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
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
