Perennial flood and the lamentations of presidents
[From my archives: http://alaye.biz/perennial-flood-and-the-lamentations-of-presidents
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As we say in Yoruba: Mó dúpẹ̀
[Introduction: It is May, and the rainy season is upon us in Ghana Inc., and we are busy doing what we ritualistically do now. A few drops of rain, and our gutters are choked full with what citizens have dumped on the streets. Our airwaves are, once again, saturated with the wailings and the lamentations of flood-impacted citizens. Ministers - religious and political, will sermonize loudly. The pundits will display their polished Queen's English. But very few people will question our sanity in not having the brains to take thoughts for the morrow.]
I wrote this article during JJ Rawlings's time in the 1990s. I added a few items to bring it to contemporary speed.
Here we go!
“In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishment, only consequences.” – Robert Ingersoll
I always begin with a Big Thank You to my paid subscribers. I am immensely grateful for your reading my articles and offering me your financial support!
As we say in Yoruba: Mó dúpẹ̀
Last year in Amsterdam, I attended a lecture by the great Caribbean scholar, Sir Hilary Beckles, on reparations and the state of the Black World.
It was a fascinating lecture by the renowned academic and author of “Britain Black Debt.”
Professor Beckles used a term that best describes us in Africa: Recovering People.
Rather than continue to call ourselves developing, let us stick with Professor Beckles’ apt terminology: RECOVERING PEOPLE.
Professor Beckles took us down memory lane and recounted the psychic and psychological traumas wrought on us by slavery. He showed us impressive figures of how our unrequited labor contributed to building the economies the West flaunts in our faces today.
He also elucidated how slavery contributed directly to our current state. He told us about the battle he and his colleagues in the Caribbean are fighting to get the West to pay us reparations. He explained to us the different types of reparations being asked by the victims of the greatest holocaust to befall a people.
He concluded the lecture by saying that the aberrant behaviors we witness in the Global Black Community today are symptomatic of victims of significant traumas.
Unlike the victims of other traumas, Professor Beckles explained, there has been no collective effort to help the victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slavery.
We have been left alone to continue as though nothing happened, with no compensation. No apology and no psychological help, whatever, to help us heal the deep psychological wounds inflicted upon us.
Post-traumatic stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological term used to describe the type of malady people go through after a particularly traumatizing experience.
No honest analyst will look at us in Africa today and not conclude that something is seriously wrong with us.
The truth is that few things we do as a people make sense to a rational mind.
Some of our behaviors are the exact opposite of what is expected of thinking, rational human beings.
Let’s take the case of the perennial flood that destroys lives and properties in our dear republic.
I clearly remember every president from JJ Rawlings through JAK Kufuor through Atta Mills lamenting and appealing to us to change our bad environmental practices.
All to no avail.
I remember the flak President Rawlings received just because he dared tell us the bitter truth that some of our habits are below those of animals.
Of course, like the bloody hypocrites that we are, we didn’t see the sense in what our then-leader was telling us.
We love praises, especially the unearned and undeserved ones.
Rather than pause to make sense of what our no-nonsense, straight-shooting President was saying, many of us decided to heap insults on him.
It is no brainer that rain will fall. It is equally a given that rain will lead to heavy rainfall, which will lead to floods and require unobstructed passageways.
All these are known immutable factors.
But like the mindless simpletons that we are, we continue to behave as though nature will somehow change its ways to accommodate our wayward ways.
We hope praying, rubbing olive oil on bodies, burning candles, and tying talismans around waists will somehow sway nature.
Like demented idiots, we believe that speaking in tongues will persuade nature on our behalf.
In 1953, a flood in the Netherlands resulted in some deaths.
The Dutch told themselves: Never Again.
They sat down, planned, and engineered the awesome Delta Project in the Zeeland province in the south of their country.
I visited the project some years ago and spent the whole day marveling at the sheer elegance, beauty, vastness, and awesomeness of the engineering feat.
The Delta Project prevented floods from destroying lives in the Netherlands, but today, the Dutch earn good money from the technologies they developed to prevent floods from invading their country.
You can read about the Delta Project here: https://english.deltaprogramma.nl/delta-programme
What do we do in Ghana after flood-broken properties and lives?
Nothing.
We make no plan whatever; we only continue to hope that natural accidents will spare us if we pray hard enough.
Like a bad script written by an idiot, we see the president come with all protocol, pontificate loudly, and receive wild ovations. He goes back to his office and forgets all about it. Of course, his fawning entourage will make a show of doing something. The cameras are switched off. Everyone forgets about it. After all, the rain has stopped.
Wayward and amoral chiefs will sell land earmarked for waterways. Their machomen will ensure that developers build where they are not supposed to. Our police officers will collect their bribes, look the other way, and allow miscreants to flout our laws. City officials will also collect their envelopes and ensure they see less than they usually see. Citizens who complain are lambasted as troublemakers, beaten up, and occasionally killed.
In the meantime, the rest of us, like the good Ghanaian citizens, will continue throwing garbage everywhere.
After all, our country’s motto is Freedom and Justice.
We are constitutionally licensed to do anything, especially the most irrational things.
They forget to add Responsibility to our motto, to tell us that freedom without responsibility leads only to chaos and anarchy.
We continue to use our drains for garbage dumps. We block drains, built at great expense, with our household refuse, and they become choked.
City officials receive their paychecks, drink akpeteshi in their offices, play the lotto, gossip the whole day, and do nothing.
The Mayor of Accra would rather take his populous beard to go direct traffic than sit down and formulate policies necessary to run a modern city.
The President and his Ministers meet in their Cabinet and issue more appeals for prayers and fasting for the nation.
Our presidents feel more comfortable parlaying with parasitical priests than with city engineers or architects.
Rains come, and we die needlessly. We cry loudly and appeal for government intervention. We roll on the ground and shamelessly appeal for foreign assistance.
Oh, we love to grovel and appeal for interventional assistance. The Agency we set up to deal with emergencies, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), is ill-equipped and badly funded. Its head was in the news this week, telling us that his outfit lacked even a single tent.
Go figure!
When do we develop some sense of shame and start to behave like normal human beings?
When, when, when?
PS: I reached out for this article after visiting my old place in Kasoa. Some old friends called and asked why I did not check on them after the recent flood disaster. This morning I went there to commiserate with them. The pictures and videos above were taken from the area.]
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)
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