The troubling case of the Wasted Generation

The troubling case of the Wasted Generation

Doris Yaa Dartey.                The WatchWoman Column

Whilst in traffic about 2pm in the hot tropical sun, I saw a young boy aged about 14 years chasing after a ‘tro-tro’. I gave the boy a name: Yaw Oteng. As the vehicle slowed down, a passenger tossed a coin to him. Quickly, he grabbed it, looked at it with such calm excitement. He displayed the broadest of smiles on his face, and gently dropped the coin into his pocket. 

Then I noticed that he was carrying about five small sachets of biscuits. So apparently, what I witnessed was a quick sale of a biscuit (probably at 50 pesewas) in hectic traffic between a child who should have been in school, and an adult passenger in a ‘tro-tro’.  

This makes the 14-year old Yaw Oteng a hawker, one of the hardest routes to entrepreneurship. At that young age, someone should be responsible for Yaw—either his parents or the state of Ghana. But he was on his own. He should have been in school as the 1992 Constitution specifies, but he had dodged education to have a very early start at life, exposing himself to the dangers of moving vehicles.

FROM THE SPOILT TO WASTED GENERATION

Those of us born just before and in the early decades after Ghana attained Independence belong to the Spoilt Generation. At the time, Ghana’s population was about a quarter of what it is today. As the saying goes, “the fewer the merrier.” Probably since there were fewer of us, young people who were academically promising could pass through the system and further their education regardless of family origins. In those days, educated people had countless opportunities to find decent jobs and careers, affording them a life of dignity.

Today, higher education is mostly for the privileged. Finding a job after graduation is next to impossible, leaving thousands of educated youth in a state of undiagnosed depression. These are the Wasted Generation. In effect, the Spoilt Generation have produced a Wasted Generation, who are on a prowl throughout our country. You see the youth everywhere; and they are the frightening picture of idleness. 

Of the idle lot who are doing something, it is obvious that they are not fully utilizing their God-given talents that youthfulness offers. For 14-year old Yaw Oteng to be selling a few biscuits, a 30-year old woman to be selling ‘pure water’, or a group of young people in their twenties to be sitting by the roadside in Accra or Kumasi or under a tree in a village to have endless conversations or play card games constitute a waste of youthfulness. 

The Wasted Generation are not wall flowers decorating our national landscape; they are a disgrace on the collective conscience of Ghana. Fact: some of the youth roaming our streets without aim could have become our own versions of Shakespeare, Einstein, Bill Gates, explorers and inventors. 

The fact that an increasing number of young people are on aimless roaming in this country by the highways and bye-ways should give us adults sleepless nights. I am at a point where leaving my house to go to the heart of Accra or towns and villages depresses me beyond measure.  

I find the scene around the Kotoka International Airport particularly worrisome. It is a crowded field in that neighbourhood, with a troupe of youth hawkers and beggars. It is as if they are at a jamboree to welcome visitors to Ghana. First impressions matter a lot. So continuing to have this crowded hawking and begging scene as the main view for people entering and leaving Ghana by air tells a negative story about our country.  

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF THE WASTED GENERATION?
Today, the Wasted Generation are exposed to the full force of the tropical sunshine, of rain, floods and the other elements; and of the dangers that come from living dangerous lives. How do they sleep and survive? Such a life does not prepare anyone for the future.

What are the long-term psychological impacts of living purposeless and hopeless lives on their future? Can they ever recover from the multiple-layered trauma they are living today? In life, we advance from phase to phase. We do not hope to retrogress. But what's the fate of these youth hawkers and roamers? What does a person graduate to after five to 10 years of living on the streets without undergoing critical preparations for life?

Idleness can produce depression. Idleness can make a person weary. Living a life that is defined by sleeping rough, waking up without a purpose, and going through the day with no hope in sight can produce disappointment, gloom, and deep fear and panic. They must be pondering: “What at all am I in this world for?” There will be temptations to get into illicit acts and self-destructive behaviours like alcohol and drugs to lull the pain of dejection. 

In their quite moments, the Wasted Generation will also harbour unexpressed anger. They will have unwept tears hiding or slowly drying up behind their eye balls. This country should therefore have a collective prayer that the Wasted Generation does not express their deeply-held frustrations and anger! Any wonder that violent crimes abound?

The state of this large number of young people I have labelled as the Wasted Generation has far-reaching repercussions on the future of Ghana. It will change family and societal dynamics. More children will be born out of the safety of marriages and families. What will happen to the children of the Wasted Generation, especially of the children born in kiosks and even on the streets and who live and grow up on the streets? Ghana will stifle hope out of them.

SOLVE NATIONAL CRISIS WITH URGENCY

Whatever the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration plans to do to protect the interests of young people and to create jobs that will give them hope about their future, should be done fast and well. Beneficiaries of the NPP government’s interventions should not be drawn from the NPP folks. Like the free Senior High School initiative, all Ghanaians should benefit. 

School-aged children and young people who are roaming the streets in the cities, towns and villages of this country, should be rounded up and made to go to school. No child should be left to be responsible for him/herself. 

The state of youth idleness is a national crisis issue that can be likened to a dried-up Lake Bosomtwe. You cannot fill it up with little drops of water. You must conjure a heavy downpour of water. Drip drip will not take you anywhere near your goal of filling up the empty lake. Crisis situations call for drastic solutions!

dorisdartey@gmail.com