I slip a lot – slips of tongue, that is! Carpenters slip. Comedians slip. Labourers slip. Lawyers slip. Medical Doctors slip. Painters slip. Pastors slip. Plumbers slip. Politicians slip. Presidents slip. Professors slip. Secretaries slip. Tailors/Seamstresses slip. Teachers slip too. So, we all slip. Big deal! But when a Professor who is also a President slips on an issue that is biting the world where it matters the most, then it raises matters onto the level of high-octane slippage.
I’m a lover of a good-old ding-dong humour because life is short and we should not take ourselves too seriously. So when a comical audio clip of professorial presidential character which also doubles up as remix for mobile phone ring-tones came along recently, I couldn’t resist hugging it. I’ve saved it on my phone and periodically, when I’m low, I play-back to listen to my Daddy the President as he fumbled and slipped over the not-so-complex word, economy. In his juicy presidential mouth, the word degenerated into ecomeny, repeatedly. Why, I don’t know.
I confess that I do listen to the clip with warm laughter-tears dripping from my eyes, throat-suckling, cackling and chuckling, with laughter seeping out my very pores. Result? Every time I listen to the tape, I end up with rib-cake slum-dunk laughter. President Mills is jamming funny.
Yet, I’ve no malice whatsoever toward my President. But admittedly, the recording of his slip of tongue and his unstoppable comedy of errors when delivering his 1st State of the Nation Address are so hilarious that it should constitute a crime if we are criticized for laughing at the raw jokes. My children and grandchildren laugh at me endlessly over my numerous slips and fumbles. So why can’t I laugh at my President?
Yet, a pious school of thought that is making the rounds maintains that laughing at the ‘ecomeny’ slip of President Mills is disrespectful. The reason given is that our African culture demands that we revere our leaders. Revere, as in worship? Why? That school of thought implies that the President is King. But the leader of a democracy is not and should not be perceived as King of the land. He is only a leader because the people said so through the combined-force of beautiful, crooked and ugly ink-stained thumbs. No big deal!
Such a school of thought also implies that we should be robbed of our right to laughter. When humour and one’s right to laugh freely is taken away, freedom is lost forever. We might be damned broke, struggling to make ends meet, wondering how to work the magic of living on meagre means. But we should never lose our right to laugh – even at our President. Laughter is decisively therapeutic in a period of global economic crunch that is decisively on our doorstep.
The most ridiculous school of thought is that those who consider the President’s ecomeny slip as hilarious are definitely anti-government and anti-NDC. In our highly polemic Third World African politics, by extrapolation, this also translates to being anti-country and anti-Ghana. Disturbingly, nowadays, one is either considered NPP or NDC, with no room whatsoever for a middle-ground. Even laughter appears to have political colouring. This is sickening, beyond measure.
Such an attitude leaves people (including me), who genuinely cannot find any compelling reason(s) to align to either the NPP or NDC, hanging precariously in the balance. Undoubtedly, such people are in love with Ghana, which is the most important entity in this quagmire.
In such a time, the President deserves appreciation for providing perfect and rich bloopers for laughter. He is in clear competition with KSM as far as stand-up comedy goes. So long as we can laugh about something, we would be unlikely to cry over it. The global economic downturn is a serious crying matter but flipping it into President Mills’ funny ecomeny bloopers soften the harsh hit.
And oh, he has had other not-so-proud and not-so-glorious fumbling moments in his four month presidency. Take the case of his swearing in into office at the Independence Square on January 7. I held my breath, on the wings of serious prayers, when he nearly tripped over his ceremonial Kente. On the sheer strength of my positive goodwill, he did not fall. Just imagine ….. if he had tripped …… and fallen …flat on his face ….. on that day……. Eh!! Tofiakwa!
Then came the actual swearing in, when he made so many errors in repeating the oath of office! That should have qualified him for a national award. But over time, we have shelved that matter away. But the ecomeny slippage must stay for the fun of it. It appears that our President has verbal bloopers down to the level of an art form. Like me!
Here are a few reasons to laugh at President Mills’ fumbles over the ‘ecomeny’ being resilient. His slips take part of the painful crunch out of the global credit crunch. His bloopers are raw comic relief to lighten the burden of the tension of the global economic downturn. His slips put such painful matters into the safe realm of humour.
But most especially, his slips humanize him. Here is a man who is touted to be ‘a whole professor’, most learned, most knowledgeable; all-knowing, all-that, and more. In our part of the world, title holders are held up highly to the clouds and are the equivalence of our super-humans. In our neo-colonialist country where the elite, our new colonial masters, wield so much power and clamour to be decorated with titles even when they don’t deserve it and by that, raise their shoulders so high expecting the lowly to worship them.
In our society, Pastors, the so-called men-of-God also wield combine-titles of Doctor-Doctor Apostle-Bishop Prophet-Messiah Arch-Bishop – and pretend that with such, they become better qualified to ferry sinners across to heaven, right into the cushy bosom of God.
The most humorous exploitation of our country’s unquestioning love for titles and for senseless adoration is occurring everyday at the grass-roots. For very good effect, all sorts of political and quasi-political characters in the nooks and cronies of the land wield titles of Honourable. With near stupid adoration, individuals who have ever paraded the offices of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies throughout this land are forever referred to by the titles Honourable. Sheepishly, they encourage the use of the title long long after their terms of office have expired. Some die with the titles, taking them far into the grave. This is abusive.
Here is free advice to the Anyidoho-Ayariga Disparate Communications Company Inc. (AADCC). Once a year, organize a light-hearted event that is not a press conference, but a fun time at which the President simply chats and jokes about issues. Specifically, he should select his own bloopers and slippages committed during the year under review and make light of them.
He should even pick on errors committed by Anyidoho/Ayariga and his ministers and ridicule them openly. Of course, they should invite the media. On the invitation list, there should be no victimization by visibly eliminating names of ‘enemy’ journalists. Ghana is for all of us. We are all pro-Ghana even if some are decisively knuckle-headed crack-head rock-bottom anti-NDC and anti-NPP folks. But that’s OK too. That’s the beauty of democracy.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Go mental and see
The ground rule for reading this article is to read it out loud, in sober reflection. Allow the message to sink in and then, go mad at the ‘authorities’. But don’t stay mad for too long though. Rather, use whatever strategies that will evolve from positive energy to help effect change on the national level.
Wherever you read my name, insert your own name because this matter is not about me. It’s about all of us. Imagine that I, Doris Yaa Dartey (insert your name) lose my mind – go mental. Many things can drive someone to the edge. My/your heart gets entangled in an amorous relational break-up. I/you lose someone very dear through death and can’t get over the trauma. I/you inherited the mental break-down genes in my/your essential DNA.
Then, I/you begin to unravel. My/your foundation shake. I/you might behave funny and talk to my/yourself. I/you might enter the dark place of life where I/you might hear loud giggling or angry quarrelling in the head and so set out to outwardly behave accordingly in response to the infirmities of the mind. Fact: If I/you go mental, we would receive the hyena treatment of personal isolation from family/friends and fearful avoidance by motorists and onlookers some of who will throw things, insults and mockery at us.
I/you might set off and go hey-wire. Act 1: The stripping to lose my/your aesthetic self and leave things bare to show strange oddities. My/your (if you’re a woman) mighty headgear will drop off, and nappy African hair will become nappier. My eye-glasses which are like permanent furniture on my face will be lost. Then, kaba and brazier will be abandoned and I/you will walk around with tired old sorry mangled hanging breasts. Imagine! If the stripping continues, my/your slit and dross will drop off too and my/your low-lying parts will, in unison, join the high-rise essential body parts to just hang – in reckless abandon.
Act 2: I/you might become a great collector of things and wear as much clothing as possible in the tropical heat. People will gossip about me/you guessing why I/you went mental. Periodically, those who know me/you will make me/you the centre-piece of conversation. The chit chat about me/you will go something like this: “Eh, have you heard? That fine man/woman has gone mad.” “Who did this to him/her?” “Hmm, this life!” Such stream of conversation will soon end and the matter and me/you will rest – forgotten about.
I/you will lose dignity and become simple objects. Losing dignity is tantamount to losing humanity to live on the fringes of society where no one really cares. When human beings are counted, I/you will be left out. Who needs to consider me/you in a population census or in family meetings? After all, I/you will be nothing but a caste away from society. Periodically, someone will extend compassion to me/you. But for the most part, I/you will become the object of fear. I/you will even lose my/your name and simply become, ‘’the mad one’’.
After a while, when no one sees me/you in the areas where I/you were often spotted, they will forget all about me/you and probably assume that I/you simply went away – died. If that happens, I/you will be unmourned by loved ones because my/your very existence was such a deep embarrassment so death constitutes a blessedly good riddance. My/your grave will be unmarked. In our culture, our attitude toward mental ailment can at best be described as medieval. A mentally-ill person is considered a non-person although before going mental, he/she had lovers. We forget that there is a thin line between a person and a non-person. All it takes is a little trigger to cross over.
Worst of all, we have a medieval horror we shamelessly refer to as a mental health system. Undoubtedly, we have a national crisis in psychiatric treatment and care. Here are a few sad, sorry sordid facts about the state of psychiatric resources and care in Ghana.
(1) Our approach toward psychiatric care is institutionalization. This means that if you go mental, you must necessarily be locked-up, like a criminal, away from society and loved ones. This approach is antiquated and uncivilized. This inhumane psychiatric care model has long evolved globally to that of community care that incorporates mental sickness into overall health care. The institutionalization approach comes from a place of fear of the other, and a pretence that we who have not gone mental (yet!) are better than those who, through no fault of theirs, have.
(2) The human resource situation with regard to psychiatric care should frighten every Ghanaian. Currently, 52 year-old Ghana has five (5) psychiatric doctors in active practice within the Ghana Health Service system. Two of them teach at Korle Bu’s Ghana Medical School, leaving three in true active practice. Eleven others are tired and retired but yet, remain in practice as and when they can. Nationally, there are 600 psychiatric nurses. A simple calculation paints the grim picture with clarity.
Of our estimated 23 million population, there is one out of the five psychiatric doctors for every 4.6 million people and one psychiatric nurse for every 38,333 people. The picture is no better for the other core psychiatric personnel. For instance, there is no psychiatric occupational therapist in Ghana. This means, in very simple terms, that once I/you go mental, there are no plans to rehabilitate me/you.
How about facilities? There are three psychiatric hospitals, all located at the Atlantic coastline – two in Accra and one in Ankaful – as if it’s only in southern Ghana that one can go mental! If anyone should lose it anywhere else in Ghana, the choices include taking off into the bushes, climb trees or get onto the highway to begin a long arduous walk toward the Atlantic Ocean either naked or over-clothed. And, these three facilities are despicable places. Go mental and see!
Enduring questions: To what extent does the Ministry of Health appreciate the importance of mental health care for Ghanaians? How does the Ministry justify the woefully inadequate personnel, antiquated facilities and the fixation on the outmoded paradigm of institutionalizing psychiatric patients?
As a people, we suffer deeply from disease stigma. But when it comes to psychiatric ailment, stigmatization flies through the roof. The stigma even extends to psychiatric personnel who are objects of ridicule. Any wonder psychiatric health care is not attracting new personnel?
This is a grim picture of mental health care in Ghana. You think you’re inadequate now and have many problems? Wait until you go mental and enter the twilight zone. We must therefore move this matter from gutter-front humour into government house to be wrapped tightly in progressive policy and big forward-looking actions.
Three or so years ago in The Gambia, an NGO is said to have sued the government for abusing the human rights of mentally sick people by institutionalizing them in congested hospitals. The NGO won. The almighty pus-for-a-brain government was embarrassed. Result? Some changes were effected. (I’m researching this case further). In Ghana, a Mental Health Bill has been crawling on the corridors of power since 2006. This bill must become law as a matter of urgency before I/you go mental! As a people, we must speak to and deal with this repulsive national truth.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
Wherever you read my name, insert your own name because this matter is not about me. It’s about all of us. Imagine that I, Doris Yaa Dartey (insert your name) lose my mind – go mental. Many things can drive someone to the edge. My/your heart gets entangled in an amorous relational break-up. I/you lose someone very dear through death and can’t get over the trauma. I/you inherited the mental break-down genes in my/your essential DNA.
Then, I/you begin to unravel. My/your foundation shake. I/you might behave funny and talk to my/yourself. I/you might enter the dark place of life where I/you might hear loud giggling or angry quarrelling in the head and so set out to outwardly behave accordingly in response to the infirmities of the mind. Fact: If I/you go mental, we would receive the hyena treatment of personal isolation from family/friends and fearful avoidance by motorists and onlookers some of who will throw things, insults and mockery at us.
I/you might set off and go hey-wire. Act 1: The stripping to lose my/your aesthetic self and leave things bare to show strange oddities. My/your (if you’re a woman) mighty headgear will drop off, and nappy African hair will become nappier. My eye-glasses which are like permanent furniture on my face will be lost. Then, kaba and brazier will be abandoned and I/you will walk around with tired old sorry mangled hanging breasts. Imagine! If the stripping continues, my/your slit and dross will drop off too and my/your low-lying parts will, in unison, join the high-rise essential body parts to just hang – in reckless abandon.
Act 2: I/you might become a great collector of things and wear as much clothing as possible in the tropical heat. People will gossip about me/you guessing why I/you went mental. Periodically, those who know me/you will make me/you the centre-piece of conversation. The chit chat about me/you will go something like this: “Eh, have you heard? That fine man/woman has gone mad.” “Who did this to him/her?” “Hmm, this life!” Such stream of conversation will soon end and the matter and me/you will rest – forgotten about.
I/you will lose dignity and become simple objects. Losing dignity is tantamount to losing humanity to live on the fringes of society where no one really cares. When human beings are counted, I/you will be left out. Who needs to consider me/you in a population census or in family meetings? After all, I/you will be nothing but a caste away from society. Periodically, someone will extend compassion to me/you. But for the most part, I/you will become the object of fear. I/you will even lose my/your name and simply become, ‘’the mad one’’.
After a while, when no one sees me/you in the areas where I/you were often spotted, they will forget all about me/you and probably assume that I/you simply went away – died. If that happens, I/you will be unmourned by loved ones because my/your very existence was such a deep embarrassment so death constitutes a blessedly good riddance. My/your grave will be unmarked. In our culture, our attitude toward mental ailment can at best be described as medieval. A mentally-ill person is considered a non-person although before going mental, he/she had lovers. We forget that there is a thin line between a person and a non-person. All it takes is a little trigger to cross over.
Worst of all, we have a medieval horror we shamelessly refer to as a mental health system. Undoubtedly, we have a national crisis in psychiatric treatment and care. Here are a few sad, sorry sordid facts about the state of psychiatric resources and care in Ghana.
(1) Our approach toward psychiatric care is institutionalization. This means that if you go mental, you must necessarily be locked-up, like a criminal, away from society and loved ones. This approach is antiquated and uncivilized. This inhumane psychiatric care model has long evolved globally to that of community care that incorporates mental sickness into overall health care. The institutionalization approach comes from a place of fear of the other, and a pretence that we who have not gone mental (yet!) are better than those who, through no fault of theirs, have.
(2) The human resource situation with regard to psychiatric care should frighten every Ghanaian. Currently, 52 year-old Ghana has five (5) psychiatric doctors in active practice within the Ghana Health Service system. Two of them teach at Korle Bu’s Ghana Medical School, leaving three in true active practice. Eleven others are tired and retired but yet, remain in practice as and when they can. Nationally, there are 600 psychiatric nurses. A simple calculation paints the grim picture with clarity.
Of our estimated 23 million population, there is one out of the five psychiatric doctors for every 4.6 million people and one psychiatric nurse for every 38,333 people. The picture is no better for the other core psychiatric personnel. For instance, there is no psychiatric occupational therapist in Ghana. This means, in very simple terms, that once I/you go mental, there are no plans to rehabilitate me/you.
How about facilities? There are three psychiatric hospitals, all located at the Atlantic coastline – two in Accra and one in Ankaful – as if it’s only in southern Ghana that one can go mental! If anyone should lose it anywhere else in Ghana, the choices include taking off into the bushes, climb trees or get onto the highway to begin a long arduous walk toward the Atlantic Ocean either naked or over-clothed. And, these three facilities are despicable places. Go mental and see!
Enduring questions: To what extent does the Ministry of Health appreciate the importance of mental health care for Ghanaians? How does the Ministry justify the woefully inadequate personnel, antiquated facilities and the fixation on the outmoded paradigm of institutionalizing psychiatric patients?
As a people, we suffer deeply from disease stigma. But when it comes to psychiatric ailment, stigmatization flies through the roof. The stigma even extends to psychiatric personnel who are objects of ridicule. Any wonder psychiatric health care is not attracting new personnel?
This is a grim picture of mental health care in Ghana. You think you’re inadequate now and have many problems? Wait until you go mental and enter the twilight zone. We must therefore move this matter from gutter-front humour into government house to be wrapped tightly in progressive policy and big forward-looking actions.
Three or so years ago in The Gambia, an NGO is said to have sued the government for abusing the human rights of mentally sick people by institutionalizing them in congested hospitals. The NGO won. The almighty pus-for-a-brain government was embarrassed. Result? Some changes were effected. (I’m researching this case further). In Ghana, a Mental Health Bill has been crawling on the corridors of power since 2006. This bill must become law as a matter of urgency before I/you go mental! As a people, we must speak to and deal with this repulsive national truth.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
Go mental and see
The ground rule for reading this article is to read it out loud, in sober reflection. Allow the message to sink in and then, go mad at the ‘authorities’. But don’t stay mad for too long though. Rather, use whatever strategies that will evolve from positive energy to help effect change on the national level.
Wherever you read my name, insert your own name because this matter is not about me. It’s about all of us. Imagine that I, Doris Yaa Dartey (insert your name) lose my mind – go mental. Many things can drive someone to the edge. My/your heart gets entangled in an amorous relational break-up. I/you lose someone very dear through death and can’t get over the trauma. I/you inherited the mental break-down genes in my/your essential DNA.
Then, I/you begin to unravel. My/your foundation shake. I/you might behave funny and talk to my/yourself. I/you might enter the dark place of life where I/you might hear loud giggling or angry quarrelling in the head and so set out to outwardly behave accordingly in response to the infirmities of the mind. Fact: If I/you go mental, we would receive the hyena treatment of personal isolation from family/friends and fearful avoidance by motorists and onlookers some of who will throw things, insults and mockery at us.
I/you might set off and go hey-wire. Act 1: The stripping to lose my/your aesthetic self and leave things bare to show strange oddities. My/your (if you’re a woman) mighty headgear will drop off, and nappy African hair will become nappier. My eye-glasses which are like permanent furniture on my face will be lost. Then, kaba and brazier will be abandoned and I/you will walk around with tired old sorry mangled hanging breasts. Imagine! If the stripping continues, my/your slit and dross will drop off too and my/your low-lying parts will, in unison, join the high-rise essential body parts to just hang – in reckless abandon.
Act 2: I/you might become a great collector of things and wear as much clothing as possible in the tropical heat. People will gossip about me/you guessing why I/you went mental. Periodically, those who know me/you will make me/you the centre-piece of conversation. The chit chat about me/you will go something like this: “Eh, have you heard? That fine man/woman has gone mad.” “Who did this to him/her?” “Hmm, this life!” Such stream of conversation will soon end and the matter and me/you will rest – forgotten about.
I/you will lose dignity and become simple objects. Losing dignity is tantamount to losing humanity to live on the fringes of society where no one really cares. When human beings are counted, I/you will be left out. Who needs to consider me/you in a population census or in family meetings? After all, I/you will be nothing but a caste away from society. Periodically, someone will extend compassion to me/you. But for the most part, I/you will become the object of fear. I/you will even lose my/your name and simply become, ‘’the mad one’’.
After a while, when no one sees me/you in the areas where I/you were often spotted, they will forget all about me/you and probably assume that I/you simply went away – died. If that happens, I/you will be unmourned by loved ones because my/your very existence was such a deep embarrassment so death constitutes a blessedly good riddance. My/your grave will be unmarked. In our culture, our attitude toward mental ailment can at best be described as medieval. A mentally-ill person is considered a non-person although before going mental, he/she had lovers. We forget that there is a thin line between a person and a non-person. All it takes is a little trigger to cross over.
Worst of all, we have a medieval horror we shamelessly refer to as a mental health system. Undoubtedly, we have a national crisis in psychiatric treatment and care. Here are a few sad, sorry sordid facts about the state of psychiatric resources and care in Ghana.
(1) Our approach toward psychiatric care is institutionalization. This means that if you go mental, you must necessarily be locked-up, like a criminal, away from society and loved ones. This approach is antiquated and uncivilized. This inhumane psychiatric care model has long evolved globally to that of community care that incorporates mental sickness into overall health care. The institutionalization approach comes from a place of fear of the other, and a pretence that we who have not gone mental (yet!) are better than those who, through no fault of theirs, have.
(2) The human resource situation with regard to psychiatric care should frighten every Ghanaian. Currently, 52 year-old Ghana has five (5) psychiatric doctors in active practice within the Ghana Health Service system. Two of them teach at Korle Bu’s Ghana Medical School, leaving three in true active practice. Eleven others are tired and retired but yet, remain in practice as and when they can. Nationally, there are 600 psychiatric nurses. A simple calculation paints the grim picture with clarity.
Of our estimated 23 million population, there is one out of the five psychiatric doctors for every 4.6 million people and one psychiatric nurse for every 38,333 people. The picture is no better for the other core psychiatric personnel. For instance, there is no psychiatric occupational therapist in Ghana. This means, in very simple terms, that once I/you go mental, there are no plans to rehabilitate me/you.
How about facilities? There are three psychiatric hospitals, all located at the Atlantic coastline – two in Accra and one in Ankaful – as if it’s only in southern Ghana that one can go mental! If anyone should lose it anywhere else in Ghana, the choices include taking off into the bushes, climb trees or get onto the highway to begin a long arduous walk toward the Atlantic Ocean either naked or over-clothed. And, these three facilities are despicable places. Go mental and see!
Enduring questions: To what extent does the Ministry of Health appreciate the importance of mental health care for Ghanaians? How does the Ministry justify the woefully inadequate personnel, antiquated facilities and the fixation on the outmoded paradigm of institutionalizing psychiatric patients?
As a people, we suffer deeply from disease stigma. But when it comes to psychiatric ailment, stigmatization flies through the roof. The stigma even extends to psychiatric personnel who are objects of ridicule. Any wonder psychiatric health care is not attracting new personnel?
This is a grim picture of mental health care in Ghana. You think you’re inadequate now and have many problems? Wait until you go mental and enter the twilight zone. We must therefore move this matter from gutter-front humour into government house to be wrapped tightly in progressive policy and big forward-looking actions.
Three or so years ago in The Gambia, an NGO is said to have sued the government for abusing the human rights of mentally sick people by institutionalizing them in congested hospitals. The NGO won. The almighty pus-for-a-brain government was embarrassed. Result? Some changes were effected. (I’m researching this case further). In Ghana, a Mental Health Bill has been crawling on the corridors of power since 2006. This bill must become law as a matter of urgency before I/you go mental! As a people, we must speak to and deal with this repulsive national truth.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Everybody plays the fool, sometime – while sanitation suffers
I don’t know how it goes with you but with me, periodically, some old songs replay in my head, for no particular reasons at all. I may just be a pathetic case of a yet-to-be-diagnosed crazy, but well…… This past week, an oldie by Aaron Neville rushed through my tender mushy tissues –brain. Come on, sing along with me. Snap your fingers and break into a gentle dance:
“Everybody plays the fool, sometime;
There’s no exception to the rule.
Listen baby, it may be factual, may be cruel,
I ain’t lying, everybody plays the fool.”
Yes, although factual, it may be cruel to put it this bluntly. The state of our country’s environmental sanitation is a sign that we are playing games with finding a permanent solution to a problem that affects and threatens our health, the survival of our economy and our very existence as a people.
It appears that everybody is playing the fool, at least sometime, through our actions and inactions. Some people play the fool, all the time! Our leaders as well as We the People, severally and jointly, are all guilty in this fool-play through throwing garbage around by-heart, and worst of all, by not being vigilant to stop those who indiscriminately trash our country. What role have you, me and we played for us to get to where we are today in disgusting filth?
Sanitation is probably our most challenging national problem, standing firmly between us and survival, on our journey to develop. Clearly, whatever we have been doing so far to solve this problem is not working; not even making a dent in addressing the problem. Rather, things continue to move from bad to worse and further from worse to senseless ridiculousness. Our 52-year old Ghana looks as if it is a quiet helpless victim of cruel and endless vandalism that is unstoppable by even the laws we have put in our books to take care of such. Collection and proper disposal of garbage is a problem. Plastic garbage is taking over our landscape.
Yet, we proudly pronounce our intent to become a middle income country by 2015, six very short years away. What a joke! I’ve drawn a blank so please help me with the ending of this nursery rhyme: “If wishes were horses……” Knowledge gaps exist! Whatever a middle-income country looks like, one can boldly maintain that it must not look anything like this. Let’s face it, filth is engulfing us but we are not taking any concrete steps to change directions. We could try to get other things right but if we are unable to clean up this national mess, 2015 will come and go and we’ll still be wallowing in filth. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!”
Meanwhile, administratively, sanitation is orphaned within a small department in the Ministry of Local Government. As part of the rationalization of the ministries, I had expected the President Mills’ administration to isolate sanitation as a ministry so it will receive the needed attention.
A certain theory I picked up during life’s journey is Broken Windows Theory, which for convenience, will be referred to here as BWT (referred to previously in this column). The theory simply posits that brokenness attracts more brokenness. Slums are created because little bits of brokenness are tolerated until over time, brokenness becomes the norm. A major implication of the theory is that when the appropriate measures are taken to promptly fix manifestations of brokenness, one could deter low-level anti-social behaviours as well as major crimes, and keep society on its toes.
Once upon a time, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani of September 11 terrorist attack fame, adopted BWT as part of general reform measures to clean up the then scary crime-ridden and filthy financial capital of the world, which was fast losing its shine because of anti-social behaviours of the likes of crime, filth and graffiti, as well as public intoxication, nuisance and urination. (Hahaha to Ghanaian men who shamelessly urinate in public – by the road-side!)
As part of the measures, the city authorities first zoomed in to symbolically solve some of its challenging problems including regular cleaning up of graffiti. Next, it began to enforce the laws, even laws for petty offences, if just to convey a symbolic message. The result of the initiative was the reduction of both petty and major crimes. The message was clear: no foolishness tolerated. And the message sank in with people who had hitherto, been disrespectful of the society, its laws, its morality and everything else it stood for.
Some of the enduring lessons and implications for us from BWT is that we should stop waiting forever before we clean up our acts. Everyday should be a sanitation day. If we clean up everyday, the filth will not mount. It is dangerous to start and stop, start and stop because it only worsens what is already bad. We should enforce our laws.
Brokenness is costly. Brokenness is ugly. Brokenness is filthy. Brokenness leads to more brokenness. Fact is: we are not on our toes in the matter or environmental sanitation and that is why we spit our laws in the face with impunity.
Picture these two scenarios in our own society:
Esi, an eight year old girl takes out the family garbage to fulfil her family obligation of chores. She finds no one looking so hurriedly, out of habit, dumps the bucket filled with funky household trash by the roadside and moves on. The trash stays. A few week’s after, the garbage mound grows because others added to it. Esi’s little first bucket-full of garbage on the spot conveyed this clear message: “Garbage is welcome here.” In effect, her act was symbolic – the first little broken window. Because it was not checked, it resulted in the creation of an unplanned community garbage-dumping site where everybody can literally play the fool, unchecked.
Next comes Honourable Nana Professor Yoofi, a grown man, looking very respectable – clearly, an important person in society, driving the newest series Mercedes Benz through the Nkrumah Circle in Accra. He casually rolls down his car window and absent-mindedly throws out a plastic waste and corn cob, and quickly rolls up the window and continues his drive in air-conditioned comfort and bliss. The garbage is out of his hands and beautiful car so it has gone away. Not!
He knows for sure that there would be no repercussions for his actions. So although he would not throw garbage around in his personal space at home or office, he drops anything anywhere in town. Woe besides anyone who dares to challenge him. He will fly off his mighty high horse with insults in a fit of self-importance because he is well connected. He is clearly untouchable; not prosecutable. He might boldly ask, with chest out: “Do you know who I am?” The matter rests! Others join in because it is a garbage-party and all are welcome. Children learn the bad habit because it appears right. No one cares.
Imagine how different these scenarios would have played out and shaped up if these acts of brokenness had been nipped in the bud just when they occurred through bold strategies including law enforcement, naming and shaming, and general community-wide intolerance of brokenness.
Dear readers, chew on this. We are sitting on a national sanitation time-bomb that is ticking very fast. We will return to this matter. But until then, keep singing the song – “Everybody plays the…..”
“Everybody plays the fool, sometime;
There’s no exception to the rule.
Listen baby, it may be factual, may be cruel,
I ain’t lying, everybody plays the fool.”
Yes, although factual, it may be cruel to put it this bluntly. The state of our country’s environmental sanitation is a sign that we are playing games with finding a permanent solution to a problem that affects and threatens our health, the survival of our economy and our very existence as a people.
It appears that everybody is playing the fool, at least sometime, through our actions and inactions. Some people play the fool, all the time! Our leaders as well as We the People, severally and jointly, are all guilty in this fool-play through throwing garbage around by-heart, and worst of all, by not being vigilant to stop those who indiscriminately trash our country. What role have you, me and we played for us to get to where we are today in disgusting filth?
Sanitation is probably our most challenging national problem, standing firmly between us and survival, on our journey to develop. Clearly, whatever we have been doing so far to solve this problem is not working; not even making a dent in addressing the problem. Rather, things continue to move from bad to worse and further from worse to senseless ridiculousness. Our 52-year old Ghana looks as if it is a quiet helpless victim of cruel and endless vandalism that is unstoppable by even the laws we have put in our books to take care of such. Collection and proper disposal of garbage is a problem. Plastic garbage is taking over our landscape.
Yet, we proudly pronounce our intent to become a middle income country by 2015, six very short years away. What a joke! I’ve drawn a blank so please help me with the ending of this nursery rhyme: “If wishes were horses……” Knowledge gaps exist! Whatever a middle-income country looks like, one can boldly maintain that it must not look anything like this. Let’s face it, filth is engulfing us but we are not taking any concrete steps to change directions. We could try to get other things right but if we are unable to clean up this national mess, 2015 will come and go and we’ll still be wallowing in filth. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!”
Meanwhile, administratively, sanitation is orphaned within a small department in the Ministry of Local Government. As part of the rationalization of the ministries, I had expected the President Mills’ administration to isolate sanitation as a ministry so it will receive the needed attention.
A certain theory I picked up during life’s journey is Broken Windows Theory, which for convenience, will be referred to here as BWT (referred to previously in this column). The theory simply posits that brokenness attracts more brokenness. Slums are created because little bits of brokenness are tolerated until over time, brokenness becomes the norm. A major implication of the theory is that when the appropriate measures are taken to promptly fix manifestations of brokenness, one could deter low-level anti-social behaviours as well as major crimes, and keep society on its toes.
Once upon a time, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani of September 11 terrorist attack fame, adopted BWT as part of general reform measures to clean up the then scary crime-ridden and filthy financial capital of the world, which was fast losing its shine because of anti-social behaviours of the likes of crime, filth and graffiti, as well as public intoxication, nuisance and urination. (Hahaha to Ghanaian men who shamelessly urinate in public – by the road-side!)
As part of the measures, the city authorities first zoomed in to symbolically solve some of its challenging problems including regular cleaning up of graffiti. Next, it began to enforce the laws, even laws for petty offences, if just to convey a symbolic message. The result of the initiative was the reduction of both petty and major crimes. The message was clear: no foolishness tolerated. And the message sank in with people who had hitherto, been disrespectful of the society, its laws, its morality and everything else it stood for.
Some of the enduring lessons and implications for us from BWT is that we should stop waiting forever before we clean up our acts. Everyday should be a sanitation day. If we clean up everyday, the filth will not mount. It is dangerous to start and stop, start and stop because it only worsens what is already bad. We should enforce our laws.
Brokenness is costly. Brokenness is ugly. Brokenness is filthy. Brokenness leads to more brokenness. Fact is: we are not on our toes in the matter or environmental sanitation and that is why we spit our laws in the face with impunity.
Picture these two scenarios in our own society:
Esi, an eight year old girl takes out the family garbage to fulfil her family obligation of chores. She finds no one looking so hurriedly, out of habit, dumps the bucket filled with funky household trash by the roadside and moves on. The trash stays. A few week’s after, the garbage mound grows because others added to it. Esi’s little first bucket-full of garbage on the spot conveyed this clear message: “Garbage is welcome here.” In effect, her act was symbolic – the first little broken window. Because it was not checked, it resulted in the creation of an unplanned community garbage-dumping site where everybody can literally play the fool, unchecked.
Next comes Honourable Nana Professor Yoofi, a grown man, looking very respectable – clearly, an important person in society, driving the newest series Mercedes Benz through the Nkrumah Circle in Accra. He casually rolls down his car window and absent-mindedly throws out a plastic waste and corn cob, and quickly rolls up the window and continues his drive in air-conditioned comfort and bliss. The garbage is out of his hands and beautiful car so it has gone away. Not!
He knows for sure that there would be no repercussions for his actions. So although he would not throw garbage around in his personal space at home or office, he drops anything anywhere in town. Woe besides anyone who dares to challenge him. He will fly off his mighty high horse with insults in a fit of self-importance because he is well connected. He is clearly untouchable; not prosecutable. He might boldly ask, with chest out: “Do you know who I am?” The matter rests! Others join in because it is a garbage-party and all are welcome. Children learn the bad habit because it appears right. No one cares.
Imagine how different these scenarios would have played out and shaped up if these acts of brokenness had been nipped in the bud just when they occurred through bold strategies including law enforcement, naming and shaming, and general community-wide intolerance of brokenness.
Dear readers, chew on this. We are sitting on a national sanitation time-bomb that is ticking very fast. We will return to this matter. But until then, keep singing the song – “Everybody plays the…..”
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Advancing the Media in Ghana
2009 Global Press Freedom Day
News Commentary for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation
Every May 3rd is observed as World Press Freedom Day. It is a day set aside by UNESCO to celebrate journalism, to reflect while calling the world’s attention to the key issues facing the profession. This year’s celebration is under the theme, “Media, Dialogue, Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation.” This theme stresses the enormous potential of the media in providing a platform to dialogue and foster mutual understanding and reconciliation in society. On the flip side, the theme underscores the other potential of the media – to cause harm through irresponsible practice by dividing society and inflaming passions instead of being the glue that can keep society together.
Not surprisingly, this year’s World Press Freedom Prize is to be awarded posthumously to the Sri Lankan Journalist, Lasantha Wickremantunge, for his notable contributions in the defence of freedom of expression in his war-torn country. Although he paid the ultimate prize with his life in January 2008 for what he believed in, even in death, he stood tall. In an article published three days after he had been gunned down by government forces, he predicted his death while defending the profession of journalism. For him, journalism “is the call of conscience.”
Without a doubt, journalism in Ghana won a great battle in getting out of under the thumbs of various political regimes who granted the media limited freedoms. Then came the 1992 Constitution with enshrined freedoms of expression to the citizenry and of press freedom. The task now is how to grow the media alongside the development of Ghana.
The image of Ghana is that of a beacon of stability in a region characterized by chaos, unrests, wars and senseless bloodshed. Ghana has survived in the midst of failed states. The Ghanaian media is in no doubt, a pace-setter on the African continent. In the 2008 Global Press Freedom Rankings, Ghana placed second after Mauritania in Sub-Saharan Africa and 27th in the world.
Despite the apparent presence of freedom for the media, problems persist. Freedom does not solve all problems. The just-ended General Elections exposed the vulnerabilities of our democracy with an unrestrained vibrant liberal media and a weak regulatory institution. During the heat of the elections that was characterised by irresponsible volatile commentaries, rumours and media wars between FM radio stations with political party allegiances and/or ownerships, the National Media Commission appeared helpless.
In the 100-day Rwanda genocide in 1994, an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis were massacred by Hutu militia. It was later established that intolerant FM radio stations were the major tool used to ignite and fan the flames for social tension. However, when it mattered the most during our election crisis, Ghana did not appear to have learned the lesson of Rwanda. National cohesion and survival was not paramount.
On the surface, this country appears to have moved on from the election tension. But beneath the surface, ethnic tension, which is sharpened by political party allegiance, is apparent. The media can play an important role in promoting mutual understanding among different ethnic groups and through that, enhance the chances of reconciliation and cohesion, which are fundamental needs for national development.
In present-day Ghana, journalists are not running away for dear life. Together with the rest of the citizenry through a liberal media with its characteristic call-in radio shows, the mass media are wallowing in the hard-earned freedom. Freedom of expression for society and press freedom for the media as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution should provide opportunities for the media to shift focus on pressing developmental issues.
However, the focus of journalism and the citizenry appear to be stuck in politics. Reviewing media content does not suggest that ours is a developing country in which many live on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
Journalism can provide the leadership and focus on urgent developmental issues as a way of advancing not just the democracy of Ghana but its social development. It can do this by relentlessly keeping the searchlight on developmental challenges like poverty, corruption, sanitation, environmental pollution, indiscipline, education, roads, healthcare and inequities in the distribution of development projects.
There is also the need for tolerance and an inclusive coverage of all segments of society and different shades of opinions and values. The media should at this time, shift the focus of reportage from the minority urban, elite and privileged and to throw its powerful searchlight on the poor, disenfranchised, rural, peri-urban and non-literate majority. The best journalism is one that is not driven by agenda that is set by news sources, especially that of the privileged political elite. The media must therefore be bold to pursue and set an agenda that benefits society.
Through FM radio, local language broadcasting is flourishing. It is a new phenomenon in the Ghanaian media landscape. Unfortunately, it is characterized by exaggerations, proverbs and distortions of news through translations and commentaries. The danger in the extremities of local language broadcasting lies in the tendency for embellishment, misinformation and irresponsibility.
Worst of all, Ghana’s media play into the polarization of our society along political party lines. Unfortunately, it is easy to identify some journalists and media houses as either NPP or NDC, an echo of the poisonous polarization of our country on political party lines. This is a situation that can potentially get in the way of basic journalistic standards of objectivity, accuracy, fairness and ethics.
Owing to its power, if practiced inappropriately, the mass media can potentially become a security risk and by that, a threat to our democracy.
News Commentary for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation
Every May 3rd is observed as World Press Freedom Day. It is a day set aside by UNESCO to celebrate journalism, to reflect while calling the world’s attention to the key issues facing the profession. This year’s celebration is under the theme, “Media, Dialogue, Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation.” This theme stresses the enormous potential of the media in providing a platform to dialogue and foster mutual understanding and reconciliation in society. On the flip side, the theme underscores the other potential of the media – to cause harm through irresponsible practice by dividing society and inflaming passions instead of being the glue that can keep society together.
Not surprisingly, this year’s World Press Freedom Prize is to be awarded posthumously to the Sri Lankan Journalist, Lasantha Wickremantunge, for his notable contributions in the defence of freedom of expression in his war-torn country. Although he paid the ultimate prize with his life in January 2008 for what he believed in, even in death, he stood tall. In an article published three days after he had been gunned down by government forces, he predicted his death while defending the profession of journalism. For him, journalism “is the call of conscience.”
Without a doubt, journalism in Ghana won a great battle in getting out of under the thumbs of various political regimes who granted the media limited freedoms. Then came the 1992 Constitution with enshrined freedoms of expression to the citizenry and of press freedom. The task now is how to grow the media alongside the development of Ghana.
The image of Ghana is that of a beacon of stability in a region characterized by chaos, unrests, wars and senseless bloodshed. Ghana has survived in the midst of failed states. The Ghanaian media is in no doubt, a pace-setter on the African continent. In the 2008 Global Press Freedom Rankings, Ghana placed second after Mauritania in Sub-Saharan Africa and 27th in the world.
Despite the apparent presence of freedom for the media, problems persist. Freedom does not solve all problems. The just-ended General Elections exposed the vulnerabilities of our democracy with an unrestrained vibrant liberal media and a weak regulatory institution. During the heat of the elections that was characterised by irresponsible volatile commentaries, rumours and media wars between FM radio stations with political party allegiances and/or ownerships, the National Media Commission appeared helpless.
In the 100-day Rwanda genocide in 1994, an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis were massacred by Hutu militia. It was later established that intolerant FM radio stations were the major tool used to ignite and fan the flames for social tension. However, when it mattered the most during our election crisis, Ghana did not appear to have learned the lesson of Rwanda. National cohesion and survival was not paramount.
On the surface, this country appears to have moved on from the election tension. But beneath the surface, ethnic tension, which is sharpened by political party allegiance, is apparent. The media can play an important role in promoting mutual understanding among different ethnic groups and through that, enhance the chances of reconciliation and cohesion, which are fundamental needs for national development.
In present-day Ghana, journalists are not running away for dear life. Together with the rest of the citizenry through a liberal media with its characteristic call-in radio shows, the mass media are wallowing in the hard-earned freedom. Freedom of expression for society and press freedom for the media as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution should provide opportunities for the media to shift focus on pressing developmental issues.
However, the focus of journalism and the citizenry appear to be stuck in politics. Reviewing media content does not suggest that ours is a developing country in which many live on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
Journalism can provide the leadership and focus on urgent developmental issues as a way of advancing not just the democracy of Ghana but its social development. It can do this by relentlessly keeping the searchlight on developmental challenges like poverty, corruption, sanitation, environmental pollution, indiscipline, education, roads, healthcare and inequities in the distribution of development projects.
There is also the need for tolerance and an inclusive coverage of all segments of society and different shades of opinions and values. The media should at this time, shift the focus of reportage from the minority urban, elite and privileged and to throw its powerful searchlight on the poor, disenfranchised, rural, peri-urban and non-literate majority. The best journalism is one that is not driven by agenda that is set by news sources, especially that of the privileged political elite. The media must therefore be bold to pursue and set an agenda that benefits society.
Through FM radio, local language broadcasting is flourishing. It is a new phenomenon in the Ghanaian media landscape. Unfortunately, it is characterized by exaggerations, proverbs and distortions of news through translations and commentaries. The danger in the extremities of local language broadcasting lies in the tendency for embellishment, misinformation and irresponsibility.
Worst of all, Ghana’s media play into the polarization of our society along political party lines. Unfortunately, it is easy to identify some journalists and media houses as either NPP or NDC, an echo of the poisonous polarization of our country on political party lines. This is a situation that can potentially get in the way of basic journalistic standards of objectivity, accuracy, fairness and ethics.
Owing to its power, if practiced inappropriately, the mass media can potentially become a security risk and by that, a threat to our democracy.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Dialoguing on Media and Society about Press Freedom
Collectively, the media of mass communication is the mirror image and lifeblood of Ghana, reflecting the nuances of struggles and triumphs. In times when the citizenry did not experience freedoms as a result of oppressive military and quasi-civilian regimes/administrations, journalism was the symbolic representation of our society’s deprivations and sufferings. Even poverty and corruption in national life is reflected in the media.
This year’s celebration of World Press Freedom day, under the theme, “Media, Dialogue and Mutual Understanding” is particularly significant because it is on the 118th day, in the fourth month of the first year in a new political administration. Press freedom cannot be taken for granted. Even when you are so sure that you have it, if you dare blink for so long, you run the risk of losing it in a flash. That is just the way it is – the product of a fundamental human flaw to shut out negativity. Freedom is not for free. Press freedom must therefore be guarded by all; fingers must be on the pulse. Unfortunately, journalists can themselves perpetuate the erosion of press freedom through self-censorship, that insidious internal self-editing and self-killing of thinking that influences the journalistic art of writing and speaking that is informed by the need to be careful, or else……. A Ga proverb articulates this wit as follows, ‘Fio fio ne adedong keyeo gbe tue’ (Literally – Gradually, the house fly munches a dog’s ear.)
As this government settles in for the four-year constitutionally mandated governance, one of the areas widely-open for learning and tweaking is its relationship with the media as the country continues the journey of deepening its democracy on the set path of the 1992 Constitution.
Without a doubt, it is still very early in President Mills’ administration to pin-point any warts on the Emperor’s delicately essential body parts and to articulate anything of substance about the quality and/or direction of the government’s relationship with the media with regard to press freedom. For the time being, the relationship can at best be described as a cat-and-mouse-game of figuring each other out.
The gaming phase is a good place to be, much better than any scare-crow oppression and media silencing. The ‘cat’, representing a typical government of a developing country, naturally prefers a mouse (the media) that is safely consigned to either being out of sight or quietly allowing itself to be munched. But one should be able to hold on to the promise of President Mills to tolerate press freedom without any efforts to silence contrary views during the NDC’s second act. This promise of tolerance of dissenting media naturally extends to political functionaries who might be tempted (for one reason or the other), with unchecked egos, to catch or kill the naughty juicy mouse.
Wole Soyinka put it best: “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.” A docile and silent media that merely sings the praises of a ruling government is unproductive and boring. Hear Alice Walker: “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” Personal growth emanates from the ability to apply ones mind to thinking.
Silence is death. For a developing country with challenges in just about every sphere of life – poorly equipped hospitals, roads which are death traps, a weak educational system, corruption in public life which has permeated private life, a sanitation monster which we appear unable to manage, among many others – the worst any government can do is to stifle freedom of speech.
All hands, brains as well as the patch-work of perceived ugly annoying critical mouths should be on board to cross-fertilize ideas for national development.
Regardless of the challenges Ghanaians endure as citizens of a developing country, democracy appears to have come to stay, with the accompanying freedoms. Throughout this country’s struggles under-the-thumbs of various governments and dictators, journalism has remained one of the unshakable bastions of Ghana’s arduous journey on the democracy path. When you are crossing a river and you get into the middle, you do not return, especially when you know the desolation you have left behind. Once you have learned something, you cannot unlearn it.
Muffling the media is therefore not an option.
Besides, the Ghanaian population benefits tremendously from freedom of speech within an enhanced environment of a free press. For instance, the liberalization of the airwaves has made the media accessible to Ghanaians from all walks of life who, through another pervasive technological innovation, the mobile phone, continuously call into FM radio stations across the country to express their opinions. It is therefore unlikely that the Ghanaian citizenry will quietly tolerate a withdrawal of freedom of speech and by extension, press freedom.
Internal Media Dialogue:
There are several issues crying for dialoguing within the media. One unfortunate development in the media is what appears to be blocks of NDC and NPP journalists, an echo of the poisonous polarization of our country along political lines. This is a development that can potentially get in the way of basic journalistic standards of objectivity, accuracy, fairness and ethics.
There is an over-emphasis on political journalism to the neglect of development oriented issues. If a visitor from another planet monitors Ghana’s media content, s/he might doubt that this is a developing country where many still live in abject desperate poverty – on less than one cedi a day. But good flesh and blood journalism in any country, by definition, is what that society needs to advance. The media has the vast potential to wage a crusade for the development of Ghana. The slow pace of Ghana’s development requires the kind of media that will be passionate advocates, watchdogs and gatekeepers of society to promote human rights, fight corruption, and relentlessly expose issues that are inimical to development.
Ethics and conflict of interest is an area ripe for internal dialoguing. The media must exercise care about whose interests they serve. Journalism must serve only the public interest. The media must therefore endeavour to stay on high ground and avoid operating in manure piles that have been rained on. In a global era of corporate colonization, there is a danger of compromising the interests of Ghana to foreign nationals and/or corporate greed. Fact: a journalist is NOT a politician or a representative of politicians. A journalist is NOT an advocate of products or spokesperson of profit-making entities.
Of all professions, journalism should remain the conscience of a society and be at arms to protect it from harm through exposing devious actions. Journalism in a developing country cannot therefore afford to be practiced under corrupting influences. Like in the story about the Trojan Horse, ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’ Journalists should therefore not get cosy with those whose actions they should expose.
As part of Press Freedom Day, the internal dialogue in media institutions should be to take a hard look at the matter or poor remuneration of staff. When senior editors in state-owned and/or private-owned media organizations earn a sorrowful monthly income of GH¢200 or less, the pay-envelop will cry for other envelops – from anyone who will offer. A salary should actually take one home to live a decent life. Media work is hard work; it goes on endlessly all day long. It is not your typical 8am to 5pm profession; it belongs to the 24-7 category. As the International Federation of Journalists maintains, “There can be no press freedom if journalists exist in conditions of corruption, poverty or fear.” When media employers exploit their staff through meagre remuneration and sub-standard conditions of service, they are by extension, robbing journalism of its tremendous potential to maintain a grounded posture to serve society.
The ultimate triumph of a free people – economic independence, continues to elude Ghana. It is conceivable that through an improved media, Nkrumah’s declaration at Independence that, “At long last, the battle has ended. Ghana our beloved country is free forever,” can become a meaningful reality.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com
The writer is a Communications Consultant and an Educator
This year’s celebration of World Press Freedom day, under the theme, “Media, Dialogue and Mutual Understanding” is particularly significant because it is on the 118th day, in the fourth month of the first year in a new political administration. Press freedom cannot be taken for granted. Even when you are so sure that you have it, if you dare blink for so long, you run the risk of losing it in a flash. That is just the way it is – the product of a fundamental human flaw to shut out negativity. Freedom is not for free. Press freedom must therefore be guarded by all; fingers must be on the pulse. Unfortunately, journalists can themselves perpetuate the erosion of press freedom through self-censorship, that insidious internal self-editing and self-killing of thinking that influences the journalistic art of writing and speaking that is informed by the need to be careful, or else……. A Ga proverb articulates this wit as follows, ‘Fio fio ne adedong keyeo gbe tue’ (Literally – Gradually, the house fly munches a dog’s ear.)
As this government settles in for the four-year constitutionally mandated governance, one of the areas widely-open for learning and tweaking is its relationship with the media as the country continues the journey of deepening its democracy on the set path of the 1992 Constitution.
Without a doubt, it is still very early in President Mills’ administration to pin-point any warts on the Emperor’s delicately essential body parts and to articulate anything of substance about the quality and/or direction of the government’s relationship with the media with regard to press freedom. For the time being, the relationship can at best be described as a cat-and-mouse-game of figuring each other out.
The gaming phase is a good place to be, much better than any scare-crow oppression and media silencing. The ‘cat’, representing a typical government of a developing country, naturally prefers a mouse (the media) that is safely consigned to either being out of sight or quietly allowing itself to be munched. But one should be able to hold on to the promise of President Mills to tolerate press freedom without any efforts to silence contrary views during the NDC’s second act. This promise of tolerance of dissenting media naturally extends to political functionaries who might be tempted (for one reason or the other), with unchecked egos, to catch or kill the naughty juicy mouse.
Wole Soyinka put it best: “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.” A docile and silent media that merely sings the praises of a ruling government is unproductive and boring. Hear Alice Walker: “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” Personal growth emanates from the ability to apply ones mind to thinking.
Silence is death. For a developing country with challenges in just about every sphere of life – poorly equipped hospitals, roads which are death traps, a weak educational system, corruption in public life which has permeated private life, a sanitation monster which we appear unable to manage, among many others – the worst any government can do is to stifle freedom of speech.
All hands, brains as well as the patch-work of perceived ugly annoying critical mouths should be on board to cross-fertilize ideas for national development.
Regardless of the challenges Ghanaians endure as citizens of a developing country, democracy appears to have come to stay, with the accompanying freedoms. Throughout this country’s struggles under-the-thumbs of various governments and dictators, journalism has remained one of the unshakable bastions of Ghana’s arduous journey on the democracy path. When you are crossing a river and you get into the middle, you do not return, especially when you know the desolation you have left behind. Once you have learned something, you cannot unlearn it.
Muffling the media is therefore not an option.
Besides, the Ghanaian population benefits tremendously from freedom of speech within an enhanced environment of a free press. For instance, the liberalization of the airwaves has made the media accessible to Ghanaians from all walks of life who, through another pervasive technological innovation, the mobile phone, continuously call into FM radio stations across the country to express their opinions. It is therefore unlikely that the Ghanaian citizenry will quietly tolerate a withdrawal of freedom of speech and by extension, press freedom.
Internal Media Dialogue:
There are several issues crying for dialoguing within the media. One unfortunate development in the media is what appears to be blocks of NDC and NPP journalists, an echo of the poisonous polarization of our country along political lines. This is a development that can potentially get in the way of basic journalistic standards of objectivity, accuracy, fairness and ethics.
There is an over-emphasis on political journalism to the neglect of development oriented issues. If a visitor from another planet monitors Ghana’s media content, s/he might doubt that this is a developing country where many still live in abject desperate poverty – on less than one cedi a day. But good flesh and blood journalism in any country, by definition, is what that society needs to advance. The media has the vast potential to wage a crusade for the development of Ghana. The slow pace of Ghana’s development requires the kind of media that will be passionate advocates, watchdogs and gatekeepers of society to promote human rights, fight corruption, and relentlessly expose issues that are inimical to development.
Ethics and conflict of interest is an area ripe for internal dialoguing. The media must exercise care about whose interests they serve. Journalism must serve only the public interest. The media must therefore endeavour to stay on high ground and avoid operating in manure piles that have been rained on. In a global era of corporate colonization, there is a danger of compromising the interests of Ghana to foreign nationals and/or corporate greed. Fact: a journalist is NOT a politician or a representative of politicians. A journalist is NOT an advocate of products or spokesperson of profit-making entities.
Of all professions, journalism should remain the conscience of a society and be at arms to protect it from harm through exposing devious actions. Journalism in a developing country cannot therefore afford to be practiced under corrupting influences. Like in the story about the Trojan Horse, ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’ Journalists should therefore not get cosy with those whose actions they should expose.
As part of Press Freedom Day, the internal dialogue in media institutions should be to take a hard look at the matter or poor remuneration of staff. When senior editors in state-owned and/or private-owned media organizations earn a sorrowful monthly income of GH¢200 or less, the pay-envelop will cry for other envelops – from anyone who will offer. A salary should actually take one home to live a decent life. Media work is hard work; it goes on endlessly all day long. It is not your typical 8am to 5pm profession; it belongs to the 24-7 category. As the International Federation of Journalists maintains, “There can be no press freedom if journalists exist in conditions of corruption, poverty or fear.” When media employers exploit their staff through meagre remuneration and sub-standard conditions of service, they are by extension, robbing journalism of its tremendous potential to maintain a grounded posture to serve society.
The ultimate triumph of a free people – economic independence, continues to elude Ghana. It is conceivable that through an improved media, Nkrumah’s declaration at Independence that, “At long last, the battle has ended. Ghana our beloved country is free forever,” can become a meaningful reality.
dorisdartey@yahoo.com
The writer is a Communications Consultant and an Educator
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Living on less than one cedi a day -- The story of Elizabeth
Her name is Elizabeth. No, not THAT Elizabeth – the mother of King-in-waiting-forever Prince Charles. That Elizabeth, the Queen of England, was born with a golden spoon firmly and irremovably stuck into her mouth. She was raised a royal, nurtured to be queen and rule the world from an island up in the northern hemisphere while casting a wry smile on her subjects far across the waves. No, definitely, not that Elizabeth!
This Elizabeth is 52 years old, the age-mate of Ghana. She is Ghana. She lives near Bonsaaso, in a forgotten backwoods of Kumasi, the Garden City. Poverty has got her down. She is shrivelled. She is educated. She is the loyal subject of a King, The Occupant of The Golden Stool – the Asantehene Osei Tutu II. She lives in a gold-rich region of the country. The earth underneath her might have gold. Yet, she is desperately poor and lives on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
She suffers from life-weariness. Worry is printed into the deep jagged crevices of her face. Added to her biological age is a big bonus of 20 or more years that simply hovers over her like a ghastly ghost, giving her a real-age look of 70 or 80.
The agony is in her skin texture – thin, crumpled, hanging on, darker than its original shade. It’s in her eyes, sunken in, as if searching for something unknown in the distant. It’s on her head – covered carelessly and tightly with a worn-out scarf like a piece of abandoned rag to conceal long-neglected nappy African hair. It’s in the way she walks – drooped, looking downwards as if in anticipation of the ultimate journey to the down-under. It’s in her clothes, hanging loosely over her thin frame like a curtain on a window to keep out the sun, the dust and prying neighbours.
Elizabeth is a mule for poverty.
Ten years ago, Elizabeth was a trader in Kumasi. Then, life turned a bad eye at her and she relocated back to the village. She is now sick. She is desperately poor, her capital for trading long evaporated. She lives off people’s kindness on less than one cedi a day. Her meal is nothing but cassava, more cassava, periodic plantain and as God wills, a sorry piece of fish for flavour. She is a card-bearing NPP member who lives in the NPP Stronghold World-Bank King-Maker Ashanti Region. But poverty has no political party colouring or tribal/regional boundaries. Poverty is just what it is: ugly, painful and demeaning. Poverty is the ground-zero of life.
Elizabeth is a mother or two sons aged 28 and 25. One lives in Accra engaged in unknown trade and the other in Kumasi learning to be a driver. Neither one sends remittances to her because ‘life is hard’ for them.
Nothing in Elizabeth’s life path predicted that she would end up like this. She is now a destitute – in her own hometown. Here is how she lives. Her ancestral home has collapsed. I saw the old rusty weighty roof hanging down on an antiquated mud-house. She currently lives alone in a small room in a shack at the back of a church house. Members of her extended family do not visit her although they live in the same town. She explained it tersely: ‘Each one for him/herself, God for us all.” Our cultural values that used to glue us together are breaking down. Fellow-love is running cold.
Her meals? If anyone shows her kindness and drops some precious cedis her way, here is how she works the magic of living on less than one Ghana cedi a day. Onion: 20Gp (Ghana Pesewas), garden eggs: 20Gp, tomatoes: 20Gp and dried fish (herrings) 50Gp all knocked together with lavish quantities of water to prepare a ‘ways-and-means’ soup. Plantain: 50Gp and cassava: 40Gp. Total cost: two Ghana cedis (about $1.50). Through the sweaty old-fashioned hard-pounding way, fufuu materializes. The meal is ‘managed’ to last for two or three days. On the average, she lives on 70 pesewas (about $0.60) or less a day.
The cliché, ‘Variety is the spice of life,’ applies here. So periodically, Elizabeth introduces variety into her meals. One ball of kenkey: 20Gp and sugar: 50Gp mashed with water to drink. Her diet is therefore high in carbohydrate because the ultimate goal is belly-full. She eats only one meal a day. Without a doubt, she presents powerful practical lessons in the economics of living on less than one cedi a day.
But there are days she goes bone dry and sleeps restlessly on an empty stomach filled with lots of water – and waits and hopes and prays for kindness from anyone the very next day.
Destitution is a difficult existential reality in whatever station of ones life. To be a destitute as a migrant away from home is one thing and although tough, can be excusable and tolerable. But to be a destitute in your own hometown – the town of your birth where your umbilical cord rotted into the earth, the town of your parents’ and grand-parents’ birth, the town where you can locate the graves of your ancestors, the very town where your ancestral DNA can be traced with precision – that is another matter altogether. Destitution at home is unacceptable. It is demeaning – beyond measure. It is painful.
So therefore beneath the fine surface of much of the “This is my hometown” rhetoric are destitution, homelessness and hopelessness. It is easy to take it for granted that living in ones hometown implies that one lives at home. The sad fact is that there are people living in our rural and peri-urban ‘home-town’ communities across the country who are as destitute as some migrants in cities and large towns.
It is said that it is not over until it is over. But in the case of Elizabeth and many others like her, life appears to be over long before it is over. The sort of life that is lived as if one is waiting, wrapped in hopelessness, waiting for death, is a painful life.
Ghana is wasting away its human resources across the land. Children who could have been our wiz-kids – our Bill Gates, Picasso, Tina Turner, Beyonce, Martin Luther King Jn, Barack Obama – our intellectuals, doctors, scientists, artists, musicians – are locked up in the crushing bosom of underdevelopment. Reason? They did not enter this world through the groins or wombs of privileged folks.
I met Elizabeth last week. She is Ghana. Her poverty arrested me. Dear reader, there are many Elizabeths – male and female, young and old – scattered across this country in both rural, urban and peri-urban areas who are precariously leaning off the frail fringes of privilege. Fact: desperate poverty abounds in Ghana.
Elizabeth is Ghana, woven tightly into the national tapestry. When the history of this era is written, future generations will wonder why we allowed such agonizing degradation of the human condition to occur. If you are still alive, you’ll be asked why you didn’t challenge the ‘authorities’ to do right by us. If you’re still around, remember the uproar that is loudly absent at this very moment in history and tell the truth that our generation, especially the privileged minority, chose to look the other way because indifference was easier than taking the right actions. You joined in to ignore Elizabeth!
Meanwhile, we watch and wait for CHANGE to happen through President Mills.
This Elizabeth is 52 years old, the age-mate of Ghana. She is Ghana. She lives near Bonsaaso, in a forgotten backwoods of Kumasi, the Garden City. Poverty has got her down. She is shrivelled. She is educated. She is the loyal subject of a King, The Occupant of The Golden Stool – the Asantehene Osei Tutu II. She lives in a gold-rich region of the country. The earth underneath her might have gold. Yet, she is desperately poor and lives on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
She suffers from life-weariness. Worry is printed into the deep jagged crevices of her face. Added to her biological age is a big bonus of 20 or more years that simply hovers over her like a ghastly ghost, giving her a real-age look of 70 or 80.
The agony is in her skin texture – thin, crumpled, hanging on, darker than its original shade. It’s in her eyes, sunken in, as if searching for something unknown in the distant. It’s on her head – covered carelessly and tightly with a worn-out scarf like a piece of abandoned rag to conceal long-neglected nappy African hair. It’s in the way she walks – drooped, looking downwards as if in anticipation of the ultimate journey to the down-under. It’s in her clothes, hanging loosely over her thin frame like a curtain on a window to keep out the sun, the dust and prying neighbours.
Elizabeth is a mule for poverty.
Ten years ago, Elizabeth was a trader in Kumasi. Then, life turned a bad eye at her and she relocated back to the village. She is now sick. She is desperately poor, her capital for trading long evaporated. She lives off people’s kindness on less than one cedi a day. Her meal is nothing but cassava, more cassava, periodic plantain and as God wills, a sorry piece of fish for flavour. She is a card-bearing NPP member who lives in the NPP Stronghold World-Bank King-Maker Ashanti Region. But poverty has no political party colouring or tribal/regional boundaries. Poverty is just what it is: ugly, painful and demeaning. Poverty is the ground-zero of life.
Elizabeth is a mother or two sons aged 28 and 25. One lives in Accra engaged in unknown trade and the other in Kumasi learning to be a driver. Neither one sends remittances to her because ‘life is hard’ for them.
Nothing in Elizabeth’s life path predicted that she would end up like this. She is now a destitute – in her own hometown. Here is how she lives. Her ancestral home has collapsed. I saw the old rusty weighty roof hanging down on an antiquated mud-house. She currently lives alone in a small room in a shack at the back of a church house. Members of her extended family do not visit her although they live in the same town. She explained it tersely: ‘Each one for him/herself, God for us all.” Our cultural values that used to glue us together are breaking down. Fellow-love is running cold.
Her meals? If anyone shows her kindness and drops some precious cedis her way, here is how she works the magic of living on less than one Ghana cedi a day. Onion: 20Gp (Ghana Pesewas), garden eggs: 20Gp, tomatoes: 20Gp and dried fish (herrings) 50Gp all knocked together with lavish quantities of water to prepare a ‘ways-and-means’ soup. Plantain: 50Gp and cassava: 40Gp. Total cost: two Ghana cedis (about $1.50). Through the sweaty old-fashioned hard-pounding way, fufuu materializes. The meal is ‘managed’ to last for two or three days. On the average, she lives on 70 pesewas (about $0.60) or less a day.
The cliché, ‘Variety is the spice of life,’ applies here. So periodically, Elizabeth introduces variety into her meals. One ball of kenkey: 20Gp and sugar: 50Gp mashed with water to drink. Her diet is therefore high in carbohydrate because the ultimate goal is belly-full. She eats only one meal a day. Without a doubt, she presents powerful practical lessons in the economics of living on less than one cedi a day.
But there are days she goes bone dry and sleeps restlessly on an empty stomach filled with lots of water – and waits and hopes and prays for kindness from anyone the very next day.
Destitution is a difficult existential reality in whatever station of ones life. To be a destitute as a migrant away from home is one thing and although tough, can be excusable and tolerable. But to be a destitute in your own hometown – the town of your birth where your umbilical cord rotted into the earth, the town of your parents’ and grand-parents’ birth, the town where you can locate the graves of your ancestors, the very town where your ancestral DNA can be traced with precision – that is another matter altogether. Destitution at home is unacceptable. It is demeaning – beyond measure. It is painful.
So therefore beneath the fine surface of much of the “This is my hometown” rhetoric are destitution, homelessness and hopelessness. It is easy to take it for granted that living in ones hometown implies that one lives at home. The sad fact is that there are people living in our rural and peri-urban ‘home-town’ communities across the country who are as destitute as some migrants in cities and large towns.
It is said that it is not over until it is over. But in the case of Elizabeth and many others like her, life appears to be over long before it is over. The sort of life that is lived as if one is waiting, wrapped in hopelessness, waiting for death, is a painful life.
Ghana is wasting away its human resources across the land. Children who could have been our wiz-kids – our Bill Gates, Picasso, Tina Turner, Beyonce, Martin Luther King Jn, Barack Obama – our intellectuals, doctors, scientists, artists, musicians – are locked up in the crushing bosom of underdevelopment. Reason? They did not enter this world through the groins or wombs of privileged folks.
I met Elizabeth last week. She is Ghana. Her poverty arrested me. Dear reader, there are many Elizabeths – male and female, young and old – scattered across this country in both rural, urban and peri-urban areas who are precariously leaning off the frail fringes of privilege. Fact: desperate poverty abounds in Ghana.
Elizabeth is Ghana, woven tightly into the national tapestry. When the history of this era is written, future generations will wonder why we allowed such agonizing degradation of the human condition to occur. If you are still alive, you’ll be asked why you didn’t challenge the ‘authorities’ to do right by us. If you’re still around, remember the uproar that is loudly absent at this very moment in history and tell the truth that our generation, especially the privileged minority, chose to look the other way because indifference was easier than taking the right actions. You joined in to ignore Elizabeth!
Meanwhile, we watch and wait for CHANGE to happen through President Mills.
Living on less than one cedi a day -- The story of Elizabeth
Her name is Elizabeth. No, not THAT Elizabeth – the mother of King-in-waiting-forever Prince Charles. That Elizabeth, the Queen of England, was born with a golden spoon firmly and irremovably stuck into her mouth. She was raised a royal, nurtured to be queen and rule the world from an island up in the northern hemisphere while casting a wry smile on her subjects far across the waves. No, definitely, not that Elizabeth!
This Elizabeth is 52 years old, the age-mate of Ghana. She is Ghana. She lives near Bonsaaso, in a forgotten backwoods of Kumasi, the Garden City. Poverty has got her down. She is shrivelled. She is educated. She is the loyal subject of a King, The Occupant of The Golden Stool – the Asantehene Osei Tutu II. She lives in a gold-rich region of the country. The earth underneath her might have gold. Yet, she is desperately poor and lives on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
She suffers from life-weariness. Worry is printed into the deep jagged crevices of her face. Added to her biological age is a big bonus of 20 or more years that simply hovers over her like a ghastly ghost, giving her a real-age look of 70 or 80.
The agony is in her skin texture – thin, crumpled, hanging on, darker than its original shade. It’s in her eyes, sunken in, as if searching for something unknown in the distant. It’s on her head – covered carelessly and tightly with a worn-out scarf like a piece of abandoned rag to conceal long-neglected nappy African hair. It’s in the way she walks – drooped, looking downwards as if in anticipation of the ultimate journey to the down-under. It’s in her clothes, hanging loosely over her like a curtain on a window to keep out the sun, the dust and prying neighbours.
Elizabeth is a mule for poverty.
Ten years ago, Elizabeth was a trader in Kumasi. Then, life turned a bad eye at her and she relocated back to the village. She is now sick. She is desperately poor, her capital for trading long evaporated. She lives off people’s kindness on less than one cedi a day. Her meal is nothing but cassava, more cassava, periodic plantain and as God wills, a sorry piece of fish for flavour. She is a card-bearing NPP member who lives in the NPP Stronghold World-Bank King-Maker Ashanti Region. But poverty has no political party colouring or tribal/regional boundaries. Poverty is just what it is: ugly, painful and demeaning. Poverty is the ground-zero of life.
Elizabeth is a mother or two sons aged 28 and 25. One lives in Accra engaged in unknown trade and the other in Kumasi learning to be a driver. Neither one sends remittances to her because ‘life is hard’ for them.
Nothing in Elizabeth’s life path predicted that she would end up like this. She is now a destitute – in her own hometown. Here is how she lives. Her ancestral home has collapsed. I saw the old rusty weighty roof hanging down on an antiquated mud-house. She currently lives alone in a small room in a shack at the back of a church house. Members of her extended family do not visit her although they live in the same town. She explained it tersely: ‘Each one for him/herself, God for us all.” Our cultural values that used to glue us together are breaking down. Fellow-love is running cold.
Her meals? If anyone shows her kindness and drops some precious cedis her way, here is how she works the magic of living on less than one Ghana cedi a day. Onion: 20Gp, garden eggs: 20Gp, tomatoes: 20Gp and dried fish (herrings) 50Gp all knocked together with lavish quantities of water to prepare a ‘ways-and-means’ soup. Plantain: 50Gp and cassava: 40Gp. Total cost: two Ghana cedis. Through the sweaty old-fashioned hard-pounding way, fufuu materializes. The meal is ‘managed’ to last for two or three days. On the average, she lives on 70 pesewas or less a day.
The cliché, ‘Variety is the spice of life,’ applies here. So periodically, Elizabeth introduces variety into her meals. One ball of kenkey: 20Gp and sugar: 50Gp mashed with water to drink. Her diet is therefore high in carbohydrate because the ultimate goal is belly-full. She eats only one meal a day. Without a doubt, she presents powerful practical lessons in the economics of living on less than one cedi a day.
But there are days she goes bone dry and sleeps restlessly on an empty stomach filled with lots of water – and waits and hopes and prays for kindness from anyone the very next day.
Destitution is a difficult existential reality in whatever station of ones life. To be a destitute as a migrant away from home is one thing and although tough, can be excusable and tolerable. But to be a destitute in your own hometown – the town of your birth where your umbilical cord rotted into the earth, the town of your parents’ and grand-parents’ birth, the town where you can locate the graves of your ancestors, the very town where your ancestral DNA can be traced with precision – that is another matter altogether. Destitution at home is unacceptable. It is demeaning – beyond measure. It is painful.
Destitution is a difficult existential reality in whatever station of ones life. To be a destitute as a migrant away from home is one thing and although tough, can be excusable and tolerable. But to be a destitute in your own hometown – the town of your birth where your umbilical cord rotted into the earth, the town of your parents’ and grand-parents’ birth, the town where you can locate the graves of your ancestors, the very town where your ancestral DNA can be traced with precision – that is another matter altogether. Destitution at home is unacceptable. It is demeaning – beyond measure. It is painful.
So therefore beneath the fine surface of much of the “This is my hometown” rhetoric are destitution, homelessness and hopelessness. It is easy to take it for granted that living in ones hometown implies that one lives at home. The sad fact is that there are people living in our rural and peri-urban ‘home-town’ communities across the country who are as destitute as some migrants in cities and large towns.
It is said that it is not over until it is over. But in the case of Elizabeth and many others like her, life appears to be over long before it is over. The sort of life that is lived as if one is waiting, wrapped in hopelessness, waiting for death, is a painful life.
Ghana is wasting away its human resources across the land. Children who could have been our wiz-kids – our Bill Gates, Picasso, Tina Turner, Beyonce, Martin Luther King Jn, Barack Obama – our intellectuals, doctors, scientists, artists, musicians – are locked up in the crushing bosom of underdevelopment. Reason? They did not enter this world through the groins or wombs of privileged folks.
I met Elizabeth last week. She is Ghana. Her poverty arrested me. Dear reader, there are many Elizabeths – male and female, young and old – scattered across this country in both rural, urban and peri-urban areas who are precariously leaning off the frail fringes of privilege. Fact: desperate poverty abounds in Ghana.
Elizabeth is Ghana, woven tightly into the national tapestry. When the history of this era is written, future generations will wonder why we allowed such agonizing degradation of the human condition to occur. If you are still alive, you’ll be asked why you didn’t challenge the ‘authorities’ to do right by us. If you’re still around, remember the uproar that is loudly absent at this very moment in history and tell the truth that our generation, especially the privileged minority, chose to look the other way because indifference was easier than taking the right actions. You joined in to ignore Elizabeth!
Meanwhile, we watch and wait for CHANGE to happen through President
Mills.dorisdartey@yahoo.com
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