Day 4 – the British High Commission, takeovers and mergers, and snow

Friday started early, as I not only had to leave time for the Accra traffic as usual, but also wanted to fit in a visit to the British Commission before work.  After a false start, when I mistakenly went to the visa section rather than the Consul and thus wasted some time patiently queuing for a British visa, I found myself in the right place - with half an hour still to go before the Commission even opened.  I passed my time chatting with the (Ghanaian) security guard, who was very friendly but didn’t shy away from awkward questions:

“Are you doing any travelling when you’re in Ghana?”

“Yes, I’m hoping to go to Cape Coast and maybe Mole National Park.”

“Cape Coast – to see the forts?”

“Yes.”

“Where your ancestors enslaved my ancestors?”

“Um....yes.”

There isn’t really a good answer to that one.

The day was spent at the offices of Sam Okudzeto & Associates, the law firm at which I am based.  In the morning I typed up a statement of case in a contractual dispute which was going to arbitration and in the afternoon I was given the Ghana Code on Takeovers and Mergers to read.  My task was to find and note down all the provisions which impose obligations on buyers and/or sellers during the takeover process.  The lawyer for whom I was doing the work said that she had been through it herself, but wanted someone to “take a fresh look”: as this was almost my first experience of company law, “a fresh look” was probably the one thing I could have guaranteed providing.

On Friday afternoons the firm’s office meeting is held.  This is an opportunity for the lawyers to discuss all the cases which were in court that week or are to come to court the next week.  I doubt whether such an event in that precise form would be possible in a chambers at home, where barristers are of course individually responsible for their own cases and therefore not likely to have much knowledge of their colleagues’ work, but it did strike me that setting aside a time every week for members to come together and discuss any issues arising from their cases could only be a good thing – perhaps it does indeed happen in some sets.  I was interested to note that the meeting began and ended with a prayer: religion really does figure much more prominently in daily life here.  I’m not sure such a proceeding would even be legal in the UK (R (National Secular Society) v Bideford Town Council)!

I got a lift home in a taxi with a chatty driver named Christopher.  He wanted to know where I was from (“England”) and whether that was a long way away (“very”).  He was also absolutely fascinated by snow and asked me if I had seen it (yes), whether I had any pictures of it on my phone that I could show him (unfortunately not), and whether there would be snow in England at the moment (from the summer we were having before I came away, quite possibly).

I also found out on Friday that I passed the BPTC: a very nice end to a fantastic first week in Ghana.