I Might Die Tonight!

 

By Solomon Mensah

Farah (left) & a casualty of the war

Somewhere in August this year, I had gone to shave my hair at a barbering shop located at Coastal-Spintex, Accra. After shaving, I chanced upon The Times, a UK newspaper, on the centre table of the shop which made me spend hours reading. While reading, I bumped into a write-up on the Israel-Gaza conflict making me to abandon the rest of the stories.

“Every night, as Gaza City shudders under a barrage of bombings, the secondary school student cowers in her bedroom and posts a blow-by-blow account in English of what it is like to live under fire,” Bel Trew, a freelance journalist, wrote (in August 4, edition) of a 16 year old Farah Baker.

“She likes Taylor Swift, wants to be a lawyer and is an avid user of social media,” Bel noted. “The only difference between Farah Baker and other 16-year-olds around the world is that she tweets from a war zone. Her twitter feed, @Farah Gazan, is littered with videos of airstrikes, recordings of drones and photos of latest casualties.”    

Farah does not merely worry about tweeting from a war zone but the constant ‘hide and seek’ with death. She lives opposite to the Al_Shifa Hospital. Farah would at times stand on her rooftop and observe what is happening at the morgue of the hospital whenever situations are a bit calmer. On one of her observations, she tweeted seeing “a woman shouting, screaming and slugging. After a while, a doctor arrived and with him was a dead body which was covered by a white cloth.”

She has witnessed three wars which she described as 'hardest ones'. For her and her family, to survive in Gaza for just an hour is the greatest miracle one could ever recount; the kind a Ghanaian would seize the microphone in church to shout on top of their voice Mark Anim Yirenkyi’s ‘Aseda dwom.’

That is it: Gaza scare! But in all these brouhahas, in struggling to sustain one’s breath, Farah and her family have not ceased to praise Allah for protecting them. They have not killed themselves by committing suicide to shame the enemy. They have not stopped smiling because though some of their hospitals (if not all) are bombed, food and drugs are in little supply, most houses razed down to rubbles and what have you. So... who are you to end your life because the going has become tougher for you?

Perhaps, you might think you are the only troubled soul wandering on Odomankoma’s planet. Listen to this....

It was only two weeks to complete teacher training college. The colleges of education across the country had given their third year students some days off to relax from their teaching practice before going back to campus to write their final papers. I had had my teaching practice at Wamfie, Dormaa East district, and, then, I would rush home (Sunyani) to eat from my mother’s kitchen from time to time.

We vacated, came home and met my lovely mother, Ama Adease, and the entire family. As old as she was, she would never entirely ‘handover’ the kitchen to her three daughters to do the cooking while she sat idle. She would strive to do something to assist the cooks. Perhaps, the only time she vacated the kitchen was when she went to the farm and came back home late.

Ama Adease would share her meal with those afflicted by hunger and her foodstuffs with the needy. These and many other benevolent deeds became part and parcel of her life. Once again at home, I enjoyed seeing her hold on to such deeds tightly like the scarf sitting on the head of a Nigerian woman.

But... on 19th July, 2010, the dawn of the day we were supposed to leave the house for school, the unexpected happened. It was around 4:00am when one of my brothers struck a loud bang at my door. I had slept around 1:00am (doing some reading) so to be called to wake up at 4:00am was sickening. I managed to creak the door opened only to be told “Maame awu!” to wit; mom is dead.

All of a sudden, it seemed I was watching a Kumawood movie. I shook terribly as if I had touched a jelly fish. “This can’t be true,” I told myself. The very night that hatched that awful dawn, I had had a chat with my mother telling her that when the cock crowed to usher in a new day, I would leave the house for school. She responded ‘Ok.’ She sat in a plastic chair in the heart of the compound chatting with the wife of my brother who broke the news to me.

When the hour hand hit 2:00pm that Monday and a number of black-clad sympathizers sat under the mounted canopies, it was then I realized “agye gon.” Maame (as we affectionately called her) was gone. Almost a year to commemorate her one year anniversary, on 18th June, 2011, my father also passed on. A smell of death I could sense. Since these days till now, knowing how painful it is to lose a relative, I never have wished for anyone (not even my arch enemy) to taste or smell death.

Life has not been easy. I struggled to finance my education at the Ghana Institute of Journalism because I closed the door of my source of income – teaching - to pursue my heart desire; journalism. I did no longer want to live someone else’s dream and I have dearly paid a price for switching professions. There have been days I lived on less than Ghc2. There have been days all hopes were lost. I was recently turned down (employment) by two great Ghanaian media platforms. But amazingly, there have also been days people asked me for an unimaginably huge sums of money in the form of loan, asked me to help them publish their books and the list is endless. Isn’t God a wonder working God?

Following the reignition of the Israel-Gaza conflict on the 8th of July, 2014, the pungent smell of death in Gaza became much more suffocating. It was, therefore, not surprising that on 28th July, 2014, Farah Baker shared a tweet: “Gaza is my area. I can’t stop crying. I might die tonight.”

The most important thing to be well noted here is that Farah did not use the word ‘will’ but ‘might.’ Get the difference. Fortunately, her little faith of a sustainable life one day at a time worked magic. “This girl can’t believe that she is back for her ordinary peaceful life. I am soooo happy,” she tweeted recently. Israel and Palestinian groups have on 26th August, 2014, agreed an open-ended ceasefire to end seven weeks of fighting in Gaza.

I have never lost hope in life, Farah did not, and I charge you to steadfastly hold on to God, faith and hope, too. Forget not that no matter how bad you think your predicament is, someone else’s is more bitter than yours. I write from Gaza to motivate you. O.J, the Ghanaian musician, transliterated his song “Obi Nya W’ay3”; “Somebody get you do.”

 

The writer is a Sunyani-based Freelance journalist.

Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com

Blog: www.aniwaba.blogspot.com

Twitter: @Aniwaba

 

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