Fact: I came from nothing. Whenever I pinch myself, I surface back at my roots – sleepy villages which have remained in a state of life-support since Abraham was a school boy and Sarah was a little virgin girl who found herself betrothed to the guy who later became ‘Father Abraham’. Real progress has passed my people by. The saddest is my initial root, Ocansey Kope. Those days, when we had to go, we went at the then pristine beach or under coconut trees with little black pigs scuttling around impatiently, grunting – to pick up.
Things have not changed much beyond the arrival of Christianity that clashes fiercely with the calico-clothed fetish shrine. Oh, the beach is filthy now with ‘civilization’ – ugly multi-coloured plastic waste that the Atlantic Ocean vomits out which have rudely interlocked the white sands. Dear reader, you know your own roots. Pinch yourself right now and your deep repressed memories will return – fast and furious. Oh, not good, eh?
With our roots as backdrop, let’s go shopping with sixty million Ghana cedis. Yes, sixty million! Ocansey Kope is on the Ada coastline, frozen in time 52 years after Independence. Growing up, with cassava-stick legs, I fetched water from a communal well at the village entrance. Today, I’m privileged, still have cassava-stick legs, but live in Accra and fetch water from a neighbourhood well.
A strange development in the Kope is the number of young people who just sit by the roadside, absent-mindedly, waiting – and watching vehicles that pass by. Waiting for what? How about your own roots? Education came to me by chance; no, by God’s grace! Those I left behind are over-aged now; shrivelled, with teeth lost and/or rotten. Hope passed them by long ago.
Let’s go shopping with your memories refreshed. What would you do with sixty million Ghana cedis (or dollars) if you were asked? In the past few weeks, sixty million Ghana cedis have been brandied about with reckless abandon as if it was a child’s play. We’re told that the magic amount of sixty million and some more was spent in celebrating Ghana@50. What a party! And the conversion of Nkrumah’s Flagstaff House into a Golden Jubilee House (Palace) is also estimated to have cost another sixty million Ghana cedis, and some more – still counting.
In short, when Ghana turned half a century old, we went crazy on a spending spree despite the reality of Bukom, Ocansey Kope, Obosomase, Keta, Agona Bisease, Kekam, Oppong Valley, Walewale and Tegbi.
Try this: go on an imaginary shopping spree with the golden sixty million Ghana cedis. Have fun doing it. So, what would you buy if you were to lose your mind over 60 million dough? What silly things would you do with that kind of money? Supposing you were a President or an important minister of something something something, what would you do with the nation’s money if it was entrusted to you?
I’m crazy about shoes, especially, high-heeled shoes. I’m vertically challenged, not much above the ground but by means of cheap high-heeled shoes, I can easily gain two or more inches upwards. So supposing I take a bag with 60 million Ghana cedis only and hit the road on a shopping spree. I’ll travel the world to buy shoes of different colours, shapes and tastes. I’ll shop until I drop. I’ll be tempted to take friends and relatives along to help me blow the big money.
You might call me irresponsible or think I’ve lost my little mind. You’ll wonder: don’t I see all the children who need to go to school? My bad-side might insensitively respond – “They are not my children so why should I care?” And you’ll boom back at me, “You despicable little woman!” And I’ll respond, “Didn’t our leaders see all those children by the roadside when they went shopping with our sixty million Ghana cedis?”
Two things drive people to go on shopping sprees: belly-full or folly. For instance, it is said that when a country’s economy is on a downward spiral, lipstick and alcohol sales go up. That suggests that women resort to buying and using make-up to feel good while men hit the bottles to forget their financial woes. Clearly, Ghana’s expenditure at age 50 was not a matter of belly-full. It sounds more like folly in the absence of pinching ourselves to remember the reality of our situation.
Another school of thought is that we shouldn’t wait to solve our funky poverty problems before embarking on mega projects. This sounds more like, "The chicken and the egg, which came first?" dilemma. But if a mega project is estimated to cost 20 million Ghana cedis and it ends up costing three/four/five times the amount, one can’t help but suspect if that astronomical expenditure was not the motive to start with. Are our leaders forgetful of their roots, have they misplaced our priorities, or they have undiagnosed insecurities and are perfect candidates for psychological analysis?
Call me backward because of my low-cost roots. I just don’t understand how we don’t feel shame that Ghana stands 51st only ahead of Chad, Niger and Eritrea on the continent when it comes to sanitation but yet, we find nothing wrong with building a presidential palace with an open-ended expenditure. Why 50 plus years ago, I used to defecate at the beach and under coconut trees but yet, in the Ghanaian Times of February 2, 2009, it is reported that around-the-clock open defecation occurs in the neighbourhood of Kwame Nkrumah Circle (Odaw River) in Accra?
The Golden Jubilee House and Ghana@50 were ‘nice’ projects. Many well-placed people I spoke to during the period justified them. Some reasons were: The country needed to revive its soul to feel good, and then for bonus, upgrade its international image. That sounds like a sorry case of mid-life crisis. Now, what? How good do we feel now? I feel horrible after the big birthday bash. I’m suffering from a hang-over that won’t go away. Don’t you? Lesson: feeling good temporarily is sheer folly.
Here is my prudent shopping list which I trust can have a more lasting feel-good experience and a real common-good advantage. This is a shopping-list compiled on an empty stomach, not belly-full. They include schools, hospitals and sanitation facilities. Reason: after almost 52 years, we still have ‘pretence schools’ with children who sit or lie under trees and pretend to study. Many study ICT without computers and with teachers who know nothing beyond a mouse.
Our hospitals are death traps, waiting with gaping mouths to swallow us. They are ill-equipped with some without basic facilities. We rather pretend that with a National Health Insurance Scheme that is grounded on an empty promise of a low-cost health system, all is well. In computer parlance, we forget “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO). Our glorious leaders therefore rush abroad to take care of their belly-full ailments. Some die and are returned as cargo for grand funerals. Damn!
Meanwhile, Ghana’s average life-expectancy continues to decrease sharply but we’ll rather not focus on that. We gleefully engaged in big lies. Having a big senseless national 50th birthday party and building gargantuan prestige projects are beyond folly. Well, there’s probably something about getting ‘up there’ in higher public office that makes one get big ideas, so big that one’s memory is fogged. Go figure!
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
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