Ghana So far: The Impressions of a holidaymaker (III)

‘GHANA SO FAR: THE IMPRESSIONS OF A HOLIDAYMAKER’ PART III of IV

Admittedly, I couldn’t see much in two weeks. Well, perhaps, there wasn’t a lot to see beyond what was palpably visible. I had plans of talking to a newspaper editor and a brilliant parliamentarian, who has become a good friend since we met at a free-trade workshop in London some two years ago. He has changed my thinking about African politicians and given me reason to believe that good would one day triumph over evil in that part of the Jordan if we could change a few things. He doesn’t fit into the traditional conception of politicians as egocentrics who promise the gullible masses bread only when they know that the dough is not coming from their wives’ kitchen. And it is refreshing that there are a few visionaries of his sort in Ghana today. Even so, I had not gone to assess the contribution of politicians to the national development agenda; I had gone to see whether there were sufficient indications that things could change. In the whole gamut of attitudes and behaviours that need changing, where would anyone looking for changes start from? Often times, you may need to change your perception of how things have been before you go shopping for changes. And certain things do not change. When they do, it is for the worst.

Suddenly, it has become normal for Ghanaians to marry today and divorce tomorrow, as if ‘emotional terrorism’ is gradually becoming a national pride. Of course, it wasn’t as bad as in England, where two out of five marriages end in a divorce; but the rate of divorce was quite alarming for a country where every meeting on mosquito fumigation starts with a prayer. I had walked into the marital homes of a few friends, expecting to meet toddlers crawling on the floor of a happy home. Instead, I had to give one friend after another my condolences, after I was greeted with bitter divorce tales. And these were not septuagenarians; they are folks in their early thirties, one of them just 29, whose wedding had seen well-wishers flying from far away Australia and America to congregate in a small church at Abeka-Lapaz. The marriage had been over in three months, at the behest of the Mrs. She had explained to family members and her pastor that it was her right to divorce her husband if she prefers another man. Three more newly-married guys had suffered a similar fate.

I wondered whether these girls were victims of the ‘com-centre mentality’-doing it because another person had successfully done it, or they are the new breed of the assertive African woman. I have been reading the works of Nana Oye Lithur, a brilliant and independent-minded lawyer, who appears to be championing the cause of women in Africa. She writes a column in the state-owned Daily Graphic under the heading: Women and the Law, a very good intellectual exercise that seeks to expose negative practices and attitudes towards women. I don’t think she would sanction this kind of new female power. Or have folks misunderstood the business of the Ministry of national orientation, whose head is a beautiful liberal feminist, and done such a sinister orientation for themselves? Wanton divorces have never been part of us.

Well, may be we can’t blame a woman for divorcing a man who stinks like rotten menstrual blood, in Ayi Kwei-Armah’s words. It appears Ghanaian women are finding a western voice to make a point. Marriages in the west, even those among Ghanaian born-again Christians, are increasingly becoming laughable contracts between two bored individuals whose blankets are not good enough for the cold weather. Some women ‘burgers’ bring their partners here to help them pay their mortgage and give them children. They discharge them when their last baby is old enough to say daddy. And, sometimes, most of these men do not deserve wives anyway. In the two weeks I spent in Ghana, I had read in the papers the stories of two okotobonku village men who had killed their wives for denying them sex. One of them had killed himself to bid a despicable adieu to this world. The wife of that man had every right to have divorced such a fool ten times over in a single day.

Another thing that had changed for the worst was the emergence of a new occupation that does not require CV’s from new entrants. That trade is so good that once you are established, you appreciate in value with time, and you don’t retire until you are called to eternal glory. It is the most respectable of jobs when done properly. Those who are genuinely called to do it insist it is not a job; it is a divine obligation and a sacrifice. And most of them are doing a very good job, praying ceaselessly for our country and guarding the morals we cherish. We need a lot more of those faithful ones to pray God for His enduring mercies on our souls. The kind we don’t need are those corrupt Pharisee pastors (because they can see far) who are making us Saducees: sad you see. They are the ones who usually have no CV’s, and so would have remained unemployed if they hadn’t sought refuge in the church.

One of those Pharisees had visited my sister’s flat where I was also a guest. My sister had to necessarily do the Abraham-introducing me as her fiancée, to respectfully frustrate the married pastor’s amorous advances. The Man of God, the General Overseer of her church, had been pestering her for sex since she joined the church. He had promised to sponsor her postgraduate studies abroad. His rather well-toned face assumed the character of a displaced aborted foetus after my sister’s introduction. Immediately, he started quoting and often hurriedly misquoting verses of popular books in the bible, to save his already abused honour. He instantly offered me a job when I told him that I was a writer: ‘You could head my publicity team and write for the church’s website’, he said. I told him I didn’t live locally. ‘The Lord is great; I have a branch of the church in London, so you could help us all the same. Your fiancée has been a blessing since she joined us’, he shamefully submitted. He prayed for us, demolishing the plans of the devil against our intended marriage. He looked as drained as a raped royal peacock when he drove away his posh, obviously church funded Chrysler saloon car. Who is more of a devil than he was?

The devil that he was, he had bragged to my sister that he runs his church as a business. Being the General Overseer and founder, he recruits pastors to work for him. He determines their salaries and conditions of service. ‘Whatever is left is mine’, he was reported to have said. As I write this sentence, I am at the advanced stages of a legal battle I am about waging against an Amsterdam based Ghanaian pastor, who has duped me of several thousands of Euros, in what should have been a friendly commercial transaction. He had become a pastor to tame people’s disappointment at his murderous voodoo past. Sometimes, you wonder if God is still King of Israel.

Unlike Alistair Campbell, former UK Premier Tony Blair’s spin doctor, we do God, and sometimes too much of Him. The Downing Street media guru had told his country that his cabinet did not do God. And it is a good thing that we have a bit of God in our country. May be, things would have been worse when structural adjustment programmes fail to adjust peoples’ faith in public policy. The day I chaired a staff meeting in my college, I asked the attendees, mainly Asians and whites, to bow down their heads for an opening prayer. The principal instantly retorted: ‘we don’t do that kind of thing here; the meeting is between us, not you and your African God.’ In the end, he asked me if my God was aware that my students had been complaining that I was usually late on Fridays. I had been teaching part-time at the rival college next door. Apparently, that was the reason for my lateness.

I found time to visit a little village near Gomoa Manso, where the boy I have been sponsoring lives with his mum and grandmother. The boy had grown very well, but resources in the village had remained stunted. Nearly the entire village trooped into their decrepit structure when they learnt of the arrival of Ekwow’s new father. I was humbled by their kindness and their rather affectionate, often consciously condescending hospitality. They called me ‘yenwura’, the greatest honour I have received all my life; an honour more honourable than the aggregate weight of my three miserable honours degrees. But, I felt sad that the inspiration to commit a few British Pounds every month to this boy had not come from a fellow Ghanaian. A middle-aged English woman, a colleague at work during my first year in the UK, had showed me the way. She had photographs of an African girl in her bag, which she proudly showed to anybody who would bother to look. She had not travelled to any part of Africa before, but she had been responsible enough to sponsor a poor child from that continent. She had seen an Oxfam-sponsored advertisement in a local newspaper in Milton Keynes, and had decided to share her meagre earnings with somebody who was in need. I earned more than she did; she was only a part-time worker. I began to question my sense of responsibility from then on.

I had met my boy when he was a little over two years. His mother had come to sell produce from her farm in the biggest town in the area. The boy had wandered off while the mum was attending to a customer, and had bumped into me. I instantly took a liking to him, and had time to give him a fatherly cuddle. He cried uncontrollably when his mother later came to take him from me. I followed them to her selling point and the rest is the above. Now, my paternal grandmother, who lives about seven villages away, has become part of the boy’s family. This happened when I had just graduated from Legon. I was a 23 year old freethinker at the time. But, it wasn’t until five years later, when I had embarked on a pilgrimage to the UK as a foreign student that I would begin to assume some responsibility towards the boy.

There are many Ghanaians who have been instrumental in charity work, but it has not been part of our nature, the way hypocrisy and celebrity funerals have been. Last week, the people of the United Kingdom woke up to read the refreshing story of a widowed pensioner who had left £6 Million in his will, to assist his local children’s hospice. He had led the life of bargains, never spending a pound when a penny was all he needed. While he was pleased with his lonely life, he cared about children who are disadvantaged and those that would be born after his death.

Should it be impossible for every salaried worker in Ghana, especially those in the higher income bracket, to donate 5GH cedis every month to help our brothers and sisters in the villages? Who doesn’t know where to find a poor single mum in Ghana? Everybody is thinking of when to buy the latest model of his automobile. That would only beautify our roads. If we want to develop our society, we should do the Kennedy everyday: think of what we can do for Ghana, not what Ghana can do for us. If that is not a truism, ask Prof Martin Owusu, and he would tell you it is an axiom, in fact.

By Benjamin Tawiah
The author is a freelance journalist; he lives in London, where he also teaches Journalism and English as a foreign language. Email: quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk / btawiah@hotmail.com.

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