Features
Israel: My take on two things
As a journalist and teacher, I cannot remember the number of times I have asked people that, given the chance of a lifetime visit, where is their preferred destination. Majority mentioned the United Kingdom, followed by the Caribbean, Canada and Israel. The few who mentioned the US did not want just to visit but to stay.
Personally, my dream is to visit far-flung places like Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The people there respect nature and its offerings and tune their lives accordingly. When their fishermen haul in their catch they apologise to the spirit of the fish for sacrificing them for their own sustenance. They do same for plants and animals they feed on. My prayer is to get sponsorship soon to visit such a place. As a naturalist I am very interested in societies that respect nature’s laws.
Visiting Israel had never been on my mind. I have read many a historical account on the formation of the State of Israel. Knowing the perennial conflict with Palestine, I thought there would be police or military presence every few metres all over the place. Described as the Holy Land by many, I was not inclined to think I should visit, probably because I am by nature a non-conformist. But then, it happened that I was on a pilgrimage to Israel in July of 2016.
As our tour bus left the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv en route to Tiberias, I noticed a knoll just a few 100 metres to the right. It looked strange to me because as a good student of Geography, it looked incongruous against the landscape as I am well aware of formation of hills, mountains and valleys, so I asked our guide, Major (Rtd) Abirama Harris, what that knoll was.
She said the site used to be a refuse dump that attracted a lot of vultures and other avian scavengers that posed a danger to aircraft taking off or landing. There were occasional bird strikes by aircraft. As a result, Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, decided the site be covered with grass. The rotting garbage thus produces methane gas that has been piped, harvested and adds two megawatts of electricity to their national grid.Is there a lesson in here for Ghana?
I did not see police officers in the street corners of Israel; none. It was only when we were getting into Jerusalem from Bethlehem that I saw two at the checkpoint. Then I bumped into three young soldiers when I was getting out of the Dead Sea enclave. This, I was told, was because east of the Dead Sea is Jordan, considered not friendly towards Israel. I took a picture with these young soldiers.
I learnt that every Israili citizen is a soldier. At age 18 when one would have completed high school, you do a three-year military training and service after which you go for higher education if you so qualify. So, in the event of what they term terrorist attack, casualties are minimal because their military background kicks in, in that event. The women do half the time.
However, Palestinians who are citizens of Israel have no compulsion for military training, unless they so desire. Reasons for this cannot be far-fetched. I think it was during the Rawlings era that the government mooted the idea of military service for our university graduates. There was hoopla over this at the time, but a cue could have been taken from the Israeli experience, not because Ghana has hostile neighbours but because of the discipline military training engenders. Now, thousands who want to join the armed forces are turned away.
Everyone has their version of the problem between Israel and Palestine, but I have tried not to bother understanding any. Don’t I have my own headaches already? But in Israeli cities and towns I saw Palestinian registered vehicles moving about freely, but Israelis were rather more cautious in Palestinian areas. Major Harris herself did not go to Bethlehem with our group.
If you have read and followed the historical narrative of the Holy Bible and walk through the places in Israel and Palestinian areas, it feels as if the Bible has come alive and you are a participant in those events. That was what I felt in Israel. Israel itself is just a few 100 square kilometres bigger than Ghana’s Oti and Volta regions put together. Within five days we had covered the whole of the area.
The climax of every pilgrimage to Israel is the visit to the Wailing Wall. Some call it The Western Wall, others call it the Post Office. Post Office, because there are little crevasses in the wall in which the faithful thrust their written prayer requests. To the left is the Muslim area where the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque is and the Jewish side to the right. This one is open to all faiths so long as you put the cape with the Star of David on your head.
I guess it was this day that I sold my country as tolerant of all religious faiths. I had a prayer request from one of my best journalism students who is Muslim. Then I spotted two women heading for the Mosque. They were speaking Bangla so I surmised they were wives of Muslim clerics from Bangladesh. They were suspicious of me when I called out to them. Could they have thought I was going to beg them for alms?
I read their minds, and to put them at ease, I said, “Sorry to bother you ladies, I am a Christian pilgrim from Ghana in Africa, but I have a prayer request from my Muslim friend. Could you, please take it to the mosque for her?” I could see the surprise on their faces. To test me, they asked the name of my friend. “Jemila,” I said before the question reached my ears. A female? I said yes and pulled out the envelope from the pouch slung over my shoulder. Their befuddlement was clear.
The one who spoke better English asked if various faiths mixed freely in my country. I said yes and added that we had no inter-faith problems in Ghana. They took the envelope with a certain reverence I cannot describe. Then I asked if they could get me a good quality Misbaha or Tasbih, the Muslim prayer beads, for my friend and her sister because I was afraid some cheap imitation might be sold to me.
At 20 dollars, one went and brought me three of the beads. I thanked them profusely for giving me their time. It was an honour to them that a “non-believer” like me could be of service to a Muslim friend. “Your country will be great,” they said to me as I headed for my side of the Wailing Wall. With the satisfaction of having sold my country positively, I strode to do my own meditation.
Israel may be called the Holy Land, but not everything is holy. You could buy fake items if you are not smart to detect it. I had the experience in Jericho, where supposed pure leather belts were on sale. A cousin had asked me to get one for him. The vendor swore to high heavens that nothing could be better than that in quality. I paid top dollar for the belt. I am ashamed to describe what it turned out to be less than two weeks after my cousin started using it. But one fake belt should not overshadow the holiness of the area, should it?
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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