Quotes:
“This is going on documentation, so we need to speak exactly how things are.”
Current (R)urban Dilemmas
“The land in the city is becoming extinct and so people are moving to more fertile spaces. In the Abotsiman village, people sell their land to buy farmland outside of Accra.”
“The problem with farming in Abotsiman is the access to land. The land here in Abotsiman is not rich, it’s spoiled. This is not the ideal place to grow crops like this, the land is not fertile. Without farming I can’t do anything.”
“The growth of these large buildings have taken away the rural nature of Abotsiman. For our people, the Eastern Region is the new migration destination, that is why the people of Abotsiman need to sell their land in order to buy farmland elsewhere. There‘s no place for us here anymore”
Migration + History of Abotsiman
“In the olden days, it was believed that the Aburi people were the only people close to the coast. But
when they saw the Gas coming from the far east from Nigeria, they were scared, and so they ran up into the mountain range and watched them from above. The Ga people were so many and they were fast! So by default, the Aburi people called them ants [NKRAN], tiger ants.”
“The present Abotsiman village is a part of the La community down by the coast. Although the distance is far, the La people do not recognize it as if they have crossed a border — this is their zone, their land, their territory.”
“The settlement of Abotsiman dates back to the late 1800s. Pastoralists and nomads from the North would graze their cattle in this area. This area was once all bush! Nothing else. People rarely settled here. But our grandfather Nii Adjei Tsuru decided to settle here in Abotsiman to farm and create a community for his relatives who were living in La. The old mud house you see on the main road is the first building created in our town and was built entirely by the hands of my grandfather, Nii Adjei. To this day, it stands.”
“When you look at the map, you see that the Eastern Region and Greater Accra are neighbors, so by default, the next migrational pattern of the GA people is towards those fertile lands. The whole village doesn‘t migrate at once. The process starts as this — a family or two brothers might sell land in the Accra city and then move to the hinterlands to start a small farming process. You will hardly meet a community migrating in mass to relocate and settle elsewhere. Those were the olden days. People do things alone now.
Urbanization in Accra
“After independence, a lot of Ghanaian people fled the country due to political instability. However, once we entered the age of democracy, some of those people returned, and when they returned they returned with capital, investing in places like East Legon and Abotsiman.”
“Since the late 90s, the migrational movements of elites have occurred, but right now it is on the rise. There’s no place for the GA people to farm in Accra. Their lands are now used for western infrastructural things. They are forced to leave their environment.”
Land in Africa (In regards to the leasing agreement in Ghana. Land is never sold for life, but only leased on contracted terms ranging from 50-99 years)
“You know in Africa we don‘t play with land. Land is our soul.”
“An African man with his land, you don‘t play. He is not a rich man, but the land is all he has.”
“The land is the spirit of an African.”
