Features
COVID-19 AND THE GHANAIAN DIASPORA
Introduction
Today, I write about COVID-19 and the role of the Ghanaian Diaspora in efforts to fight the disease pandemic.
The Ghanaian Diaspora is making great efforts to support the fight in Ghana against the coronavirus disease, as well as support their own Ghanaian migrant communities abroad.
Contributions
I have heard or read media and other reports about Ghanaian embassies in North America and in Europe, for example, working with Ghanaian Diaspora groups in their locations to contribute and support the fight against the dreadful disease.
The Ghana embassies are mobilising Ghanaian Diaspora groups–associations or unions, churches, etc.–for contributions to the national Covid-19 Trust Fund.
Some of the Diaspora groups are also setting up a fund to support members of their own groups as well as contribute into the national trust fund.
The national Covid-19 Trust Fund was set up by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, to raise funds towards alleviating the devastating impact of the pandemic.
The spirit of giving
A number of groups in Ghana have contributed generously into the fund and I dare say many more groups are preparing to donate, including Ghanaians in the Diaspora.
All these efforts need to be highly commended. Kudos to them for their well-meaning gesture and such a positive attitude with the spirit of giving. Blessed are the merciful…or, as the good book tells us, there is more blessings in giving than receiving.
Diaspora contributions
Some Ghanaian Diaspora groups have already made donations and I am sure that more donations from others will pour in.
Such donations may be as a result of the joint efforts by the embassies and the Ghanaian Diaspora groups.
It could also be that the Diaspora groups will set up their own fund to help their own Ghanaian communities abroad as well as send their donations directly to the national trust fund.
Good coordination
Whatever form it takes, if there is good coordination the Diaspora contributions to the national trust fund could be massive.
It could be second only to the remittances Ghanaian migrants send home from abroad to support their relatives or invest in businesses.
A lot of logistics are needed in the fight against the coronavirus disease. We need to support in the fight. Let’s do it nicely.
For example, the frontline health workers need the right equipment, including Protective Personal Equipment (PPE), to be able to work gallantly in their field to save lives and prevent suffering.
I salute you all kind-hearted and gallant people. Thank you.
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
