Berekum: A Premature Widow?

Back view of Berekum's Library

Somewhere in 1924, my father walked with his father (my grandfather) from Berekum to Kumasi. The long walk was to attend a welcome durbar held for Nana Agyeman Prempeh I on his return from Seychelles. I guess you remember the Seychelles story? Then, my father told me Berekum was beautifully blossoming like the promising breasts of a girl in her prime. Indeed, Berekum, was a little Las Vegas in the Brong Ahafo Region.

It (Berekum) is 36km from Sunyani (the capital of Brong Ahafo Region). Nsoatre, one of Berekum's immediate neighbors, is on its east, Seikwa to the north and Gyaman to the west.

Berekum, according to hearsay, was one of the first towns in Ghana to have had storey buildings. The "Mpem-num abrosan," a storey building that cost the owner five thousand cedis- fifty pesewas (50p) in today's currency together with many other buildings have become local tourist attraction centers to citizens and visitors alike; not necessarily because of the buildings' architectural beauty but of the cost involved in putting them up. Such seem outrageously cheaper today.  Thanks to our drowning cedis.

Walking through the streets of Shalom FM, NHIS and the main lorry station street that joins the roundabout, among others, these buildings have been aesthetically queued up on the various shoulders of such streets and seem to form a canopy over one's head. Coming from Sunyani, plying the NHIS route, one meets the main roundabout. 

Facing the roundabout with my back towards the NHIS route, I face the road leading to Drobo with the same road branching on the right to head towards Mpatasie. On my left is the Dormaa road and on my right is another leading to Mpatapo. From all these directions come cars, motorbikes and bicycles with some of the town's cheerful citizens either crossing the roads or walking on its shoulders.

In a story I did for Adom TV- multi TV- somewhere last year, the chief of Nanasuano (Nanasuano is a suburb of Berekum) told me in an interview that considering the layout, ornamental plants, cleanliness and good roads of Berekum, the title "Golden City" was indeed befitting for the town.

However, today, the story of the 'Golden City' could be told differently. The beauty of the city is fading away. Kato, a suburb of Berekum, is the town that ushers everyone (when coming from Sunyani) into the Berekum city. 

Moving further away from Kato, one is greeted by the Berekum Senior High School situated on the left and a bit further on the right, the Berekum College of Education. However, the entrance of the College, in shambles, would make you feel like rejecting her greeting.

Journeying on, on your left sits the town's library in a ‘forest' close to the Agricultural Development Bank. The forest library, since my days (2007/2010) at the Berekum College of Education till now, has its entire compound grown with weeds tall enough to swallow a class three pupil.

At ‘Scotch De Low' (a drinking spot on the shoulder of an intersection- which gives you the choice to either ply the NHIS or Shalom FM routes), potholes-turned-manholes gladly say "akwaaba!" Thanks to God, the town's court house which once stood as a hen coop, somewhat opposite to the Scotch, has recently seen massive renovation. But opposite to the court, a community centre sits dejectedly.

Let me take you back to the town's lorry station manhole-street. With Mpatapo behind me and facing Dormaa road, Berekum's main lorry station is situated to my right. Considering how Berekum has come in terms of growth, the size of the station is too small a plot to accommodate the numerous vehicles that compete for passengers. In more plain terms, the legendary Aseibu Amanfi could consume a farm of maize planted on the station's plot within a split second.

At the choked station, observing the movement of these vehicles, the ones that have finished loading passengers onboard spend much more time finding their way out. And when these cars finally get out of the station, a fleet of vehicles also parked on the said street pose as another threat. As if this is not enough, taxis and other passenger cars stop and load/offload passengers in the middle of the street. Consequently, there's total indiscipline.

Let me add this before the Zoom Lion workers chastise me for not telling their story. Still on Berekum's lorry station, is the indiscriminate waste disposal by both drivers and commuters. Litters on the floor of the station could form a carpet for a conference hall. I ask myself whether this waste dumping is as the result of lack of dustbins here. But is the earth man's dustbin?

Still on indiscipline and wrong parking, the Shalom FM street is noted for double parking. This poses a great danger to pedestrians since they could be hit by approaching cars and motorbikes.

Berekum is my father's hometown and I love to associate myself with the city. But the time has come for the truth to be told of the fading title, the Golden City. Indeed, a Golden City cannot not be associated with an entrance of its college of education that does not even match that of a kindergarten. A Golden City cannot not be associated with a library of which weeds have taken over. A Golden City cannot not be associated with potholes-turned-manholes on its streets. 

A Golden City cannot not be associated with the gross indiscipline of loading and offloading passengers in the middle of roads, dumping waste indiscriminately, and double parking on the shoulders of their roads. 

A Golden City cannot not be associated with a lorry station that is only a little bigger than the size of a lotto kiosk. A Golden City cannot not be associated with a plush roundabout that links a tattered road. A Golden City cannot be associated with …

Is Berekum not too young a ‘wife' to lose her ‘husband'- beauty?

The writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance journalist

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

         

      

   

                

Snoring Ghana & the Accra-Kumasi Highway Monsters

By Solomon Mensah

Accra-Kumasi Highway

Few days ago, trending on our print and electronic media- newspapers, television, radio, online among others- was the news of the armed robbery incident on the Accra-Kumasi highway.

The crime, which eye witnesses reported was suspected to have been carried out by about five Fulani men, saw one driver who plied the road being killed and other commuters being robbed, too.

Speaking on Sunyani-based Sun-City Radio, a driver who witnessed the horror ‘movie’ but escaped death narrated his ordeal. According to him, on the said day, he was journeying from Accra to Kumasi. At a point on the road, he was signalled to stop by a man. The driver says he had already noticed a quasi-accident-involved car parked somewhere ahead of him. So… he thought the helpless man's frantic call was aimed at saving the accident-involved car’s victims.

After ignoring the supposedly help-needing man, he, however, realized that he was the conductor of an accident-involved car whose master (driver) had been shot to death by these unknown armed robbers. Apparently, he was trying to tell him to stop. These ‘monsters’ ahead had taken the life of an innocent driver and wouldn't mind taking his, too.

The eye-witness-driver told Sun-City Radio’s morning show host, Nana Kas, that when the armed robbers shouted, "Stop!" at him with their guns being brandished in the air, he said his last prayer. “I knew I was standing between the junction of life and death,” he said.

Fortunately for him, they took all the money on him and that of his conductor and were ordered to lie prostrate like an agama lizard that had fallen from an iroko tree. “My phone fell from my pocket and laid few meters from where we had prostrated on some weeds. I wanted to crawl, take it and call the police but my conductor warned me to stop lest they shot us to death.” If the robbers had taken one of the eggs from the crates of eggs he had loaded into the Kumasi-bound car and placed on his heart, it would have cracked. Trust me.

“Lying on the weedy floor for some minutes, we saw a VIP bus coming. They gave a warning shot signalling the bus driver to stop. After the bus stopped, they demanded that he opened the bus’ door of which he refused. They started firing at the door and broke its glass windows through which they passed into the bus,” he confirmed. The nightmare-narrating driver said that the bus then stood as still as a cemetery and what really happened in it was unutterable.

That was just an eye witness’ naked-eye-coverage of the monsters’ horror. This is not the first of such armed robbery cases on our highways, especially that of Accra-Kumasi road. Neither is it going to be the last.

When such happens, the newspapers give it a front page honour and the radio and television stations re-echo it on their proverbial ‘newspaper review’ shows. Security experts are called on to suggest ways of curbing the highway menace and the very armed robbers, I suppose, laugh. Why? One needs not to be a prophet to tell the robbers that ‘all the seeming concern would die off after a week.’ 

So... while ‘Ghana’ heavily snores over such an important, life-threatening issue as this, the robbers adopting the guerrilla’s tactics would continually have a field day- coming like a flash in the pan, attacking, looting, killing and dashing back into the thickets. After all, who cares!?

Whenever I sit in a bus plying the said highway, I incessantly say, "Thank you God for how far you have brought us," in every one hour. Indeed, in this crazy world where some brutes would take guns to rob and kill when they feel like doing so, one cannot help but be thankful to God for a safe trip.

Is it not sad that our various political parties see education as the only bit of their manifesto worth achieving? Nana Nyame’s sun is shining in vain. In this technological era, can’t we have solar street lights on the Accra-Kumasi highway and the other highways for the sake of those whose votes would make the politician what he or she prays to be? Can’t we have security patrols on the roads? I reiterate, "No one cares!"

The buses at first adopted the police-on-board policy but if I may ask, “3k) sii s3n?” Nine day (or even less) wonder!

The National Road Safety Commission, the Government of Ghana, the buses, and authorities concerned, together with our media are heartily snoring. Indeed, our elders were prophetic in opining that, "when the hen is drunk, she forgets about the hawk." Are we not over-drunk with politics?

On the day a new government is sworn into office, the politicians would launch ‘the operation next election’ campaign and sadly, majority of our media houses would trumpet such agenda throughout the four-year tenure.

We may continue to snore but we must not forget that we cannot kill a louse with one finger. It was that driver then, who knows who is next? May be you, maybe me. I am not a prophet of doom.

The writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance Journalist/Cultural Activist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

Blog: www.aniwaba.blogspot.com