Thirty percent increase of youth hawkers in Accra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An internal dialogue with power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Womb Diaries: From Pregnancies, Fibroids, Hysterectomies to Adoptions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Womb Diaries: From Pregnancies, Fibroids, Hysterectomies to Adoptions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corporate colouring of Ghana for a little bit of cash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oil City awaits crude oil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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