Today’s interview is with Gayle Pescud, an “accidental” location independent professional who is based in Ghana. She’s the Lonely Planet’s Ghana blogger and co-author of the “Insider’s Guide To Ghana” an exceptionally detailed & useful eGuide about travelling to and living in Ghana.
I asked Gayle to share some insights about what it’s like being location independent in Ghana. I highly recommend you pay close attention to some of Gayle’s suggestions for getting things done, which are extremely valuable even if you don’t have to deal with daily power cuts, water shortages and extremely unreliable internet like she does…
Could you please introduce yourself briefly?
I’m a writer with a passion for making a difference through writing and working in the developing world.
You say you “accidentally” fell into being location independent – can you explain how that happened?
I had been planning to work in England when the tsunami hit SE Asia on Boxing Day 2004 and a thought crept in: I could do something to help..but NGOs were overwhelmed with offers of help from professionals so I left tsunami recovery to the experts.
However the idea of volunteering somewhere in the developing world stuck – that was the accidental part. I had no idea that I would work in five countries and travel to more than a dozen countries and three continents over the subsequent five years…and in the process become location independent.
Looking at your blog, it sounds like location independence in Ghana can be somewhat challenging! How do you overcome some of these challenges? What kind of impact does it have on your life and your business?
It depends where you live in Ghana. If you’re in Accra or Kumasi, the largest cities, you have access to more reliable internet and amenities, although they do experience water and power shortages at times.
But I live in the far north where sometimes you feel like the service providers have forgotten you exist. We had terrible internet between January and March this year, such that I had to travel to other cities to do serious online work. Basically, everything slows down.
What I could normally achieve in 5 days might take 10 due to external variables like not having power or internet connectivity when you need them. I’m quite efficient and productive with consistent power and internet, so I find it quite frustrating that my output is sometimes half what it could be.
Sometimes I’m tempted to move to Accra, but we’ve committed to a project here; it’s the poorest area of the country and needs the most help and we’re in a perfect position to do that.
The only way to manage is to be super organized. I have paper note book lists for each thing I’m working on. I prioritise my tasks by categories and then work through them. I always have something to work on, paper-wise, in case the power cuts.
I have lists of what I want to achieve each time I visit the internet café. If I don’t write these lists, I’ll get side-tracked and won’t even get the minimum done. Plus, you can never count on having continuous connectivity so you have to finish the “priority” work before anything else.
There are so many things that you take for granted in the developed world (24 hour internet, for example) which are huge barriers for those in developing countries.
Ghana isn’t somewhere that would spring to mind for most location independent people, especially with the challenges you mention above! Can you tempt us with some of the highlights and benefits you experience as a LIP in Ghana?
On the positive side, Ghana gives you the freedom to operate in a much less structured way and you can live on much less – although if you live in Accra you will most likely pay western prices for rent and lifestyle. A decent western style house rents for around US$1,000 a month in the nicer parts of Accra.
The culture is very laid back (maddeningly so when you’re busy) and no one gets too uptight. While this can feel frustrating when you’re on deadlines, I love the freedom and feeling that anything can happen and often does.
Once I did some work for a net café owner. He popped in for 5 minutes and then everyone disappeared for an hour, leaving me alone in the café—wide open. I forgot it was Friday Muslim prayers. People are very trusting. I was able to browse in the meantime and then resume work talks when he returned.
Most expats live along the coast. It’s still largely undeveloped so you can find your own patch of beach and set up home, literally, for very little in western terms. I think you could build a large, western-style house with all the amenities on beach front for around US$50,000—including the land.
Most expats are involved in tourism or development work, often integrating positive community development in tourism projects like you’ll see at Green Turtle Lodge or Beyin Beach Resort. Access to electricity in these areas is the challenge. Many use solar power.
What’s it like doing business in Ghana? What about the practicalities for anyone visiting the country? (visas, tourist visas, communications, etc.)
Official bureaucracy is slow and mostly not digital. One of the biggest pains is that you can’t do any of the registering stuff for NGOs or businesses online. You have to run around to each office but you can’t guarantee finding the person you need at that office, even if you go during official business hours.
You end up waiting hours for the person responsible to come (since delegating to colleagues is not common practice here). Because there are so many delays, I always have other work to do with me in the form of paper work. I finish my work, but not necessarily in the order I planned it. Being flexible is extremely important.
Getting a visa is straightforward as a tourist. You apply to the embassy in your country beforehand or you can get a visa on arrival. www.ghanaimmigration.org has all the details.
If you’re working, the sponsor organisation will apply for a work/resident visa on your behalf. This is also all online. You can also get all the investment contacts at that website. We cover this in detail in our Travel and Living Guide to Ghana in which we explain some of the contradictory conditions of visas and permits through our research with officials and illustrating it with our personal experiences.
If you start your own business or NGO, you have to complete a pile of paperwork. You can see which offices you need to contact, to initiate this, at the Ghana Immigration site, too.
One of the simple things about communications is that you can buy phone sim cards—“chips”—for one Cedi (75 cents) on the street everywhere. You just buy the chip, put it in your phone, and it works.
You can top it up with credit also available on streets everywhere. If you have a locked phone, you can “unlock” it on the street, too. Vendors are quite skilled at this.
Any tips on where to head for in Ghana? What about sights & “must sees”?
I’d urge you to get out of Accra (if that’s your base) and travel the three hours west to Cape Coast and visit the historical Cape Coast Castle and check out the whole town, hang out on the beach, have a beer and watch the sun set at Oasis. I wrote a series of highlights to visit on our blog (see the sidebar).
If you were to move here, my major piece of advice is to set up bank accounts in your country of origin which you can access online so you can at least control finances this way. Also, ensure you have two separate Visa credit cards. Visa is still the major credit card in Ghana and you can use it to withdraw cash from ATMs all over Ghana. If you have two, you still have one if the other gets stolen. Activate them at home so you know the PIN works before coming.
Also, set up anything that requires credit card authentication before you leave. For example, if you need web hosting and must pay with a credit card, do that at home! The hoops you have to jump through to prove to a foreign hosting company that you’re legitimate in Ghana…well, just imagine there are seven hoops and they’re on fire and they keep shifting them…that’s how it is when you try to initiate anything online or by phone with credit cards in Ghana, even if you’re nationality is Australian or English or any country with good credit card ratings.
It’s understandable, given the level of credit card fraud here, but it’s very frustrating when you get denied services based on your IP or stated location. So do anything that requires authenticating yourself regarding online payments in your home country, or have someone prepared to do it for you.
Can you see I’m writing from (sorry) experience? I didn’t plan to “live” overseas so I didn’t set these things up before I left. But if I can make it work with very little planning, I know you can certainly make it work if you plan ahead and do your homework! And patience, lots of patience!
