Google blimps will carry wireless signal across Africa

I understand why you read it that way, but you couldn't be more wrong about what I think about Africa. As rattray mentioned: I wasn't judging them, just making an observation of how things are there.

Your interpretation of my standpoint is kind of ironic: I was born in Ghana, lived there the first four years of my life. I feel more of a connection to Africa than to my supposed roots in China (I'm half Chinese too), and I hated growing up in the Dutch countryside. While I was visiting my birthcountry for the first time in 25 years, it was the visiting Westerners that pissed me off. They were always complaining about being treated disrespectfully, and refused to see how their insistence of interpreting situations through a Western lens plays a huge role in all the misunderstandings.

So this is getting very off-topic, but let's talk for a minute about white folks not "getting" Ghana, as I understand and experienced it. There's plenty of things, but I'll focus on the wealth sharing issue.

First of all, if you are wealthier, in the local traditional culture it is perfectly acceptable to be asked or expected to share the wealth. Not in the form of money (more on that later), but material wealth, or "spontaneously" paying for something they need. Of course, there's a difference between actually being rich and being perceived as such - and by the way, the locals suffer from this more than we do: "hey cousin, you moved to the city so you're rich now and can support your family in the countryside, right?" Well no, but try telling your family that. It's hard to get a break in Ghana, because as soon as you do everyone wants a piece of the pie (and don't get me started on Ghanaian funerals, if there's one example of a tradition being warped and now bankrupting families...[1]).

You have to realize that if you're from the West, you are considered rich by definition, so you have to mentally be ready for constantly being asked for support. It's tiring, but it's not like you can blame them. From our point of view it might feel like reverse-racism, but look at it from their perspective: you can afford a plane ticket (return ticket even) and taking a few weeks/months off of earning money and going on holiday - how rich do you have to be for that? Just because Weber-Fechner[2] fools you into not feeling rich back home doesn't mean you're not.

Where things go sour is that if you say no, which is perfectly fine, you're supposed to do so with an excuse, so that the person asking doesn't lose face: "I'm sorry, I can't give you my sunglasses, they're the only ones I have." Business and social life are not separated there. Because most Westerners instead feel like being hustled, or are just tired of the never-ending stream of requests, they just bluntly reject the haggler, resulting in him/her feeling insulted and going "well, screw you too then." So the next time they'll just be more rude and blunt like the Westerners, which can result in this weird cycle of everyone slightly pissing off everyone. If you don't know how to haggle respectfully and understand the social component (and it takes a while before you "get it"), you will be hustled disrespectfully in return. Luckily there's some locals who "get" Westerners and are capable of bridging this.

Also, there's a clear correlation between how bad this Western/local culture clash has corroded things and how close to the capitol you are: the closer, the more bluntly the people will ask you for money.

Another communication breakdown example: if you stay over at a family, traditionally they would insist you don't have to pay them. Not because they actually mean that, but because you don't discuss money exchanges out in the open - everyone will want a piece of the pie and they might end up with less than what they started with. The exchange happens discretely when nobody is watching, and you have to 'spontaneously' offer it, sometimes insisting on it a few times (although these days nobody is that naive towards Westerners anymore). Also, a Ghanaian will not tell you to your face that he thinks badly of you - you kind of have to infer that indirectly from others.

So more than once this has resulted in a Western family leaving without paying, thinking "wow, those Ghanians are so generous!", while the Ghanaian family thinks "those disrespectful jerks exploited us!" resulting in them being blunt and openly "Western" (as they interpret it) towards the next family. And then that family will be openly pissed off and haggle about payment (remember: in Ghana, you never dismiss someone to his face, and are supposed do the haggling indirectly/implicitly by giving excuses so the receiving party's social status isn't compromised - things are never "just business" there). So in the end, the local family is even more insulted and the tourists are pissed off and stay away.

More than a few local tourism initiatives have failed because of this. These days, the successful tourist villages have a tourist center, where you pay for the whole experience of staying in that village at once, and everyone in the village gets a share later (again, secretively).

What pisses me off is that every other visitor I met (implicitly) complained about how the Ghanaians weren't more like us, and more than once I've started an angry rant towards them that fell on deaf ears. No, that's now how it works: we're the visitors, so it's our responsibility to understand the Ghanaian point of view. And they actually have a point in their judgement of us being rich. Not that we should accept being treated as walking fountains of cash, but the "it's unfair, it's not like I have endless supplies of money just because I'm white!" gut reaction is very short-sighted, as it's also unfair that we were lucky enough to be born in an economically privileged position. Think of it as an investment in the local economy, an actually working trickle down effect. Yes, it can be tiresome, but you should have done your homework and realize what you were getting into when you went there. As long as it's no too blatantly disrespectful, and you know how to talk your way out of ridiculous requests with a bit of humor, it's all fine.

BTW, this is generalized of course: Ghana is full of different ethnicities and cultures, and things differ from place to place. I had a wonderful time being "back home", and in my experience most of the annoyances could be attributed to past miscommunications souring things as explained above.

So anyway, back to my original post: it's the local population that is hesitant to pick up internet, because they associate it with Nigerian scams and their reputation being smudged. I'm repeating what I was told by them, and was just being curious how this easy access to internet will change things and how the local cultures will adopt it. Also, if you really want to know more about this issue: "Invisible Users, Youth in the internet Cafés of Urban Ghana" by Jenna Burrel[3]. Just picked up my own copy the other day, still have to start reading it, but based on the blurb it seems to mirror my own experiences.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/07/ghana-call-frida...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/nyregion/12funerals.html?p...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law

[3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/invisible-users

The reason I was critical is that it is poor judgement to bring up the cliche of "Nigerian scams" when discussing something as important as attempts to spread internet availability in sub-saharan Africa. Now, I understand that to some extent you were making a point about how Ghanaian society views internet scamming. But still, it seems to be saying that "Nigerian scams" are a problem (a cost) that we should consider when planning to increase internet availability in Africa. Is the proportion of Ghanaians using the internet for that sort of activity really so large as to merit even discussing it? And anyway, Europeans and Americans make substantial use of the internet for child abuse and to support abusive areas of the global pornography industry; should we consider that as a disincentive for improving internet technology for Europeans and Americans?

> I guess the problem with these small internet cafes is that the most likely early adopters are these 419'ers.

> Anyway, I wonder how getting internet access to everyone will impact all of this. Maybe it will force the local governments to really start taking the problem seriously.

The question here is "problem for whom"? I appreciate your response and explanation that you were making observations about phenomena in Ghanaian society but I still think these sentences are dramatically missing the big picture: we're talking about increasing internet access across sub-Saharan Africa. Something which could radically improve the standards of life of hundreds of millions of some of the poorest people on the planet. It's just not the time to talk about "Nigerian scams" -- a phenomenon which is at worst a minor #firstworldproblem.