Returnees in an aftershock of war

A Drinking Well in Bardnersville, Liberia

Check out this comment from the Encyclopaedia of Earth of May 2008. “Liberia is in a post-war period facing serious political, financial, administrative and organizational problems. Ten years of conflict have led to multiple internal displacements of hundreds of thousands of people, disrupted the supply of basic social services, increased the vulnerability of women and children to extreme poverty, hunger, disease and HIV/AIDS. Poverty is widespread.

Access to education is limited. An estimated 80 percent of schools, health service structures, water wells and sanitation facilities have either been destroyed or abandoned since 1998. No up-to-date water supply and sanitation data are available, but those still functioning are in alarming and worrying conditions in almost all counties in Liberia.

As a result, morbidity and mortality rates remain high and may possibly deteriorate further as populations returning to these areas are expected to increase and thereby overstretch the already either only partly functioning or malfunctioning health and social infrastructures.”

It’s been two years since the above commentary was written about Liberia. Currently, Liberia is painstakingly picking up the pieces and is in a national reconstruction mode. Its people continue to return home. I’m lost in thought over this country I’ve had the chance to work in for the past few weeks.

This is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It’s the most fertile land I’ve ever set feet on. Wherever you turn, it’s plush green. Everything grows here, in gigantic sizes (more about this later). Liberia looks very much like God’s own country, a Garden of Eden of some sort. Yet, they waged a long and destructive war. Now, the country is bruised, with scars of war visible to the most casual observer (more about this later).

My thoughts about Liberia today centre on the impact of the return home of many who fled for dear life to various countries during the prolonged civil wars. Let’s just call them returnees, like we did in the case of Ghana in the 1980s.

Returning home after such a national trauma must necessarily be associated with hopes of restoration. A homecoming, the going back to the familiar must bring joy. But, can one ever truly go back home again? In cross-cultural adage, it is said that you can’t “step in the same river twice” because the river moves so never remains the same. What is perceived as home therefore changes; and the returnee also changes.

As I talk to Liberians of varied social status – from taxi drivers to government executives – in curiosity to glean into their war-time stories (I’ll bring you individual stories later), I hear a lot of sighs; lots of hmmmmm. So much is said by what is not said. Individual stories of the war period can only be punctuated with hmmmmm while they make genuine efforts to get their lives back together.

Yes, Liberia is rebuilding. But what does it mean to have a country with many returnees? What does the phenomenon of returnees do to the psyche of a country? How does it change the national character and culture?

Let me take you down a gloomy memory lane, to Ghana in the Year of Our Lord 1983 when an estimated one million Ghanaians hurriedly returned home when Nigeria drove them out. In 1985, another hundred thousand or so joined the returnee bandwagon. At the time, a nice word, repatriate, was used to describe the national shock of having an influx of its kith and kin suddenly return home, unplanned.

That was when the word returnee made it into Ghana’s national lexicon. These folks had earlier on left Ghana as economic refugees because they could not stand the heat in the kitchen – the poverty, hunger and destitution. So desperation to pursue greener pastures set in.

We called them “Agege returnees.” They arrived with bags, sacks, babies with runny noses, petty thieves, armed robbers, crap, scraps, miscreants and undiagnosed depressed folks; extra human beings, hungry, confused and desperate for dear life.

The “Ghana must go” people came by sea (some tossed out of some sort of giant fishing nets); they came by land (mostly on top of each other in trucks and vans); they came by air (the privileged who could afford). They came! Hungry, tired, angry, disappointed – they came. And Ghana had to accept them with their varied funky burdens. That was the single largest migration into Ghana in our recorded history.

The returnee influx had some positives as some brought money and goods in hot demand. These included ‘boom boxes’ which home-based Ghanaians instantly bought off their tired backs. But any positives in vibrant trading activities in the informal sector were short-lived because the returnees were met with bush fires and the associated famine in the midst of eye-popping ear-clogging nose-choking military dictatorship. In my estimation, the early 1980s were the worst years with regard to the quality of life of Ghanaians.

Most people went about hungry. We grew very lean on what was nicknamed the “Rawlings Chain.” I spotted mine, with bones sticking out like a person in a Nazi concentration camp. Stark poverty stared the majority of our people in the face. We used “Don’t Touch Me” soap. I learned how to make soap with powdered dried cocoa pods and palm kennel oil.

As a people, we begged and queued for anything. Wheat, oil, yellow corn, ‘kako’, milk powder, as well as unbaked bread and uncooked 'kenkey' were luxuries. Some of our people (our mothers!) were stretched out naked on tables, and whipped for either hoarding or selling one thing or the other above the ‘control price’.

I vividly recall other unimaginable horrors. The strange phenomenon of instant justice was introduced into Ghana with the influx of many and varied desperate returnees. The worst was the burning alive of anyone who was vaguely suspected to be a thief. The main tool used in the technique of human burning was old vehicle tires, placed around the neck of the suspected criminal. I witnessed one such abhorrent objectionable repugnant incident at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. The memory will never leave me.

Without a doubt, the arrival of “Agege returnees” had a deep impact on Ghana’s national character. Ghana experienced a culture shock. So therefore with the many ‘returnees’ arriving home in Liberia after years of sojourn in different parts of the world, I can’t help but wonder what degree of changes this phenomenon would effect on the national character of Liberia. Would the negatives out-weigh the positives? Time will tell.

If Agege returnees, bush fires, famine and autocratic rule brought such untold hardships on Ghana, then the effects of a long drawn-out war in Liberia might be unimaginable.

War does not repair; it destroys. The interruption of war leads to retrogression. War doesn’t just stop progress; it pushes back whatever progress has been made. It sets the clock back. War is waged in the backyards of women and children. Rape is used in war as a weapon to crush womanhood, the backbone of families and nations. War destroys the psyche, the very depth of it. War does not just kill in the present; it kills in the future. War uproots sanity and impudently replaces it with insanity.

Chew on this and speak peace to Ghana.

When we lift up the flag of Ghana, what colours do we lift?

Please answer ‘True’ or ‘False’ to the following questions. 1. Yellow is the same as gold. 2. Pink is one of Ghana’s national colours. 3. Light green or bluish green is the same as deep green. 4. The red in our national flag represents the blood that was shed to win us independence from the tight apron strings of the British throne. 5. The colour grey is the same as black that represents the black star in Ghana’s flag. 6. It’s important to use the same colours consistently. Answers: 1 – False, 2 – False, 3 – False, 4 –True, 5 – False, 6 –True.

Consistency matters. Ghana’s national colours are horizontal strips of red, gold, green with the Black Star boldly and gorgeously seated in the middle. But what are the authentic colours? Does it matter the shade of the colours we use? It should matter.

We do know that the red symbolizes the blood that was shed by our forefathers to win us freedom from the funk of colonialism; the gold, of course, stands for our natural resource of gold; the green stands for our lush forests; and the black represents the beauty of the texture of our black skins.

During national feel-good moments, the highest of which is the periodic football seasons when Ghana features prominently on the international stage, Ghana’s national colours become our uniform. We wear, paint and hung them as decorative pieces of national pride. If we could eat red gold green during these high-octane occasions, we would. Alas, if we could, we would eat red fufuu, green groundnut soup, gold tilapia, and nibble on black chocolate for dessert.

However, it is during such national feel-good moments that the abuse and debasement of our national colours rise to a nonsense pitch. The colours degenerate and get no respect at all. Anything goes with no particular attention paid to the shade of colours we display. At a close look during such occasions, different shades of the four colours are paraded throughout our country – from flags, tee-shirts, hats, head bands and anything that could be worn, waved or hoisted.

Instead of the lush forest-green, different shades of green are observable, with some degenerating into bluish-green. Gold suffers humiliation to become various shades of yellow. Red is dishonoured with funny shades of pink. Even black suffers defilement to become greyish.

On the whole, our national colours have become adulterated while we go about feeling very happy, proud and on top of the world. It is as if our country now suffers from an acute case of colour blindness. See where the general lack of standardisation in our national life has brought us?

During international sporting events, Ghana gets the unique opportunity to market itself. The first ‘African’ World Cup has put us on the world stage as our ‘boys’ masterfully chased after and kicked balls. But during the recent unique opportunity, while we screamed hoarse in wild excitement for the Black Stars, we displayed several shades of red, gold and green instead of unified national colours. But it is important that when we lift up the flag of Ghana, we should lift up the same colours.

Ghana’s image is closely attached to its national colours. Using various shades of colours to represent our country tarnishes our image and gives the impression that we do not care. The World Cup was such a great opportunity for the Branding Ghana initiative to shine through and call our attention to the debasement of our national colours. What a missed opportunity!

The corporate world has always known the importance of consistency of logo and corporate colours in branding. Companies small and large painstakingly design and make decisions on the choice of logos, colours, slogans and flags for a purpose. These companies seek for identity, uniqueness, differentiation and exclusivity from others.

Symbols and colours offer a short-cut to a message because they can resonate with people once they become identifiable with the corporate entity. These are simple but powerful public relations, marketing and publicity tools. A brand communicates the values of a company and calls for message consistency because anything less creates fragmented, confusing and splintered messages. Clearly, a brand is an intangible asset that cannot be toyed with.

During national feel-good moments, Ghana’s national colours generate an emotional connection, creating a bond among us. The spontaneous display of our national colours everywhere by people from all social status -- young and old, male and female, tall and short, Ewe and Ashanti – is so inspirational and magical. The message of our national colours is national heritage and unity. Even our annoyingly divisive NPP/NDC politics take a back seat during such occasions. So maybe we need more of such occasions!

But, is a flag just a flag? No! Until Independence on March 6, 1957, Ghana’s flag was a version of the British Union Jack with an insert of an emblem showing a tropical rainforest with an elephant. Ghana, its people and everything it owned belonged to Britain. The adoption of our own national flag with specific colours at Independence has a powerful symbolic meaning. It implies that at last, we were on our own to take charge of our destiny.

People have shown pride in their national flags and colours from time immemorial. Some have died for their flags. While flags have united others, it has sharply divided others. Some even burn flags as an act of protest to show defiance and resistance. The swat sticker presents a dualism of the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. While it remains a symbol of unity and purpose for perpetuators of hatred, hostility and brutality, it undoubtedly stands fearfully as a symbol of oppression and pain for victims of racial prejudice and violence.

If Ghana as a brand is closely intertwined with our national colours and identity, then can it be said that as the quality of our national colours deteriorates, our country’s fortunes will also deteriorate? Symbolically, do we loose inspiration with the loss of every shade of the richness of our national colours? Most likely.

There is therefore a need for quality control, standardization and an effort to guard and jealously protect whatever are the authentic but vulnerable national colours from get-rich-quick manufacturers. Our flag and national colours should provide the seal of approval for anything Ghana, our cherished ideals and values. Whether the flag adorns the neck as a scarf or the head as a hat, the colour shades should be the same, otherwise they should not represent Ghana.

If our national colours are not protected now during our half-century of nationhood, who can tell what concoction of colours will be paraded about as our national colours another fifty to hundred years from now? They might not be recognizable or contain any meaning worth holding on to, or let alone become anchors of national pride and development.

We should care enough to get our national colours right and leave no room for mediocrity. We should show consistency with the colours that represent us as a nation state or else we will be conveying a fragmented message as we continue on the path of developing our country. We should sustain and proudly wallow in the exclusive esteem our authentic national colours bring. But what are they, specifically?

Do you flirt with wellness?

If Martinata, an extraterrestrial being from super outer-space, should stop by in Ghana to listen to our media content, s/he would swear at the awesome throne of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost that we are a bunch of belly-full lucky-go-lucky folks with no cares whatsoever in the world.

All we appear to care about is our Excellency Honourable political leaders, chief among them is the almighty Rawlings couple. Fact: raw Rawlings news over-powers the media landscape in unhealthy doses. Meanwhile, as a people, we have many issues to resolve.

A case in point! Take health as an example. Roll back to 30 years when I almost had my first baby on the floor because of shortage of beds at the Ridge Hospital. At the time, medical doctors at Korle Bu were on strike. When a baby is ready to arrive in the world, it pops out regardless of the mother’s location – be it a farm, toilet, bushes or a well-equipped hospital. What saved me from floor baby-birthing was the kindness of my family to send me to Kumordji Hospital where the bill amounted to my one year salary.

Fast forward to July, 2010 to news reports of the pressure on beds in our hospitals. On a recent visit to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, a whopping 30 years after my near floor-birthing experience, I saw women who had just had Caesarean surgery, lying on thin mattresses on the floor. The matter rests! No, this matter should not rest.

We must be upset enough to push for a change. In the face of our low-cost health-care delivery system, it’s even more important for individuals to take charge of their health and practice wellness.

Enters Professor Lade Wosornu, a columnist of The Ghanaian Times newspaper. He manifests in that paper every Saturday, on page six in “Health Issues.” Out of the estimated 220 original articles published in the column over five years, he has selected 25 on wellness theme for publication in a book entitled, “Welcome to wellness: A Ghanaian guide to personal well-being.”

I discovered his column about three years ago. It arrested me. I’ve gleaned so much medical wisdom from that column and I strongly recommend it to you as a key part of your weekend reading material. If you’ve never read that column, then you’ve missed a ton of health advice in the past five years. Ouch! But it’s not too late. Look for back issues. But that might be a bit cumbersome.

A short-cut solution is to buy the new book, “Welcome to wellness” and keep it by your bedside. Chew on it, one chapter at a time like you’ll handle a chewing stick to pick up not-so-nice left-over stuff from in-between your teeth after a good meal. As you recline, burping without shame after a heavy meal, read the book to welcome yourself to wellness.

You see, Professor Wosornu has been a medical doctor for 37 years in Ghana and beyond our shores. So clearly, he has seen all there is to see in health care – the good, the bad and the very ugly. He has seen patients of all sorts – the graveyard-dreaming terrified, the whatever-would-be-would-be I-don’t-care, the eye-popping clueless, and many others in between.

Lade Wosornu writes like a loving teacher who cares about his students. He knows so much and he teaches it gently. There is no such health column in Ghana so go to his river and swim in his wisdom. He makes complex health information very simple and readable, even funny. He wakes you up from slumber and/or any hallucination you may have about the state of your health. If after going through half of this book you don’t feel the urge to change anything about your lifestyle, then you need a serious visitation from God the Father, God the Son and definitely, God the Holy Ghost!

But Wosornu acknowledges the limits of advocacy. When it comes to behavioural change, awareness creation is only the beginning. The individual carries the burden of change. He, the medical doctor, advocate, columnist, author does his part through his writings. Take it or leave it.

But prepare yourself, for you’ll come away with an indictment after reading this book. Maybe you’ve not taken your annual leave in the past five years. You don’t exercise. You don’t have a hobby. All you do is work, work and work some more because you wait to rest in your grave. Or probably, you are the type who, even when your body demands it, won’t see a medical doctor for any sort of check up because fear has eaten away at your senses. You don’t laugh, enough. You drink alcohol, a lot.

May be, just maybe, you’re overweight – a politically correct way of saying that you’re FAT (taflatse ten times). Your stomach has protruded and hardened. People assure you that you look good, that your obesity is a sign of wellbeing. That’s an unholy lie.

Or, you may be one of those people who eat mighty balls of fufuu accompanied by thick and complex palm-nut soup made from an animal farm assortment of meat late in the evening after a hectic day’s work so that as you sleep, the food hugs and sleeps over you.

Who do you know, with an impressive stomach, a stomach that screams poor health which we glorify as good living? Such stomachs are taut, like leather pressed and pulled tight like the surface of a drum. If you’re a married man, people praise your wife for feeding you well. If you’re a woman, some people congratulate you for being pregnant.

According to Professor Wosornu, when you can’t bend with ease, if your thighs are not at peace with each other, then you must fix your weighty problem. I suggest that periodically, stand naked in front of a full-size mirror and look at yourself in your ‘birthday suit.’ If you like what you see even if you can’t see below your belly-button, worry. Or, like me, you might not like the strange bulges which make you look like a pear ripe for plucking. Let’s do something about it although that something, wellness, is tough to do.

So as Ghana stays enamoured with our political leaders and waste an incredibly hefty amount of time discussing the almighty Rawlings couple while our national agenda for health remains out of whack and might remain so for the unforeseeable future, let’s do what is within our power, to welcome ourselves to wellness. Professor Wosornu’s book can show you the way.

Unfortunately, no superb practice of wellness can save a pregnant woman with a breach who urgently needs a hospital bed to settle in after undergoing a Caesarean section to deliver a baby. Show me one individual who is the ‘government.’ I have a few questions to ask, chief among them is: When, if ever, would it be safe for all women of Ghana, irrespective of location or station in life, to have a baby without the gloomy reality of death hovering?

Oh, the book is selling for 30 Ghana cedis, the cost of a few meals. And, Martinata, our extraterrestrial being, would sanctify that expenditure.

Managing Sickle Cell Disease: A voice from the frontline

Ask a typical Ghanaian this simple question on a good day: “Charle, how is life?” The answer is very likely to be: “I’m managing.” This response comes without any explanation whatsoever about the nature and extent of the management. So it appears that in Ghana, the farmer is managing. The accountant is managing. The labourer is managing. The student is managing. The desperately poor are managing. The MP is managing. Even the manager is managing. We are all managing. This probably makes ‘managing’ very Ghanaian; or so you would think.
So when I attended a conference this week on the achievements of sickle cell disease patients, the big thing that hit me is that management should also be applied to diseases like sickle cell. With effective management, the focus shifts from the disease to the person. Despite any aches suffered by a sickle cell patient, and in spite of disability, a patient who manages his/her disease well can live a long and productive life to achieve his/her full potential.

During the conference, I heard sad stories, but I also heard powerful stories of hope from sickle cell patients who have accomplished more with their lives than some of us who claim to be ‘normal.’ Sickle cell patients are the ones we call SS, or what the internationally renowned sickle cell expert, Dr. Konotey-Ahulu, refers to as ACHEACHE. Yes, the stereotype is that the SS patient is literally cursed to live a life of pain. Fact: pain is not fun; pain gets in the way of productivity.

But there is another school of thought. If managed well, sickle cell should not be a pain sentence. Several of the participants who shared their stories said it better than I ever could. I therefore reproduce below, the full text of a speech delivered by Mrs Mary Klufio, a sickle cell disease patient who has lived a long and productive life in spite of the disease.

She is a 64 year old mother of three. Enterprising, she worked at CFAO Multi Stores, advancing to senior management position, the first woman to do so. She did all that and more through effective management of sickle cell disease. Anyone can.

Please share this information with anyone you know who suffers from pains because of sickle cell disease. Remember, knowledge is power. Without knowledge, the people perish! So hear her!

“Like so many sickle-cell patients, I am a living proof that we can live with the disease and still achieve our dreams. That is not to say that the disease should be taken lightly, because it can be debilitating and can cause death. I know that all too well because I have come very close to death myself and only last Friday, I buried my 36-year-old nephew who was a sickle-cell patient. But, the good news is that the disease can be managed. Like every situation, if it is managed, the results can be good.

“I am a business-person and I know that to run a successful business you have to put certain regulations in place. Some of these may be difficult to follow, but there is no easy way out. So it is with this unfortunate and painful disease. As sickle-cell patients, we can live a normal, healthy life if we look after ourselves well, that is, if we adopt the correct lifestyle.

1. We must learn to listen to our bodies and respond accordingly because a crisis almost always gives us enough warning before it manifests. In my case, an ache along the spine is enough warning. I did not know this when I was growing up, so I had numerous crises that could have been avoided.

2. Research done on the disease by well-renowned physicians and hematologists has shown that while the weather can affect us, we do not have to suffer pain anytime there is a change in weather. To reduce our chances of falling ill in cold weather, we must keep ourselves sufficiently warm. In hot weather, we should be careful not to overexpose ourselves to the heat.

3. We must regularly visit our doctors or sickle-cell clinics even when we feel well. We must report to them as soon as we start feeling the symptoms of a crisis coming on. If we get to the clinic early enough, the crisis can be managed and most probably minimized.

4. We should take our prescribed medicines for life; or at least until a cure is found for the disease.

5. It is imperative that our daily fluid intake be consistent with what doctors prescribe: at least three liters of water a day. We must take note of how much we are drinking daily. For example: it helps to drink from one bottle and finish that before taking another so that at the end of the day, we may know the exact volume of water we have drunk. We know we are drinking enough water if our urine does not appear concentrated.

6. From my experience, stress, fear, anger, anxiety and extreme excitement are all enemies of the disease. But how can one go through this crazy world without falling prey to some of these emotions? We must learn to control the triggers. Since excessive physical exertion and hard manual labour can be triggers, we must exercise in moderation.

7. Education that can help us secure appropriate jobs is very important for people with sickle cell disease. I am grateful to my parents and doctors, especially Prof. Felix Konotey-Ahulu, for motivating me to obtain a university degree even as I struggled with the disease as a young woman. I have friends and acquaintances with sickle-cell disease who, by virtue of their education, have achieved even more that I have.

8. I have learnt over the years that we need a lot of support from family, friends and colleagues, especially when we are in crisis. These are people who can tell us when we do not look well or remind us to take our medications, etc. This is an important aspect of the management of sickle cell disease. I go into crisis whenever I do not heed my husband’s advice to slow down or rest.

9. Last, but not the least is the power of faith. People sometimes feel uncomfortable at the mention of God’s name. I do appreciate that this a scientific conference, but, as I am sharing my personal experiences, permit me to state that faith in and prayers to God have helped me, my family, my friends and maybe my doctors to manage my condition. I still remember my parents praying for me when I had crisis as a child.

In January 2003, when I had a major crisis and was in a coma for two weeks, family, friends and doctors offered and solicited prayers from all over the world for me to get better, while I was being treated by excellent physicians. If you have faith that the good Lord is taking care of you in addition to all the medical and personal care you are receiving, you, too, can be at peace with your condition and rise above it.”
dorisdartey@yahoo.com

A Protest Note for Plastiki Ghana Company Limited

While South Africa was warming up to play host to the world for FIFA’s 2010 soccer tournament, a group of environmentally conscious folks were constructing the Plastiki, a boat made from plastic waste bottles that can sail across the oceans. It was an extraordinary exercise in protest against plastic pollution.

The Plastiki expedition left San Francisco in California on 20th March this year and arrived in Sydney, Australia last Monday 26th July. The Plastiki was inspired by the epic 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage on a raft made from balsa husks. The plastic bottle boat is the very first of its kind. It was a logistic nightmare to build but after several months of figuring things out from an engineering standpoint, the construction was completed for the vessel to sail off.

The message the Plastiki conveys is that waste can be transformed into a valuable resource. Here in Ghana, waste is waste, and rarely transformed into anything edifying. There is some national pretence of recycling plastic waste but that is just a big joke. Ghana’s plastic fingerprint on the earth is not measured and nothing is being done to curtail plastic usage. This matter belongs to a free-for-all regime.

Visit Ghana's beaches and you’ll witness how much garbage, especially plastics, the wise Atlantic Ocean vomits. Nature knows something we humans of today do not know. Nature abhors horrible waste that does not fit into the web of life that is not cyclical, and does not have ‘cradle-to-cradle’ characteristics.

Facts on the global level about plastics are frightening. In the USA, a country that is big on recycling, only 20% of plastic bottles are recycled. Of the 15 billion pounds of plastics produced annually, only one billion pounds are recycled. The excess of 38 billion pounds of plastic bottles and 25 million Styrofoam cups/plates end up in landfills. In the United Kingdom, less than ten percent of plastic is recycled. Figures are not readily available for Ghana but you can guess that a tiny quantity of our plastic waste is recycled.

More facts. It is estimated that up to about 80 percent or more of pollution in the world’s oceans and rivers comprises of plastic waste. This means that human’s plastic debris either floats or settles in water bodies. As if these frightening facts are not enough, scientists estimate that every year, about one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die when they gobble up plastics or entangle themselves in plastic waste.

Since April, whenever I could, I followed the fascinating Plastiki voyage online. One of the fascinating characteristic of the Plastiki expedition was the details of the records. It was constructed from approximately 12,500 plastic waste bottles. It took 120,000 man hours to build. The crew travelled 8,000 nautical miles, which lasted 129 days (specifically, 3,083 hours).

During the Plastiki expedition, the crew read 32 books, drank 1,200 cups of tea, and ate 1,175 chocolate bars (I imagine that some cocoa from Ghana might have featured in the manufacturing of those yummy chocolate bars!). The crew granted 50 interviews while at sea. The Plastiki expedition was reported in over 300 print publications and covered on more than 200 radio broadcasts and 10,000 news websites. 10,400 photographs were taken.

The fundamental philosophy that informed the Plastiki expedition is that it recognized waste as a design flaw because waste does not appear in nature. Waste from one aspect of nature should be a resource for another. This implies that any waste we generate that does not become a resource is unacceptable. The materials we use in everyday living should, as a matter of nature’s necessity, have a life cycle.

An understanding of this philosophy calls for a new way of thinking and acting about the way we live. Clearly, at this point in time of human existence, we don’t have all the answers. There is much room for learning, re-learning, un-learning and re-thinking about waste. Hopefully, the outcome of learning, re-learning, un-learning and rethinking will be a reduction of our human footprints on the world.

The Plastiki adventure story is a perfect message in a bottle. Ghana must have a national conversation about plastics. Some of us contribute nothing to the world. We’re born, we live and we die. But long after our deaths, our plastic waste will hang around, stuck in mother earth and water bodies far into the lifespan of several generations of our confused offspring. This must be unconscionable.

Plastics have not been around long enough so scientists do not know and are not in agreement on how long it takes for non-biodegradable plastics to decompose (i.e. to become one with nature). Some estimate hundreds (500?) of years. Ghana’s average life expectancy is less than 60. Using this estimate, the plastic from which you sucked sachet water yesterday will outlive you by anything from 100 to 450 years. Chew on this.

Ghana needs solutions to the plastic problem. We must rethink combined strategies to reduce, reuse and recycle. The materials we use in the name of civilization which have no life-cycle but choke the earth should be considered scandalous. The youth must wake up and push this country to generate inspiring solutions. We adults are living on borrowed time, dying off with our days seriously numbered. The youth and their descendants will inherit Ghana. But, the reckless will not inherit this earth!

During the journey, the Plastiki crew caught three fishes compared with the crew of the Kon-Tiki expedition forty years ago who ate freshly caught fish every day. Besides, the Kon-Tiki crew could not enter the ocean for fear of sharks. In contrast, the Plastiki crew saw no sharks. Implication? Something is changing or has changed in the oceans’ texture and stock of fishes.

Considering the unknown but definitely excessive quantity of plastics we use in this country and simply toss into the environment, we are creating our own Plastiki of some sort. With all the multi-coloured plastics we are dumping into the finite size of earth called Ghana —in water bodies, in farm lands, being swallowed by fishes, goats, cows and chickens – someday, Ghana would become a Plastiki.

Clearly, there is no political commitment – on both the NDC and NPP fronts. Why? Plastic is big business. People from across our land make good money from plastics. The producers are on the first line of the plastic front with the profit trickling down to wholesalers and retailers.

Plastics have become so fashionable that just about anything one buys, s/he receives multiple layers of single use plastic bags. As a country, we have developed an insatiable hunger for plastics. We use them mindlessly without any pause whatsoever to think about what happens to plastics after they leave our hands. We hunger for more plastics, regardless of its permanent damage to mother earth. Sadly, there is no effort to even promote a reduction in use.

We don’t need a rocket scientist to make it clear to Ghana that there is nothing sustainable about our reckless use of plastics. Without a doubt, our continued uncontrolled use of plastics is irresponsible and disrespectful to our land and waters. We are inadvertently creating our own Ghana Plastiki Company Limited. Damn!

Water and Sanitation are Fundamental Human Rights!

Beat the talking drums. Dance, even if your dance moves are awkwardly out of tune. Scream Hallelujah or simply, Halle! Yell out Hurray! Or just Amen! Or, if you so desire, combine Hallelujah with Amen. Be joyful. Sing praises to God’s Holy name. Why? The world body has spoken to establish the key markers of civilization and of humanity!

What? If you haven’t heard, just a week ago, on 28th July, 2010, while some of us were busy searching for water, and others were awkwardly easing themselves in unholy places, the United Nations (UN), in all its wisdom, declared that from this blessed time onwards, access to clean water and basic sanitation ceases to be a matter of privilege, but a right for all human beings on God’s earth.

Broken down, this means that for being one of the estimated 6,602,224,175 people on planet earth (July 2007 estimates) and specifically, for being one of the estimated twenty-three or so million human beings in Ghana, you have a right to clean water and basic sanitation.

Fact: A human being is a doing being. The moment you stop being, you are dead. As beings, we need water to do our thing. As for sanitation, it constitutes the output of our being and doing. So chew on the following profound statement of Victor Hugo, who wrote in Les Miserables, that “The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers…. The sewer is the conscience of a city.”

Human Wrongs

Anything that is supposed to be fundamental is necessary and essential for average functioning. Human rights are set against human wrongs. Lack of access to basic sanitation and clean water are so fundamental that their lack degrades a human being to an inhuman existence. And, that is wrong.

There is human wrongness in the situation of thirteen-year old Shamima Adams, a girl-child in a village near Tamale, who dropped out of school because she could not bear the humiliation of having to “manage” her menstruation. Why? There was no female toilet facility that guarantees her privacy and dignity. There is also wrongness in the matter of middle-aged menopausal Yaa Doris who lives in the far northern armpit of our sprawling capital city of Accra, who has water flowing through her pipes about six times in a year.

Water and sanitation occupy a two-way street. Although they stand alone, yet, they cross paths on the live-sustaining two-way street. They stir each other. They put each other to shame. They honour each other. But in the final analysis, they become one. In their oneness, they give either life or death. There is no middle-of-the-road. You are either a have or a have-not of water and sanitation. Period!

When the rights of humans are violated, they are wronged. Once upon a time, long long but not too long ago, having more than one house-hold toilet was criminalized in my motherland. If the gods did not smile on you, some god-forsaken bloody hooligans would tackle and beat you into an ugly pulp. That was then in Ghana. And this is now. Then, we were wronged. Now, we are still being wronged, 53 long years after Independence. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi said that ‘Sanitation is more important than independence.”

Many awesome things are said about water. In these oily days, water is even said to be the next precious liquid, after crude oil. But typically, they say that water is life. Fair enough. And they also say that sanitation is dignity. It must be. So let’s conclude that people without water are not guaranteed life and those with poor sanitation have lost the dignity to live. In both cases, the person without water and sanitation does not have much of a life.

Sanitation and Human Psyche

But beyond the obvious and immediate, what happens to the psyche of Ghanaians who live such a difficult life in an endless struggle to strategize on the how, why, what, where and when of water and sanitation? Imagine young Kwaku Ofori of Nkawkaw, who grows up in a water-closet house where toilet flushing is an occasional luxury. If such a person grows up and goes into civilized society, he would walk away from a toilet after use without flushing, leaving the stuff for others to stare at and smell. A horrible habit has formed. Dignity has been caste to the swine.

One of the key things said about sanitation is that it is a marker of dignity. Recounting the grievances of untouchables in India in 1896, Mahatma Gandhi once said, “‘Latrines for us!’ they exclaimed in astonishment. ‘We go and perform our functions out in the open. Latrines are for you big people’”

As a country, we have many homes with water closet systems installed but these homes do not have water flowing to flush. Imagine if the thousands of houses to be constructed by STX have fanciful water closet systems installed, but water does not flow through the pipes. As people do their thing without flushing, what a stinky thousands of houses we would have created!

We make a national mockery of hand-washing campaigns. We make do with unthinkable and disgusting sacrifices. For many of us, the abnormal has become normal. For instance, not flushing a toilet immediately excreta and urine are dropped, but waiting until we add some more before flushing is to say the very least, both unhygienic, hazardous and uncivilized.

Demanding our Rights as Humans

So, how do we make demands for these human rights? This declaration of the United Nations must be considered a gift to the world and to all Ghanaians who spend precious time searching for, strategizing, managing, scheming and worrying about water and sanitation.

Even when rights have been declared, if we don’t insist, they would not be given to us on silver platters. What silver! After all, we suck Hausa koko from sachet bags so who will give us water and sanitation rights on whose silver platter? No one! We must demand for clean water and basic sanitation. How?

I’m getting ideas, fast. You see, when I was growing up, I didn’t have water. Toileting was a challenge – at beaches, in bushes, and other unmentionable etceteras. Now, after half a century life span, I still don’t have water. Personally, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of adopting all sorts of unholy strategies to live a hygienic life. Water and sanitation should not be a privilege. They should be a matter of our human right – my right, your right.

So what? Should we run to the government to make demands when its illegitimate naughty children – the Ghana Water Company, Aqua Viten Rand and all other agencies with the responsibility to provide us with clean water and basic sanitation services fail us? This strategy has not worked. Effort is wasted year after year complaining to the government.

Would the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) come to our aid? Let’s test CHRAJ with such cases. Additionally, some of us should test this UN declaration by using the law courts. What’s the way forward?