Whispers Of A Revolution

It has been well over 7 months since my last post on this blog. I took the backstage. Perhaps because I'm not an ardent fan of blogging and tweeting. Or was there was a dry out of ideas? Umm.. I doubt. I wanted to "take care of life" first...hope you know what I mean. I've been a little busy though, with a couple of travelling here and there. A couple of partnerships here and there. A couple of setbacks here and there, raising funds here and there... makes me realise its time to resume with some blog posts cos you never really finish "taking care of life," do you?

That was enough time for me though, to conceive a vision. I have a dream, you know? It started when I became a partner in a two man regional supervisory team to the Amansie West and Central Districts of the Ashanti Region during the recent NID on polio. Prior to that was a similar monitoring on LLIN distribution in the Bekwai municipality, and that's where the dream began: in the deprived villages of these districts.

NID monitoring: some kids sharing a meal at Mile 9 village, Amansie West District. The one below 5years was given 2 drops of the polio vaccine. He may be protected from polio, but how about diarrhoea or worm infestation? An example of "health without wealth".

The more I saw malnourished children playing football barefooted in the hot African sand, the more I witnessed them eat plain rice without stew, the more I saw young men my age burning precious time away in the  village squares apparently because there are no jobs, the more I heard stories of their recent poor returns on farming, the more I saw young ladies visibly struck with poverty with four or more children, the sparkle in their eyes upon seeing you step out  of a government 4WD presuming you're some sort of Santa Claus... the more I saw, the more the dream took shape.

I believe in order for Africa to be fully liberated, there must be another scramble; this time, by Africans.

MY FIRST DAY IN PRISON

I had passed by that prison so many times in my life. With its tall imposing walls, I had wondered what lied behind each time I passed by. Is it true the stories I had heard about Ghana’s prisons? Well, the deadlock was broken yesterday as I was ushered in, with my two colleagues around 9 a.m., upon orders by the OIC (Officer in Charge).

“No phones, cameras or recorders are allowed in here,” grunted an officer at the final gate of entry. I had to empty my pocket of everything. Some official stuff was taken care of and our letter was shown to the 2OIC. Our initiation had begun. We had three hours to conduct a quick survey on the female prisoners. Our questionnaires were out, our pens were ready, and the talks began.

The purpose of our visit was not to listen to the individual stories of these incarcerated prisoners or those on remand, but deep within some of them, you could tell they wanted to talk and be comforted. We had to stick to our ethics and the purpose of visit, but yet, others would begin telling you about their stories even without being asked. And of course, you can’t shut such a person down. Its part of emotional health, of which I, myself was a beneficiary a couple of weeks ago when I needed people to talk to, so badly. Well, back to my focus on the prisoners, I spoke with the fair, the dark, the pretty, the ones as old as my mum, those who clearly were psychologically unstable, the sick and the pregnant ones, from all walks of life.

Our purpose was to get a bird’s eye view of their health status and conditions within the prisons. Of course, technically, none of them was healthy, as the World Health Organization (WHO), defines Health as being “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” So once your freedom is taken away, your social well-being is affected. With one exception, a pretty young woman I interviewed, who was full of smiles and seemed to be comfortable in prison. She’s 23, and had been given a 10 year sentence 5 years ago. My heart sank, but had to stay on course. I spoke with was a four month old pregnant married woman who was certainly going to deliver in prison due to the kind of sentence she had been given. Next, was a suspected HIV positive prisoner — I say suspected because I was not given any medical proof but rather word of mouth by one officer. She had also delivered 3 months ago with the police by her side after being sentenced to do 9 years, out of which she had done only four months. She was emaciated, looked sick and had only breastfed her baby for two months until her mother came for the baby. Had she transmitted HIV to her baby through breastfeeding? That, as you know, I cannot tell, but she most probably would die in prison without any ARV's. By the way, research in this regard confirms HIV transmission through breastfeeding is very minimal except when done with mixed feeding. So pediatricians in Ghana actually advise HIV positive mothers to still stick to exclusive breastfeeding for at least three months. That’s another topic of its own, which I’d blog about, later on.

But my main reason for this short post today is to expound on how much of a blessing it is, to be free. Freedom is an asset. Let us guard it jealously. Let us thank our God for our freedom today. I kept thinking about these convicted and remand prisoners overnight. Don’t be ungrateful. If for nothing at all, you’re a free man or woman. You might be broke, sick, stressed, disappointed, etc, but you’re FREE!!! Thank God today.

My name is Emmanuel Asare and I thank God I'm a free man!!!

Tourism

Wow. It’s been 3 months since my last post here. Not a sign of a good blogger, I know. The issues of life have kept me a little busy, but that’s no excuse, I know. Been so long I even forgot my blogger password and way around how to post a blog. That sucks, I know. So then, after hitting myself with all possible queries, let me proceed. I want to talk about a topic that’s been on my heart for years. In fact, it’s so strong it woke me up from my 1 hr sleep in the middle of the night – time check is about 00.14a.m.

It’s so strong I couldn’t even fathom any suitable title. Preposterous, I know. Folks, I want to talk about environmental cleanliness and its attendant benefits to us, as a country. And yes, who doesn’t know it’s good to have a clean environment? Seems like a primary school topic, but there’s much more to it.

Personally I do not care so much about economic talk: GDP growth, reduction in inflation, what else? School feeding programme... yes, that’s another pro poor programme that drives me nuts. I’ll hit on in my subsequent posts. They’re all important but not too important in my perspective. Why? Seek ye first environmental sustainability, and all other benefits shall be added unto you. J

I do not seek a government that will provide free food for school children. I seek one which will lead a strong campaign on environmental cleanliness and proper urban planning. Take it easy and pause for a moment of reflection. These two, when effectively implemented has got humongous benefits. Talk of prevention of communicable diseases like the occasional cholera outbreaks, savings on health investment, prevention of perennial floods and its attendant economic loss, promotion of tourism and its related injection of foreign direct capital into the economy, you name it... but to be honest, it requires a bit more than just a clean environment and well planned cities to achieve these benefits.

A couple of years ago, the vice president in the previous administration began a campaign on discipline. That was a very good point to start, but unfortunately it couldn’t hold; nine day wonder. Don’t get me wrong, but I think our military leaders in the past failed us big time, because such social discipline like non littering and non dumping of refuse at inappropriate places take a long time before it’s fully absorbed and practised. These days, let any government begin any strong handed approach for environmental discipline and we’ll threaten to vote them out with our thumbs. That was just by the way, though.

Where was I? Aha. The attendant economic savings on health expenditure through cleaner aesthetic environment and well planned cities. Can you imagine a Ghana where governance is well decentralised such that each district has the sole responsibility of developing tourist sites within the district in order to earn more cash for development? Tourism goes with cleanliness, it goes with proper planning, it goes with advertising the smaller cities and it would be such a wonderful place to start. I was at the Suntreso Government Hospital earlier today, where a neonatal health project was brought to a conclusion. For the first time, nursing mothers since September 2010 were given extensive advise about neonatal care and called on phone to remind them about post natal visits and child welfare clinic visits. The results were phenomenal!! I can’t rant too much because the results are not yet out officially. But the point is: any well planned intervention can yield fabulous expected results and the same can be done with ensuring good environmental health practices.

What can I do? I’ll lobby appropriate quarters to see how far this district centred tourism idea can be implemented. What can you do? That, my friend, is in your mind alone.

My brothers and sisters – Uncle Atta’s address phrase - there is a lot to be done. Develop yourself. Get a voice. I mean, a voice. Get your voice out there. Not just your voice, get your hands out there too and lets work hard for father Ghana – for once, not mother Ghana. Let us work to keep him clean and healthy, for no matter how far away you will ever travel, there’ll always be some Ghana within you. That Ghana, must be clean and healthy.

Back to bed... zzzzzzzzz...

The Justice Of Mob Justice.

It’s been almost a year, since I created this blog. Not a single post here. So why did I create this blog? The answer does not come to mind so easily. Somehow, I wanted to talk about myself. Talk about my daily life. More like a daily diary. I wanted to blog about interesting things I see each day. I wanted to make it a fun blog. Entertaining, catchy, funny, you name it. But then I never found the time. I never got the buzz to make it how I wanted it to be.

You may have to forgive me for this, because things are about to get heated up in here. A plethora of issues on my mind since creating this blog, some have died out, others are still burning, others are coming up as current issues. Blah... blah... blah... let me not bore you with all the jazz. I’ll tell you what’s on my mind... that reminds me of facebook. Personally, I think they ought to change that dumb question anyway: "What's on your mind?" But that’s not my business. It’s for Big Mark to decide.

Yeah, now to my blogging topic. Who heard about the news of a young lady who was brutally molested at the University of Ghana campus for allegedly stealing a cell phone and/or a laptop computer? Well, if you didn’t, then you’re probably not living in Ghana. Sorry.

I’ve seen the unedited video, and I’ll be very charitable with my words. It’s... yyyuck!!! Terrible. Simply appalling. To think those are University students who inflicted such abuse on a young lady? Phew!! We have a long way to go.

Yet, some segment of the public keep talking about the “good guy bad guy” stuff. Was the lady indeed a thief? Really? I mean seriously? People can be that shallow? To me, as to whether she was caught red handed with the stolen gadgets at 3a.m. as alleged is of no consequence. We’re not talking about how bad it is to molest an innocent person. We’re talking about how inhumane it is, to molest a defenceless human being. I just read a news article on ghanaweb and it was such a shock!! Not the article per se, but the comments. Jeez!!

So who’s to be blamed? That’s what we - me kyer3 s3 Ghana fo - like to do, right? Something happens, we quickly find one person or an agency to blame, then we keep quiet about it. You wanna know the ugly truth? We’re all to be blamed. I quite remember a news item on TV a couple of weeks back. Some women advocates met to “deliberate” over this issue. And what of all these big time women groups who held big meetings and talked big on TV about how heinous a crime the UG students have committed? Where were they? Why didn’t they visit her? I won’t be surprised if none of them has ever met this young lady (Amina). If they did, then why this news that she’s become suicidal due to the associated disgrace of the video? Yet, they take advantage to advance their careers by appearing on TV and radio taking big about how deeply “concerned” they are about the situation. To say the truth, all some of them want is some publicity. Something to get them some UN appointment somewhere and a couple of citations to swell their pride. That’s all. If they really cared, then I ask again: why was the molested young lady suicidal? huh? Why didn’t any of them offer psychological support or pay her bills so she could see a clinical psychologist for help?

I can see someone nodding his head to this. I’m not done yet. No, far from that. Now, to those in academia. The social scientists especially and to some extent, public health professionals – well, here, I’ll be culpable. I am yet to see any extensive research work in Ghana about why the public choose to lynch suspected thieves, what goes into the decision process, what would attract a passer- by to get involved in this act, how they completely lose their conscience when this act is going on, and a whole lot. None, whatsoever. Nil. No research in this area. Rather, we quickly blame the police, saying the public has lost confidence in the police.

And oh, yes. Just in case you didn’t know, I’m a technocrat. (KNUST alumni) Call me a snitch, whatever, but a similar incident took place at KNUST, somewhere in 2004/2005, when I must have been in either first or second year. I saw it myself. A young man was beaten up mercilessly with blood oozing from his face at Indece Hall on an allegation of theft. He was later whisked away by campus security. What was made of him later, I never heard of it.

Where am I going with all this? I’m looking at the bigger picture here. Mob justice is a social cancer. Our society is sick, my friend. And as Ghanaians, we’re all part of that society. Let us not be too quick to blame others for our problems. Human rights advocates, academia and the rest of us must do our little part. As you talk with people in your daily routine, when you notice someone is sick in the head- I mean someone who thinks mob justice is justified, take it as an opportunity to do some little public education. We kicked polio out of Ghana – we still immunise though since it’s still found within some of our neighbouring countries. As I was saying, we managed to kick polio out of GH, lets endeavour to help kick mob justice out.

Enjoy your Easter break.