If you haven?t tasted how bitter the motherland has become, you are not being observant. I am sure you have, you are and I bet you are sure to, momentarily, if you haven?t had anything at all like the following experience of 24hours of bitterness.
I set out on a 20 to 25-minute drive to pick up my children on one of the very few motorable roads. This was about 15 minutes drive pre-2009. However, the road is now blocked by congress ramping spree which has extended the travel time to 25 minutes.
The drive began from a golden city now rubbished by the planting of containerized ramshackles anywhere and everywhere. I was that full of revulsion as I left it; very bitter at why a former cleanest town in the motherland is now an eyesore from every angle of assessing the cleanliness of a town.
Growing unemployment has caused a scramble for physical space to engage in any form of penny capitalism. Consequently, every lane, alley and sometimes even parts of streets have been occupied and are occupied every day of the week in trading activities.
The bitterness that has become prevalent in the motherland began on a more serious note when a long planned visit to an elder in the next major town towards my destination was crashed. I had parked by the street side about to open the door of the car when a young man shouted repeatedly ?please your tyre is down.?
I could see my elder sitting on his veranda most probably awaiting my arrival. Unbelievably, I had to restart the engine and head for the tyre fixer, in local parlance the ?vulcanizer.? At the first call, the shop was closed. The bystanders quickly said the vulcanizer wasn?t around because there was no light. It wasn?t until I went to the third shop a third-time without finding a vulcanizer that I realized the problem was load shedding. No energy supply bitterness, yes!
Determined to fix the problem, I changed the tyre to an equally disabled spare tyre. My belief was that this would take me to the next town where electricity current was most likely to be functional and therefore a vulcanizer ready to fix the problem.
I had barely travelled 500kilometers when I discovered the spare tyre was actually shredded. And so I saw myself stuck in the middle of nowhere; with no tyre and no help. Bitter, bitter motherland, I said to myself. Now, any visit to my elder was gone!
The whole tyre debacle began with a crash into a gaping hole caused by bitumen eaten up by erosion. Not that I couldn?t see; I had to battle with parking to leave enough space for passing vehicles.
But why a system of no light no tyre repair should guide our existence as a people, is regrettable. It is not easy to understand why the vulcanizers have so quickly abandoned the small diesel driven machines and hand-operated tyre pumps as back-ups. It must be part of our wrong ?all modernization is development? attitude. If we were more conscious, more diligent, we will always be guided by ?all development is modernization? but not ?all modernization is development? as contended by Paulo Freire, the radical Brazilian thinker.
Well, also to blame for the bitterness is that week of ?yes flight?, ?no flight.? A direct flight to Bonoland would have averted much of the bitterness tasted by my children besides my own struggles with crashing into a pothole and damaging a tyre in the process. They lost money, a lot of money by a retiree?s standards in that ?yes flight?, ?no flight? situation.
I cannot conclude without a mentioning a very, very curious announcement at the thanksgiving church service as part of the mourning rites which took us to the scenes of all the bitter happenings. So and so announce a ?pastors? awards? on such and such a date. I need help. I need to know the criteria developed for the selection of those to be awarded the prizes. Equally, I wonder about the nature of the awards.
Bitter Ghana is not a one-time taste. It is not a medicinal taste from which one can expect some relief from the bitter taste. It is a taste of poison that depresses you, needles you, irritates you and eventually kills you softly.
Something is left in my compatriots? readiness to help the one in trouble, though; caring for your brother and sister spirit ripe for fighting all this bitterness. A Tico taxi I hailed without complaint carried the tyre to my nephew to be fixed. And when I had to change the tyre, total strangers lent hands. Maybe one day, we would be able to convert that into ample energy supply.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh
