PART ONE
In the course of my constantly intriguing life, I somehow came across a genuine spy; I mean the real McCoy, a full-blown, 20/20 vision, soft-spoken intelligence operative with a mind like a sponge. Guess what, this guy is learning how to speak Twi at such an exponential rate that I'm convinced he will be graduating to Ga, then Hausa before he leaves Ghana, his temporary stay here will not be for long. Amazingly, he is quite self-depreciating when discussing his “profession”. I guess the romanticized images of Hollywood do not quite portray the practical realities on the ground, I mean look at what the new 007 is doing now, AABA! It does however serve as perhaps a hyperbolic clue to the underlying truth - certain people (governments) will expend much effort and resources to gather information (intelligence) no matter how seemingly mundane or apparently useless it seems to everybody else, save their own clandestine self interest. Upon broaching this issue as a joke, the spy replied, "What is there to spy on in Ghana though?" I raised my hands defiantly and gestured towards the bushy shrubs and forests our bus was speeding past and exclaimed with a silly smile, “This is all we have, nothing?” Of course at the time, I did not think to jump to the most obvious reason for the increased interest being showed in Ghana of late; Ghana has high quality, light sweet crude OIL, and in abundant quantities in a global setting that is faced with the intractable problem of dwindling petroleum supplies and concurrently rising demand.
So if we have nothing worth spying on, then why waste so much resources building a state of the art infrastructure and allocating funds to beef up a security and intelligence gathering system here then? This suggests then that I may have been slightly misdirected, in the sense that this spy's employer may see not see Ghana as critical to its national interests, but certainly as a country of some strategic importance; perhaps not just for its own selfish interests alone but for the betterment of Ghana itself, and the whole West African sub-continent as a whole; or simply, as just another country to keep tabs on. To be honest though, I really am fishing here, who knows what exists in the minds of those big-shot political bureaucrats in the former marsh (cough, cough: A certain capital of a certain world power used to be a mosquito ridden marsh). Who knows their end game or even cares in this small country, certainly not me. Truth is, I was once told that our expectations of things are very different from how we actually perceive them, so I am trying to do away with my expectations and rather deal with my perception of things; the spy, what he said, how he said it and the clues he gave me – clues that can certainly benefit this ‘poor’ country his employer is intensifying its monitoring of and thereby its relationship with.
Ruminating on this conversation brings back memories of my heady high school days. One of my favorite teachers in high school was some acerbic white man called Mr. Paulson. He was my favorite teacher not because I liked him, or because he liked me, or even because I got good grades in his class, which I did of course. He was my favorite teacher because I could sense that he genuinely respected me, though I was so young, and this respect was mutual. But he made my life hell for some odd reason, I felt that I never got the grades I deserved, he tormented my friends and me in class and he went as far as to leave me stranded on an international school trip, but through this all, our mutual respect increased, because I saw all these obstacles as tests and I never failed a Paulson Test. I bested him constantly and in the end he acquiesced and gave me a good Final parting grade before he zoomed of to train (or torment depending on how you look at it) some more 'native' kids in Peru or was it Puerto Rico. Please note, he as much as admitted that he was a spy himself. Sometimes I feel he was probably bitter because he probably hit the rock ceiling in some high-risk job and had to retire or perhaps felt his considerable skills were being underutilized in a backwater country like Ghana. I don't know because I'm fishing again here. Paulson's story is important here only because if he taught me nothing at all he taught me two things; that International Relations is a complicated chess game of sticks and carrots, and that the world is becoming a fast paced integrated global society where Information, the right kind of information, is key to winning and staying ahead. (This should ring a TOK bell).
To be continued!
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