May your Road be Rough!

(I borrowed the words of the title, credited to Tai Solarin a Nigerian educator, simply because I love the ring to it and off course because I read it many many years ago and it stuck) 

A relative of mine, a creative fellow with answers to most of my country’s challenges, came up with his latest idea recently. He thinks “we as a people” – this is one of the favoured lines in national debates - should derive more value from our culture and traditions. As far as he is concerned traffic offences will be a thing of the past if we replaced the police on our roads with barefooted and bare-chested men in raffia skirts, shiny little pot bellies, faces painted with white chalk leaving the eyes and armed with little clay pots filled with water and leaves and tiny bells hanging around their necks. Any time a person run the red lights these people would only sprinkle some white powder in the air after the offender with a wand. Off course this got us all laughing.  This chap is never short of outlandish ideas we said; he is the same person who declared a conviction that the tropical sun did something devious with our brains (the consequences of which reflect in our development) and so if he became president his first and perhaps only policy would be that each person would wear a hat at all times in our country. Still, thinking about the angry driver honking like crazy behind us for not driving through the traffic lights as they turned red, we wished his suggestion could actually work!  

I came across a newspaper report a while back that got me thinking; perhaps my relative’s idea is not so farfetched. The nation’s leading daily reported on Wednesday February 27, 2013, that a pressure group called People with Convention of Principles (POWCOP) had appealed to the judiciary at a press conference to consider introducing the “traditional curse” in the court system “to help find lasting solutions in the adjudication of cases at courts”. The group held that the current situation where persons before the court are made to swear on the Bible or Qur’an gave these persons the opportunity to tell lies and that bribery, corruption, etc were on the increase. Obviously, the bible and Qur’an are not working for them as effective tools for getting the truth out of people and so they advocate the introduction of the “traditional curse” in every sector of government. To drive home their point, they cite the example of the on-going challenge to President Mahama’s election as president and suggest that the curse system would be the simplest in determining the truth.  

It seems that “as a people” no matter our religious beliefs, we so believe in the power of curses and fetish pronouncements. That should not surprise anyone. Depending on the packaging the effects of these things are believed to be instantaneous or long term, spanning generations. They also do not discriminate as to the target; that is if it is meant for the father and for some reason the father misses it, the son, mother, girlfriend or whoever is just as good a target. What other punitive system could be this effective? 

I decided my relative had a point when I stumbled on a 2013 report about striking workers who have refused to return to work because of a curse. They are demanding that the curse be reversed before they return to work. I don’t blame them! Kwakubonsam and his likes are about.

  

Final Wishes

By the very expression, these are usually uttered close to death. Luckily I already have a premonition of things to come so before anyone starts arguing about where I really belong and therefore where I am to be buried; before anyone goes shopping for the trendiest casket or perhaps not, I won’t have a say; before some ridiculous garment I never would have worn in my life is designed for whatever sorry body I may leave behind; before the undertaker comes to douse my body with bottles of zoflora and sets me up for exhibition; before anyone starts imagining what tombstone would best represent me and concocts some seeming wise inscription and worries about how to keep the surroundings of a bone prison tidy, may I respectfully say that none of these will be necessary.

I always played with the idea of cremation but now I am dead  certain (no pun intended) that’s what I want done with my body – when I die off course.

Of all the persons connected with organizing a funeral, the undertaker is the one that causes me the most anguish besides family and “chief mourners”- not necessarily those in most grief or that mourn the most. First a call to ask what wig to dress the corpse with. I have the choice of grey, brown, black, mauve......ok that’s enough! We settled on “colour 2”.

A few minutes later another call. She forgot something...gloves! Do I want gloves and which type? I didn’t know. Never worn one and hopefully never will.

A few days after settling the undertaker’s fees for the job, she sends what is obviously an official procurement request to enable execution of the job. What the ........! And what’s with the Malta Guinness and foreign news what?  On a more practical level this gives anyone who would be confronted with the undertaker someday an idea as to what to expect.

As for me I may not write a will before I am knocked off this earth so here’s to family and friends and all those who will assume responsibility for deciding my funeral. On the small matter of my body, just burn, burn, and burn!

.... and by the way I am of perfectly sound, body, mind et esprit at this point even if I say so myself.  

The Undertaker's List

Scenes from a Trip Along the Country Side

"For Sale" - The Vehicle not the Coconuts

 

 

 

 

Just a small election reminder

"Native Clinic" at Somanya

Billboard- In case you forgot!

 

Who's home?

Workplace- spot the kid

 

Well earned nap by the pit

Atimpoku- where to stop to get delicacies such as "abolo"; "white kenkey"; "one man thousand" and coloured fried yam...

 

 

The Akosombo Dam from a cool spot 

Native Doctor Beckons

 

A Jolly Ride!

It's Christmas

Its Christmas Day and I just had to come by. I have been away too long, studying like there was no tomorrow! And I have definitely missed writing.

So much has been happening and yet the drama is only unfolding in my backyard. Ghana went to the polls on December 7; the Electoral Commission declared a winner; the opposition does not accept the results and has served notice to challenge the EC on Thursday 27th. I guess everyone knows this by now. Obviously some people are not "chopping" Christmas.

Elsewhere people with no business wielding guns and  those certified to use them to protect are equally using them to cause havoc. All that is sad and dreary news.

Well, I will return shortly but right now, today, its Christmas and I intend to ..... probably attempt to bake a cake.

Best of the season to anyone and everyone!

"The Three Little Pigs"

before the collapse

Depending on which local media reports from Ghana you’ve accessed in the past week, a 4, 5 or 6 storey building partly being used as a shopping mall crushed to pulp leaving rubble that suggests, nay definitely smacks of substandard construction work. 

Having personally experienced the numbing consequences of the “priceless” handiwork of the most celebrated estates company in Ghana with a record of almost yearly awards for industry excellence, I was truely upset by the incident.

Pickaxes, shovels, spades, cranes and bare hands were deployed quickly at the scene of the disaster for the rescue operation. Aside the bare hands our tools for the rescue operation sent shivers down my spine as I imagined the possibility of victims being gored in the eye, in the sides, or crushed by the very same rescue tools. The Israelis must have felt the same. A day after the disaster, 18 of them were flown in to our aid armed with sniffer dogs and other “special equipment”. 

Thankfully 50 victims of the disaster had already been removed from the rubble safely by the time they got in. Personnel from almost all the security agencies were at hand supported by probably all the ambulances and operational stretchers, private and public in the city. Concerned citizens bought sachet water and threw them into the wreckage for the trapped, screaming and thirsty victims. 

The incident happened Wednesday November 7 before 10am and going by the claim of the shop owners that business was yet to begin that day and that only about 52 workers were likely to be in the building at the time, the search for survivors should have ended on the same day. At the last count on Monday 12, about 85 people out of which 14 have been pronounced dead, had been taken from the wreckage and the search is only now winding down.   

Elsewhere, on the eve of the recent US presidential election Superstorm Sandy hit the US. It wasn’t pretty - about 2 million people were reported with no electricity and some 40, 000 New Yorkers faced evacuation - and I thought the election would be postponed or something. I was wrong, Sandy did not happen in my backyard. I am pretty certain the events of Wednesday November 7 would have halted our elections slated for December. But off course I couldn’t possibly be suggesting we could be measured by the US’s capacity to weather the storms (no pun intended); just the sobering realization that we aren’t ready for just about anything, death being the exception.

Yesterday the subject matter for Talking Point, a current affairs discussion program on Ghana Television was off course the national disaster that brought the election campaigns to a halt, albeit temporarily. A panelist was saying that there is no authority that registers private construction firms/ contractors in Ghana and that must be corrected. Another suggested the need to determine the chain of command in rescue operations as we were confronted with in the current incident. Yet another cautioned against apportioning blame until it becomes clear what contributed to the disaster. The discussion was filled with many “we have tos” and “we try tos”. 

The metropolitan boss says the building had no permit and practitioners in the construction industry are suggesting that the building that crushed seems to have been the product of inferior materials in the hands of unqualified builders.  The president has said that those culpable in this incident will face the music but beyond that, it seems to me the real culprit is the state. 

Where is the institutional framework that ensures such buildings never come into being in the first place; that defines and ensures minimum standards in the construction industry; that monitors and penalizes substandard work; that ensures redress for citizens who suffer the ills of industry players and indeed that ensures that those who receive awards for excellence do indeed meet the standards of quality? This calls for deep reflection; the kind that results from the self-assessment of a humbled people. 

So to the presidential candidates at the next debate and particularly the one who claims his vision is to get (state) institutions to work again: How will your government strengthen the institutional framework for disaster management in Ghana? While you think about it, please be advised to refrain from suggesting that your vice presidential candidate will head an institution  to be set up to deal with it. That solution has been spent, thank you.

Chicken Prescription

We went in to see how the ailing elderly woman was doing. She had arrived at the medicine man’s place the night before with a bloated, taut tummy and experiencing severe abdominal pain.

She lay on her side on a mat, using her arms for a pillow and spoke and breathed with obvious difficulty. Her daughter, a woman of about 50 years who was with her, sought to contain our anxiety with assurances that the medicine man was famous for the potency of his medicine; the ailing woman was a long-time patient of this medicine man and that the condition of the patient had improved since the night before. We remained quizzical.

The 6 foot cubicle in which the ailing woman lay was dark except for the streaks of sunlight coming through the doorway when the door was opened and cracks in the wall joints. A little gap had been left between the lintel and the roofing sheets but much of the space was blocked with wood and rags.  A lone candle stood on the bare cemented floor less than a foot away from the ailing woman’s feet. In a corner was a carrier bag which seemed to be carrying the patient’s belongings. Not much else was in the room or could have been except the little stool that I got to sit on at her feet.

The ailing woman had been brought to the medicine man’s village from a clinic situated in one of the major districts of Accra and about an hour’s drive away. Recent history has it that the patient was placed on “drip” at the clinic; a rather routine clinical first aid practice in ‘clinics”. Why this is so, I cannot tell ... for now. Obviously this did not impress those who took the old lady to the clinic nor the old lady herself; hence the decision to seek the medicine man.

Suffice it to say, this is how come for the first time in my lengthy life, I came to meet a medicine man. Contrary to expectations, he was a rather harmless looking fellow. Tall and weary looking, he wore a pair of black togas (long shorts), a knee length lacy tunic and orange flip flops to match.   I suspect the weariness came from the prospect of explaining his trade to a wide-eyed ignoramus. His words were few, calm and self-assured.  

He had administered some medication to the ailing woman he said, which had delivered much of the offending guests from the patient’s tummy. As we spoke, he was awaiting delivery of a cock to him. He explained that in his line of work, an important and indeed primary business process entailed seeking direction from the powers that be. I believe some people would dare call this diagnosis. And what did the cock have to do with this? Well, on its arrival, some rituals were to be done; a letter would be scribbled on a piece of paper and voila, the direction as to which herbs were to be collected and what concoction was to be cooked would become evident. I am not sure who was to do the scribbling but I suspect the cock on death row would undoubtedly leave its marks after its throat was slit.  

Herbalists, traditional healers, native doctors or in this case medicine men - have often been criticized because of their unorthodox methods and potentially hazardous processes; take a prescription writing cockerel and the ailing old lady's "ward" for example. However, the growing sense that there is a "science" behind what they do is no more worthy of debate so perhaps its time they did away with the mysticism and embraced "cleaner" methods for taking care of their patients. Especially since often times, the choice is between the medicine man and lousy service at the clinic. 

Religious Doctrine, Culture and Legal Tender

My good friend is an enterprising woman, married with two sons. Not that these characteristics distinguish her in any way. But that she is a committed practicing Catholic is why I believe she and many like her in the Catholic Church merit relief from the oppressive doctrine that prohibits Catholics from receiving the Holy Communion if their marriages are yet to be “blessed” in church i.e. they have as yet to receive the sacrament of holy matrimony or in more plain language, they have not exchanged vows in front of the church congregation yet. Note I said their marriages, which means they are married. Curious isn’t it?

Some people believe there is an easy way out. After all being Catholic is not an obligation so people like my friend could very well go and be something else. But since an existence without controversy yields no change I prefer for people such as my friend to hang in there and just like Cardinal Martini, keep hammering the fact that change must happen. Who knows?

Thing is, in our context legal marriages may be contracted either under Customary Law or under Marriage Ordinance. Traditional (customary) ceremonies adopt different flavours depending on the particular ethnic group(s) involved but essentially they retain similar features. The suitor through his family, requests the hand of the bride. When the suitor’s intentions are accepted, a date is set for exchange of bride price and gifts from the suitor’s side for the bride from the other side. The bride’s family then fetes the two families and their friends – there’s music, food, words of near wisdom etc. etc. etc and man and wife begin the journey of bliss or doom. Marriage by ordinance in contrast can be quite a dry affair without the added after party. The two intended appear with witnesses at appropriate location, mumble some words of commitment and sign off!

By way of ritual, the traditional marriage is certainly more meaningful (I say so), engaging, rich, colourful, public and legally recognized. My bias is apparent but the truth is marriage by ordinance seems to require the agreement of the two families (only possible in the customary marriage) in the union as prerequisite!

So why the Church’s obvious distrust of or is it aversion to the traditional marriage and for which reason it strongly promotes the sacramental topping, in the absence of which it takes further steps to debar legally married Catholics from coming to the Lord’s table? Two reasons have been suggested; first is that those whose marriages are not “blessed” in church are “living in sin”. The church says no sex before marriage; remember? So in the eyes of the church traditionally married couples are just people cohabiting and doing what married people do. I say boo to that. Second the church frowns on polygamy (I do too) and customary marriages are potentially polygamous. By insisting on the church blessing (which supposedly commits a person to monogamy, if one turns a blind eye to what happens in real life) and instituting “punitive” consequences otherwise, the church hopes to keep up the pretext of monogamous relationships among its flock. Never mind that many traditional marriages are and remain monogamous while a percentage too great of the so called church marriages are “openly” polygamous.

My axe falls partly on a society that instinctively assumes inferiority of its own culture in relation to others. Take for instance those who tend to say they are attending “engagements”, or say their relative is being “engaged” when indeed the ceremony referred to is that of marriage! There is no such thing as engagement in our marriage custom. The so-called “engagement” activity which rests heavily on two people and whatever they care to “engage in” does not even come close to what we call “knocking”. Knocking is a prelude to the marriage ceremony proper which put simply involves emissaries from the suitor’s family going to make enquiries about a woman’s availability for marriage to the bridegroom hopeful. Call it the application stage. Is this anything like engagement?

I believe our traditions with respect to marriage are too meaningful for the Pope to turn his nose at. If I was my friend I would go right ahead and eat up the bread each Sunday and see who stops me. After all many so-called engaged and yet to be married couples pretending not to be having sex (actually in many cases it’s the Church pretending they are not) are having their fill.