Features
Jobless thousands in Sikaman-Part One
It is normally the desire of every human being, of sound mind, to work for the sake of his stomach and that of his dependants. It is also true that some indolent fatheads always want to be bellyful without desiring to work.
In any case, the good old Lord has since the beginning of time declared: “Не that does not want to work, let him not eat.”
Obviously, when the Lord made this declaration there was nothing like unemployment or retrenchment of workers, known in Sikaman jargon as redeployment.
In Sikaman today, like elsewhere, many people really want to work but it appears the work can be found only in heaven, not Sikaman.
Thousands of both the educated and uneducated grieve in their hearts for the lack of something small doing to earn them their daily bread and to buy clothes to cover their nakedness.
Indeed, many able-bodied persons aged over forty, highly educated and willing to work roam the streets, living on petty charities and the magnanimous hands of sympathisers.
The declaration of the Lord will have to be amended: “Blame not he who wants to work but has no work to do. The state must feed him.”
This is already being applied in some advanced countries, where the jobless enjoy unemployment benefits that cater for food, clothing, accommodation and incidental expenses. And the equivalent of money paid to a jobless man in the US for instance is about four times the salary of a Managing Director in Sikaman.
PROGRAMME
Understandably, however, the resources of Third World countries cannot accommodate such programmes for the unfortunate thousands who are jobless and destitute. And so be it in Sikaman.
Let’s come to the investments parents make to educate their wards. When parents are paying school fees, they don’t do so just for the sake of it. They pay school fees in the hope that the child would become educated, responsible and independent. And perhaps in a reciprocal gesture, the child would look after them in their old age.
But today, many parents do not reap the fruits of what they have sown. Their wards complete school and stay at home jobless, still depending on their ageing parents to feed them three solid times a day. The parents become tired feeding their well-educated but jobless children.
When they can’t continue feeding them any longer, they either resign or leave the children to their fate or they die to end it all. They can’t continue like that, feeding able- bodied wards who are old enough to have children. There is no one to feed at the cemetery, anyway, so why not rest there in peace?
Every school-going child also entertains a dream – a dream of becoming a responsible fellow in gainful employment after completing “college”. This dream lingers all through secondary school days.
When a child completes and his grades are terribly bad then he is in trouble. Because messengers are now Level holders, an ‘O’ Level dropout must start to discard the idea of becoming a lawyer or space engineer and start thinking about how to become a cobbler i.e. shoemaker or an apprentice to a tailor.
If he is brilliant enough to get to Sixth form, he is going to experience hell, unless he squeezes through academic net and enters university.
Otherwise, and because there is no job befitting his status, he’d have to do as a messenger, a post that is politely referred to as junior clerk. If that is also hard to come and he doesn’t want to be a ‘housewife,’ then he start making a living the hard way.
Indeed, many certificate holders are today seriously engaged selling dog chains, air refreshners, ice-kenkey, meat-pie and chamber pots. No kidding, dear reader, it is what is actually happening in the Kenkey Kingdom.
When the child, however, gets admission into university, he believes he is in paradise. Soon, he’d graduate with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and become a man.” Some even entertain the illusion of chauffeur- cars. And sure he passes his exams with excellence, earning him a Second Class Upper (Hons).
The graduation ceremony is superbly organised. The Head of State or his representative is ever-present to offer a very inspiring speech. Cameras flash around and coloured pictures are taken.
Meanwhile the graduates appear in their gowns known as acapompo in allusion to academic pomposity. Then they retire home and start trotting in readiness for national service. Of course one must serve his nation.
In fact, national service becomes a real breather for graduates who, otherwise, would have been unemployed straight from school. Doing the service at Karni JSS (Upper West) or with the Community Improvement Unit (CIU) at Kordiabe Junction, the serviceman can at least earn something to buy ‘supporter’ and ‘charlie-wote’ and drink beer once in a month.
Adjustment
It is when the national service period is grinding to a halt that the graduates begin having nightmares. They have terrifying dreams about IMF, structural adjustment, freeze on employment, increase in the price of kenkey, Saddam Hussein and others.
Some expect to be retained in their departments after national service but, more often than not, they are told: “You’ve been a hard worker, intelligent and respectful. We would have wanted to retain you. Unfortunately, however, we are allergic to retaining servicemen just like how some people are allergic to Chloroquine. So please pack your things and go away peacefully. Peace be with you and with us.”
The graduate comes to realise that academic qualification is not all there is to life. But he must not lose hope at this crucial stage in his life. He must start writing applications. He approaches his mummy: “I want to buy seven official envelops, seven official papers and stamps. I must apply to all the companies in Sikaman. At least three of them will click, and I can choose the best of the three. “Yes, he must start begging for a job, irrespective of his qualifications.
In colonial times, writing application for a job was altogether a laborious venture bordering on the use of highfalutin language and linguistic gymnastics. And the jobs were available for qualified personnel.
Today, we write in simple language and as simply as that, there are no jobs. Perhaps applicants of today will have to write something similar to what a Pitman shorthand college graduate wrote some three decades ago.
“I wish to apply for employment in your highly- esteemed company. … My achievements in the realm of Pitmanization have been noised hither and yon, and I am accordingly indelibly impressed with your restrained solicitation in the publications for a stenographical secretarial amanuensis.
“Fortunately, I am at the present a member of the regimentation of unemployed and am therefore at liberty to consolidate my interests with your own at a moment’s notification.
“Both by educational attainment and experiential service, I am pre-eminently qualified to render you superlative performances in the acknowledged artistry of abbreviated communication. I remain, your humble servant… signed”
Dear reader, the discussion continues next week.
*This article was first published on May 4, 1991*
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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