Thirty percent increase of youth hawkers in Accra

The number of young people who sell by busy roadsides has increased. I know so because at the beginning of this week, during a short period of one hour, I counted 638 youth hawkers alongside two major streets in Accra.

Twelve weeks ago (September 24) when I last conducted this count of the teeming number of youth hawkers during the same time (9 to 10 am) on the same two principal street corridors (Emmanuel Eye Clinic through Tettey Quashie Interchange to Liberation Circle, and from GBC through Kwame Nkrumah Circle to Obetsebi Lamptey Circle), the number stood at 489. But on Monday, December 14, the number had increased to 638, showing a whopping 30.47percentage increase.

To my surprise, for this week’s count, there were ten percent more girls than boys. In the last count, gender was not segregated so they were all counted together. A hawker was just a hawker; not male or female youth hawker. But gender counts. With all the money this country has spent on girl-child education campaigns, to count 361 female youth hawkers (51.58 percent) as against 277 (46.42 percent) male youth hawkers might be an indication of a failure in policy implementation.

Why am I counting? Putting a number to a phenomenon helps to gain a firmer grip over that phenomenon and move it from the fussy realm of vague description to the concrete realm of figures. For instance, to a casual observer from the comfort of moving vehicles, it might seem obvious that the number of hawkers on our streets continues to increase. But when you ask those who should know, “how many hawkers do we have?”, the response is ‘aaahhh’, meaning, ‘we don’t know’. So periodically, this column will conduct a rudimentary social science research of counting. Soon, stories of individual street hawkers will also be told.

In a lecture delivered to the Indian Parliament, the Nobel Laureate, Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank fame, said: “Poor people are like bonsai trees. When anyone plants the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flower pot, he will get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed planted, only the soil-base that was given it was inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people.”

The children who are hawking an array of odd products on our streets are our ‘bonsai people’; we will get out of them in future what we are planting in them today. There is nothing inherently wrong with the youth who have by default, taken to street hawking. They are our ‘internally displaced persons’ who hover around looking for opportunities, any opportunities! It’s amazing that we don’t have more armed robbery than we have today.

As a country, whatever we’ve been doing about the youth question is clearly not working. A smart person once said that it’s only a fool who does the same thing over and over again even when he/she gets the same results.

The 30 percent change might indicate a Christmas shopping season increase or it might be part of a trend. But if more young people moved to the cities in the past few weeks to become hawkers during Christmas, what’s the guarantee that they would all return to their hometowns after the buying/selling season? If business was lucrative for them on this initial trip, why would they return? In March, I’ll conduct another count and bring you the results as we track this disturbing phenomenon.

If I were a young girl growing up right now in any part of Ghana, knowing very well that my education will not take me anywhere of substance, or that my education will render me illiterate, I would by now have packed a couple of my tight skirts and stained fashionable-in-my-eyes-only blouses and headed to the bright city lights of Accra, Kumasi or Takoradi. I would have been strategic and settled on Sekondi/Takoradi where business is poised to become more brisk when crude oil will flows.

According to Elie Wisel, a holocaust survivor, indifference is both tempting and seductive. “It is so much easier to look away from victims….. to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. …for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbours are of no consequence….their lives are meaningless.” Through indifference, therefore, we blur the boundaries between the sacred and the profane in the face of our super-Christian pretentiousness. Especially so!

This phenomenon of youth hawkers should be abnormal; yet, it has become so normal to see young people of any age chasing after moving vehicles to sell just about anything; so normal that we just look away. Social welfare has gone to the dogs, and trampled over, crushed into nothingness. We, by default, commit the sin of indifference.

At Christmas time, the season of waiting for the redemptive birth of Jesus the Christ, the offspring of privileged folks would see and live joy, unencumbered with the burden of chasing after cedis and pesewas. From which armpit of Ghana do these youth hawkers come from? Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to associate a name, a hometown, parents, circumstances and a life story to each of these young people, some of whom are barely removed from childhood?

These are our ‘bonsai trees’ who in full exposure to the tropical elements of hot sunshine, torrential rainfall and windstorms but especially, at the peril of vehicular traffic, work in hazardous, menacing, demeaning and excruciating endeavours as professional hawkers.

Some people come into this world with silver, even golden spoons stuck in their tender mouths. Some enter by edging their way through the backdoor as if just to take a peek at life, to check out if there’ll be a place for them out here under God’s sun. When, after crawling around here for awhile, like worms, bumping their ‘eyeless’ heads on walls at each blind turn, they leave, exhausted, a puree of want and despondency. This reality might explain why the cemeteries might be full of unfulfilled ex-people; people who left no evidence behind that they ever touched down on planet earth.

Some people get nothing from life and to some extent, expect nothing. But shouldn’t they be entitled to something, especially when they enter the world by way of a country that has something? That something includes our gold, diamond, timber, the billions of dollars of loans contracted from ‘development partners’ and others on behalf of ‘we the people’ and for which no account is given to the populace. Who is responsible for protecting such people from themselves and from the painful grind of poverty? Who and where are the elders of this town?

Postscript: A confession. This was a difficult article to write. I cried. I struggled to hold back my tears over the sin of indifference we are committing over our youth. Reader, while you merry over Christmas, (a celebration Jesus would not recognize as his birthday), have space for outrage over the phenomenon of Ghana’s ‘bonsai trees.’

An internal dialogue with power

Oh, power! Thou get stuck in many ugly toe nails. You are like fungi infection that eats into the nail, discolouring it until rottenness becomes the essence. Our leaders forget that they are in public service, not in power.

Phrases like the following are commonplace in political discourse from especially the NDC and NPP camps while the lesser political parties look on with far-away dream looks. First, the jubilant NDC folks: ‘Now that we’re in power’; ‘When we were out of power’; ‘We will retain power in 2012.’ The NPP, on its part, caries on with: ‘When we were in power’; ‘Now that we are out of power’; ‘When we return to power in 2012.’ Oh, the year 2012! You make me nervous, beyond measure.

Power-talk is ego-filled audacious impudent unstoppable loose talk of the liquid waste family. Loose power-talk even comes from the Osu Castle Presidency, by way of Koku Anyidoho. It doesn’t seem to matter who is smeared and insulted, even if it’s the entire nation. Oh, power, how your embrace sticks! As if in a state of utter forgetfulness or cluelessness to the implications of the 1992 Constitution, references are carelessly made to these democratic times as a ‘regime.’

Power is merciless. Power is forgetful. Power is capital. Power is political. Power is drunkenness. Power is foolishness. Power is cruelty. Power is heartless. Power should be constructive and merciful. Power is a lot of things good, bad and at times, truly ugly. When bad men (and women too!) get power, they can use it for really bad things. Similarly, when good men (and women too!) are graced with power, they can use it for good.

Power endows gravy of wealth, flowing onto corruption corridors that are vainly paved with gold. Power-cut. Power-lines. Power-lust. Power-hungry. Power-poverty. Power-base. Power-grabbing that leads to property-grabbing, house-grabbing, vehicle-grabbing, position-grabbing, job-grabbing and anything-grabbing.

Power-point. Super-power. World-power. Higher-power. Lower-power. Powers-that-be. Powerful. Power is above the law. Power is might. Power is authority. Power grants control. Powerless. The absence of power is darkness. Oh, power, thou art stuck in funky nails!

Power can potentially cancel out press freedom and drag down free speech on its sticky stinky way. Power can constrict the voices of the populace. Censorship and the most insidious of all – self-censorship, can eliminate criticisms of the governors by the governed and silence opposition voices. The love-child of power is sycophancy. Oh, sycophancy! You sickening, gutless, fear-ridden, shameless response to power!

Power grants status and exaltation. Very often, power endows undeserved and unearned titles like ‘Honourable’ and ‘Nana’. Power grants privileges. The powerless extol the greatness of the powerful. Power over whom? Over what? Power from what? Power implies exemption from control; the sun flies over the moon.

Voting confers power; hands over collective power to a few. Boundless power must be checked. Watch out and cut off entangling and strangling tentacles of power. Once upon a time, in our utmost folly, clothed with blind hope that was decorated flamboyantly with deceit, we as a people recited the words, ‘Power to the people’ followed by the desperate but senseless rhetoric, ‘Let the blood flow.’ Pain and misery ensued, with some paying the ultimate price – death! This stain on our history remains, waiting for redemption.

Powerful people love obedience, the expected response to the might and authority and privilege. Power talk gives birth to phrases like ‘Greedy bastards.’ Guess who is speaking. Guess who is coming home for dinner.

What is it that makes a man so honey that he will rape a woman, even a girl, a fragile being? It could be just a child, even a child of his own groin, and a child of his pleasure with an older woman whom he loved once upon a time before he got funny ideas and became honey over a younger more vulnerable child. What is it? Power? Sickness?

A case in point. What is it which make soldiers and police officers on ‘peace keeping’ missions in different parts of the world, and recently, in our own country, get so honey during the course of active duty that they will have a quick reversal of purpose to pay attention to banal matters?

What is it which makes a man’s libido go hey-wire to the point that he would sexually violate a fragile being? What was behind the recent rape of girls by ‘peace keepers’ somewhere up north in our country? Power? Control? Rape and sexual violence can potentially transmit HIV and AIDS.

Watch as people you consider perfectly normal come to power, rise to positions of power. Something flips in them. They change, at times suddenly. They puff up. The alcohol of power over-powers them; intoxication that can only be caused by exceptionally high doses of power. Changes can potentially exhibit in autocratic tendencies. Power-drunkenness. Swollen-headedness.

Power is a drug. Power is an alcohol. Power is cocaine. Power is marijuana. Once power mixes up with the body’s mechanisms, a monster erupts, a horrible genie gets out of the bottle, ready to devour anything in its path – small, large, mighty, gentle, sorrowful.

Power is not only found in the elected and appointed in the political sphere. In job advertisements throughout our land, individuals are sought who can think for themselves, with excellent communication skills and are able to contribute toward organizational advancement. But in reality, in true practice, there is little room in the inn for innovators and thinkers.

Power, in all its monstrosity, is alive and kicking in the governmental and quasi-governmental arena. Power sits high and mighty. In the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, tyranny reigns supreme. Quietly, voicelessly, adults complain that they are treated like children. Creativity is stifled. Innovativeness and thinking tendencies are quickly and ruthlessly nipped in the bud with, ‘Who do you think you are’ syndrome. While democracy is supposed to be the practice on the national level, authoritarianism is common in government offices. Oh power, thou art an idol to be worshipped!

Foot-soldiers are soldiers on foot. But when power is won by their political party, foot-soldiers detest remaining on foot. They begin to dream of gaining vehicular status. Without it, acrimony gains ground and can fracture. Power not shared is privilege denied. Power gives vent to nepotism, cronyism, favouritism, tribalism and other unnamed ugly isms. Power loves patronage, belly-full of undeserved praises – on cue.

If there is re-incarnation, I’ll re-incarnate as a foot-soldier – that is, if or when I decide to return to this earthly playing field. But if or when I return, I must arrive with good legs. My current spindly legs would not do. Why? Recent pronouncements from officialdom suggest that NDC foot-soldiers are about to have easier access to power corridors; the flood-gates of privilege will be opened for them to enter to dine with power nyafu-nyafu. Clearly, good legs are assets in a better Ghana.

Womb Diaries: From Pregnancies, Fibroids, Hysterectomies to Adoptions

About this time of the year 2000 or so years ago, the mother of Jesus the Christ was very very pregnant with baby Jesus. So this is a good time for womb diaries. One could be pregnant with babies or pregnant with ideas in readiness for the New Year. The womb! If only the womb could talk! Good memories! Horror memories! An unseen clock, the ‘biological clock’ ticks in the womb.

Oh the womb! Our first home! Comfort. Protection. Safety. Warmth. Nurturing. The temperature is just right – warm, cozy. The space is just the right size – for turning, for nurturing, for feasting, for easing, for comfort. It is peace that passeth all understanding; hassle-free, stress-free, no worry. The womb is the encasement, the home that carries us all from conception to birth.

It is within the uterus (Latin word for womb) that the foetus develops, where babies are formed, where life begins. The womb is at the centre of womanhood; the site of much joy – when it produces a child. But it is also the site of untold anguish. Women can have problems at the womb. For a body organ that is not seen, that hides on the inside, its power over women, over men, over families, over entire nations and humanity is forever so awesome.

All it takes is nine months and the magic of conception through the development of different body organs is accomplished, and hooray! .....a child is born – at first crying at the initial rude shock of life’s realities. Then, for days, weeks, months, it learns to laugh and even enjoys laughing. But the crying lingers on – in demand for comfort, for protection from the elements, for food, for good health and for nurturing.

But not all grown-up wombs carry foetuses. For one reason or the other, some wombs are unable to become healthy hosts of the magic of life and to take on the miracle of pregnancy. A woman might desire a baby with desperation but when it can’t happen, it won’t happen. That’s just the way it is.

According to a US department of Health and Human Services statistics, Black women are two to three times more likely to get uterine fibroids than women of other races. Ours is a land of black people so most of us Ghanaian women carry fibroids of different sizes, shapes and forms – a badge of honour of some sort for black womanhood.

Why bother about fibroids? For the most part, they are no big deal; just a bunch of benign (not cancerous) growths inside and/or on the edges of the womb. They are nothing but parasites which can cause bleeding and other symptoms, the most annoying of which is to take up some of the space for a pregnancy to grow. When the ugly mushy growths have occupied space, what does a foetus do? Stifle! Witchcraft has nothing to do with it.

Fibroids just sit there, giving pelvic pressure. Men have beer pot bellies to contend with; and women have fibroids to give a ‘pregnancy look’. This is like a fake pregnancy that never results in a baby. Fibroids and black womanhood become one.

As women age, fibroids may reduce in size; but some degenerate. When a gynaecologist informed me that my fibroids had degenerated, I lost my cool. I retorted, “I know the meaning of the word ‘degenerate’ and I don’t appreciate it being used to describe my situation.” The truth is bitter!

When fibroids give more trouble than a woman can bear, the medical solution is to have it removed. In some women, only the fibroids are removed (myomectomy). But in some cases, parts or the entire female reproductive system is yanked out (hysterectomy). So one day, a woman is a proud carrier of a womb (even if an unhealthy one); the next day, she is without a womb.

So what? A ‘wombless’ woman is still very much of a woman like all others. On the brighter side, after a radical hysterectomy, a woman is saved from uterine and ovarian cancers. Yes, behind every cloud, there is a silver lining.

It’s not the absence of a womb, but the absence of viable products of the womb in the midst of our culture that creates high drama. But, when there is a will, there is a way. Take surrogate motherhood – a rent-a-womb situation by which a couple can arrange for another woman with a healthy womb to carry their baby. See what medical science can do!

And oh, there is adoption too. That is more straightforward – the baby is already made. Adoption ensures that a woman skips the joy and/or agony of pregnancy and child delivery to give birth to a child at the heart and not from the womb! Enters stigma!

Anguish is written all over the grand effort at baby-making. Woe unto a woman whose womb does not produce. It is as if the word woman originates from the word womb. Women without children are set up to burn both ends of the candle.

The pressure on Ghanaian women to give birth to their own womb children is so great, beyond measure. The only other pressure that comes anywhere close to the pressure to have one’s own womb child is for women to marry. Get married by any means necessary. Have a child by any means necessary – foul or otherwise.

But there is no pressure on females to get an education. We forget that the womb is at the heart of Ghana’s population explosion. Within two decades, our population has gone from an estimated 12 million to the current 25 million. Without a doubt, wombs have been active, populating the earth.

Men want to have their names etched onto their offspring, children out of their groin. Mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law come on so strong, bitching their way into a woman’s bedroom. Desperation galore!

Some women who are desperate to have womb-babies fall into diabolical traps with false prophets/prophetesses, Mallams, fetish priests, herbalists and all sorts of con spiritualists waiting in the wings at the junction of the baby-making industry. Whatever is demanded of them, some vulnerable women will do: ‘Holy water’, olive oil, lizard tails, goat bones, concoctions to drink and/or bath, unholy prophetic washing of private parts and endless ‘pray-for-me’ sessions against the backdrop of suspicions of witchcraft and evil eyes – anything.

Some desperate women are raped by con spiritualists. Some go to the extent of stealing babies. Some even pay the ultimate price – death, in the pursuit of their own biological children by experimenting with anything unwholesome or wholesome that is recommended by anyone who claims to have an answer.

But we forget that apart from the womb, the heart is also an authentic site for childbirth. Childbirth is about love; about bondage between two human beings. Children who are born at the heart are no different than children born at the womb. Nature has its ways. An adopted child could even resemble the adoptive parents; motherhood can descend on you. Motherhood is not tied to the womb. \

Womb Diaries: From Pregnancies, Fibroids, Hysterectomies to Adoptions

About this time of the year 2000 or so years ago, the mother of Jesus the Christ was very very pregnant with baby Jesus. So this is a good time for womb diaries. One could be pregnant with babies or pregnant with ideas in readiness for the New Year. The womb! If only the womb could talk! Good memories! Horror memories! An unseen clock, the ‘biological clock’ ticks in the womb.

Oh the womb! Our first home! Comfort. Protection. Safety. Warmth. Nurturing. The temperature is just right – warm, cozy. The space is just the right size – for turning, for nurturing, for feasting, for easing, for comfort. It is peace that passeth all understanding; hassle-free, stress-free, no worry. The womb is the encasement, the home that carries us all from conception to birth.

It is within the uterus (Latin word for womb) that the foetus develops, where babies are formed, where life begins. The womb is at the centre of womanhood; the site of much joy – when it produces a child. But it is also the site of untold anguish. Women can have problems at the womb. For a body organ that is not seen, that hides on the inside, its power over women, over men, over families, over entire nations and humanity is forever so awesome.

All it takes is nine months and the magic of conception through the development of different body organs is accomplished, and hooray! .....a child is born – at first crying at the initial rude shock of life’s realities. Then, for days, weeks, months, it learns to laugh and even enjoys laughing. But the crying lingers on – in demand for comfort, for protection from the elements, for food, for good health and for nurturing.

But not all grown-up wombs carry foetuses. For one reason or the other, some wombs are unable to become healthy hosts of the magic of life and to take on the miracle of pregnancy. A woman might desire a baby with desperation but when it can’t happen, it won’t happen. That’s just the way it is.

According to a US department of Health and Human Services statistics, Black women are two to three times more likely to get uterine fibroids than women of other races. Ours is a land of black people so most of us Ghanaian women carry fibroids of different sizes, shapes and forms – a badge of honour of some sort for black womanhood.

Why bother about fibroids? For the most part, they are no big deal; just a bunch of benign (not cancerous) growths inside and/or on the edges of the womb. They are nothing but parasites which can cause bleeding and other symptoms, the most annoying of which is to take up some of the space for a pregnancy to grow. When the ugly mushy growths have occupied space, what does a foetus do? Stifle! Witchcraft has nothing to do with it.

Fibroids just sit there, giving pelvic pressure. Men have beer pot bellies to contend with; and women have fibroids to give a ‘pregnancy look’. This is like a fake pregnancy that never results in a baby. Fibroids and black womanhood become one.

As women age, fibroids may reduce in size; but some degenerate. When a gynaecologist informed me that my fibroids had degenerated, I lost my cool. I retorted, “I know the meaning of the word ‘degenerate’ and I don’t appreciate it being used to describe my situation.” The truth is bitter!

When fibroids give more trouble than a woman can bear, the medical solution is to have it removed. In some women, only the fibroids are removed (myomectomy). But in some cases, parts or the entire female reproductive system is yanked out (hysterectomy). So one day, a woman is a proud carrier of a womb (even if an unhealthy one); the next day, she is without a womb.

So what? A ‘wombless’ woman is still very much of a woman like all others. On the brighter side, after a radical hysterectomy, a woman is saved from uterine and ovarian cancers. Yes, behind every cloud, there is a silver lining.

It’s not the absence of a womb, but the absence of viable products of the womb in the midst of our culture that creates high drama. But, when there is a will, there is a way. Take surrogate motherhood – a rent-a-womb situation by which a couple can arrange for another woman with a healthy womb to carry their baby. See what medical science can do!

And oh, there is adoption too. That is more straightforward – the baby is already made. Adoption ensures that a woman skips the joy and/or agony of pregnancy and child delivery to give birth to a child at the heart and not from the womb! Enters stigma!

Anguish is written all over the grand effort at baby-making. Woe unto a woman whose womb does not produce. It is as if the word woman originates from the word womb. Women without children are set up to burn both ends of the candle.

The pressure on Ghanaian women to give birth to their own womb children is so great, beyond measure. The only other pressure that comes anywhere close to the pressure to have one’s own womb child is for women to marry. Get married by any means necessary. Have a child by any means necessary – foul or otherwise.

But there is no pressure on females to get an education. We forget that the womb is at the heart of Ghana’s population explosion. Within two decades, our population has gone from an estimated 12 million to the current 25 million. Without a doubt, wombs have been active, populating the earth.

Men want to have their names etched onto their offspring, children out of their groin. Mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law come on so strong, bitching their way into a woman’s bedroom. Desperation galore!

Some women who are desperate to have womb-babies fall into diabolical traps with false prophets/prophetesses, Mallams, fetish priests, herbalists and all sorts of con spiritualists waiting in the wings at the junction of the baby-making industry. Whatever is demanded of them, some vulnerable women will do: ‘Holy water’, olive oil, lizard tails, goat bones, concoctions to drink and/or bath, unholy prophetic washing of private parts and endless ‘pray-for-me’ sessions against the backdrop of suspicions of witchcraft and evil eyes – anything.

Some desperate women are raped by con spiritualists. Some go to the extent of stealing babies. Some even pay the ultimate price – death, in the pursuit of their own biological children by experimenting with anything unwholesome or wholesome that is recommended by anyone who claims to have an answer.

But we forget that apart from the womb, the heart is also an authentic site for childbirth. Childbirth is about love; about bondage between two human beings. Children who are born at the heart are no different than children born at the womb. Nature has its ways. An adopted child could even resemble the adoptive parents; motherhood can descend on you. Motherhood is not tied to the womb. \

Corporate colouring of Ghana for a little bit of cash

Last week, I responded to the national call for Ghanaians to embark on domestic tourism. Yes, I did! While I did, I saw yellow; I saw red. MTN and Vodafone have strategically painted neighbourhoods of key tourism sites I visited in the Western Region. And, we let them. Why? For a little bit of cash! The red and yellow colours are in your face – loud, bright, rude, offensive, invasive and intrusive. And, it is annoying – to say the least.

The overpowering corporate colouring clash and interfere with the intended exposure of tourism. This is a mind-game that is meant for one thing only: grab the attention of tourists by any means necessary – foul and insulting. How far will the cell-phone wars take us? Is anyone responsible for drawing the lines, or any negotiated settlement for a little bit of cash is enough for this corporate colonizing war?

Museums and Monuments Boards and the Ghana Tourist Board – is there a policy on branding tourism sites? Or it’s just a free-for-anyone corporate exploitation, for a little bit of cash?

In a grand exploitation of our human need to talk, this time, in a 21st Century fashion, mediated by new information communication technologies, companies have brought shiny colours to our streets as banners and billboards and as kiosks and table tents. And now, to our homes to envelop tourism sites? Where is this going? Into our bedrooms to ensure that we see and remember to patronise certain telephone companies? Or someday, they will colour the food we eat? Oh, P-L-E-A-S-E!

Come with me on my first tourist visit to a part of the Western Region. First stop: Nkroful, the birthplace of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, now rehabilitated and therefore, he is of blessed memory.

The disrespectful extent to which MTN has defiled the neighbourhood in yellow oil paint is troubling. Houses next door and near by have been branded by MTN. Explanation? MTN sponsored the Nkrumah Centenary celebrations. So for a little bit of cash, does that give them the right to colour his birthplace yellow? Oh, P-L-E-A-S-E!

On the right-hip side of the Nkrumah birth-home, which until recent years, was also his burial-ground, is a small aging house, the size of a two-bedroom family home. MTN simply picked up that building, dipped it in thick yellow oil paint and re-planted it on the same spot while the paint was still wet and dripping, and then ….. moved on. I learned that it used to be the palace of the chief of Nkroful, before Nkrumah built a more befitting edifice for the purpose. The new palace is next door to the little sorrowful yellow-paint-dipped house.

On the left-hip side toward the back, in close proximity to the Nkrumah birthplace, another house has also been dipped in yellow paint and shamelessly branded MTN. This house is strategically located, next to the cement-paved path to the river which gained prominence in the cock-and-bull mythical story of “Once upon a time (a time!), baby Nkrumah was strapped to Mama Nyaniba’s back. While crossing the river, Baby Nkrumah said, ‘Mama, Mama, you’ve stepped on a fish.’ Upon that bold pronouncement, Mama looked under her foot and lo and behold, there was a fish. So Baby Nkrumah made her Mama Nyaniba a fisher of fish. She promptly picked up the fish, walked a few steps from the river to her kitchen and prepared a meal for them to eat.”

More desecration: MTN has also painted a storey building almost opposite Nkrumah’s birth-house in its loud corporate colours. The entire neighbourhood of this tourism site is therefore an MTN zone.

Why should such defilement be allowed? I wonder how ‘Comrades’ react when they are rudely confronted with this corporate colonization of what should be a shrine of so-called Nkrumahists. I am not a ‘Comrade’ but I was offended by the desecration.

Next stop: the twin-city of Sekondi/Takoradi, the up-and-coming Oil City of Ghana. It is crying red and yellow tears. An increasing number of family houses, some multi-level storey-buildings, have been painted annoying MTN yellow or ridiculous Vodafone red. It appears that this onslaught on the Twin-City is part of a grand business strategy, in brisk and ruthless preparation for the expected crude oil population.

Next stop: Already feeling blinded by loud yellow and red, I continued to the 494 year-old Danish Fort St Anthony at Axim. To my utter surprise, MTN was again in my face Buildings and walls close to the fort have been painted yellow and fully branded MTN – another rude case of defilement of a more than painful symbol of our nation’s history.

This creepy phenomenon of corporate colouring of our country’ landscape is less apparent in Accra where the colouring seems to be limited to kiosks and containers. Question: Have the mobile phone companies branded all other tourism sites in other parts of our country? Who is allowing this raping insult on Ghana? Oh, for a little bit of cash!

Corporate rainbow-colouring of Ghana is taking on a frightening dimension; a disturbing dimension. The telecoms, particularly MTN and Vodafone, are not satisfied with old school marketing. They are painting entire houses too. And, they are intruding into and defiling our tourist attractions.

I detest the type of marketing that insults the dignity of a people. Our national monuments and their neighbourhoods should not be given away to any corporate entity to brand. We may be poor, we may not have much, we may be foolish enough to allow foreigners to take our gold, our diamond, and maybe soon, our oil. Long long time ago, our kith and kin were taken away to serve as slaves. But we must guard whatever is left of our national dignity as a people. Somebody should stop this rampant and senseless corporate colouring of Ghana.

Advertising, standard marketing outlets, erecting kiosks, containers, umbrellas, billboards should be enough. It is upsetting enough to see the youth chasing after moving vehicles, clothed in product vending shirts of the mobile phone companies. With impunity, the telecoms are sneezing and coughing and pissing their colours into all parts of Ghana. They are behaving like mosquitoes in a nudist colony – so excited at the unlimited access to raw flesh targets, and with sharp proboscis, bite and suck blood from the hands, legs, bottoms, neck and indeed any body part of choice.

Centuries ago, such people came. They came tall. With erect noses and thin lips, they came. They came bold. They took and took – gold, diamond, then humans as cargo. With flaring nostrils, thick lips and unsuspecting smiles, we accepted them wholly. We bore their presence like a crown of thorns and now bear their castles and forts like a cross. We gave and gave; they took and took. And we shrank back into our mud houses. No! Not again, in any shape or form.

Developed? No, developing. Becoming. It’s a word with an ING ending. This thing is a process. What a long process! ING! This matter calls for a hymn: Precious Lord, Take our hands, Lead us……

Oil City awaits crude oil

Ghana is experiencing a distinctly sweet sensation because she is expectant with oil; crude oil, that is. Father of the baby? God! The Almighty himself has graced us with a new natural resource since precious heavenly gifts of gold, diamond and timber have not won us financial independence. Oil delivery date? The second half of 2012. That makes the year of our Lord 2012 a critical year in our nation’s history, probably as important as 1957 when this country was yanked out of the clutches of colonialism.

If you haven’t heard, it is official. Ghana’s Twin-City of Sekondi-Takoradi has had a name change while you were not paying attention. It is now known as the Oil City. After the oil has been sucked from the belly of their side of the mighty Atlantic Ocean in say – 10, 20 or so years, and/or if expectations go burst, violated and unfulfilled, it will necessarily have another name change and might become known as the Former Twin Oil City!

Expectations are very high in Sekondi-Takoradi especially, and indeed, in the whole of Ghana. The expectations are dotted with remarks like, “When the oil comes” and “As we wait for the oil money”. A radio station in the twin city periodically bellows out, “This is the Oil City!”

When you hear such remarks, you can’t help but feel like love is coming your way. You feel like balm is approaching to soothe the hurt; to fill up the jagged cracks and by that, ease or even take away the pain of poverty; all of it! You even feel that you are about to be clothed, to at long last, cover the brute nakedness of want, of nothingness and of despair – for ever!

Sekondi-Takoradi’s ‘twiness’ lies in the fact that the demarcation is blur; it’s just a river, which appears to be dying away, filled, no – choked with weeds and silt. As a result, the river looks more like a wetland that serves the purpose of sucking away the Twin City’s sorrows. The river does not flow. It sits. It just stays put. It’s not pretty.

It is said that the best comes from the west, or better still, the best is in the west. The Western Region has had timber and gold forever! But – so what? What is there to show for the rich endowment of varied natural resources? The region is under-developed; especially the gold mining areas. Especially so!

A drive through Sekondi-Takoradi reveals that this city has been on a wealth road before – several yesteryears ago. The former wealth and better days show in the sheer number of aging, huge, magnificent but dilapidated multi-level storey buildings in many parts of the city. Some houses bear the marks of decay and brokenness, the sort that come from the inability to maintain such huge buildings or probably, the absence of a maintenance culture.

The Atlantic Ocean has been good to the city. During its vibrant harbor glory days, wealth flowed and left the storey buildings on the landscape as permanent evidence. Life was fast and furious. People lived hard, high and fun, made money and built beautiful houses. When the ’sea-man jolly’ glory days ended, the houses remained, without much love of paint and renovation. But now, the gods have again looked kindly on the city; this time, with crude oil proximity.

Maybe, just maybe, the Oil City people (and Ghanaians) are making a volcano out of an ant hill. After all, the oil is far out into the mighty Atlantic Ocean. All the sucking will be done in oil rigs located offshore. Or, some of it has already been sucked away? The Twin City people will therefore not see or smell the oil. Everything they will know will be what the technical people who will have the privilege of working on the rigs come back to tell.

I last visited the Twin City in October 2008. Last weekend, I visited again. One thing was obvious. Vehicular traffic! You can feel the new go-slow traffic in vehicular movement, especially after 5 pm on major roads. The implications are clear: more cars are in town. Without a doubt, these additional vehicles have been brought in by people who have been attracted by what is soon to become the oil industry.

I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the up-coming oil industry will benefit the original inhabitants of the area. With the oil being very far off and the fact that the oil will barely touch the land, could it be that those on land might be left out of the gains? A sad case of drip-drip-drip? Will the Niger Delta blues repeat itself in the Twin City?

There is nothing as annoying as when outsiders come to your land and grab and eat nyafu nyafu, and for good effect, smear their palms with what rightfully belongs to you and insultingly rub their soiled hands on your nostrils.

Currently, there are several knotty areas that are clearly not in a state of readiness for the additional population that will definitely move to the Twin City to chase after crude oil wealth. The city has no acceptable place to dispose of garbage and liquid waste. Human excreta is dumped directly into the Atlantic Ocean, untreated and by that, turning the ocean colour from blue to brown. If we can’t handle human excreta (which we understand), how could we manage oil spills (which we don’t understand) but which will occur because that is just the way of the business? Or, we’ll just pray away oil spills?

After experiencing the Oil City for two full days, I decided to go further west to ‘greet’ our first President, the fully rehabilitated Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah by heading to his birthplace, Nkroful. Reason? The Oil City is just one and a half hours drive to Nkrumah’s doorstep so since the oil will attract many investors and visitors – some idlers, some plunderers and definitely some crooks – some of whom might want to visit the historic site, I wanted to get a feel for its state of readiness for more visitors.

I was disappointed by what I saw. There were no directional signs to Nkroful from Sekondi-Takoradi. There was nothing announcing that one is approaching a place of such significance. There has been a lame effort to renovate the place but from a best practice perspective, it does not match up to, for instance, Nelson Mandela’s home near Johannesburg, which has been developed into a major tourist attraction and a money-earner.

The tour guide, an employee of the Ghana Tourist Board, is more into himself than into Nkrumah. Half of the time he took us round the small facility, he talked more about himself and what he has done to improve Nkrumah’s birth-home. I was on a pilgrimage to feel the mighty man, Nkrumah (which I did), and not to listen to the self-aggrandising blabbing of an inconsequential tour guide. Tourist Board, please replace this self-centred guy with a well-trained individual who understands what the great man stood for to guide people through the experience.

Naughty words to live by

Since January, some words and phrases have entered, re-entered and/or have been raised in status in our national lexicon. Vocabulary is dynamic. It evolves. So to ensure survival, periodically, we need to sharpen our vocabulary and become alert to and abreast with current words in the market-place. So periodically, this column will lift the curtain off some of these words.

We’ve been this road before. Just a few weeks ago, we danced to malfeasance on this page. Fact: the Fifth Child of the Fourth Republic has been busy vomiting out and giving birth to rich hot words. So today, come with me to enjoy a dance to only four of such words which are hot in current usage. The words are: Proceed, Truncate, Nod and of course, Saga. These words are of high entertainment value and/or have implications for national underdevelopment.

Proceed: This word has a mighty stature. It simply means, ‘Go-way-you’ so that ‘one of our own’ can replace you. ‘Go where?’ Who cares! Just go, far far away from what you consider to be your position. You might be in control of a public toilet at the lowest level in the armpit of Ghana or a Chief Executive of a state-owned enterprise, department, agency or a public institution of some sort. The same rule applies – “Go-way-you” – which nicely put, is, ‘Proceed.

Proceed is a twin sibling of ‘Aaba ee!’ Accra street hawkers know this painful phenomenon very well. To the target of “Proceed” who is confused, simply ask him/her, “What part of PROCEED don’t you understand?” The unwritten Fourth Republican rule is, “If you’re not ‘one of our own,’ then proceed.” It doesn’t matter what kind of appointment letter you have or the nature of your contract. Proceed means proceed. End of story!

This word is only the first part of what is usually meant to be a complete sentence as in, “Proceed on leave.” And it doesn’t mean that after your leave, you’ll return. You might proceed indefinitely, never to return. But you’ll not be told that part. You could smash into a wall, go hang, roast alive, commit suicide, be crushed by a fast moving train (the few remaining), or be run over by a drunk driver. That’s OK too. The important thing is that you proceed!

If you’re lucky, long after you have proceeded, your salary and most of your benefits might be left intact because someone forgot to ‘truncate’ your name from the pay roll. You could even start a new work life elsewhere on your ‘proceed’ status. It could be a win-win situation for the Proceed Practitioner but definitely, a lose-lose for Ghana. Proceed is one word which we must exorcise from the Fourth Republic. Ghana loses too much while people proceed.

Truncate: From no where, and for no particular reason, truncate has entered our national lexicon. For a while this year, on FM radio stations, truncate gained currency. For instance, you might hear on call-in segments of a radio discussion, “I’ll truncate your comments if you are rude,” or, “Sorry, listeners, the call has truncated.”

The synonyms for truncate include shorten, abbreviate, trim, reduce, slice and prune. The first part of the word truncate is “Trunk” as in the trunk of a tree. So therefore to truncate is to cut off, eat away at the trunk – that is of a tree, from the base. In effect, it means – to take away the life source from the very torso. It’s akin to cutting off the head of a snake instead of the mere tail of a lion. The latter is more tolerable than the former. A headless snake is no snake at all but a ‘tailless’ lion can cause a lot of havoc.

Words have their underlying psychology. They live and breathe. They influence our thinking. So whenever I hear the word truncate being tossed about with reckless abandon, I wonder if an underlying change in national consciousness is occurring. Worst of all, I wonder what is driving this apparent thinning and reduction in patience, tolerance and kindness. I’m at a point of being afraid that if pint-sized me stepped on mighty but delicate toes, I could be truncated and erased into oblivion. That’s scary stuff!

Nod: The first word which kept me laughing for months this year is ‘nod’. A few months ago, I served on a job interview panel with a mix of university graduates (1st and 2nd degrees) and Higher National Diploma holders as job candidates. I bore witness to intellectually wounded young job applicants. Ghana, the beautiful! Ghana, the blessed! God even shed his grace on us with lots and lots of resources. Crude oil is currently being stirred up in the belly of the mighty Atlantic Ocean. So why is our educational system wounding our children? But I digress!

At the interview, some of the candidates zealously used the phrase, “If/when given the nod” with some pronunciations sounding like “the knot”. So out of curiosity, I scrutinized their application letters. To my surprise, some applicants actually spelt nod as knot. They heard the expression earlier this year during parliamentary vetting of ministerial candidates as they desperately made wild promises on how they will make Ghana a better place if/when appointed – ‘given the nod’ or ‘knot’.

Bombarding our ears with one phrase that many number of times for weeks did a thing or two to some of us. It stuck, glued to the mind, and has made it into the streets as a viable personal selling phrase. Some people heard it in variegated colours, so have joined the chorus to say it accordingly, as it floats their funky boats to move an otherwise innocent phrase into a dangerous territory.

Twisted nods probably become knots that need to be loosened. This implies that before a person is given a position of responsibility, the person might be in desperate circumstances, waiting for a breakthrough. The nod therefore becomes part of the process of untwisting the knot and to realise far-fetched dreams – belly-full. After the relief, malfeasance can potentially set in.

Saga: This word existed long long before Moses Asaga was a school boy. The dictionary definition of saga that is most relevant to our usage of the word is: “a long involved story, of heroic achievement”; “a narrative”; “A history of connected books giving the history of a family, etc.”
The extent to which the word ‘saga’ has entrenched itself into our national discourse and used freely to refer to just about everything suggests that we are writing our history. Our stories are connected – a sorry narrative of our dramas.

Named after the Nixon Watergate scandal, we have our own ‘gates.’ They include: M&Jgate, Asagagate, Muntakagate, Sekyi-Hughesgate and Vodafonegate. Whilst the Asaga and Sekyi-Hughes narratives seem to have rested, M&Jgate, Muntakagate and Vodafonegate continue to burp to the surface like alcoholics burp at dawn after a binge.

The way things are going, other ‘gates’ would arrive and the filthy burping will continue. As long as malfeasance has a permanent place in our psyche, the gates will open and strange creatures will rush through the floodgates.

Who owns our national hummus?

On October 25, a certain record was set straight when the Lebanese won a war against Israel. It was a ‘boomless’ war. No bombs were dropped. No tankers were used. No shots were fired. No one died in this war just for crossing the street. No innocent child was maimed whilst playing with friends in the neighbourhood. No centuries-old exotic buildings were crushed into rubble in the split of an eye.

The war that was won is not a brick and mortar war; not a blood and flesh war. The war was over hummus, a well-known Middle Eastern dish. And the Lebanese won; they whipped Israel! So Israel, the previous proud holder of the world record, lost. Ouch!

For years, the national pride of the Lebanese had been hurt over hummus, something they consider to have originated from their culture and therefore their property. Specifically, the Lebanese claim that they invented hummus but Israel stole it. Who is to judge? The hurt is rendered deeper because Israel packages and exports hummus throughout the world as if to perpetuate the ownership claim. In places where the Jewish Diaspora abound, hummus is literally claimed as Jewish.

So last weekend, the Lebanese had the unique chance to set the record straight by setting a world record. With over 300 Lebanese chefs assembled, mixing and working hand-in-hand around a gigantic tray, they made the largest plate of hummus. What they prepared was more than two tons of hummus, a dish made from beans (chickpeas), olive oil and lemon juice. Yes, it is the same olive oil we use in pray-for-me prayer camps throughout our land.

By that award, the Lebanese broke the Guinness World Record for hummus, an enviable record originally held by Israel. It was a sweet victory. By that feat, they reclaimed ownership of what they consider to be their national birthright and pride. The fascinating aspects of this delicacy dish win included the celebrations that accompanied the event. One billboard that promoted the event read, “Hummus – 100% Lebanese.” In the emotion-filled celebration, a Lebanese official proclaimed: “The world should remember that this is our cuisine. This is our culture.”

On the surface, the hummus matter sounds so funny and inconsequential. But beneath the surface, this is a serious Lebanese national matter. We have our own hummus too. We just call them by different names.

There is the rich exotic Kente, the fabric of kings and queens. Woven intricately with lots of love, the colours are mind-blowing and to die for. When you hold a Kente cloth so closely to your chest, you can’t help but realize that the people who invented the Kente had their heads screwed on properly. But more than that, a feel of the Kente clearly unravels the creative power of the brains inside those heads. These must have been talented artists like no other. These must have been colour lovers and great designers. No less a conclusion makes any sense.

It is therefore at once shocking and annoying when you’re outside Ghana and find out that even some black people in the Diaspora, including Jamaica and America, who love the Kente and view it as a symbol of black pride, do not know that it is uniquely Ghanaian.

And then there is also the matter of Adinkra symbols. Even the most well-known of them, the gye nyame, is making it onto different artefacts and marketed in general and specialty shops, and on jewellery and assorted home décors in different parts of the world without any indication that they originated from a small West African country known as Ghana.

It is as if we have donated these designs to the world. Since we don’t need acknowledgement or need to make any money from them, we do not therefore care what anyone does with any of our collective intellectual properties.

A major leg to stand on as a grown up country is to lay a firm claim and grip over the things which without a doubt, belong to us exclusively, to our 52 year old nation state. We should claim them loudly as our own. Imagine that a grown up acquires properties like cars and houses but does not register them. Then someday, someone appears to take them away. On what basis does the person scream, “Thief! Thief!”? We should feel the same way about Adinkra symbols, Kente and other national intellectual properties.

Periodically, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) expresses hurt over the manner in which FM radio stations in particular, use GNA news without giving any credit to the source. News generated from GNA is its own hummus. GNA owns it. They appreciate it when their material is used. All they ask for is the nice mention that the news was produced by the sweat and hard work of GNA staff.

As we talk about branding Ghana, we should also identify the components of our national brand, those things which are uniquely Ghanaian and brand them also. We should name and claim them, affirming their proper place in the world’s memory.

If we do not claim what is rightfully ours, someday, Ghana would have to enter into global competitions to establish claim and national or ethnic ownership of intellectual assets including Kente, kelewele, Adinkra symbols and red red. These are the products of our national collective intellect, the nurtured intellect of our forebears, generated through painstaking thinking and creativity, and of hard work.

The way the world is changing very fast, with all this talk about the diminishing global village, when everything is closing in on us through technological advancement, if we don’t do the right thing to protect our national intellectual properties, one day one day, they’ll be stolen from us.
One day, we’ll wake up to realize, without any grain of a doubt, that the Chinese are making Kente in large quantities and exporting it world wide – for really good money. Or, that Adinkra symbols are patented as Chinese, Indian, Angolan or Jamaican. Or, it is already happening?

If you’re interested in going Middle Eastern exotic, and want to prepare hummus, here is a recipe. Note that it’s not like your typical banku and tilapia dish. This is only a snack, an appetizer; a dip for pita bread.

The preparation time for hummus is about ten minutes. The ingredients are: 1 16 oz can of chickpeas or garbanzo beans; 1/4 cup liquid from can of chickpeas; 3-5 tablespoons lemon juice (depending on taste); 1 1/2 tablespoons tahini; 2 cloves garlic, crushed; 1/2 teaspoon salt; and 2 tablespoons olive oil.

Drain chickpeas and set aside liquid from can. Combine remaining ingredients in blender or food processor. Add 1/4 cup of liquid from chickpeas. Blend for 3-5 minutes on low until thoroughly mixed and smooth. Place in serving bowl, and create a shallow well in the centre of the hummus. Add a small amount (1-2 tablespoons) of olive oil in the well. Garnish with parsley (optional). Serve immediately with fresh, warm or toasted pita bread. There are various variations of hummus. Visit http://mideastfood.about.com/od/appetizerssnacks/r/hummusbitahini.htm for additional information.

The WatchWoman Column: Gaming with Sickle Cells

The WatchWoman Column: Gaming with Sickle Cells: "www.sicklecell.md; http://blog.konotey-ahulu.com/."

Gaming with Sickle Cells

Imagine. Image. Branding Ghana. A diamond is just a piece of rock, in the rough, until it is identified as something precious and cleaned to reveal its glory. Then, viola! diamonds are then considered forever! These are the thoughts that have been consuming my thinking and talking moments during the past two weeks.

Then, an opportunity came unto my plate to interview Dr. Konotey-Ahulu. Yes, you guess right! It’s the same Dr. Konotey-Ahulu of sickle cell fame. We must not forget such priceless gems of national assets, our high-achievers here at home and in the Diaspora, in any effort to coherently brand Ghana.

I had several hours of recorded interview with him and came out with a wealth of information that will be published elsewhere. Today, I release to you in this column, a bit of the knowledge I gleaned from him.

He is 79 years old and is still at his game. Like some other medical doctors including Professors Badoe and Archampong of the Department of Surgery of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, and other national jewels elsewhere, Dr Konotey-Ahulu has retired from public service but not retired from deepening and sharing knowledge. Lesson? It should not be over until it’s over! We must live our lives fully.

While hanging around the extraordinary Konotey-Ahulu, I also learned his perspectives on the importance of learning HOW to think instead of WHAT to think. The two are very different. Learning by memorizing information ‘by heart’ cannot take us far. Rather, critical thinking that probes to find answers is the path to solving critical and extraordinary problems. But all that information will be reserved for another article.

Today, let’s play a sickle cell game with two sets of three different dices (he gave me as a Christmas gift – far ahead of time). These dice are the KANAD – an acronym for the Konotey-Ahulu Norm-Ache Dice. It is a cube, very much like a six-sided dice used in a ludu game. This is a game for two people to play – a male and a female.

The basis for these dices is that every individual carries two haemoglobin types, one from the father and the other from the mother, which are inherited at conception – either a pair of normal-normal, normal-abnormal or abnormal-abnormal. The dices in the KANAD are therefore the NORMNORM, NORMACHE and ACHEACHE.

Stay with me; don’t get confused. Remember, we’re only setting up to play a game of dice. To increase the reliability of the results of the game, the male and female could play each round of game several times to get a feel for the probability of the combination of haemoglobin types that an offspring could inherit from parents. This game is therefore strongly recommended for people who are of child-bearing age and are going through the motions of selecting a partner with the intention or likelihood of procreating – to populate the earth.

Just imagine if through a simple game of dice, you could eliminate, or at the least, reduce the chances of ending up with a sick offspring! Granted, that life is a game of chance; but we would be better off if we could play life by taking away some of the unknown factors in the chance game. Dr. Konotey-Ahulu uses the dice in genetic counselling.

Here are the results of (taflatse) four rounds I played with a friend during the week – at my dining table. The results made my eyes pop widely open. They are presented below. NORMNORM played against NORMACHE four times resulted in two NORMACHE and two NORMNORM. When we played the NORMACHE dice against the ACHEACHE dice, it resulted in two NORMACHE and two ACHEACHE.

Of course, by now, the results should be obvious for the other pairs of dice. When ACHEACHE is played against ACHEACHE, it can only result in ACHEACHE; while NORMNORM against NORMNORM will only result in NORMNORM. Similarly, when NORMNORM is played against ACHEACHE, it can only result in a NORMACHE.

NORM is the same as haemoglobin Type A; (this is different from Blood Group A) and ACHE is haemoglobin Type S. NORMNORM is the same as AA – non-sickler and therefore no ACHE! NORMACHE is the same as AS – sickle cell trait but with no ACHE! However, since NORMACHE is part A and part S and therefore a carrier of ACHE (the S cell), such individuals could potentially pass on the sickle-shaped red cell membrane to their offspring.

The plot thickens further. Some NORMACHEs are not regular AS but AC because they have a non-A haemoglobin type that is a C.

So therefore if I had been actually mating instead of just playing a game of dice at my dining table, out of the episodes of child birth, I might have given birth to eight SS or ACHEACHEs (that is sick children); eight with the sickle cell trait who will grow up to also potentially pass it on to their offspring; and eight ‘normal’ children.

Of course, this is a probability game and it very much depends on which sperm meets which egg at the august moment of pregnancy. Pregnancy is a probability game; you can never know what you gonna get! For pregnancy to occur, millions of sperms (taflatse) charge towards a woman’s ovary but only one can succeed in the mighty race to fertilize the woman’s egg. It is fascinating that even between what appears to be normal healthy people, genetic gambling can still occur.

So if a NORMACHE and a NORMACHE mate and they are fortunate that their first child is not a sickler, they should stop tempting nature because the probability of having an ACHEACHE (SS) child remains high. Besides, they also stand the chance of passing on S haemoglobin types to the next generation.

Here are some disturbing facts. Twenty percent of the population in Southern Ghana are NORMACHE (AS), that is – they have inherited a sickle cell trait from one parent and a normal haemoglobin type from the other parent. Another ten percent of Southern Ghanaians who are NORMACHE are AC. These figures are the reverse for Northern Ghana with 20 percent AC and ten percent AS.

A whopping one-third (33 percent) of Ghanaians are therefore walking around with one abnormal haemoglobin trait (either an AS or AC). All of such people are perfectly well and do not ache; neither do they know that they carry sickle cells.

Not knowing what they carry in their haemoglobin, they also do not pay attention to what haemoglobin type the partner or target partner is carrying. Then, as if in a grand game of genetic gambling, (taflatse) the mating begins, followed by grand out-dooring parties to celebrate the birth of a child who, may be, just maybe, might be an SS, a sickler who will ache and ache and ache. That is also known as chwechweechwe! No wonder ACHEACHE and chwechweechwe sound alike.

For more information as you and I learn more about sickle cells, visit these websites. www.sicklecell.md; http://blog.konotey-ahulu.com/. You could also check with the Sickle Cell Clinic at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. Knowledge is power.

United Nations calls for global ban on plastic bags. What is Ghana’s response?

On June 8 this year, the United Nations top environmental official, the Under-Secretary General/UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, called for a global ban on the use of plastic bags. Hurrah! But – how is Ghana responding to this call?

When earlier this year, the IMF announced a loan facility to cushion developing countries in the hard-hitting global credit crunch, there was clarity about Ghana’s response. Of course we did not hesitate to jump at the opportunity – over-enthusiastically.

Last March, the world media – Bloomberg, BBC and many others carried the news that the World Bank has promised to provide a US$1.2 billion of interest-free loans to Ghana over the next three years to bolster its economy. This single loan has been touted as the largest in our history – the loan that passeth all understanding. Fair enough! “Bring it on”, we might even say. “If we’re just ‘sitting our somewhere” and someone comes along to hand over sacks full of money to us, why should we say no?

Let’s juxtapose the IMF loan story with the UN call for a global ban on plastics. Since the UN made the call in early June, Ghana has not made any significant move to respond to the call.

Here is the crust of the plastic ban appeal. The report of the first study of its kind by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) entitled, Marine Litter: A Global Challenge, highlights the growing marine litter problem in seas around the world. At the lunch of the report, Steiner described marine litter as “symptomatic of a wider malaise: namely the wasteful use and persistent poor management of natural resources.”

The UNEP report cited plastics as one of the primary pollutants and greatest threats to marine life. Put bluntly, plastics are killing living creatures in the worlds’ oceans.

“Plastic – especially plastic bags and PET (i.e. plastic) bottles – is the most pervasive type of marine litter around the world, accounting for over 80 percent of all rubbish collected in several of the regional seas assessed. Plastic debris is accumulating in terrestrial and marine environments worldwide, slowly breaking down into tinier and tinier pieces that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web.”

The UN environmental boss concluded that, “Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere – there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere."

On the same day, to mark the first United Nations World Oceans Day, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to the call. He asserted that human activities are taking a "terrible toll" on the world's oceans and seas.

"Vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as corals, and important fisheries are being damaged by over-exploitation, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, destructive fishing practices, invasive alien species and marine pollution, especially from land-based sources," he said.

Clearly, the world’s super body, the United Nations, is alarmed about plastics. And we must too. Research is being conducted worldwide about the plastic menace and the findings are frightening. For instance, a study of fulmar seabirds in the North Sea found that 95 percent of them had plastic in their stomachs.

Of course, we don’t need the United Nations or any research to tell us this. We know, as a country, that we must ban non-biodegradable plastics – the ones which have over-powered our entire landscape – from backyards to town centres, from markets to police stations, from cities to villages, and from rivers to the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

Some countries have taken the initiative to ban the non-biodegradable single-use plastics, the type we over-use and toss about mindlessly. Some African countries including South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya have taken varied bold initiatives. But Ghana is silent and periodically jokes about recycling plastics.

In the first week of August, a group of scientists set out on a journey from the US state of California to examine what is known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The Patch is estimated to be about six times the size of Ghana, and growing. Here is how it formed. When plastics make it into the sea, they float and swim and dance with the sea currents. Later, after breaking down into tinier pieces, they band together in one area – and stay put. So the years of grand global plastic swimming has created a floating island in the Pacific Ocean.

Knowing comes from seeing, feeling, experiencing, awareness, familiarity, recognizing, understanding, comprehension, discerning, appreciating and grasping the essence of something. Plastic use and the resulting menace have reached that tipping point of insanity where we all know that it must be banned. So I’ll cry myself hoarse about the need to ban plastics in Ghana until I can cry no more. You must too.

Fact: Rivers and water bodies are forced to swallow down plastics. A walk by our beaches indicates that nature abhors filth. The sea, in its maturity and wisdom, vomits out plastics and lays down the heavy burden at the beaches.

I’m a ‘fishtarian’ (I eat fish and not meat.) Plastics are not meant to be consumed by any living being. But since plastics are the most common form of ocean litter (as well as litter in our rivers and water bodies), and are invariably eaten by fishes, what are the chances that the fish I eat and you eat and we eat is free of whatever chemicals are in the plastic debris eaten by fishes? I shudder to think and dwell on this matter at meal time.

So when will Ghana respond to the call of the UN for a global plastic ban? Here is my guess; in fact, my conviction. Plastics is a business. Big business! Big money! So those who make money from plastics would lobby against a ban.

How I wish I could be a fly on the walls of the Castle, at the very seat of government and in high-place ministerial offices and meetings to eavesdrop on the sheer magnitude of lobbying that goes on to thwart any dreams of banning plastics! An expressed, unbending political will of government to do otherwise to save our land and waters from plastics will not hurt.

We must have this national conversation on the way forward instead of burying our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. Living in denial about plastics will not eradicate the menace. It will only magnify the destructions of plastics and complicate the solution.

My fascination heightens when I see plastics fly around like birds. They are the flying objects of our 52 year old civilization. The difference is that plastics tend to land more often than birds. They take off suddenly on any little push by the wind, hop around for a little while and then make landing anywhere – on streets, in gutters, rivers, on roof tops, and on electrical or telephone wires. They don’t care where they land because they are helpless without the wind.

Remember, the next time you handle plastics (usually, mindlessly) that all the plastic you over-use and toss about might last forever, long long after you’ve exited (escaped?) this earth’s! You, me, we all are contributing to this menace. It is your plastics, my plastics, our plastics that fly around and choke gutters, water-ways, rivers, farmlands and litter the streets, hang on trees and electrical wires.

For women only, and the men who love us

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

This is a girlfriend chat – a conversation between one woman and other women. The men who read this should pass on the message to all the women in their lives who are 40 years of age and above. October is being celebrated throughout the world as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is a unique chance to remind all women of the importance of checking out their breasts for lumps and any other abnormalities.

What you don’t know can kill you. That explains why a biopsy is always better than an autopsy. Both seek to find out the cause of diseases. But whilst a biopsy is conducted from a problem solving mind-set, an autopsy finds out when it is too late. Similarly, early detection of breast cancer increases the chance of saving the breasts and of saving life. Statistics show that black women are twice as likely as white women to get breast cancer. Sister friend, you and I are as black as black can be so the chances of breast cancer knocking rudely at our life’s door is pretty high.

If you are the conservative type and therefore uncomfortable to use the word breast, you could simply refer to them as your ‘girls’. These girls are our precious assets and we must take very good care of them like we would take care of any other treasure. When they are ignored, they are capable of leaving misery in their wake, the kind of misery which passeth all understanding. We should therefore take care of our breasts by checking them regularly, so we can detect abnormalities. Ask your female friends and loved ones: “Have you had your girls checked lately?”

Here is a story from my childhood. I witnessed breast cancer in all its bitterness when I was just a little girl, at about ten years old. My grandfather’s younger sister was literally eaten away by the unseen monster. I didn’t know what it was by name, but knew that a disease was slowly but surely burrowing its sharp deadly teeth into my grandaunt’s chest. It felt like having an unwelcome visitor in your home, an invasion of some sort – and the visitor stays on with vengeance, until mission is accomplished – whatever it determines the mission to be.

Those days, breast cancer was a taboo subject. A respectable person would not talk about the breast in public; it was indecent language. It was as if it was more dignifying to die of breast cancer than to talk about a diseased breast! Breasts belong to the category of body parts known as ‘private.’ They are so private that they are usually shrouded in secrecy. These are mostly reproductive organs that are sources of pleasure in secrecy so one was (is?) required to shy away from them in public discourse. But fortunately, that was then; and this is now. We can and must talk about breast cancer.

My grandaunt’s story happened many yesteryears ago but because of the horrific nature of the experience, the memories are still vivid as if it happened only in a recent yesteryear. Some memories are so deep-seated that you don’t need a photograph or any form of recording to capture them into permanency. I bore witness to breast cancer at that young age and therefore froze the memory, forever.

The monster entered via one of her breast and dug in; or, it was already inside, unseen, but peaked outside to announce its unholy presence. After it had made my grandaunt’s chest its home, it dug deeper by spreading into the other breast, chewing other things in its path on the deadly but sneaky viral journey. Then came maggots, as if they were the unholy children of the mature breast cancer! The breasts shrivelled, as they should under such a trying ordeal.

Sometime during the breast cancer drama, my grandfather travelled with his kid sister to a far away place to seek herbal treatment. I recall that they returned with some concoctions which were regularly slapped onto the festering cancer crevice. As if in defiance of African medical concoctions, the cancer continued to spread, jubilantly. Besides, medical advancement to fight breast cancer was at the time, at best, rudimentary.

In the midst of all those uncertainties, the rude breast cancer trampled on the entire extended family, taking away my grandaunt’s dignity in the process. There was so much moaning and groaning, amidst grinding of teeth of biblical proportions. My grandaunt was a smallish woman. By the time she finally died, she was not left with much of a body. Pain and misery can suck away at the flesh, beyond measure.

That was then, several yesteryears ago. Those days, when diagnosed with breast cancer, you had the option of having the affected breast surgically removed on the wings of prayers that the cancer was seated only in that particular breast. Those days, there was no chemotherapy, radiotherapy or any of the other screening methods available today. When diagnosed, you were also handed a death sentence par-excellence. The cancer had the power to embark on a relentless and insidious grand journey of destruction and the attendant eventful and definite painful death.

While chemotherapy serves the purpose of searching the blood stream to find cancer cells which are running amok to destroy them, radiotherapy is often used after surgery to focus high-energy beams in the affected area to stop any cancer cells dead in their tracks.

Those days, there were no methods to screen for breast cancer. More often than not, a patient found out when it was too late and the cancer had already gained ground, at a point of no return. But today, there are screening methods – to poke and probe to find abnormal growths in the breasts that require further investigations.

This is the best time to be alive. Unlike during my grandaunt’s days, we can be our own breast health advocates. On our own, we can do breast self-examinations. The breasts are ours and we must know them intimately. With self-breast knowledge, we can tell when any changes occur. These days, there is also mammogram, an x-ray of the breast which can show abnormal growths. In short, these days, we can save our breasts but best of all, we can save our lives and prevent breast cancer – if only it is diagnosed early, in a treatable form.

But if one is diagnosed a bit late and had to lose the breast, hope is not lost. Those days, when you lost your breast to cancer, you could only manage by arranging some odd fillers as a make-belief breast to prevent a flat chest and give the appearance of femininity. But these days, there are well-engineered well-shaped state-of-the-art artificial look-alike breasts that one could simply stick into a brazier to conceal a missing breast. Not bad at all for aesthetics.

But we only win through early diagnosis. Late diagnosis hands in the same ugly death sentence that breast cancer meted out to my grandaunt many yesteryears ago. That is unnecessary these days. Not for you; not for me; not for anyone.

Nkrumah’s Show-Boyism Lives On

Is it just me or it’s normal for a song to play over and over in ones head, for no reason at all? In the past week, one particular song has been playing in my micro-sized coconut-head. If you know the tune, sing the danceable show-boy praise song. Shake your body (shoulders, legs and all your members) as you sing it repeatedly (even if you dislike the man). “Nkrumah eh, Nkrumah Show Boy. Nkrumah eh, Nkrumah Show Boy. I want to see you, Kwame Nkrumah Show Boy.”

As they say in Hollywood, “There’s no business like Show Business!” President Kwame Nkrumah was a ‘Show Boy’ from cradle to grave, from Mama Nyaniba’s back in a village in the middle of nowhere, to iconic stature as the most celebrated African of the last century and clearly, beyond.

I saw the man once. Well, not really! I was a little girl, barely above the ground in height with a Young Pioneer scarf tied around my innocent littleneck, crowded by taller older children by a village roadside. We had been lined up to wave miniature Ghana flags at the Osagyefo as his convoy zoomed past. I think I saw him. Not a chance! The ‘Show Boy’ was larger than life and I, a little inconsequential village girl, could not have seen him.

But I remember I had to recite this poem at school assembly before we did the ‘march pass’, enroute to our classrooms: “Nkrumah never dies. Nkrumah is our leader. Nkrumah never dies. Nkrumah is our Messiah.” I recited it without attaching any particular meaning to the words. Now in my adult life, I think I recited those words because Nkrumah was and is truly a ‘Show Boy’, both in life and death – yes, even in death!

Otherwise, why are we organizing the man’s 100th birthday bash 37 years after his death? After all, mourning the dead is our biggest national past-time. Celebrating a birthday is to celebrate life.

Only a ‘Show Boy’ will have his own ideology with an institution named after himself (the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute), dedicated to the study of – you guess right – Nkrumahism, an ‘ism’ like racism and sexism. The ‘Show Boy’ had many things named after him – an airport and a university, among many others.

Given the benefit of a longer stay in power, who knows – he might have named Ghana after himself! Thinking of it now, it would have made sense. Travel the world and see – till today, even in death, when you mention Ghana, this country is immediately associated with Nkrumah. The gateway into Ghana, the airport, should as well be renamed after Nkrumah because his name is synonymous with Ghana. Kotoka who?

The ‘Show Boy’ was audacious, defiant, proud, ambitious, charismatic, visionary,
eloquent and restless. With defiant restless ambition, he demanded ‘self government now’ from the British. He ignited pride and lifted up the self-esteem of the black race. He was a great public speaker, punctuating his speeches with passionate antics and high drama. He wore the Kente cloth with pride, introducing it to the world when he wore it at the United Nations.

Even in his choice of a wife, the man was a ‘Show Boy.’ For strategic reasons, he found his bride in Egypt, a ploy in his quest for African unity. No wonder Africa will participate in the Nkrumah birthday bash!

Only a ‘Show Boy’ will have his personal linguist – Okyeame Okuffo, to recite praise poems to the Osagyefo before he opened his mouth (and he was not a chief!).

Clearly, the Show Boy loved to be President and be at the centre of things. He had his effigy made and erected at different locations. He crowned himself president for life and Ghana as a one party state – and that meant the Convention Peoples Party (CPP).

Many praise songs were composed and sang repeatedly to prop up his image as a messiah, the star of Ghana and a godlike figure who could make impossible things happen. There were patriotic songs too which helped to glue together the collection of disparate tribes into a nation state and to inspire national pride and push a development agenda.

He made baldness look handsome. Women loved him and loved Fathia too although she deprived a Ghanaian woman from becoming Ghana’s first First Lady.

Buy the Show Boy’s restlessness led him to introduce several austere measures, the most notorious being the Preventive Detention Act by which individuals who appeared to be against him were imprisoned indefinitely without trial. Under Nkrumah’s rule, the fog of fear thickened and hung heavily over Ghana. Press freedom was non-existent; the media was stuck under Nkrumah’s mighty thumb.

Even as a little school girl, I felt the fear. My outspoken grandfather, Nana Ansah Israel, repeatedly warned his grandchildren to be careful what information we shared at school about his utterances. He knew that he could easily be packaged and sent off to prison on account of innocent but careless disclosures about his criticisms of Osagyefo.

As Ghana toasts and roasts Nkrumah for turning 100 (in death), we should remember the anguish of the many who suffered under his rule. Deep grudges have been nurtured for decades and as his name is resurrected, the Nkrumah story must be told with great sensitivity because there are people who bear Nkrumah’s deeply inflicted scars. Every coin is double sided!

Nkrumah is now of the status of a dead man walking, living and thriving. It is as if Ghana still needs him to revive its development. But if the Show Boy should reappear today, he would not fit in; we might lynch him! And he would lock us up, again!

Even a coup d’etat could not destroy him; at least, not permanently. After the 1966 coup, his name became an abomination. Everything about him was considered evil. His statutes, like those of Sadam Hussein, were mocked, vandalized and decapitated. Lesson: when you have power, don’t greedily self aggrandize by naming things after yourself. But then, people don’t learn lessons. Three years ago, the then Rector of GIMPA, Dr Stephen Adei, named a building on the campus after his village. Hours after his retirement, the inscription was painted over! Ouch!

Nkrumah’s overthrow was followed by several years of political autopsy to analyse what went wrong. If only we would do more political biopsies during the life of a government to identify all the ailing organs of government and find healing before we’re injured beyond healing.

One of the reasons we can’t seem to get over Nkrumah is that Ghana’s development stalled after his departure. The ‘Show Boy’ gave us the Tema Motorway and Akosombo Dam, among many other national monuments; but he owned no personal property. We have not replicated anything close to these national landmarks since we booted Nkrumah out of office 43 years ago while he was busy running his big black mouth in Hanoi over the Vietnam War.

Still, after 52 years of Independence, several Ghanaians live a bare-bone existence in stinky abject poverty, struggling to afford one meal a day. Economic independence seems to have dodged us. That is why Nkrumah is sorely missed; by some!

Counting plastic bags in a shop

Last Saturday, I gave my neighbour, Auntie Felicia (not her real name), a plastic bag counting assignment. She owns a shop, in-built into her front wall. She sells provisions (milk, Milo, sugar, soaps, margarine, PK, yoghurt, bread, etc.) and several other items in her shop. Hers is like any typical shop scattered throughout Ghana.

There are six of such shops on my street alone – the tarred portion; the supposedly privileged part where I live my supposedly privileged life. There are more of such shops beyond, where tar has never touched; might never touch in this generation.

In my estimate, there are about 100 of such shops in my general neighbourhood. I wonder if anyone is responsible for counting shops in the country, let alone, to imagine the quantities of single-use plastics that are given away in shops and markets throughout Ghana.

Join me on a brief trip through major markets in Ghana. While on the trip, imagine the quantities of single-use plastics in which traders package assorted items to their customers. Some of the major markets are: Makola, Madina, Malam Attah, Nima, Agbogbloshie, Kasoa, Kintampo, Tamale Central, Bawku, Walewale, Salaga/Sraha, Bodjoase, Asafo and Techiman markets, among several others.

Now, let’s return to Accra, to my neighbour’s shop. Here are the results of Auntie Felicia’s assignment last Saturday. From about 6:30 in the morning when she opened the shop for business until she closed about 9:30 pm, she gave out the following single-use non-biodegradable plastic bags as packaging for customers.

The smaller size black plastic bags are known as “Take Away”. She gave out 88 pieces of those. She also gave out 102 medium size black plastic bags and an additional twelve pieces of the large size black plastic bags.

Some single-use thin transparent plastics, called “Margarine Rubber”, also made the rounds from her hands. That’s the type used to package items like bread, scooped margarine (that’s probably how it got its name!) and anything sold in smaller quantities, so small that the manufacturer did not foresee or was not interested to package. Auntie Felicia gave out 21 of those margarine rubber bags last Saturday.

Another avenue for dishing out single-use plastics into the environment is the naughty ‘Pure’ water in sachets (packets). Auntie Felicia sold 77 sachets of “Pure” water last Saturday. How pure the water is, no one can tell. Yet, it is a free-for-all big business.

Petty trading overwhelms our national landscape. From ‘table-tops’ to full-blown shops built into walls of most houses which are located near roadsides; from properly designated markets with numerous market stalls to young and old hawkers who parade street shoulders. Wherever you turn, someone is selling something. Not that there is anything wrong with trading. My mother is a trader too! It is the indiscriminate and mindless use of plastics to package just about everything sold that must trouble us.

Who is counting the sheer volume of non-biodegradable single-use plastics that is produced, imported and mindlessly used in this country everyday, every week, every month and every year? Who is doing the maths to put a finger on the quantities? We must know the quantity, so we would see the urgency in putting a stop to it.

Let’s do a little multiplication of the quantity of plastics Auntie Felicia gave out last Saturday by a few thousands to figure out the quantities on the national level for one day. Conservatively speaking, let’s multiply Auntie Felicia’s single-use plastics give-aways of one day by only three thousand. This would include different plastic give-away locations like markets, shops, hawkers, petty traders and stationary roadside sellers.

That would give us a rough guesstimate (guess plus estimate) of quantity of single-use plastics in Ghana in just one day as follows: medium size plastics – 306,000 pieces, small size ‘Take-away’ plastics – 264,000, thin transparent ‘margarine’ rubber – 63,000 pieces, large-size black plastic bags – 36,000 pieces and ‘Pure Water’ sachet plastics – 231,000 pieces.

A guesstimated total single-use plastics we dump into the environment in one day is a whopping 900,000 pieces, close to one million! Note again that these figures only represent one day of single-use plastics.

As you read this, give a thought to your personal plastic bag life. Yes, we all lead plastic bag lives. Koko, kokonte, fufuu, groundnuts, roasted plantains, soup, and banku -- all come packaged to us in multiple plastic bags. Adults, the youth, children, men, women, rich and poor and everyone up and down the social ladder lead a plastic life.

A story. I entered the office of a senior government official about 8:30 in the morning. He was sucking Hausa Koko from a thin transparent plastic. Yes, a grown man was sucking koko like a child sucking the mother’s breast. Oddly, he found nothing wrong with it. The nastiest thing I saw recently was a group of school-going children in uniform sucking banku and soup from plastics.

These are bizarre examples of our mindless use of plastics. After the sucking, we just toss the plastic into the environment, never thinking of what happens to plastics when they leave our hands after a single use.

Too many things are packaged in single-use plastics. Very often, things are packaged in multiple plastics, one inside the other and inside yet another. And when we throw garbage away, we do so with the multiple plastics confusingly interwoven in our garbage. Plastics therefore are literally inseparable from other garbage because plastics have become the foundation – yea, the character of our garbage.

In the past week, a sanitation company that is trying to enter the Ghanaian market staged a demonstration of their products. The company is named Bola Solutions. What an interesting name! Yes, Ghana needs desperate solutions to its bola problems. Before Independence in 1957, our solid waste was incinerated so it was nicknamed ‘bola’ after the hard-to-pronounce word, broiler. Those days, garbage was simple and could easily be burnt and reduced to ashes.

But now, our bola is very complicated, made more complex with scientific and technological inventions like plastics, computers and cans which are tough and do not readily lend themselves to incineration and to easy solutions.

Bola Solutions treated a container-full of garbage with the application of enzymes and after one week, we re-visited to observe its new status. In one week, much of the bola of old (left over food, etc.) had quenched. But a heap of bola was left untouched. It comprised of the items which are at the heart of our waste management quagmire: plastics, lorry tyres, electronic parts and cans.

Poor people’s bola is too complicated. As a student in a previous life elsewhere, I benefited from picking good stuff (TV, desk, chair) from privileged people’s bola. But poor people’s bola is true bola, difficult to find much that is usable. It’s rendered in worst condition because we don’t segregate; everything is jumbled together to form one big ugly filthy mess of garbage.

I shudder to imagine what Ghana would become five to ten years from now if we do not ban non-biodegradable plastics. Every day, every week, every month, every year, we pile up unknown quantities of plastics which are not decomposing. We are irresponsibly committing a collective national act of insanity.

Counting plastic bags in a shop

Last Saturday, I gave my neighbour, Auntie Felicia (not her real name), a plastic bag counting assignment. She owns a shop, in-built into her front wall. She sells provisions (milk, Milo, sugar, soaps, margarine, PK, yoghurt, bread, etc.) and several other items in her shop. Hers is like any typical shop scattered throughout Ghana.

There are six of such shops on my street alone – the tarred portion; the supposedly privileged part where I live my supposedly privileged life. There are more of such shops beyond, where tar has never touched; might never touch in this generation.

In my estimate, there are about 100 of such shops in my general neighbourhood. I wonder if anyone is responsible for counting shops in the country, let alone, to imagine the quantities of single-use plastics that are given away in shops and markets throughout Ghana.

Join me on a brief trip through major markets in Ghana. While on the trip, imagine the quantities of single-use plastics in which traders package assorted items to their customers. Some of the major markets are: Makola, Madina, Malam Attah, Nima, Agbogbloshie, Kasoa, Kintampo, Tamale Central, Bawku, Walewale, Salaga/Sraha, Bodjoase, Asafo and Techiman markets, among several others.

Now, let’s return to Accra, to my neighbour’s shop. Here are the results of Auntie Felicia’s assignment last Saturday. From about 6:30 in the morning when she opened the shop for business until she closed about 9:30 pm, she gave out the following single-use non-biodegradable plastic bags as packaging for customers.

The smaller size black plastic bags are known as “Take Away”. She gave out 88 pieces of those. She also gave out 102 medium size black plastic bags and an additional twelve pieces of the large size black plastic bags.

Some single-use thin transparent plastics, called “Margarine Rubber”, also made the rounds from her hands. That’s the type used to package items like bread, scooped margarine (that’s probably how it got its name!) and anything sold in smaller quantities, so small that the manufacturer did not foresee or was not interested to package. Auntie Felicia gave out 21 of those margarine rubber bags last Saturday.

Another avenue for dishing out single-use plastics into the environment is the naughty ‘Pure’ water in sachets (packets). Auntie Felicia sold 77 sachets of “Pure” water last Saturday. How pure the water is, no one can tell. Yet, it is a free-for-all big business.

Petty trading overwhelms our national landscape. From ‘table-tops’ to full-blown shops built into walls of most houses which are located near roadsides; from properly designated markets with numerous market stalls to young and old hawkers who parade street shoulders. Wherever you turn, someone is selling something. Not that there is anything wrong with trading. My mother is a trader too! It is the indiscriminate and mindless use of plastics to package just about everything sold that must trouble us.

Who is counting the sheer volume of non-biodegradable single-use plastics that is produced, imported and mindlessly used in this country everyday, every week, every month and every year? Who is doing the maths to put a finger on the quantities? We must know the quantity, so we would see the urgency in putting a stop to it.

Let’s do a little multiplication of the quantity of plastics Auntie Felicia gave out last Saturday by a few thousands to figure out the quantities on the national level for one day. Conservatively speaking, let’s multiply Auntie Felicia’s single-use plastics give-aways of one day by only three thousand. This would include different plastic give-away locations like markets, shops, hawkers, petty traders and stationary roadside sellers.

That would give us a rough guesstimate (guess plus estimate) of quantity of single-use plastics in Ghana in just one day as follows: medium size plastics – 306,000 pieces, small size ‘Take-away’ plastics – 264,000, thin transparent ‘margarine’ rubber – 63,000 pieces, large-size black plastic bags – 36,000 pieces and ‘Pure Water’ sachet plastics – 231,000 pieces.

A guesstimated total single-use plastics we dump into the environment in one day is a whopping 900,000 pieces, close to one million! Note again that these figures only represent one day of single-use plastics.

As you read this, give a thought to your personal plastic bag life. Yes, we all lead plastic bag lives. Koko, kokonte, fufuu, groundnuts, roasted plantains, soup, and banku -- all come packaged to us in multiple plastic bags. Adults, the youth, children, men, women, rich and poor and everyone up and down the social ladder lead a plastic life.

A story. I entered the office of a senior government official about 8:30 in the morning. He was sucking Hausa Koko from a thin transparent plastic. Yes, a grown man was sucking koko like a child sucking the mother’s breast. Oddly, he found nothing wrong with it. The nastiest thing I saw recently was a group of school-going children in uniform sucking banku and soup from plastics.

These are bizarre examples of our mindless use of plastics. After the sucking, we just toss the plastic into the environment, never thinking of what happens to plastics when they leave our hands after a single use.

Too many things are packaged in single-use plastics. Very often, things are packaged in multiple plastics, one inside the other and inside yet another. And when we throw garbage away, we do so with the multiple plastics confusingly interwoven in our garbage. Plastics therefore are literally inseparable from other garbage because plastics have become the foundation – yea, the character of our garbage.

In the past week, a sanitation company that is trying to enter the Ghanaian market staged a demonstration of their products. The company is named Bola Solutions. What an interesting name! Yes, Ghana needs desperate solutions to its bola problems. Before Independence in 1957, our solid waste was incinerated so it was nicknamed ‘bola’ after the hard-to-pronounce word, broiler. Those days, garbage was simple and could easily be burnt and reduced to ashes.

But now, our bola is very complicated, made more complex with scientific and technological inventions like plastics, computers and cans which are tough and do not readily lend themselves to incineration and to easy solutions.

Bola Solutions treated a container-full of garbage with the application of enzymes and after one week, we re-visited to observe its new status. In one week, much of the bola of old (left over food, etc.) had quenched. But a heap of bola was left untouched. It comprised of the items which are at the heart of our waste management quagmire: plastics, lorry tyres, electronic parts and cans.

Poor people’s bola is too complicated. As a student in a previous life elsewhere, I benefited from picking good stuff (TV, desk, chair) from privileged people’s bola. But poor people’s bola is true bola, difficult to find much that is usable. It’s rendered in worst condition because we don’t segregate; everything is jumbled together to form one big ugly filthy mess of garbage.

I shudder to imagine what Ghana would become five to ten years from now if we do not ban non-biodegradable plastics. Every day, every week, every month, every year, we pile up unknown quantities of plastics which are not decomposing. We are irresponsibly committing a collective national act of insanity.