In Ghana people take the law into their own hands. Call it mob justice if you will. During my first few months here in Ghana while I was in Techiman for training, there were a group of guys going around robbing gas stations among other things. One night these guys robbed a taxi and decided to hide in the town where the taxi driver just happened to live in. To make a long story short two out of the three guys got away, but the one that got caught was beaten and hacked to death by a machete. A couple of Peace Corps people coming from that town saw this on their way to morning meetings. This was the first time I heard about or saw anything like this, but it was not the last. Mob justice/violence are a daily occurrence here. If I were a criminal and I got caught doing something, I would hope the police got to me first before the people did.
The other day there were two people in my town trying to sign people up for a new “Susu” they said that they were starting. A “Susu” is essentially a traditional savings and credit organization within the informal sector. It is substitute for formal banking for those that lack credit or resources. Anyway, these people presented themselves as an NGO (non-governmental organization) that have been helping people through other financial channels over the years, and now decided to start a “Susu.” They called themselves New Opportunity Trust. Some people signed up with them and others chose not to, which is fine, but they were collecting registration/start up fee of 30,000 cedis (9200 cedis=$1 US). This may not seem like a lot of money to you, but this is the average amount a person in my town makes in a day (people earn a lot less in other parts of the country).
The New Opportunity Trust people stayed in my town for a couple of hours signing people up and told us that they were going to move along to the next town down the road after they were done here. My counterpart thought the way they were handling things were a bit sketchy so he took it upon himself to go and investigate. I decided to join him hoping to see and/or become part of the “mob” if it ever came down to that. So we boarded a tro and headed to the town where they said their office was located in. There are no addresses in most parts of Ghana so we went to the place/spot where these people said their office was. There was nothing there. We asked people in the area about New Opportunity Trust, but they never heard of them. My counterpart then proceeded to make a few phone calls to people in town and then I knew it was game time. We boarded the a tro headed for the town the people said they were going to be in. We looked for them for about an hour, but to no avail.
I don’t know if anyone found these people or heard from these people again. I was hoping to see some mob justice that day, but it just didn’t happen. You may ask why am I writing about this when nothing interesting really happened. I have two reasons. The first reason is I wanted to show people how I spend/waste the hours in my day here in Ghana sometimes. The second reason is that I find it sad that people try and take advantage of each other especially considering most people here hardly have anything.
