Then, for some reason, we started speaking quite specifically about our criteria when it came to finding accommodation in Accra. It was odd because we were both happily ensconced in quite enviable homes.
It became even more odd when Melissa, well-travelled polyglot that she is, said, “I’d be willing to drive down one really bad road to get to where I live, but I draw the line at two.”
The image of Melissa, on whom a hair is ever out of place, rough-roading some fabulous vehicle several times a day just to enter and exit her own residence seemed both cruelly, and comically, out of place.
But that’s not the reason I remember that conversation so well. It stands out because it carried me into another conversation I had with yet another friend, Kwabena, a recent returnee from England.
He lived on the Spintex Road in a Manet housing complex that was situated directly beside a Regimanuel housing complex. At the time both housing complexes were relatively new, the epitome of middle-class bliss, West African style.
There was a really nasty, potholed road on which you had to drive in order to enter either complex. I just couldn’t understand it; all the bourgeois baby-boomers, so pedigreed and proper, and all the nouveau riche, with their phoney Westernised accents and their faux designer accoutrements were situated there—and this was the entrance to their well-appointed lives?
“Why,” I asked Kwabena, “couldn’t the people who built these master-planned communities extend their planning an additional 100 yards beyond the front gates?”
“Oh that’s easy,” Kwabena replied. “Neither of them wants the residents of the other community to benefit from a road that they’ve built.”
Kwabena’s statement would have shocked me, had I not already heard something similar from another friend just months earlier. My conversation with Melissa had caused a domino effect and this was the next conversation to come to mind.
When my friend, Kwesi, returned to Ghana after decades of living in Los Angeles, he purchased a property in Ringway Estates in which he intended to house his business. Kwesi’s only problem? The back roads of Bolgatanga were probably smoother than the street that led to his new property. Successful businessman that he is, Kwesi came up with a simple solution: all the neighbours could pool their money to fix the road.
It would be to everyone’s advantage. He went from door to door, asking and explaining; every single person refused. At some point in the process, Kwesi told me, he realised that his neighbours’ refusal had very little to do with contributing to their own success and ease of life; it was more about them resenting the idea that they might contribute to the success and ease of life of the other people living on that road.
At the time, I thought it was one of the meanest, most cold-hearted things I’d ever heard. I mean, who would wilfully hurt or inconvenience him/herself just to avoid helping somebody else?
Having now heard about a dozen variations on the same basic theme, I can’t help but consider it par for the course. So that leads me to wonder: at what point should we take responsibility for the communities, the cities, and the country in which we live?
I’ve asked this question again and again and the answer that always seems to get kicked back to me is that the upkeep of our municipalities is the government’s responsibility. Okay, I won’t dispute that the government could, and should, be ensuring that roads are paved, well lit and safe. But what if that’s not the case?
What if, for whatever reason, the government doesn’t pave the roads or pick up the rubbish? What then? Do we resign ourselves to living amidst filth, to driving down at least one bad road in order to get home?
You see, there’s an apathy that sets in when we simply shrug and accept the hand that we’re being dealt as our fate, some substandard reality to which we’ve been relegated. It’s the sort of apathy that often goes hand in hand with a sense of powerlessness. And there is a danger in powerlessness. It can so easily promote bitterness, hopelessness, envy, and resentment.
But the truth of the matter is that we Ghanaians are not powerless. The truth of the matter is that we hold the power to find solutions to the majority of the problems that we whine and complain about, especially if we come together as one community, one city, one country.
Citizens of other countries do it all the time. They form neighbourhood watch groups to combat crime; they open co-operative grocery stores and build co-operative housing; they organise advocacy groups to encourage civic engagement.
Does it then mean that the government is relieved of their responsibility to the citizens? Not at all; quite the opposite. Citizens who feel empowered actually expect and demand more; and they make sure that their elected representatives understand in no uncertain terms that if they do not meet those expectations, they will soon find themselves joining the ranks of the unemployed.
In our development of “a better Ghana,” (banal slogan that this is) it would serve us quite well to recognise that we are, indeed, our brothers’ (and sisters’) keepers; what hurts one will hurt all, and what benefits one will benefit all.
By Meri Nana –Ama Danquah/Daily Graphic/Ghana
