In pursuit of randomized sampling

Over the weekend I visited coca farmers, monitoring the implementation of the Harvard fair trade survey I’ve been helping with. Made the terrible mistake of leaving Accra at 6pm, which led to an hour or more of traffic en route to the Achimoda bus station. From there took a tro-tro to the town of Kofiriduo (spelling wrong), about 3 hours away (should be less, but the minibus stopped by another city on the way).

From there it was another 20 minute tro-tro to the largest town near the farming community; the tro-tro deposited us at an empty gas station in the middle of nowhere a bit before 11 at night. Luckily the owner of our guesthouse was roused by phone and he eventually emerged from the darkness and led us back into the bush. Our resting place was a paleo-hacienda set amidst a half-dozen small 2-room houses in circle cluster, oddly reminiscent of pioneer settlements. No running water, of course. Outside the house cinematic high contrast white lighting illuminated the edge of a palm frond forest, a banana orchid stretching into the darkness, and goats skittered between houses

Next day we woke around 6:30am to walk to the town. The area consisted of a series of sharp mountain ridges and broad, uneven valleys, all covered in a dark green forest carpet. From the town we took a taxi for 15 minutes to get to the base of a nearby mountain and then set off. The narrow, overgrown trail – dark bushes crowding, obscuring the path – wound upward for couple of hours, passing through beautiful tropical rainforest. At one point we crossed a boggy expanse, edging along half-submerged wobbly tree trunks and, after a dozen trees, leaping to the edge of the forest marsh.

Eventually we reached the village community, which was scattered into 2-3 house clusters along the slope. Our guides, whose assistance we had requested at the mountain base village, took us to the village chief’s house. We gathered on the pseudo-porch of his long, narrow concrete hut, sitting on a smattering of plastic chairs, wooden blocks and benches. Since the villagers only spoke Twi or other local dialects, there was nothing for me to do besides sit and watch as the leader of the survey team, Daniel, spoke with the village chief and explained our project. With a small, round head, heavily-creased face and gap-toothed grin, the chief was more than happy to let us proceed.

So with assistance from some of the local farmers, we split up and walked separately from house cluster to house cluster, briefly speaking with whoever was around (typically women) to assess which, if any, households farmed coca. After completing the village inventory over the course of several hours, we reconvened and randomly selected five of the coca farmers for in-depth interviews.

The village itself, while very poor, looked reasonably healthy. Unlike places in Kenya, the fields were green and lush, and the people were not skeletal. Men were out farming (I assume), while women were with the children (interestingly, average family size seemed to be ~3-4 kids, not the 5+ I expected). Chicken, goats, lambs and even ducks running around everywhere, but no pigs. Lambs formed a chorus of high-pitched whinnies, chiming like a demented crèche. And butterflies were everywhere, flitting in and out amongst the bushes, a wild range of colors and sizes.

After observing the interview for an hour or so, Maja and I departed in order to return to Accra before it got too dark. The overcast day had turned markedly darker, and we could hear thunder in the distance as we rushed back down the mountain. Back at the base village we could get a clear sit of the horizon and see sharp line as the black clouds advanced toward us. We had returned without a clear plan for how to escape the base village, since there were no taxies and we had no phone numbers, and now the oncoming storm made the issue urgent. Asking around, we soon had the entire village gathered around us. Trying to work out a taxi phone number. Everyone knew someone who might know. But as the rain start to fall and a couple of kids set off to find a taxi by bicycle, I knew we were fucked. The patchy semi-thatched town gazebo hardly seemed sufficient for the coming storm.

Then our salvation, rusting yellow hulk, trundled around the corner. It turns out that there is a sort of minibus service running to the village, and we immediately hoped inside just as the monsoon erupted, sheeting rain against the metal. Inside only weathered patches of yellow paint remained; the rest stripped to bare metal. The dashboard was full of gaping holes, the roof leaked and the engine roared down around dirt mount roads like a mechanical beast from Sorcerer. But what was really remarkable was the water coming up at us, from where the bottom of the vehicle had rusted away.

After a while we passed through the storm and reached Kofiradou. At this point I was quite exhausted, and fortunately the rest of the journey to Accra proved unremarkable.