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

   

Toilets of shame! (Part II)

 

By Solomon Mensah

Caution: The content of this article could be nauseating to the reader!

Fighting the stench

In Sunyani, I met a toilet attendant who doubles as the cleaner in one of the toilets I visited. For the sake of anonymity, I will call him Papa Asare. Bare handedly, he held a short broom in the right hand tightly like a relay baton. I gawked at him as he picked the half-worn-out baskets that had toilet papers in them one after the other and poured the contents into a bigger basket.

The 52 year old man stamps his right leg on the piled toilet papers to suppress it from falling from the basket. While I struggled to take a breath, he did the sweeping seemingly happily without a nose mask. “I would have wished wearing a nose mask and gloves to work but I have never been given any,” he told me.  

Papa Asare hints that cleaners use DDT and other chemicals to wash the toilet seats. “These chemicals kill the houseflies and other animals that are in the toilets,” he noted. However, “It is not all the time that the caretakers of the toilet supply us the DDT. Therefore, what we often use is just ordinary water.”

The flies, as I spoke with him, hovered all over. A user of any of the public toilets performs another function in addition to easing him/herself. “For the user of the public toilet, he or she has to fan away the houseflies incessantly,” he admitted.

Another toilet attendant, a woman, whom I will name as Ama Kwakyewaa, told me that “The Sunyani Municipal Assemblies’ Health Inspectorate Team occasionally comes to inspect the toilet. But the sad thing is that when they come, they stand meters away and write their report. It was on only one occasion that I saw them enter this toilet to inspect,” she said.

Mr. Simon Opoku, the Municipal Environmental Health Officer-Sunyani, however, debunks the assertion that his men do not enter the toilets during their inspections. “I enter the male section of the toilets but not that of the females’ since I am a male,” he said. On the provision of gloves, nose and mouth masks for the toilet cleaners, he admits that some of the private operators who partly manage these facilities with the assembly fail to resource their cleaners with such gears.

He said that the standard of the public toilets in the Sunyani Municipality is average and that they are not to perfection. Answering my question as to whether he will use these toilets himself, he gave a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ reply. “Yes, if the standard of the toilet is good and vice versa,” he observed. Attempt to reach the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to as well react to the standard of public toilets went futile.

Contracting diseases

Dr. Ohene Adu is a private medical doctor in Sunyani. He tells me there are a number of diseases that one is likely to contract from the public toilet. “Candidiasis (in women), urinary tract infection (in both men and women) and diarrhea are some of the diseases one could contract on an untidy toilet,” he said.

Considering the filthy nature of our public toilets, a user is prone to contracting any of such diseases.

Public toilet in the news

On Adom FM’s News (17^th August, 2013 and 19^th August, 2013 respectively), it was reported that at Aseseso (Akuapem South) in the Eastern Region, both men and women use the same column of a public toilet due to malfunction of the female section and at Amasaman in the Greater Accra Region, a public toilet overflowed. Just close to the Amasaman’s overflowing toilet, the report said, sat a school and food vendors.

The Foot Soldiers’ factor

The public toilets, unlike the days of old, are now jointly managed by the various assemblies together with private individuals. According to Mr. Simon Opoku, the assembly used to advertise to the general public for interested persons to sign a contract to run the facility with the assembly.

He, however, said that for the past two to three regimes (governments), the laid down procedure in getting private individuals for the joint management of the toilets has changed. “Now, foot soldiers will seize the toilet and give it to their own men to partner the assembly in the toilet’s management,” he noted.

Looking beyond the toilet seizures, no decent word can be used to describe any of the toilets the foot soldiers fight over. “With the present system of foot soldiers taking captive of the toilets, the assembly can only query them of the poor state of the toilets but rather cannot take the ‘ownership’ from them,” says Mr. Opoku.

Where does the money go?

Averagely, the public toilet user pays 20 pesewas to access the toilet. The following table analyzes the income such toilets owners receive. The table uses two hundred (200) users of a toilet to calculate its proceeds in a day, month and year. Assuming every user visits the toilet once in a day.

Unit cost	Day (1)	Week (7)	Month (30)	Year (12months)
0.20p	200x20	40x7	280x4wks	1120x12
Total	GHc40.00	GHc280.00	GHc1,120.00	GHc13,440.00

Proposed fiscal analysis of sanitary income of a toilet from its 200 people (users).

The million dollar question now to ask is where do these monies go???

Mr. Simon Opoku says the owners pay 40 to 60 Ghana Cedis to the assembly in a month. He is hopeful that with the Sunyani Municipal Assembly’s newly drafted policy to police the private ownership of public toilets and the effort of his office, cleanliness would be restored to such toilets. Until then, users of the public toilet like Derrick and Juliet will have to battle the filth and stench.

The Writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance Journalist and a Cultural Activist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

 

 

 

 

Toilets of shame! (Part I)

 

By Solomon Mensah

Caution: The content of this article could be nauseating to the reader!

Filth in Darkness 

The Sun seems breathing fire. From where it hangs in the sky to where the descendants of Adam tread on Earth, one wonders why its heat is so severe. Derrick Fosu, a 27 year old teacher, is seen with his forehead dotted with beads of sweat. He trudges out of a public place of convenience here at New Town, a suburb of Sunyani.

The toilet stands close to the Methodist Junior High School. Observing it from afar, it promises to have had a good architectural look of its frontal view. A dwarfish wall of pillars and mesh in shambles stand on the edges of both the male and female entrances of the toilet. The wall protrudes to form a square-like shape to enclose the forecourt. Upon entering the forecourt, a wooden structure (on the left) which has never ‘tasted’ paint sits like a bull frog in a swamp. In the tattered and tilted kiosk which could perfectly be described as a hen coop sits the toilet’s attendant, an old man. He munches some groundnuts.

“I bought my paper of which one cost 20 pesewas. Its size is a little bigger than a class one pupil’s A1 exercise book. Walking down the defaced concrete ‘red carpet’ pavement to enter the toilet, one is greeted by a very pungent smell like that of an expired egg,” Derrick says.

He says that he started wearing glasses (lens) far back in 2002, then a Junior High School student. “But even with my glasses on, I get lost into an impenetrable darkness whenever I enter this toilet.”

Boakyewaa Juliet, a 37 year old trader, will not pass by upon seeing me interview Derrick. She says when one enters the facility in question, the first half of a minute, one stands still like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s statue at the Independence Square due to the darkness in it.

Derrick says that on his first day of patronizing the facility, he had to draw back into the day’s light to switch on a ‘flashlight application’ he had on his phone. “This was just about 30 seconds after entering. Slowly lifting one leg after the other, I finally found what my eyes told me was a clean seat to squat on.

“Minutes later I realized that my feet sat in a pool of maggots. The maggots were as innumerable as one couldn’t imagine such that if you threw a grain of sand onto them, it would not find a way to fall onto the cemented floor,” he told me.

Derrick and Juliet’s concerns represent the sentiments shared by both the young and elderly who are the patrons of these public toilets. Boakyewaa tells me that aside the toilet, the only option for easing oneself is the ‘wrap and throw’ method. “You do it in a polythene bag and throw it away. But I feel guilty doing that so this toilet is my last resort.” 

The state of others

At Penkwasi- another suburb of Sunyani- the filth that adorns public toilets is not any different. Few meters away from the Highstreet JHS sits two toilets. By just filing pass one of them (KVIP), one stands the chance of being heartlessly ‘perfumed’ without paying a pesewa. This particular toilet has lately seen a little improvement. Visiting it this time, it has new aluminum roofing and seemingly whitewashed.

Martha Adjei who just got out of the toilet shared the ordeal patrons of the toilet go through. “One has to squint off the pots of urine and battle houseflies,” she said. Upon entering the toilet, pockets of urine that stand in holes in front of the squatting-seats send one squinting. At New Dormaa, Zongo, Area II, and Area III among many other suburbs of Sunyani, the state of our public toilets is the same.

AMA’s tomb in the Capital City 

I did not limit my search for a clean public toilet only to Sunyani. In the heart of Ghana’s capital city, Accra, is a toilet that I refer to as a tomb. It is situated some few meters from Maame Dorkono’s Obra Spot. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s (AMA) toilet at the 37-Labadi Lorry Station is given a good painting on its outer look. It has both urinal and toilet in one hall. I paid 20 pesewas to urinate.

In the toilet, one of three ceiling fans meticulously rotates to drive away the unbearable breeze. On the doors of the toilet’s cubicles is the inscription; “Please do not stand on the pot. Sit on it.” Such give the impression that the AMA, by the standard of this particular toilet, is poised to uplift the face of public toilets. However, this one, like the others, is bedeviled with uncleanliness.

The water closet and urine sink are turning brownish in colour. The former is in such a bad state that users of the facility hide in squatting on it instead of sitting; which the toilet attendants seriously abhor. The flashing system of the WC has as well collapsed. One has to fetch water from a tank placed outside the facility when flashing. The stench here, probably because of the chemical used in cleaning the toilet, is disgusting. “Its condition, if not for the pressing need to attend to nature’s call, I will never enter,” a user told me.    

On my tour of public toilets, I have come to one of the sanity-crippled toilets here at Labadi, a suburb of Accra. This toilet sits opposite to the Omanye Art Gallery, on the Labadi Beach road. I have bought my paper of which one cost 20 pesewas. Looking at the filthy nature of the water closet, most users buy two papers costing them 40 pesewas.

Adjetey, a user tells me, “We divide one of the papers into two so as to spread them on the edges (mouth) of the pot. I once vomited upon entering the toilet because of the nauseating scent.” He says that in the rainy season, maggots climb up to the mouth of the pots and it is very worrying.

At La Maami, close to the Fraga Oil at the lorry station, another toilet announces its presence by its stench. In front of this toilet, food vendors compete for space as they mount their stands to sell to their prospective consumers.

Watch this space for Part II soon.

The Writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance Journalist and a Cultural Activist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

 

 

What Car Does Adwoa Safo Cruise?

By Solomon Mensah

Apostle, His car & Adwoa

Once upon a time, in the annals of a third year teacher trainee, a thrilling conversation ensued between him and his pupils. Out of tension, a ‘gbaa alert’ was recorded when a supervisory team that had visited his school told him to teach for marks,

Tr: Children, what is holding me? (He held a tin of milk)

Pupils: (Dead silence)

Tr: Oh childrens! What is holding me?

Pupils: (Dead silence)

Tr: This a ‘mlik konko.’ Say mlik konko!

Pupils: Mlik konko!

The above is a tip of fun we had back at the Berekum College of Education. Akokora Wee (our Compound Overseer) would share jokes while he loaded us (greenhorns) like camels with workloads. In the colleges, I guess, are where all the world’s jokes are hatched. So when the CO himself had shared a joke, who were you to say tweaaa and stand still as a statue into whose face the artiste has moulded defiance? Ajala (comic exclamation)!

Today while I reminisce and laugh with you over the ‘mlik konko,’ let’s ask Madam Adwoa Safo (daughter of Kantanka and Member of Parliament for Dome Kwabenya, Greater Accra Region) the teacher’s simple question. Sister Adwoa, what car’s key is holding you?

I first wrote about Apostle Dr. Kwadwo Safo, taking Ghana’s industrialization to a higher level, during my first days at the Ghana Institute of Journalism. I had before then watched his thrilling innovations on the screens of my television.  Gently wave your hand in front of a television set and it switches on/off! That was amazingly superfluous. The )nantefo) and )bremp)n (cars) among others beat my imaginations as well.

The question that many Ghanaians kept quizzing themselves with upon seeing such innovations was whether what the Star of Africa manufactured was indeed made in Ghana. With the passage of time, one has come to accept that whatever we heard or saw about the Apostle is nothing but the truth. Ghana like Adom TV; ‘y3 w) adze a oye.’ Sad enough, however, our ‘adze a oye’ is being left to the dustbins as successive governments have paid little attention to helping the Apostle establish a strong brand of manufacturing plant in Ghana.

Aside the great number of innovations that are being launched by Apostle Dr. Kwadwo Safo (Kantanka) every year, his single effort to develop Ghana through his God given talent has been inadequate. This should tell any discerning mind that the Apostle’s mission is not a one man demonstration. All hands must be on deck.

So would it not have been a great move Adwoa Safo cruising one of her father’s cars? I have of late given myself a title; A Cultural Activist. I believe in the culture (way of life) of Africa/Africans that would help our continent move from zero to hero and from hero to legend. It is in this light that I am madly crazy to see your father ‘grow’ to the status of a world icon. It is said that when a dog bites a man is not news but when man bites a dog, becomes a big news. As it stands, my influence in the society goes not beyond my family and few friends who would ‘follow’ me upon seeing my report in the media. But let Adwoa Safo cough and it would become news to our tingling ears. This is to say that as a cultural activist dying to see our land develop through what we have, even if I have the purchasing power to choose and cruise one of the wonder cars, the crowd I would pull for people to think Kantanka wouldn’t be as massive as you would do.

“Kantanka in parliament,” “Adwoa Safo on mission drive Kantanka,” “Kantanka surpasses all innovations- Adwoa Safo” are but some of the headlines I have craved to see on the front pages of our newspapers. Unfortunately, I have not yet come across such headlines in the media. I guess you have not realized that aside being a woman, your presence in Ghana’s parliament add up to the power you carry?

Tell the bus driver to stop for you to offload the content of your bladder and you would see the rest of the passengers following suit. Many a time in life, we need someone who is courageous and self-determined to start that which we even fear to mention its name. If is it the rest of your cohorts in parliament and other influential public figures that have a dwindling faith in your father’s dream, rise up to prove them wrong.

Historically, the man who came from beyond the boiling sea to rule us did not only chain our hands but he as well tried chaining our minds. From 1927 to 1934, Dr. Ephraim Amu was employed as a music teacher at the Akropong Presbyterian Training College (APTC). The father of Ghanaian art music was, however, faced with a tough opposition at the APTC for advocating for the wearing of, what the whites called, ‘native cloth’ to preach. I believe that some orders from above are coiling our leaders into their shells from making made-in-Ghana a reality. But we must today tell the world that we are using what we have first before anything else. Kudos to great men like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings for spearheading the wearing of Northern Ghana’s smock. Today, the smock is selling well on the market.

Going by this suggestion, the Kantanka brand would be well embraced by Ghanaians and the world at large. But Madam Lawyer, if you already cruise a Kantanka made vehicle, I would plead your court to pardon me of contempt. However, if it happens that you have abandoned your own and sought comfort-cruise-asylum in what the Whiteman has manufactured, then you have done a disservice to the Apostle.

Together, we can help cup our hands to shelter the flame of the oil lamp lighted by the Star of Africa from the blowing wind.

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

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

Skype: solomensah123