Benjamin Tawiah
6 January 2009
opinion
Home is Home, goes a typical Ghanaian proverb. Another one is: If licking the back of your palm is sweet, the inside must be sweeter. The Yoruba people of Nigeria also say Ike labosi oko, which means a sojourner will always go back home.
That is because Sokoto no be Shokoto, a philosophical way of expressing the difference between home and what really pertains at home. The deep sense of community that bonds Africans to their culture has often meant that they hardly succeed assimilating other cultures when they travel abroad. In fact, they become more African as they acquire foreign citizenships and integrate into their adopted communities in the West. Often, the thought of going back home one day lingers at the back of their minds as they buy their second house further down the neighbourhood close to the Mexican border. You would think their next destination will be Mexico, but it is actually any place in the Sahara that is warmer than Dallas but also more peaceful, even if it is not as promising as Mexico, the Sahara being what is it. So, it is not surprising that Ghana's most important novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah, starts one of his novels with the certain assurance of the return of somebody who travelled somewhere, and is bound to come home, just like the sun setting and coming down with the fall of dusk. Or, perhaps, it is the assured certainty of his return that makes the novel Fragments less fragmenting. "He will return", the prolific writer predicts. So even though the father had been killed and buried close to his grandfather, US president-elect Barack Obama would 'return' to Kenya to see their graves. Maybe being African means going back. And they always do.
FRAGMENTS
Fragments was fiction, but the present swoop by high profile multinational organisations on career-minded Africans in the West, is no make up. It is a carefully crafted human resource management programme that seeks to attract the best brains to build rewarding careers in Africa. And folks from the poor continent are constantly readying themselves for the swoop, reversing an old trend where Africans gave everything to travel to Europe and Northern America. This time, those same people who left behind promising careers in Accra and Abuja, are competing to go back to the land of their birth. The absolute absurdity of the trend seems to lie exactly in its absurd absoluteness. Why would anybody compete with thousands just to have the chance to travel to where they came from, when they can get a free flight from the immigration agencies of their adopted countries? A Nigerian statistician in Toronto put it even more poignantly: "Na wetin be this now: you struggle for visas to travel abroad and you compete to go back to do the same jobs you run away from. You should have stayed in Lagos now."
AMORPHOUS
Well, it turns out that staying in Lagos or Edo state, where oil flows from the soil, is sometimes the most careless decision any ambitious man could take. So, Nigerians are fleeing topsy-turvy Ikeja for the comfort zones of the West. So are Ghanaians, a population of only 22million. Kenya, Congo and Somalia have an almost worrying presence in the UK, Holland and America. While many travel as economic immigrants who overstay their visas and never go back, quite a number are students who come with one or two degrees under their belts. To get access to white collar employment, many African students in the West necessarily enrol on courses in colleges and universities, to boost their resume. A Masters degree is always fashionable for many education-minded Africans. It is not unusual to see many of them with two or three. The first one was usually ill-advised, the second is strategic. The third is supposed to be career-sensitive. Usually relocating to another part of the West would mean doing a third degree, to understand the system. And of course, a PhD is always a good thing, even if it is online and is in an area of study as amorphous as public relations. So we end up having taxi drivers boasting MBA degrees, as CNN recently reported. But there is also the ambitious class of professionals who have very good jobs in competitive industries, building great careers and servicing important sectors of their adopted communities. Many Ghanaians are making phenomenal strides in banking, commerce and medicine, earning salaries that dwarf the earnings of their presidents back home. They have no immigration problems; in fact most of them have comfortable family lives. So why are these professionals, who are the envy of compatriots in their home countries frantically filing job applications to go back to their home countries, to continue their careers?
It was a spectacle that I thought was only possible at the British and American Embassies in Accra and Lagos. The only thing that reminded me that I was not at the Osu grounds of the American Embassy in Accra, was the absence of preacher men who prayed for God to confuse Entry Clearance officers to reward fake bank statements with multiple visas. Otherwise, the feeling was the same: Nearly 600 African professionals had lined up in long queues at the St Reggis Hotel in Houston, Texas, waiting to sample the juicy employment opportunities promised by big multinational companies. These were ready job offers: instant applications and on-the-spot interviews for successful applicants. From Tullow Oil to Coca-Cola, there was an impressive representation of nearly all the rich employers in the world. These companies are ready to pay a relocation allowance of up to $25,000 for a $65,000 a year job in the Sahara. There are other incredible benefits once you are hired to go and work in a familiar part of the world, where your grandmother could be next door. These are offers that usually happen in dreams. There were men and women with good degrees and big resumes, who were ready to swap the large roads in America with the potholes in Africa. That is their dream. And they want to make it real.
EXPERIENCED HUMAN RESOURCE PRO
These job fairs are organised by experienced human resource professionals. They are different from other fairs because their focus is clear: hiring for Africa. Creative advertisements market the fairs worldwide, appearing in powerful newspapers and magazines, such as Times and the Economist. The events are usually spread over three days, and participants are encouraged to register ahead of time, to secure a place. On the first day, the employers make presentations about prospects in their organisations. Brochures and other neatly packaged information are distributed to those who express interest. The second day is for interaction, where participants are permitted to ask questions about the employment procedures of organisations and their pension schemes. The professionals who front their organisations are open enough to answer even personal questions. I overheard a participant asking the Human Resources Director of a financial institution how she got the position. The third day is devoted to interviews and hiring. Lunch is usually provided throughout. They are quite good, and well attended, too.
The recent Houston event was not any different. Africans of every stripe had crossed over from nearby states to participate. I met a vice-president of a New York based bank, who had taken a week off work, to try his luck. The occasion provided an opportunity to meet some old university friends whom I had presumed dead. As is typical of Africans, these old friends were not very happy to see me because I had come from Canada to add to the numbers, and hence increase the competition. One of them asked: "So you came all the way from Canada for this? It is coming to Toronto in January, why didn't you wait? How can we get anything home with pests like these? I didn't see the point explaining that the event had merely coincided with my visit to Texas, where I was to meet an important person about the prospect of writing his autobiography. Then he asked again: "I thought you were in the UK, why did you come to Canada? You should have gone back to Ghana after your studies." Meanwhile he left Ghana 10 years ago, and had not been back even once. Well, he promised he would leave immediately if he had an offer that day.
What struck me that day was not the large number of seasoned African professionals who were desperate to go and work in Africa; it was the sad fact that none of them was ready to make a sacrifice. The money the employers were offering was the motivation for the relocation, not that they want to go and help build the poor continent. In capitalist America, that made sense, but in Kigali or Domeabra, where girl school drop-out rate is high, the desire to earn $65,000 a year sounds rather selfish. Big salaries alone do not develop countries, otherwise California wouldn't be broke. It is sacrifice and the desire to short-change yourself so that others will have the balance. That is why a president of the Harvard Law Review, who was sought after by big law firms promising very big money, would short-change himself and accept a low paying job as a community worker. That is how presidents are made. His story is inspiring everyday.
Well, perhaps it is too tasking asking Africans in the Diaspora to make any more sacrifices. It seems living the African life in the cold of Canada or sex-ridden Holland is enough sacrifice already. Besides, whereas $65,000 would last for some five years in Africa, it wouldn't guarantee you any luxury in Canada, where a homeless person can afford to buy the same winter boots that a government statistician would fancy. The mortgage takes a chunk, bills need to be paid and tilapia is increasingly getting expensive. When you add the monthly remittances to Africa, you realise you are merely breaking even. The consolation is that you can buy anything on hire purchase. So I wasn't surprised to see people with comfortable careers interviewing for jobs in Africa. It would take some 20 years to finish paying off the mortgage in Virginia. On $65,000 a year in Africa, and most of the jobs pay more, you would build 20 houses at good locations in 20 years and still live a life of luxury. So, who wouldn't want to go back to where he really belongs and live the privileged life he once could only imagine?
When I left the Reggis Hotel, not knowing whether to think of the job fair as a Legon alumni meeting or a career development opportunity, I began to consider the real motive of the employers. Is quality human resource so scarce in Africa that they have to recruit from overseas? I bumped into a Nigerian girl who had just been hired to work in Nigeria. She was so happy, but the next minute she was contemplating whether to go or not.
Benjamin Tawiah is a freelance writer. He lives in Ottawa, Canada. Next week: How We Missed A Ghanaian Plot In The Great American Story
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