James Town Pride

“I have lived in James Town my entire life and there is no place like it. It is the center of the city; it is Old Accra,” Kofi tells me about his home. His family has been there for decades, and his father owns one of the few storey buildings in the area, with a wonderful view overlooking the neighborhood. He continues, “I am James Town born and bred.”

James Town has a charm I have not seen in other parts of Accra. People speaking Ga, children running around naked in their own way, a naked dance that is unique to this area. James Town expresses a type of poverty that is not only African, but an urban African that is only understood through the lens of an African city. Malnourished children, obese women, complete overpopulation. Kind of like India in a way: the stench, the colonial buildings, but an aliveness that inspires residents to go on, live on, dream.

But its African-ness, its Ghanaian-ness, spews out of the smelly, open sewers, the music blasting through the speakers, and the horns of the tro tros. The chief’s house up the street creates a semblance of order, while the African women pound their fufu and the youth sit on the corners, on top of run-down cars. All night. It is too much to quantify, to make sense of, to understand, but it makes you want to return. To hear stories. To figure out the “fucked-up-ness” that keeps James Town going.

We sat in a run-down courtyard at dusk, drinking palm wine out of bowls, listening to Ghanaian reggae, and watching the sun set above us. James Town was where it all started: the international slave trade in the 16th century, large migration of the Ga people to the city in the 17th century, and the beginning of the bustling metropolis of Accra. While the rest of Accra seems confused – a mish-mash of Soviet architecture, faux American influence, and the blitz of British buildings, with its own African aroma and flavor – James Town has an identity.

“They are proud people,” an NGO representative told me about the James Town residents, “They feel that the city is theirs. They feel like they have given their land to the capital city.” They have a sense of ownership: a right to the city. The Ga people settled in James Town in the 1600s, and they have been moving to the neighborhood ever since. Many of the housing structures have been in people’s families for decades, and the “family house” is still viewed as a foundation for most James Towners. “It is a safety net for the poor Ga people. There is always the house to come back to when times are rough.”

During the 1940s and 50s, James Town was the center for political independence. Kwame Nkrumah founded the Convention People’s Party at the Paladium, a central structure in the area. The struggle between the CPP and the opposition UGCC was played out in Old Accra, and it was not until Nkrumah won over the people of James Town and its surroundings that Nkrumah paved the way for his presidency. Today, the Ga Mashie district (of which James Town is a part) is considered the political hotbed of the country. The saying goes, “If you win Ga Mashie, you win the National Election.”

James Town exposes a life of endurance, of survival. Survival enlaced with pride, passion, and heartbreak. Of political apathy mixed with political heat. I could just feel the tension, the energy, the "about to break out" but a security that did not come from courts, or even the chief. Perhaps it came from history, from tradition, from somewhere within James Town itself. A mixture of it all. James Town is why I study cities. There is the “urban crisis” and the “emerging economies” that are so prevalent in the literature, the ability to form a new life but also descend into chaos and disorder. The questions just flow, fascinating puzzles are everywhere. It feels alive.

Kofi tells me of the boxers who train nearby, of the comedians who make their start in James Town. The “noisemakers” who create problems and get the public riled up. He tells me how there is a fight between chiefs, and the police had to come in and settle the dispute. Thankfully, it’s quiet now. He tells me about the parties, and says, “You have to come here for the parties. The funerals. This is the place to be.” He grew up here, and he tells me of his life going to school, and then escaping to University of Ghana. He says he could leave Ghana and study in the US or the UK, but he would not want to leave James Town and Old Accra. He does not want to leave home.

He tells me of his daughter, who is three years old. I ask him if she lives in James Town. “Oh no, of course not. I don’t want her growing up here!”