I asked the fruit seller’s daughter: ‘How much is one pineapple? Oh, and four large-sized mangoes.’ Her mother was away and has left her assorted-fruit stand for the girl to manage. She hesitated in answering, and offered me a grand display of timidity. She brought me a watermelon. I repeated, ‘I want a pineapple and mangoes.’ She stammered and absent-mindedly, brought me two pineapples. I repeated my request for mangoes. She returned and brought me mangoes and bananas. I said, ‘I did not ask for bananas.’
With the drama that unravelled from my attempt to buy fruits, which we’re told are good for our health, I decided to probe into her life story. She’s Abena (not her real name, of course). She is 12 years old and is in class three in a neighbourhood ‘Cyto’ primary school. My attempt to speak some really rudimentary English with her fell completely flat. Basic questions like ‘What is your name?’ How old are you? What school do you attend?’ drew out timid grins and zero response back in English, which clearly seemed to be a very foreign language to her.
To the question, ‘How much is the pineapple, and oh, the mangoes?’, she could only respond in the old cedi currency, by telling me the cost in the thousands. Apparently, at age 12, she is unfamiliar with the new Ghana cedi and would be one of the many Ghanaians who will forever operate in the old currency, because to them, ‘The value is (and will always remain) the same,’ regardless of the large-scale effort of the Bank of Ghana by way of public education campaigns to switch over from the old to the new currency.
A peep into Abena’s soul:
My chit chat session with Abena left me wondering if I was witnessing a classic case of low IQ. But then I thought, if she was that stupid, her mother would not have left her entire fruit stand in her care. So I concluded that Abena has been short-changed at her Cyto elementary school.
I wish I could peep into Abena’s soul to find out what bothers her, what sorrows are brewing deep in her soul, what tears are lurking behind her tender eyes, what she desires for herself, what she obsesses about, what she rebels about, the specific thoughts that flourish in her stream of consciousness, what gives her joy, and..... Does she ever think that nature has given her a lowdown dirty deal or that she is very lucky to be living in Accra and going to school, any school?
Later that night, I went on a trip down my own memory lane to my early days when I collected shreds of old newspapers, the throw-away rejects from my 'bofrot' aunt’s entrepreneurial venture. I used to put the pieces together to form my main reading material. Now, with plastics replacing old newspapers as wrappers, there would have been nothing for me to read. But most importantly, just a few decades ago, pupils from ‘Cyto’ schools, including timid little me, could still qualify to attend one of the three universities in the country. It was a matter of working hard, with a few strands of luck in your stars.
Better questions to ponder over are: What could have become of Abena if the public educational system had not become sub-standard in our 54 year-old Ghana? Abena could have become a lot more in life if she had been dealt a better deal in education. What happened to all the rhetoric about the girl-child? We even have a Ministry of Women and Children, yet issues of females and children continue to lay flat and deep in the gutters of national agenda.
Wasting the lives of our youth:
Cyto education of today is a guaranteed recipe for the youth to get stuck at low-level jobs and in lives with little hope. These days, how many young people who begin life in the middle-of-no-where-Ghana would become anything of essence in society? Specifically, how can this fruit seller’s daughter dare to aspire to become anything beyond a fruit seller? How can she dare to aspire to become a scientist, a medical doctor, the president of Ghana or at the barest minimum, to become a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, let alone a parliamentarian?
The next few days would be March 8, International Women’s Day. As I think of the fruit seller’s daughter, my mind continues to go haywire, fast and furious, imagining several possibilities for the fruit seller’s daughter. Straight up and simple, she might become a trader of some sort in future. That is a no-brainer. It’s also likely that some bloke will give her a romantic knock-out of some sort before she graduates from the teenage years. And with that, we’ll have another teenage pregnancy and the fruit seller’s daughter, she herself still a child, will give birth to her own child.
A Million Woman March:
In the provisional results of the 2010 Population and Housing Census, females came up tops, constituting 51.3 per cent of Ghana’s population – almost twelve and a half million (12,421,770). With females outnumbering males, it’s about time we revisited the matter of the dilemma of gender inequalities and inequities. Abena is only a slice of our social history; of a lousy public education system, of youth who are being wasted.
How does a country develop and thrive when females, the fifty-plus per cent majority, sit on the side-lines to cheer on the minority male population to run affairs? The paucity of women in the national space must be troubling to everyone. A cursory look at the economic geography of the world reveals to even the most unsophisticated observer that countries caught in the thorny throes of stinky poverty and underdevelopment are the ones with the majority of women operating on the fringes.
This phenomenon makes perfect sense for after all, how does one work productively with one arm tied behind the back? How do you bath well with only one arm? You do so unless you absolutely have to because you have only one arm. Females constitute that second arm. Everyone has at least one of these: a mother, sister, daughter or aunt.
So in the spirit of what is happening in northern Africa and the Middle East, where citizens who are fed up with oppressive regimes have taken to the streets to demand their rights, the females of Ghana, the fifty-one plus majority of our population should also take to the streets for a ‘Million Woman March.’ The march should be attended by both men and women who are pro-women. This is an admission that not all women are necessarily pro-women. There are men out there who believe in the cause of women more than some women do.
President Mills and his government promised a 40 per cent appointment of females to public positions. It’s past two years into his administration and he has not delivered on his promise. A key demand from a Million Woman March will be to insist on cashing the president’s promissory note. Women will not be asking for too much. It’ll be a very reasonable demand to ask for a fulfilment of a promise. This will be absolutely magical.
With the drama that unravelled from my attempt to buy fruits, which we’re told are good for our health, I decided to probe into her life story. She’s Abena (not her real name, of course). She is 12 years old and is in class three in a neighbourhood ‘Cyto’ primary school. My attempt to speak some really rudimentary English with her fell completely flat. Basic questions like ‘What is your name?’ How old are you? What school do you attend?’ drew out timid grins and zero response back in English, which clearly seemed to be a very foreign language to her.
To the question, ‘How much is the pineapple, and oh, the mangoes?’, she could only respond in the old cedi currency, by telling me the cost in the thousands. Apparently, at age 12, she is unfamiliar with the new Ghana cedi and would be one of the many Ghanaians who will forever operate in the old currency, because to them, ‘The value is (and will always remain) the same,’ regardless of the large-scale effort of the Bank of Ghana by way of public education campaigns to switch over from the old to the new currency.
A peep into Abena’s soul:
My chit chat session with Abena left me wondering if I was witnessing a classic case of low IQ. But then I thought, if she was that stupid, her mother would not have left her entire fruit stand in her care. So I concluded that Abena has been short-changed at her Cyto elementary school.
I wish I could peep into Abena’s soul to find out what bothers her, what sorrows are brewing deep in her soul, what tears are lurking behind her tender eyes, what she desires for herself, what she obsesses about, what she rebels about, the specific thoughts that flourish in her stream of consciousness, what gives her joy, and..... Does she ever think that nature has given her a lowdown dirty deal or that she is very lucky to be living in Accra and going to school, any school?
Later that night, I went on a trip down my own memory lane to my early days when I collected shreds of old newspapers, the throw-away rejects from my 'bofrot' aunt’s entrepreneurial venture. I used to put the pieces together to form my main reading material. Now, with plastics replacing old newspapers as wrappers, there would have been nothing for me to read. But most importantly, just a few decades ago, pupils from ‘Cyto’ schools, including timid little me, could still qualify to attend one of the three universities in the country. It was a matter of working hard, with a few strands of luck in your stars.
Better questions to ponder over are: What could have become of Abena if the public educational system had not become sub-standard in our 54 year-old Ghana? Abena could have become a lot more in life if she had been dealt a better deal in education. What happened to all the rhetoric about the girl-child? We even have a Ministry of Women and Children, yet issues of females and children continue to lay flat and deep in the gutters of national agenda.
Wasting the lives of our youth:
Cyto education of today is a guaranteed recipe for the youth to get stuck at low-level jobs and in lives with little hope. These days, how many young people who begin life in the middle-of-no-where-Ghana would become anything of essence in society? Specifically, how can this fruit seller’s daughter dare to aspire to become anything beyond a fruit seller? How can she dare to aspire to become a scientist, a medical doctor, the president of Ghana or at the barest minimum, to become a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, let alone a parliamentarian?
The next few days would be March 8, International Women’s Day. As I think of the fruit seller’s daughter, my mind continues to go haywire, fast and furious, imagining several possibilities for the fruit seller’s daughter. Straight up and simple, she might become a trader of some sort in future. That is a no-brainer. It’s also likely that some bloke will give her a romantic knock-out of some sort before she graduates from the teenage years. And with that, we’ll have another teenage pregnancy and the fruit seller’s daughter, she herself still a child, will give birth to her own child.
A Million Woman March:
In the provisional results of the 2010 Population and Housing Census, females came up tops, constituting 51.3 per cent of Ghana’s population – almost twelve and a half million (12,421,770). With females outnumbering males, it’s about time we revisited the matter of the dilemma of gender inequalities and inequities. Abena is only a slice of our social history; of a lousy public education system, of youth who are being wasted.
How does a country develop and thrive when females, the fifty-plus per cent majority, sit on the side-lines to cheer on the minority male population to run affairs? The paucity of women in the national space must be troubling to everyone. A cursory look at the economic geography of the world reveals to even the most unsophisticated observer that countries caught in the thorny throes of stinky poverty and underdevelopment are the ones with the majority of women operating on the fringes.
This phenomenon makes perfect sense for after all, how does one work productively with one arm tied behind the back? How do you bath well with only one arm? You do so unless you absolutely have to because you have only one arm. Females constitute that second arm. Everyone has at least one of these: a mother, sister, daughter or aunt.
So in the spirit of what is happening in northern Africa and the Middle East, where citizens who are fed up with oppressive regimes have taken to the streets to demand their rights, the females of Ghana, the fifty-one plus majority of our population should also take to the streets for a ‘Million Woman March.’ The march should be attended by both men and women who are pro-women. This is an admission that not all women are necessarily pro-women. There are men out there who believe in the cause of women more than some women do.
President Mills and his government promised a 40 per cent appointment of females to public positions. It’s past two years into his administration and he has not delivered on his promise. A key demand from a Million Woman March will be to insist on cashing the president’s promissory note. Women will not be asking for too much. It’ll be a very reasonable demand to ask for a fulfilment of a promise. This will be absolutely magical.
No comments:
Post a Comment