<<Print>>This nation appears to be losing its heritage, which is not a very pleasant statement to make. The prognosis is not that good, I am afraid. I am not an expert in sociology, neither have I ever studied anthropology, but I have the inclination that this nation is on the slippery slope towards a total break with the past.
We are not making any conscious efforts at making our children appreciate the past. It is unfortunate, but these days, it is common to meet kids who do not even speak the language of their parents. How then are we going to tell them the true stories of the past?
One of the thrills of growing up in a rural community in the early post-independent Ghana was listening to Kweku Ananse stories in the evening. Kweku was all-knowing and succeeded in fooling all around him. The moral lessons in these stories are that Ananse’s tricks are invariably discovered at the eleventh hour, when he is duly punished.
Yesterday, The Chronicle published the comedy playing out at the African Development Bank (AfDB), following the lecture delivered by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumiah, the 2012 and 2015 New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential running mate, at the Central University College at Prampram recently. The bank did indeed write to the Government of the Republic of Ghana, drawing attention to the sanctions. In all these, the bank insisted, it made a mistake.
Like an Ananse story, the blame for all these is not supposed to lie with the bank, but with Dr. Bawumiah, who used the ‘mistake’ in his lecture. That is not the whole comedy. Trying to explain why its inflation index on food items contradicted figures released by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. On the subject broached by the eminent economist, the Ghana Statistical Service said the difference between its figures and that of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoFA) lies in the fact that it uses 82 different food items in its food basket, while the MoFA only uses 24 food items.
Secondly, while the MoFA uses the 10 regions and specific markets like Ejura, Techiman, Mankessim and others, the Statistical Service has an expanded market base, according to a statement issued by the Ghana Statistical Service.
I will like to believe that when a customer wants to understand whether the price of yam or gari, for instance, has come down from its price of the year before, his or her understanding is not based on whether the Ghana Statistical Service uses 82 food items to gauge its inflationary rate or not. The customer’s calculation is based simply on the price of yam as obtained now against the price at which the customer bought the same items the previous year.
It may look weird, but this nation is beginning to exhibit symptoms of being administered on the concept of Kweku Ananse stories.
At a time dum-so has reduced life at the centre of the earth to the level of the Stone Age, we are told that President John Dramani Mahama has worked out miracles that have brought the kind of development never seen before.
The concept appears to be that the President is achieving results because he is young. The other day, President Mahama was at Mamfe on the Akwapim Hills to mourn with the chiefs and people on the departure to the next world of the Queenmother of the town. The Master of Ceremonies in the Presidential entourage did his very best to remind the mourners that the youthful Head of State of the Republic was in town.
Mr. John Dramani Mahama is 57 years old. He was born in 1958, a year after independence, in 1957. In all this, the promoters of the age factor appear to forget that at the time Dr. Kwame Nkrumah achieved independence for the then Gold Coast he was only 48 years old.
We are fast becoming a nation where trivialities drive our emotion. For more than four years, this nation has been in the dark. Electricity, without which no meaningful development ever takes place, is being rationed. Twelve hours of power is followed by 24 hours of total darkness. And we still pride ourselves as a middle income country. Which middle income nation on earth cannot fix its electricity problem for six years? And we still pride ourselves with promoting a Better Ghana. Where on earth has life been better without electricity, which brings me to a very emotional problem I am confronted with.
I write with a very heavy heart today. As you read this article, the wife my deceased senior brother left has joined her ancestors under very bizarre circumstances. Esther Bambir complained of breathing difficulties, and was rushed to the Apam Hospital at midnight on Tuesday, March 24.
On arrival, the doctor on duty examined her and said she needed oxygen immediately. Unfortunately there was no power, so the oxygen machine could not be used.
Apam Hospital, like many health facilities countrywide, has been hard hit by the dum-so syndrome. After using most of their internally generated funds to buy fuel to power their stand-by generators, it has got to a point where there is no more money to buy fuel.
Since the Ghana Health Service would not resource our hospitals, there are no funds to buy fuel to operate the generators. Anytime there was dum-so, medical delivery virtually ceases. So it was when Esther Bambir was rushed from her base at Gomoa Sampa, near Gomoa Brofo in the Gomoa West District of the Central Region, last week that she gave up the ghost, as desperate medical staff tried to find an alternative medical centre, where she could be treated.
My understanding is that a distress call to Winneba Hospital yielded no positive result. Apparently, Winneba township and its hospital were also in the dark.At the weekend, I went to Sampa with two brothers to plan Esther Bambir’s funeral. My senior brother, Solomon Kwame Ketu (same mother but different fathers), went to the village in the year 2000. Since then, I have assumed the role of a traditional husband to Esther Bambir, and father to her five children.
It is with a heavy heart that I announce officially that dum-so has killed my wife. May the soul of Esther Bambir, rest in perfect peace.
I shall return!