The 12 months, 52 weeks, 366 days, 8,784 hours, 527,040 minutes and 31,622,400 seconds of the year 2008 has come and gone! This column takes a cursory look at five of the noteworthy events of the year. They are: sanitation, pair-trawling, crude oil, free maternal care and the elections.
Sanitation: The UN declared the year 2008, the whole 12 months of it, as the first International Year of Sanitation. It was such a great opportunity for Ghana to make a dent in our deplorable environmental sanitation situation. But we couldn’t scratch the surface of the problem. We are in a new year. All fingers and toes should be kept crossed that as we usher in a new political administration, God will raise leaders to champion the fight to bring sanity into our insane sanitation situation.
Pair-Trawling: During the year, we were introduced to a new vocabulary – pair-trawling. It took me a while to understand it. Here is my elementary explanation of pair-trawling. It is tantamount to taking a gigantic double-edged broom, dipping it into the ocean and doing a grand sweep of the very bottom of the Ocean. During the cursed sweep, anything and everything the great broom touches is up for grabs. In the process, grandfather fishes, grandmother fishes, uncle fishes, aunt fishes, cousin fishes, baby fishes and distant relatives of fishes the teeth of the broom can touch is caught. If the eggs of the fishes are trapped in the great pair-trawling broom, so be it.
If only this sort of grand sweeping of the ocean floor would be applied to clean out our gutters and streets and backyards and schools and homes and businesses, Ghana would become a better place.
As a ‘fishtarian’ (I don’t eat meat), naturally and probably selfishly, I’m very concerned because this situation sounds like big trouble. Fish is my key source of protein so if pair-trawling is not stopped, I can see malnutrition coming my way. Days before the December 7 elections, news trickled in about definite efforts to stop pair-trawling. But if history and experience are anything to go by, this might be another nine-day wonder with electioneering colouring. If we can’t put an end to pair-trawling that potentially takes fish from our cooking pots, then we should be very concerned about the crude oil our politicians and their cronies have salivated about with bizarre promises as the one-item-covers-all solution to our myriad problems.
Crude Oil: Apart from Jubilee House that beckons, one key matter at stake in our elections is the crude oil find. Last July, when the frenzy of elections was at a fever pitch, crude oil was selling on the world market at $147 a barrel. The price has dropped to a five-year low of $36, bobbling up and down. We are toast! We have carelessly counted the chicks of Ghana long before the hens got down to the business of laying the eggs and to even decide whether they should commit to pausing their lives to spend precious time to provide needed body heat so nature will respond and hatch those eggs! With oil money, we might all have resorted to eating salad everyday with cake for desert and Champaign to wash it all down. But now, we might have to settle for cassava and ‘kobi’.
Free Maternal Care: During the year, through a British grant to reduce deaths during child birth, free maternal care was introduced. There are unintended consequences of well-intended policies. Free maternal care is a bonanza to irresponsible men who just impregnate women and move on as if life is just one big party. It is an everyday-Christmas gift to them; they sing the hallelujah chorus with impunity. Then, they gift the pregnancy to Ghana. They might later brag, “This is my child,” and you just want to slap the foolishness out of them.
Irresponsible men are those who are stingy, who view pregnancy and child birth as the financial responsibility of a woman. Some are damn broke but some are not – just irresponsible. I’ve heard gut-wrenching stories of vulnerable pregnant women whose men have drastically cut down chop money because hospital care is free.
There is a possible impact of free maternal care on population growth. Consider the frightening fact that Ghana’s population has doubled in a generation – from about 12 million in the late 1980s to the current estimated 23 million. This policy might be a license to keep unwanted pregnancies and indeed to excuse bringing about unwanted pregnancies with the laughable and dismissive explanation, “It’s free!” There is also the inevitable increase in the sheer numbers of children who must fend for themselves in all sorts of unacceptable ways, least among them being selling Chinese-made products by the road-side.
Elections: During the year, we ate and drank politics so we can select a fresh bunch of parliamentarians and a new president. We voted in a re-run for president to select one of two men to occupy the new palace. The December 7 elections turned into a December 28 round-up, run-on, run-off or just running. And then Tain came along! So we wait!
Let the truth be told – the past few weeks, especially the last few days, have been so tense and nerve wracking. We have sat on tenterhooks. Whatever tenterhooks are, they are definitely uncomfortable. Those hooks have pinched us in places where it hurts the most. We’ve been afraid.
All the prayers for peace and talk of peace and advertisements for peace and admonitions for peace and marches for peace assume that we are close to the opposite of peace and the opposite of peace does not sound peaceful. When going to the polls and counting votes sound like a preparation for war; when our boarders are closed tight; when the security agencies are placed on high alert; when you hear any mention of a group of young people wielding cutlasses and/or stones; when gloom is over-cast on a nation; when the rhetoric of NDC and NPP supporters, Radio Gold and Oman FM sound like war drums – you can’t help but be afraid; very afraid.
We don’t have this part of the democracy thing figured out – yet. Our democracy is fledgling like an egg, still being hatched. The egg shell is tough with naughty NPP and NDC and the many other baby political parties stuck in between the hard shell cracks. Fact: We’ve got a long way to go on this democracy path.
But on the bright side, as a people, we showed our political sophistication and maturity through the elections. First, we showed that none of the political parties or presidential candidates is a phenomenon. They don’t have what it takes to take our breath away. No wonder the results indicate a split for the two leading parties and presidential candidates. The next president will have a slim margin of victory.
Mighty trees fell during the December 7 elections. Nkrumah’s baby girl, Samia Yaaba, whipped NDC’s giant Lee Ocran. It’s a beautiful thing when a pint-sized woman whips a grown man who is thought to be ‘unwhippable.’ Ouch! NPP’s arrogant Asamoah-Boateng was booted out by his home town folks to save Ghana from his annoying ranting on our air waves. Thank you, Dear Lord for a good, funny and interesting year!
dorisdartey@yahoo.com
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