Information Related to "How to Live on $25 a Month"
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Behind the Headlines |
by Melvin Rhodes
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| Two young Ghanaians prepare fufu for a meal. Made from cassavas and plantains, fufu is a staple of the typical Ghanaian diet. |
Ironies abound. I’m writing this on my laptop computer at a desk in one of Ghana’s relatively less-expensive hotels in Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region and Ghana’s second-largest city. One night in the hotel, with tax, costs the equivalent of two months’wages for the average Ghanaian, perhaps three months’wages for a hotel employee. My laptop, moderate by American standards, cost the equivalent of more than four years’wages for the average citizen.
It’s impossible to eat a meal in a restaurant in this country without thinking of comparisons. Most meals are reasonably priced by Western standards, but the cost of one would feed a Ghanaian family of five for two days.So how do they do it? How do people here manage to live on such meager incomes? It’s no wonder Ghanaians have been called magicians.
Ghanaian realities
Let’s see how it works.
Rent is cheap—unless you
insist on good accommodation. Westerners who move to Ghana on one- or two-year
employment contracts
can pay $2,000 per month in rent for a Western-style home, money that goes to
the wealthier members of Ghanaian society. For most Ghanaians rent is 30,000
to 50,000 cedis (pronounced “seedies”) per month.
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