fixed meant I had no other choice than to take it to some makeshift car workshop in the inland villages along the main road, usually with no success. Once I met a boy named Amo,3 who occasionally worked in a workshop in the small town of Tikobo. He turned out to be accountable and honest and, when the Jomoro Mechanical Center in Bawiah (a workshop/ school)4 was fully implemented in 2003, I helped him get hired as a welder. By being able to make a decent living, Amo could eventually marry and lead a peaceful life. He was the youngest of four children and used to live with his old parents in a modest hut a few miles from Bawiah.
