Her name is Elizabeth. No, not THAT Elizabeth – the mother of King-in-waiting-forever Prince Charles. That Elizabeth, the Queen of England, was born with a golden spoon firmly and irremovably stuck into her mouth. She was raised a royal, nurtured to be queen and rule the world from an island up in the northern hemisphere while casting a wry smile on her subjects far across the waves. No, definitely, not that Elizabeth!
This Elizabeth is 52 years old, the age-mate of Ghana. She is Ghana. She lives near Bonsaaso, in a forgotten backwoods of Kumasi, the Garden City. Poverty has got her down. She is shrivelled. She is educated. She is the loyal subject of a King, The Occupant of The Golden Stool – the Asantehene Osei Tutu II. She lives in a gold-rich region of the country. The earth underneath her might have gold. Yet, she is desperately poor and lives on less than one Ghana cedi a day.
She suffers from life-weariness. Worry is printed into the deep jagged crevices of her face. Added to her biological age is a big bonus of 20 or more years that simply hovers over her like a ghastly ghost, giving her a real-age look of 70 or 80.
The agony is in her skin texture – thin, crumpled, hanging on, darker than its original shade. It’s in her eyes, sunken in, as if searching for something unknown in the distant. It’s on her head – covered carelessly and tightly with a worn-out scarf like a piece of abandoned rag to conceal long-neglected nappy African hair. It’s in the way she walks – drooped, looking downwards as if in anticipation of the ultimate journey to the down-under. It’s in her clothes, hanging loosely over her thin frame like a curtain on a window to keep out the sun, the dust and prying neighbours.
Elizabeth is a mule for poverty.
Ten years ago, Elizabeth was a trader in Kumasi. Then, life turned a bad eye at her and she relocated back to the village. She is now sick. She is desperately poor, her capital for trading long evaporated. She lives off people’s kindness on less than one cedi a day. Her meal is nothing but cassava, more cassava, periodic plantain and as God wills, a sorry piece of fish for flavour. She is a card-bearing NPP member who lives in the NPP Stronghold World-Bank King-Maker Ashanti Region. But poverty has no political party colouring or tribal/regional boundaries. Poverty is just what it is: ugly, painful and demeaning. Poverty is the ground-zero of life.
Elizabeth is a mother or two sons aged 28 and 25. One lives in Accra engaged in unknown trade and the other in Kumasi learning to be a driver. Neither one sends remittances to her because ‘life is hard’ for them.
Nothing in Elizabeth’s life path predicted that she would end up like this. She is now a destitute – in her own hometown. Here is how she lives. Her ancestral home has collapsed. I saw the old rusty weighty roof hanging down on an antiquated mud-house. She currently lives alone in a small room in a shack at the back of a church house. Members of her extended family do not visit her although they live in the same town. She explained it tersely: ‘Each one for him/herself, God for us all.” Our cultural values that used to glue us together are breaking down. Fellow-love is running cold.
Her meals? If anyone shows her kindness and drops some precious cedis her way, here is how she works the magic of living on less than one Ghana cedi a day. Onion: 20Gp (Ghana Pesewas), garden eggs: 20Gp, tomatoes: 20Gp and dried fish (herrings) 50Gp all knocked together with lavish quantities of water to prepare a ‘ways-and-means’ soup. Plantain: 50Gp and cassava: 40Gp. Total cost: two Ghana cedis (about $1.50). Through the sweaty old-fashioned hard-pounding way, fufuu materializes. The meal is ‘managed’ to last for two or three days. On the average, she lives on 70 pesewas (about $0.60) or less a day.
The cliché, ‘Variety is the spice of life,’ applies here. So periodically, Elizabeth introduces variety into her meals. One ball of kenkey: 20Gp and sugar: 50Gp mashed with water to drink. Her diet is therefore high in carbohydrate because the ultimate goal is belly-full. She eats only one meal a day. Without a doubt, she presents powerful practical lessons in the economics of living on less than one cedi a day.
But there are days she goes bone dry and sleeps restlessly on an empty stomach filled with lots of water – and waits and hopes and prays for kindness from anyone the very next day.
Destitution is a difficult existential reality in whatever station of ones life. To be a destitute as a migrant away from home is one thing and although tough, can be excusable and tolerable. But to be a destitute in your own hometown – the town of your birth where your umbilical cord rotted into the earth, the town of your parents’ and grand-parents’ birth, the town where you can locate the graves of your ancestors, the very town where your ancestral DNA can be traced with precision – that is another matter altogether. Destitution at home is unacceptable. It is demeaning – beyond measure. It is painful.
So therefore beneath the fine surface of much of the “This is my hometown” rhetoric are destitution, homelessness and hopelessness. It is easy to take it for granted that living in ones hometown implies that one lives at home. The sad fact is that there are people living in our rural and peri-urban ‘home-town’ communities across the country who are as destitute as some migrants in cities and large towns.
It is said that it is not over until it is over. But in the case of Elizabeth and many others like her, life appears to be over long before it is over. The sort of life that is lived as if one is waiting, wrapped in hopelessness, waiting for death, is a painful life.
Ghana is wasting away its human resources across the land. Children who could have been our wiz-kids – our Bill Gates, Picasso, Tina Turner, Beyonce, Martin Luther King Jn, Barack Obama – our intellectuals, doctors, scientists, artists, musicians – are locked up in the crushing bosom of underdevelopment. Reason? They did not enter this world through the groins or wombs of privileged folks.
I met Elizabeth last week. She is Ghana. Her poverty arrested me. Dear reader, there are many Elizabeths – male and female, young and old – scattered across this country in both rural, urban and peri-urban areas who are precariously leaning off the frail fringes of privilege. Fact: desperate poverty abounds in Ghana.
Elizabeth is Ghana, woven tightly into the national tapestry. When the history of this era is written, future generations will wonder why we allowed such agonizing degradation of the human condition to occur. If you are still alive, you’ll be asked why you didn’t challenge the ‘authorities’ to do right by us. If you’re still around, remember the uproar that is loudly absent at this very moment in history and tell the truth that our generation, especially the privileged minority, chose to look the other way because indifference was easier than taking the right actions. You joined in to ignore Elizabeth!
Meanwhile, we watch and wait for CHANGE to happen through President Mills.
Showing posts with label Poverty Watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty Watch. Show all posts
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Underdevelopment and the Toil of Sisyphus
It is only about 70 to 100 kilometres from Kumasi – the Garden City. Yet, it is the backwoods of Ghana. It is said to be the second largest producer of cocoa in the Ashanti Region. Yet, it is trapped in the drudgery of poverty. The inhabitants are engaged in the grind of back-breaking farming and by that, are primary contributors to the national cake. Yet, they are conveniently forgotten when the cake is shared – a classic case of ‘monkey dey work but baboon de chop’.
Road in Atreso at the beginining of 2009 rainy season
Several rural parts of Ghana have suffered neglect since 52 years of Independence and by implication, denied entry into Ghana and the larger world. Yet still, politicians enter the most difficult-to-enter parts of the country in their quest and greedy hunger for votes.
Parts of the District have not changed much since the beginning of time, tightly locked up in conditions not different from pre-colonial Ghana. If their ancestors who died 50-100 years ago should pop back up from the beyond, they will recognize everything. They can find their way home; just that many will find their old mud-houses in dilapidation.
Underdevelopment hurts in diverse ways. Owing to unmotorable or non-existent roads, rural areas can be cut off from Ghana. As I entered a thirty-five town cluster of the District, I could not help but wonder, “Is this part of Ghana?” Last year, floods cut off eight communities (Dawusaso/Gyegyetreso, Fahiakobo, Kobriso, Hiamankwa, Edwenase, Ayiem, Assamang and Essienkyem) beyond River Offin for three months. They literally went ‘abroad.’ Oh, but we love their cocoa and everything else they contribute to the national cake!
As some Accra residents suffer from floods again this rainy season, the rural underprivileged will also suffer their own unique but painful experiences, including floods. Unfortunately, the plight of the rural population does not make it much into the national public and political consciousness.
A journey into the District will cause you to shudder, and even suspect the strength of your bladder.
Where roads exist, they are so bad that after every few minutes of ride in a top-class four-wheel-drive vehicle, you would feel an urgent urge to urinate because the roughness of the road necessarily forces your bladder and probably other internal organs to shift out of place.
Some parts of the area are cut off from Ghana technologically.
Where there is no electricity, people cannot watch television. Besides, there is no community FM radio station (some Kumasi stations reach them) and no mobile telephone network reception, rendering the residents permanently out-of-coverage area.
The absence of electricity also probably results in an increase in childbirth. When nature’s light (sun and moon) go off and there’s nothing to do, and you’re left in pitch frightening darkness in a thick tropical rain forest, the only solace is in someone else’s bosom to play hanky-panky. Then, pop – a child is born. It’s as simple as A-B-C. Population growth in such areas is therefore very high.
I came across some people who live on one cedi or less a day, whose meal is nothing but cassava, more cassava, periodic plantain and whenever God wills, a blessed piece of fish or meat for flavour. This is also an area where buruli ulcer rudely entered and causes untold pain and suffering. Much of the area’s roads have never had a touch of tar. So therefore any person who is born and lives in the area until death, will never know what a tarred road looks like.
The youth of the area, joined by migrants from afar, are engaged in ‘galamsey’, the ecologically destructive illegal mining of gold. On a light note, I saw a man shaving another man’s armpit by the roadside. I’m yet to deconstruct that experience to glean deep meaning.
Oddly, even in their plight, the people have remained loyal to the so-called Danquah-Busia tradition. These are die-hard NPP folks. Yet, despite eight years of President Kufuor’s NPP administration, their circumstances did not change. Road construction work that began was clearly put on a go-slow no-hurry low-priority low-track timeline and might remain so for a long time to come. The big bad villain in this matter is the government – all governments since Independence have failed them, big time. Unconscionable!
In life, every now and then, there comes certain things you read or experience that are so compelling that they impact on your life forever. Two years ago, I read a speech by Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps entitled, “The perils of indifference.” Read the following quote a number of times and feel where within you it touches the most. Without a doubt, it will touch you at the very heart of the matter.
“Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end…… it benefits the aggressor, never his victim whose pain is magnified when he/she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees – not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.”
Enters a project, which some in the District affectionately call, ‘Milinom.’ The Millennium Villages Project is a saving grace for the Bonsaaso cluster of villages, extending loving help to them. Funded by a consortium of three international donors – the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Millennium Promise, the project seeks to assist, in a guided and systematic manner, with interventions to holistically improve the human condition of the people by 2015 on the basis of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
This project has, at best, scratched the surface of the developmental challenges of the area considering the fact that our political leadership has committed the twin crime of indifference and fraudulent neglect since Independence.
If you have ever doubted that the global credit crunch cannot stretch its long and ugly arms across to Ghana, think again. This week, the International Monetary Fund slashed its global economic outlook from bad to gloomy. Any cut in funding and/or abandonment of this project will result in the evaporation of the few gains made in the past two years of the project’s life and return the already vulnerable population quickly back into the rocky bosom of pre-colonial Ghana. They then would have to remain on bended knees, relying solely on divine intervention, or to simply stay put until………ad infinitum.
By that, they will remain the victims of indifference and as the Sisyphus of our country, forever drag the stone up the steep hill and then helplessly watch it roll down – exploited, ignored while we continue to build Ghana on their tired backs.
For a Bowl of Soup
Images of a sea of youth providing ready-made mammoth audiences for political party rallies during last year’s General Elections are glued in my aging memory. For the most part, these young people are the offspring of the under-privileged. So, a bowl of soup, the chance to get anything – just anything at all – for free is at once exhilarating and intoxicating, and can bring smiles where there was only tension on a glorious sunny sweaty Easter Sunday.
The life of a migrant can be tragic. The crowd at Joy 99.7FM’s 2009 Easter Soup Kitchen was predominantly female migrants from the three Northern regions. If I was a young girl growing up in a rural area, I would just about now be having a strong urge to move from the vast but narrow parameters of underdeveloped Ghana. My destination of choice would have been Accra, the city of contradictions, where choked gutters and heaps of refuse can grow in privileged East Legon.
An unsolved mystery at the event was the absence of the poor and needy from southern Ghana origins. To the best of my knowledge, poor and hungry folks from Ga, Ada, Krobo, Ewe, Akuapem, Ashanti, Brong, Twifo, Denkyira and Fante ethnic groups live in Accra. Why didn’t they attend the Easter Soup Kitchen? Are they not desperately poor too?
The Easter Soup Kitchen bore testimony to the urgency to develop the three northern regions and rural Ghana. Fortunately, Team Mills and his NDC administration’s manifesto promises to embark on a grand accelerated Savannah area development project. It will include the development of a Master Plan aimed at harnessing the potential of the vast underdeveloped Savannah belt of Ghana that stretches from the three northern regions down to the northern parts of the Brong Ahafo and Volta regions. Of course the potential includes the human capital as well as the varied natural resources.
This promise is exciting. It is a promise that soothes the aching heart. So now, we just must keep all fingers and toes crossed for change to happen. But specifically, we must hold the Government accountable. Promises must be fulfilled. The international son of our land, Kofi Annan, said this about Africans: “We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems if only we can find the political will.”
So long as the Savannah belt and the rural areas remain in a sorry state of underdevelopment, the youth will continue to troop down to the bright city lights in search of non-existent greener pastures. These are our own modern day explorers. The will is strong to relocate to the cities where they won’t have much of substance to do so will end up sitting by the roadsides – idle, watching, waiting. They will sleep in conditions not meant for humans and our slums will grow.
And when drugs beckon them, some will try it and get hooked either as sellers or users. Crime will beckon them too! And some will scale walls and knock down burglar-proof doors and windows to make grand dawn-time visits to the privileged in the comfort of their homes – at gun point. It will be nothing but an exercise in sharing. Wrong, but difficult to stop. But, I digress.
The Easter Soup Kitchen was not just thought-provoking. It was fun. Participants were treated to lots of free stuff. Vitamins, anti-malarial medication, toothpaste, de-wormer, contraceptive pills, condoms, powdered milk, yoghurt, an assortment of food and of course water were distributed.
There were several scenes of greed meeting freebies, eyeball-to-eyeball. The urge to pack more than was due was apparent, probably to save for tomorrow and the next. For many of the participants, it was a day of looting anything and everything. It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the loot was sold for cash.
There were many hilarious scenes. Infants in the two-year age bracket who have just gained walking skills could not sit still at the live band music. They lost it on the floor, letting go of their unique dance moves with no inhibitions whatsoever. By mid-day, several faces at the event had a powdery appearance from sucking Nunu Instant Filled Milk Powder.
A fragile aging man who appeared to be recovering from stroke went in line to collect a pack of condoms from the Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE) stand. Of what use would that be to him? Well, that was his pot of soup!
As the day rolled by, humanity began to degenerate, regressing toward the ugly mean. People who had been calm in the morning increasingly lost their dignity. Some broke into running toward anything others run toward and in the process fell, rose and run again, sweaty and losing it at the mind.
Women are wonderfully creative when it comes to packing stuff into non-existent pockets. The under-belly bosom regions and back-sides are all convertible sites for packing whatever floats a woman’s boat. So it was that bowls of food, second-hand clothing, fruits, drinks and anything-for-free made it as body backs. One woman succeeded in making a back-pack look just like a perfect baby.
The participants who were on a quest for free ‘soup’ were mostly women, girls and infants. The number of young women (some pregnant) who were no more than girls themselves with their own babies tugged at the back was worrying. These are the babies who will grow up on the streets to perpetuate a vicious cycle of streetism.
An interesting global phenomenon is that literate and privileged people have imbibed the message of family planning and as a result, have fewer children while the non-literate, underdeveloped/developing poor cast family planning to the dogs and pop out babies with reckless abandon. The outcome is that the population of developed countries and the elites of the world continue to drop. So therefore, someday, underdevelopment will take over the world as the developed become endangered species.
Here is one way to explain the phenomenon. When you can’t self-actualize from the neck-up, at the brain, then you’re left with the option of concentrating on self-actualizing at what appears to be the only viable site of choice – the groin. The outcome is the over-population of the earth because children become the tangible signs of success. After all, they are the products of the groin and therefore of joy, regardless of quality.
But in spite of the motivation for populating the earth even when one cannot afford it, it is important for Ghana to return to a family planning campaign. Fact: our population has doubled in two decades, from 12 million in the late 1980s to the current estimated 23.2 million. The meek shall not inherit the earth!
Easter Soup Kitchen goes beyond bringing together more than 1,000 hungry mouths for a good Easter free feeding and medical care. It promotes volunteerism and philanthropy. The sheer number of volunteers who spent the day helping out was heart-warming.
But here are a few enduring questions: What is the long-lasting impact of an event of the magnitude of the mega Easter party? One eats ‘soup’ today just to go dry tomorrow? Are deep-seated needs of participants being met? But then it’s beyond ‘soup.’ The health checks and counselling are priceless for the participants who take the time to go through them instead of rushing for free food.
The life of a migrant can be tragic. The crowd at Joy 99.7FM’s 2009 Easter Soup Kitchen was predominantly female migrants from the three Northern regions. If I was a young girl growing up in a rural area, I would just about now be having a strong urge to move from the vast but narrow parameters of underdeveloped Ghana. My destination of choice would have been Accra, the city of contradictions, where choked gutters and heaps of refuse can grow in privileged East Legon.
An unsolved mystery at the event was the absence of the poor and needy from southern Ghana origins. To the best of my knowledge, poor and hungry folks from Ga, Ada, Krobo, Ewe, Akuapem, Ashanti, Brong, Twifo, Denkyira and Fante ethnic groups live in Accra. Why didn’t they attend the Easter Soup Kitchen? Are they not desperately poor too?
The Easter Soup Kitchen bore testimony to the urgency to develop the three northern regions and rural Ghana. Fortunately, Team Mills and his NDC administration’s manifesto promises to embark on a grand accelerated Savannah area development project. It will include the development of a Master Plan aimed at harnessing the potential of the vast underdeveloped Savannah belt of Ghana that stretches from the three northern regions down to the northern parts of the Brong Ahafo and Volta regions. Of course the potential includes the human capital as well as the varied natural resources.
This promise is exciting. It is a promise that soothes the aching heart. So now, we just must keep all fingers and toes crossed for change to happen. But specifically, we must hold the Government accountable. Promises must be fulfilled. The international son of our land, Kofi Annan, said this about Africans: “We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems if only we can find the political will.”
So long as the Savannah belt and the rural areas remain in a sorry state of underdevelopment, the youth will continue to troop down to the bright city lights in search of non-existent greener pastures. These are our own modern day explorers. The will is strong to relocate to the cities where they won’t have much of substance to do so will end up sitting by the roadsides – idle, watching, waiting. They will sleep in conditions not meant for humans and our slums will grow.
And when drugs beckon them, some will try it and get hooked either as sellers or users. Crime will beckon them too! And some will scale walls and knock down burglar-proof doors and windows to make grand dawn-time visits to the privileged in the comfort of their homes – at gun point. It will be nothing but an exercise in sharing. Wrong, but difficult to stop. But, I digress.
The Easter Soup Kitchen was not just thought-provoking. It was fun. Participants were treated to lots of free stuff. Vitamins, anti-malarial medication, toothpaste, de-wormer, contraceptive pills, condoms, powdered milk, yoghurt, an assortment of food and of course water were distributed.
There were several scenes of greed meeting freebies, eyeball-to-eyeball. The urge to pack more than was due was apparent, probably to save for tomorrow and the next. For many of the participants, it was a day of looting anything and everything. It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the loot was sold for cash.
There were many hilarious scenes. Infants in the two-year age bracket who have just gained walking skills could not sit still at the live band music. They lost it on the floor, letting go of their unique dance moves with no inhibitions whatsoever. By mid-day, several faces at the event had a powdery appearance from sucking Nunu Instant Filled Milk Powder.
A fragile aging man who appeared to be recovering from stroke went in line to collect a pack of condoms from the Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE) stand. Of what use would that be to him? Well, that was his pot of soup!
As the day rolled by, humanity began to degenerate, regressing toward the ugly mean. People who had been calm in the morning increasingly lost their dignity. Some broke into running toward anything others run toward and in the process fell, rose and run again, sweaty and losing it at the mind.
Women are wonderfully creative when it comes to packing stuff into non-existent pockets. The under-belly bosom regions and back-sides are all convertible sites for packing whatever floats a woman’s boat. So it was that bowls of food, second-hand clothing, fruits, drinks and anything-for-free made it as body backs. One woman succeeded in making a back-pack look just like a perfect baby.
The participants who were on a quest for free ‘soup’ were mostly women, girls and infants. The number of young women (some pregnant) who were no more than girls themselves with their own babies tugged at the back was worrying. These are the babies who will grow up on the streets to perpetuate a vicious cycle of streetism.
An interesting global phenomenon is that literate and privileged people have imbibed the message of family planning and as a result, have fewer children while the non-literate, underdeveloped/developing poor cast family planning to the dogs and pop out babies with reckless abandon. The outcome is that the population of developed countries and the elites of the world continue to drop. So therefore, someday, underdevelopment will take over the world as the developed become endangered species.
Here is one way to explain the phenomenon. When you can’t self-actualize from the neck-up, at the brain, then you’re left with the option of concentrating on self-actualizing at what appears to be the only viable site of choice – the groin. The outcome is the over-population of the earth because children become the tangible signs of success. After all, they are the products of the groin and therefore of joy, regardless of quality.
But in spite of the motivation for populating the earth even when one cannot afford it, it is important for Ghana to return to a family planning campaign. Fact: our population has doubled in two decades, from 12 million in the late 1980s to the current estimated 23.2 million. The meek shall not inherit the earth!
Easter Soup Kitchen goes beyond bringing together more than 1,000 hungry mouths for a good Easter free feeding and medical care. It promotes volunteerism and philanthropy. The sheer number of volunteers who spent the day helping out was heart-warming.
But here are a few enduring questions: What is the long-lasting impact of an event of the magnitude of the mega Easter party? One eats ‘soup’ today just to go dry tomorrow? Are deep-seated needs of participants being met? But then it’s beyond ‘soup.’ The health checks and counselling are priceless for the participants who take the time to go through them instead of rushing for free food.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Let’s Go Shopping with Sixty Million Ghana Cedis
Fact: I came from nothing. Whenever I pinch myself, I surface back at my roots – sleepy villages which have remained in a state of life-support since Abraham was a school boy and Sarah was a little virgin girl who found herself betrothed to the guy who later became ‘Father Abraham’. Real progress has passed my people by. The saddest is my initial root, Ocansey Kope. Those days, when we had to go, we went at the then pristine beach or under coconut trees with little black pigs scuttling around impatiently, grunting – to pick up.
Things have not changed much beyond the arrival of Christianity that clashes fiercely with the calico-clothed fetish shrine. Oh, the beach is filthy now with ‘civilization’ – ugly multi-coloured plastic waste that the Atlantic Ocean vomits out which have rudely interlocked the white sands. Dear reader, you know your own roots. Pinch yourself right now and your deep repressed memories will return – fast and furious. Oh, not good, eh?
With our roots as backdrop, let’s go shopping with sixty million Ghana cedis. Yes, sixty million! Ocansey Kope is on the Ada coastline, frozen in time 52 years after Independence. Growing up, with cassava-stick legs, I fetched water from a communal well at the village entrance. Today, I’m privileged, still have cassava-stick legs, but live in Accra and fetch water from a neighbourhood well.
A strange development in the Kope is the number of young people who just sit by the roadside, absent-mindedly, waiting – and watching vehicles that pass by. Waiting for what? How about your own roots? Education came to me by chance; no, by God’s grace! Those I left behind are over-aged now; shrivelled, with teeth lost and/or rotten. Hope passed them by long ago.
Let’s go shopping with your memories refreshed. What would you do with sixty million Ghana cedis (or dollars) if you were asked? In the past few weeks, sixty million Ghana cedis have been brandied about with reckless abandon as if it was a child’s play. We’re told that the magic amount of sixty million and some more was spent in celebrating Ghana@50. What a party! And the conversion of Nkrumah’s Flagstaff House into a Golden Jubilee House (Palace) is also estimated to have cost another sixty million Ghana cedis, and some more – still counting.
In short, when Ghana turned half a century old, we went crazy on a spending spree despite the reality of Bukom, Ocansey Kope, Obosomase, Keta, Agona Bisease, Kekam, Oppong Valley, Walewale and Tegbi.
Try this: go on an imaginary shopping spree with the golden sixty million Ghana cedis. Have fun doing it. So, what would you buy if you were to lose your mind over 60 million dough? What silly things would you do with that kind of money? Supposing you were a President or an important minister of something something something, what would you do with the nation’s money if it was entrusted to you?
I’m crazy about shoes, especially, high-heeled shoes. I’m vertically challenged, not much above the ground but by means of cheap high-heeled shoes, I can easily gain two or more inches upwards. So supposing I take a bag with 60 million Ghana cedis only and hit the road on a shopping spree. I’ll travel the world to buy shoes of different colours, shapes and tastes. I’ll shop until I drop. I’ll be tempted to take friends and relatives along to help me blow the big money.
You might call me irresponsible or think I’ve lost my little mind. You’ll wonder: don’t I see all the children who need to go to school? My bad-side might insensitively respond – “They are not my children so why should I care?” And you’ll boom back at me, “You despicable little woman!” And I’ll respond, “Didn’t our leaders see all those children by the roadside when they went shopping with our sixty million Ghana cedis?”
Two things drive people to go on shopping sprees: belly-full or folly. For instance, it is said that when a country’s economy is on a downward spiral, lipstick and alcohol sales go up. That suggests that women resort to buying and using make-up to feel good while men hit the bottles to forget their financial woes. Clearly, Ghana’s expenditure at age 50 was not a matter of belly-full. It sounds more like folly in the absence of pinching ourselves to remember the reality of our situation.
Another school of thought is that we shouldn’t wait to solve our funky poverty problems before embarking on mega projects. This sounds more like, "The chicken and the egg, which came first?" dilemma. But if a mega project is estimated to cost 20 million Ghana cedis and it ends up costing three/four/five times the amount, one can’t help but suspect if that astronomical expenditure was not the motive to start with. Are our leaders forgetful of their roots, have they misplaced our priorities, or they have undiagnosed insecurities and are perfect candidates for psychological analysis?
Call me backward because of my low-cost roots. I just don’t understand how we don’t feel shame that Ghana stands 51st only ahead of Chad, Niger and Eritrea on the continent when it comes to sanitation but yet, we find nothing wrong with building a presidential palace with an open-ended expenditure. Why 50 plus years ago, I used to defecate at the beach and under coconut trees but yet, in the Ghanaian Times of February 2, 2009, it is reported that around-the-clock open defecation occurs in the neighbourhood of Kwame Nkrumah Circle (Odaw River) in Accra?
The Golden Jubilee House and Ghana@50 were ‘nice’ projects. Many well-placed people I spoke to during the period justified them. Some reasons were: The country needed to revive its soul to feel good, and then for bonus, upgrade its international image. That sounds like a sorry case of mid-life crisis. Now, what? How good do we feel now? I feel horrible after the big birthday bash. I’m suffering from a hang-over that won’t go away. Don’t you? Lesson: feeling good temporarily is sheer folly.
Here is my prudent shopping list which I trust can have a more lasting feel-good experience and a real common-good advantage. This is a shopping-list compiled on an empty stomach, not belly-full. They include schools, hospitals and sanitation facilities. Reason: after almost 52 years, we still have ‘pretence schools’ with children who sit or lie under trees and pretend to study. Many study ICT without computers and with teachers who know nothing beyond a mouse.
Our hospitals are death traps, waiting with gaping mouths to swallow us. They are ill-equipped with some without basic facilities. We rather pretend that with a National Health Insurance Scheme that is grounded on an empty promise of a low-cost health system, all is well. In computer parlance, we forget “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO). Our glorious leaders therefore rush abroad to take care of their belly-full ailments. Some die and are returned as cargo for grand funerals. Damn!
Meanwhile, Ghana’s average life-expectancy continues to decrease sharply but we’ll rather not focus on that. We gleefully engaged in big lies. Having a big senseless national 50th birthday party and building gargantuan prestige projects are beyond folly. Well, there’s probably something about getting ‘up there’ in higher public office that makes one get big ideas, so big that one’s memory is fogged. Go figure!
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
Things have not changed much beyond the arrival of Christianity that clashes fiercely with the calico-clothed fetish shrine. Oh, the beach is filthy now with ‘civilization’ – ugly multi-coloured plastic waste that the Atlantic Ocean vomits out which have rudely interlocked the white sands. Dear reader, you know your own roots. Pinch yourself right now and your deep repressed memories will return – fast and furious. Oh, not good, eh?
With our roots as backdrop, let’s go shopping with sixty million Ghana cedis. Yes, sixty million! Ocansey Kope is on the Ada coastline, frozen in time 52 years after Independence. Growing up, with cassava-stick legs, I fetched water from a communal well at the village entrance. Today, I’m privileged, still have cassava-stick legs, but live in Accra and fetch water from a neighbourhood well.
A strange development in the Kope is the number of young people who just sit by the roadside, absent-mindedly, waiting – and watching vehicles that pass by. Waiting for what? How about your own roots? Education came to me by chance; no, by God’s grace! Those I left behind are over-aged now; shrivelled, with teeth lost and/or rotten. Hope passed them by long ago.
Let’s go shopping with your memories refreshed. What would you do with sixty million Ghana cedis (or dollars) if you were asked? In the past few weeks, sixty million Ghana cedis have been brandied about with reckless abandon as if it was a child’s play. We’re told that the magic amount of sixty million and some more was spent in celebrating Ghana@50. What a party! And the conversion of Nkrumah’s Flagstaff House into a Golden Jubilee House (Palace) is also estimated to have cost another sixty million Ghana cedis, and some more – still counting.
In short, when Ghana turned half a century old, we went crazy on a spending spree despite the reality of Bukom, Ocansey Kope, Obosomase, Keta, Agona Bisease, Kekam, Oppong Valley, Walewale and Tegbi.
Try this: go on an imaginary shopping spree with the golden sixty million Ghana cedis. Have fun doing it. So, what would you buy if you were to lose your mind over 60 million dough? What silly things would you do with that kind of money? Supposing you were a President or an important minister of something something something, what would you do with the nation’s money if it was entrusted to you?
I’m crazy about shoes, especially, high-heeled shoes. I’m vertically challenged, not much above the ground but by means of cheap high-heeled shoes, I can easily gain two or more inches upwards. So supposing I take a bag with 60 million Ghana cedis only and hit the road on a shopping spree. I’ll travel the world to buy shoes of different colours, shapes and tastes. I’ll shop until I drop. I’ll be tempted to take friends and relatives along to help me blow the big money.
You might call me irresponsible or think I’ve lost my little mind. You’ll wonder: don’t I see all the children who need to go to school? My bad-side might insensitively respond – “They are not my children so why should I care?” And you’ll boom back at me, “You despicable little woman!” And I’ll respond, “Didn’t our leaders see all those children by the roadside when they went shopping with our sixty million Ghana cedis?”
Two things drive people to go on shopping sprees: belly-full or folly. For instance, it is said that when a country’s economy is on a downward spiral, lipstick and alcohol sales go up. That suggests that women resort to buying and using make-up to feel good while men hit the bottles to forget their financial woes. Clearly, Ghana’s expenditure at age 50 was not a matter of belly-full. It sounds more like folly in the absence of pinching ourselves to remember the reality of our situation.
Another school of thought is that we shouldn’t wait to solve our funky poverty problems before embarking on mega projects. This sounds more like, "The chicken and the egg, which came first?" dilemma. But if a mega project is estimated to cost 20 million Ghana cedis and it ends up costing three/four/five times the amount, one can’t help but suspect if that astronomical expenditure was not the motive to start with. Are our leaders forgetful of their roots, have they misplaced our priorities, or they have undiagnosed insecurities and are perfect candidates for psychological analysis?
Call me backward because of my low-cost roots. I just don’t understand how we don’t feel shame that Ghana stands 51st only ahead of Chad, Niger and Eritrea on the continent when it comes to sanitation but yet, we find nothing wrong with building a presidential palace with an open-ended expenditure. Why 50 plus years ago, I used to defecate at the beach and under coconut trees but yet, in the Ghanaian Times of February 2, 2009, it is reported that around-the-clock open defecation occurs in the neighbourhood of Kwame Nkrumah Circle (Odaw River) in Accra?
The Golden Jubilee House and Ghana@50 were ‘nice’ projects. Many well-placed people I spoke to during the period justified them. Some reasons were: The country needed to revive its soul to feel good, and then for bonus, upgrade its international image. That sounds like a sorry case of mid-life crisis. Now, what? How good do we feel now? I feel horrible after the big birthday bash. I’m suffering from a hang-over that won’t go away. Don’t you? Lesson: feeling good temporarily is sheer folly.
Here is my prudent shopping list which I trust can have a more lasting feel-good experience and a real common-good advantage. This is a shopping-list compiled on an empty stomach, not belly-full. They include schools, hospitals and sanitation facilities. Reason: after almost 52 years, we still have ‘pretence schools’ with children who sit or lie under trees and pretend to study. Many study ICT without computers and with teachers who know nothing beyond a mouse.
Our hospitals are death traps, waiting with gaping mouths to swallow us. They are ill-equipped with some without basic facilities. We rather pretend that with a National Health Insurance Scheme that is grounded on an empty promise of a low-cost health system, all is well. In computer parlance, we forget “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO). Our glorious leaders therefore rush abroad to take care of their belly-full ailments. Some die and are returned as cargo for grand funerals. Damn!
Meanwhile, Ghana’s average life-expectancy continues to decrease sharply but we’ll rather not focus on that. We gleefully engaged in big lies. Having a big senseless national 50th birthday party and building gargantuan prestige projects are beyond folly. Well, there’s probably something about getting ‘up there’ in higher public office that makes one get big ideas, so big that one’s memory is fogged. Go figure!
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
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