Home over the Horizon

THE RED, THE YELLOW AND THE GREEN

Home is where I belong, home is what I make of it and for a very long time Ghana has been my home. It is where my immediate family lives, it is where the friends I grew up knowing are and is where I feel at peace. The world is changing and people are going places and it is only right and expected that the people around me and home in general will take part in this change. My family has expanded, I have grown older and some of my friends have left where I call home to other countries searching for a better life and education and possibly creating new places they will call home.

 Home has changed since I last saw it and although this change is not as massive, it is still apparent. Being away from home even for a little while really changes the way one looks at his or her home country. If you haven’t noticed my now, I tend to say home a lot, that’s how much I appreciate its meaning.   I assumed that returning back home meant coming back to the little things missed like the food, the people and the culture but it turned out that many other things would become obvious enough to draw my attention.

                As the years fly by, you imagine that things are supposed to get better and what used to be will be done with, leaving room for the richer and nicer things in life. On my return I noticed that our decline in progress was out weighing our improvements as a country and of course this was viewed as a disappointment.

The easiest way I can describe my dismay is by expressing my first impression of home on my return. It felt like I had suddenly slipped down the civilization slope to a place where everything looked faded and degraded. The mess that I had left behind thinking that it would have improved by now had only spread more and turned into something worse. I came to the realization that my country is far from becoming like where I just came from. The people in it were not as concerned enough to push for something better and poverty had reduced our hopes to gaining three meals a day, a place to sleep and tattered clothing, nothing more seemed attractive or at least that is the way I saw it, I am probably wrong.

It is not fair to dwell only on the misfortunes of Ghana. Credit must be awarded to the new buildings and offices, the effort made at trying to fix badly damaged roads and the reduction in power (electricity) outages, all of which are of great importance to the people. We were promised change and a way forward and from my point of view that change is long overdue. With our sluggish journey to improvement it is not surprising that the developments that were promised by government are not being fulfilled and those who have also noticed this are determined to speak out. However, I believe actions speak louder than words and Ghanaians are hardly the “action” type. We speak but do not do and even with all our noise making we tend to give up and get comfortable with what we have; this is when the noise dies down till is it triggered again by some odd incident and the process goes on.

It’s been said that Ghanaians are suffering but most government officials are living luxurious comfortable lives. The people of Ghana are the ones with the power and we must understand that when one gives up their power to someone, especially when a lot of us give up our power as well to a certain group to govern the country expecting them not to misuse this power, it is only normal that all those people should carry themselves a certain way. I do not expect to see The President sitting in a “trotro” (public transport) because the respect that comes with having such power will be lost and the people of Ghana, as out spoken as we are will definitely talk. They cannot come down to our level; we can only climb up to theirs.

I do not blame the government or the people for Ghana’s predicament, I blame everyone, young or old, in government or not, rich or poor and even myself. The sooner we realize that we put ourselves where we are the quicker our journey to enhancement will become.

 I have always felt that although there is a need for change and development in Ghana, in some way we might lose a bit of ourselves. We like not having to deal with the pressures of the more developed world but at the same time, we refuse to understand why some rules that work in the developed world do not work for us.

 After this slight bashing, I still have to acknowledge the fact that Ghana is the place to be!!!!!... I love my country and I will never stop talking about how special it is. I’m sure most Ghanaians will agree.