Ghana-man At Crossroads

There are a number of reasons why Ghanaians travel abroad. The major ones are as follows: to seek for jobs or political asylum, in persuit of further education, to join families abroad. In many of these situations, the Ghanaian had said to himself he would work or study for a certain number of years and return home to start something on his own. This article will discuss why such resolutions and determinations are never fulfilled.

Even though education in certain parts of Europe, especially, the Scandinavian countries, is free, one will have to pay for one's accommodation, food, clothing, local and international travels. This is where the problem is. Each year you have to assure the immigration police that you have enough money to sustain you for the year ahead before your residence permit is renewed. If you are not able to get a job during the summer period to accumulate enough money, you risk being refused a residence permit or face deportation.

These days in countries like Sweden all students are given work permits all-year round and not only during the summer, but there are no jobs since Europe is becoming very hard.

In the past, Ghanaians didn't even need a visa to travel to many countries. Yet people were not travelling so much. Even for those countries that Ghanaians needed visas, they were very easy and cheap to get. But today, you have to sweat at the British and US embassies and many others to get a visa. Thousands of Ghanaians enter the US Diversity Visa Lottery every year yet only few are chosen. Even those who win must go through excruciating interviews. Even as late as the 70s, Ghanaians could travel to the UK without a visa. It was Tatcher who put a stop to that. Today the Western world is fortifying its barriers against the third world but nothing seems to be able to stop Ghanaians.

Gone were the days when scholarship students leave Ghana to study in Europe and anxiously counted the days till they finished their courses and returned home to a great party and well-paid jobs. Today, even scholarship students don't want to go back home. Those were the days when a flight to London on a slow flying BOAC jet was a special treat that you savoured for the rest of your life. Some people even went by boat which took a few weeks and docked at Liverpool. Today, "aburokyere" is like your backyard garden which you can get to after your day's work at the office. And when you return, no group of drummers from your holy village will be at the airport to welcome you and shower you with talcum powder.

If you tell people at home that "aburokyire" is now hard, they will just look at you and ask you why you are still there when it is so hard. Or they will say "ennye koraa mpo a, ennte se Ogyakrom"(even if Europe is hard, it is not like Ghana). Some may even say to themselves that you are there but you don't want them to come and be like you.

Many Ghanaians are engaged in very hard, dirty, uncomfortable and back-breaking menial jobs. On their trips to Ghana, they splash money to give the impression that things are still good in Europe.

When a difficult situation like the inability to show sufficient funds anually to the police presents itself, two things immediately come into the mind of the student; either he makes an effort to get a native of that particular country to marry or seek political asylum. None of these altenatives is an easy option. They all take away your attention from your original idea to study for a certain number of years and return home. Due to the democratic dispensation in Ghana, you are not likely to be granted political asylum if you are a Ghanaian. So what many do is to use a war-torn country as their place of origin, even as they adopt different names. In a situation like this, there is no way such a person will ever be able to use his certificates again in that country since he has adopted a different name.

There is the second group of Ghanaians who obtained residence permits through marriage, jobs and sometimes on humanitarian grounds. I will talk about Akrofi, a Ghanaian whose experinces are not different from other well-meaning Ghanaians.

Akrofi came to Europe thanks to the kind invitation of a middle-aged European woman. He was then an accountant at a construction company in Ghana. When he got his visa, he sold his truck and a taxi cab that were doing good business for him in order to buy a ticket to travel. To cut a long story short, he got married to the woman and had two issues with her. After five years the marriage broke down and Akrofi had to find a new apartment. A fat chunk was automatically withdrawn from his monthly salary on behalf of his children.

During those years that he lived in Europe, he sent enough money to his uncle in Ghana to build a house for him since he was determined to return home. The pictures that were sent to him indicated a near-completion of a beautiful building. He sent money for the final completion of the building. He went home that same year to inspect and collect the papers of the building. He found to his surprise that not even a plot of land had been bought. He cursed his uncle and returned to his base. Is Akrofi's experience familiar to you? He came to Europe when he was thirty yeas. Now a pensioner, he can hardly boast of any property.

What saddened my heart was the day I saw Africans including Ghanaians in old people's homes. The problem was not their being there, but the repeated insults by the white inmates. They often told them to move to their countries because they are of no use now and besides, their beds are urgently needed by other white old men.

It is not less than a century ago when Ghanaians began to travel to Europe and America. There are many who are professors, engineers, medical officers and researchers who are actively employed and are contributing in no small way to the economies of Europe and America. Such priviledged Ghanaians bring very little or nothing to help boost the technological innovation and advancement of our motherland, Ghana. The story has it that a Pakistani student of Data engineering who normally worked during summer holidays in a European Atomic Energy Commission stayed in his office when everyone was gone. He went into the Commission's database and printed out the step by step approach of manufacturing atomic bombs. He took them to Pakistan. His effort marked the beginning of of Pakistan's research in Atomic and nuclear energy production. If this story is true, that is patriotism, hindsight and common sense.

The Minisries and the government of Ghana very often frustrates patriotic Ghanaians and inventors. A Ghanaian in Finland designed a keyboard which had Ghanaian alphabets. He presented it to the government and the Ministry of education. No interest was shown in his innovation and he was seriously frustrated. Many countries like Germany, China, Saudi Arabia can type their alphabets on the computer keyboard, why not Ghana?

With the economic recession and the present unemployment rate in Europe and North America, I will not advise any Ghanaian to sell his property or take a loan and pay "connection men" huge sums of money to procure a visa with the view to travelling abroad to seek for a job. The western world today is not the same as it was in the past.

written by Stephen Atta Owusu

Author: Dark Faces At Crossroads

email: stephen.owusu@email.com