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The long drawn face was marked with worry lines and etched eternally on the face of a 31 year old farmer who looked like he was 60 years old. His cracked feet took him steadily home where he settles for the night on a raffia mat in his brick home that marred with innumerable cracks.
“Life in these parts of the country is hard” he laments, “I have a small farm, the rains have been unfavorable and I don’t know how my family will make it in the coming months.” He has 7 mouths to feed and his sigh of resignation tells one he sees no silver lining in the clouds. “Life has always been like this, we are lucky when the rains come; we are at the mercy of the weather.”
He is 15 years old but looks 7. The taut sinews around his arms and legs tell of the hard and laborious life which has stunted his growth. With palms as rough as the sandpaper, he trudges the coastline and helps the fishermen to bring in the net. “I have been out since I was a little boy, this is the life I have known, no education, the sea is the teacher, someday I will takeover from my father and become the best fisherman on the coast”. He says dreamingly.
Tonight the family crowd round a bowl of a corn flour mill, which is the only heavy meal they have had for the day. It is as ill-balanced a meal as their very lives, devoid of the essential nutrients that should be present in a meal, here the family eats to quench hunger and not to nourish the body.
Driving down the countryside of Ghana, just a few kilometers from the capital city, one sees poor excuses of houses that are almost falling apart yet are still inhabited by people, starving children who hawk food to augment incomes and farmers with bent backs and calloused palms.
Come with me to the business centers of the cities of Ghana. It is 11pm, the regular business men and women have retired for the night, their shops closed and sealed to keep off thieves. Lined in front of the shops however are young potters who having no place to lay their weary heads convert the front of stores and shops for a bedroom.
The lie in oblivion to the dangers the night might bring. To them what really matters is a place to lay their head, they seek no comfort, they hope and yearn that their labors someday may take them off the streets into the shacks nearby then perhaps someday by the stroke of luck, they too may travel outside the country, earn some money and build houses. For now getting a place to pass the night to refresh one for the next day is all they ask for.
Another family is bereaved, they have lost a child because the fever onslaught was blamed on witchcraft and sorcery and thus a remedy was sought not in the clinic or hospital but in the shrine of a fetish. This is also poverty. A poor couple cannot help but lament the yearly ritual of adding a mouth to the already poor and starving family. The solution of contraception is not readily used mainly as a result of people’s belief systems than of its availability. So the numbers increase, increasing the pain and poverty and depravity that seem to be insurmountable. Another with hard earned money will take another wife or buy a cloth, bleach the skin, waste resources on elaborate marriage, and funeral rites, dress impressively and yet have nothing in the bank account saved much more an investments for the future.
The politician in his ivory tower who with misplaced priorities buys big cars to ride in, lives a luxurious life and even defend it when just a little of that money could have been used to educate and inform the masses on the basic little things that could make a difference in people’s life is also poor. These and many other varied forms of poverty are what I term the sketches of poverty and these can be seen every where on the continent of Africa.
Ironically however, right in the midst of all that depravity I see solutions that are so clear to me yet seem hidden to those who can do something about it. Some may argue that my approach is simplistic and not feasible, but then to my mind the best way not to find a solution or delay solving a problem is to label the problem “complicated”. That way time can be wasted attending conferences deliberating on how to un-complicate the issue, instead of doing something about it.
For most of the cases related above, making information available on how people can use resources around them could make a lot of difference in the lives of many. Let us take some examples, in the northern part of Ghana, a simple technology exist for making building bricks. Cow dung is mixed with the clay and used for their beautiful round huts. Colorful designs make from tree barks are used to decorate the house and they are beautiful pieces of architecture. A little study into the properties inherent in these mixture which makes these buildings last for a long time, could help others replicate this technology. Secondly, Africa is replete with green nutritious vegetables everywhere and most people can boast their nutritional level by simple using these as part of their diets.
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Solace Asafo
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Comments
ashutosh | May 21st, 2004
Good writing. It provids complete picture of poverty. Such writings can tickle, tease or move a person to react.
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