Features
The saga of being Ewe…(Part 2)
That I was born Ewe, as others were born Asante, Akuapem, Fante, Ga-Dangbe, Nzema, Dagomba, Gonja etc etc, is no accident. It is a divine work of the Creator of the universe for the universality of humankind.
No one, therefore, is born with a divine right to be superior to another, irrespective of their race, colour or creed. If it were so, there is a question this Creator will have to answer: what kind of God or Father He is to pit one child against the other? If God Himself is divisive, then He does not deserve our attention. The epoch of racial gods has atrophied into the universal Godhood.
No one is brought into this world to be a bigot. A lack of education and enlightenment has bred insecurity in some people who vent their inadequacies on others. That way, they feel a certain relevance. They become notoriously belligerent and hate others who endeavour to be at peace with themselves and with others.
It is, therefore, preposterous for one group of people to look down on another. It was to forster national cohesion that Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah came up with the idea of boarding secondary schools so that boys and girls from different parts of the country could live and study under the same roof. It worked well in our time, but I must admit that it is not the same today.
One day in 2004 my youngest daughter, who was in one of the all-girls schools in the capital, came home with a classmate, who was Ga, on mid-term holidays. Out of the blue, my daughter asked me why other tribes hated the Ewe so much. The question gave me a giddy feeling instantly. What answer was I to give my 17-year old? But I needed to know what precipitated such a question.
In their boarding house, some of the students said their parents had warned them that when they grew up, they should not marry Ewe. What reasons did their parents give them, I asked. None whatsoever. All I could tell her was that she should ignore such unproductive chatter from ignorant parents. But I knew it was a serious issue.
What was I to do? Then the opportunity came when the school called an emergency Parent/Teacher Association meeting to solicit funds for a quick-fix of a problem. Parents came to the meeting in their numbers and the Assembly Hall was full. We donated cash as much as we could and the executives got busy with tallying the amount raised.
I sought permission from the Chairman to make a statement, which was granted. To get the attention of the Assembly, my first statement was, “Some of us need to be ashamed of being parents.” I got the attention I needed because it sent a signal that I was up to something serious. I went on, “I wish I were non-Ewe to make what I’m about to say meaningful.”
I then went straight to the point, telling them what question my daughter put to me, and in the company of a mate who was not Ewe. You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium.. “Why poison the minds of your teenage girls with tribal bigotry, while President Kufuor is busy preaching national cohesion and unity? What kind of parents are we?”
I then asked a rhetorical question, “Assuming these poisoned daughters we breed here get involved in a vehicular accident and the first person to appear on the scene is Ewe, do you and I expect these daughters to accept help or decline because the helper is Ewe?” There was complete silence.
I went on to say that teenage minds are too fragile for such toxic brainwash. They must be allowed to grow up and make their own informed choices.”What future is there for this country with this kind of mindset if these girls grow up to take leadership positions?” I asked.
I could make out the late Minister Kwadwo Baah Wiredu, the late Cyril Acolatse of GBC and ace broadcaster, George Crabbe in the audience because I knew them personally.
After giving the parents a piece of my mind, the applause was deafening though I did not do it for the applause; I did it for Mother Ghana.
After we were done, Cyril and George were first to congratulate me on the courage to confront the issue in the manner I did. A parent who said he was Asante but hated such bigotry also came to tell me his daughters came home with same tales. He was happy I brought it up.
My daughter hooked her arm to mine like in a wedding march to see me off. The gaze on us was palpable and my pride in my daughter was on Cloud 9. But it did not end there. On her visit home the following term’s midterm, she told me that the students who revealed their parents’ attitudes were back to report that their parents berated them for discussing those things in the boarding house.
Dear reader, my true narrative above mirrors what is festering in our country at this moment. Speak Ewe in public and others are quick to tell you that no one understands ‘that’ language. Not only in public but at the workplace, on buses, airplanes and at almost every conceivable place.
I will stand up to anyone who tries to look down on another because of their ethnicity. Why would a Ga look down on an Asante, an Ewe on a Fante or a Bono on a Grushie, the tribe of my maternal great-grandmother? This must not be allowed. At times I am minded to ask if it’s the other people we hate or their language or both? Personally, I am not enamoured of the Brits and the French, but I love and speak both their languages.
I love Ghana to bits. It is the only country I call my own and take pride in calling myself Ghanaian. Let no one tell me differently. And I believe all of us must feel the same way. We are said to be the most welcoming country our side of earth, yet that hardly manifests in the way we relate among ourselves. What ashame!
I must be as proud as an Ewe as you must be as an Akan, Ga-Dangbe, Nzema, Dagomba, Kusasi, Wala. But collectively, let us all join hands in being proud Ghanaians. My friends are surprised I do not support any football club in Ghana but can stay awake to watch matches involving all our national teams in international tournaments. Nothing freaks me more than watching our female teams at play.
Lest I forget: I couldn’t be more proud when my youngest daughter called me one day and said, “Dad, a full-blooded Asante guy wants me for a wife.” I responded that if she wanted him, she had my blessing. They are a happy couple over 10 years on.
Some Akan female friends tell me to recommend young Ewe men for their daughters, and their reason is simple: since Akan inherit maternally and Ewe are patrilineal, their offspring would inherit both ways. If this can breed national unity and cohesion, why not?
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
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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