Feature: Ghanaians abroad, what are we working for?

For many Ghanaians living in Diaspora, we work day and night to try to maximise the money we earn in a month. Why - in order to pay our bills, pay our taxes live decently and send money to relatives who are less fortunate to make a decent living back home. Secondly, we also contribute significantly towards unnecessary expensive funeral celebrations back home.

What is our vision in life? Would it be making a difference within the community we come from or only building mansions to raise our profile?

Fellow Ghanaian citizens enjoying Diaspora, partying at every opportunity let us stop and think again. In life when our mother nag at us we hate them and not until they are dead and gone do we realise how much they cared for us. By this time it is too late and all we have are memories some painful and unbearable, others pleasant.

Ghanaians, we need to empower our friends and community with the strategies of fund raising activities, as we have seen in schools, the media, and churches, to raise money to improve the standard of a given situation.

Some of us I'm afraid do create an atmosphere of pride around us and wanting our fellow citizen back home to worship us. So we don't help to empower them but rather encourage them to depend on our handouts.

Research shows that, those of us who accept these offers only realise in later life how they become indebted to the families who sponsored them.

Ghanaians everywhere need to perhaps start focusing on investing for our self-growth and development in whichever area of interest that would bring some dividend in the long term. In this way we become independent and take pride in one's own self-development.

Let us all grasp the opportunities we see in the countries we now call home and instil in our children and children's children the desire to build a better Ghana. Let us encourage our children to focus to work smarter and not harder.

This is what we are finding in the developed world. If one thinks strategically and reaches their potential thus increasing their confidence and self esteem.

Instead of investing in improving Ghana, we invest in funerals. These days we return to our country and see more and more lavish funerals; life is one long attempt to outdo the last funeral. Instead of investing our time and money in helping a community to improve its schools, libraries, public toilets and recreational grounds, we invest in parties, not the future.

What I hear people say after a funeral is that wow many people attended the service, it lasted this long and so much food was there. What we fail to analyse is that at what cost?

Why can't we emulate the Europeans in this area, have modest funerals and if they wish to spend more, it goes into useful memorials, like charitable donations, sponsored equipment for public use, etc. The dead are gone - the immediate family could have decent service, but instead go beyond one's means to impress friends and competing with one another; we even go into debt for years to pay for them.

Is this the type of memory we would love to leave behind? Instead, perhaps a library in our name for a school, public toilet or recreational centre built in our name. In so doing our name would never die and people will benefit for years to come, instead we have an expensive funeral, so that people will gossip about it for weeks to come – but a year later, who cares?

Ghanaians we need to wake up, expensive funerals are a waste. In Europe if people are asking any donation, it is only to be sent to fund a charity. If we cut our expenditure by half, and invested the rest in community development projects, think where Ghana could be in 50 years time.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.