The other day, a reader wrote to warn that I was becoming ‘too westernised.’ The words seemed to have poured forth from the heart of a well-intentioned man who would rather die than borrow a thief’s kidney to live another day. The language wasn’t altogether intemperate, but there was a generous dose of grateful nonchalance breathing behind the construction: “Tawiah, you are straining too hard to sound like you know the West better than Westerners. You are no longer interesting. What happened to all the humour? And you are always comparing.” He blamed it on my globetrotting, a not-so rewarding expedition that has seen me bear with the weariness of the unintelligible life in the UK, Holland, America and lately, Canada. He signed off with a harsh PostScript: “Your marriage to a Caucasian doesn’t seem to have helped you; you are looking at issues through their lenses.” Well, I have learnt how to skate, swim and hike, but I have never been a henpecked husband tied to a woman’s apron-strings. I am only a testament to the reality that the environment wields so much power in shaping our experiences. And often, I have owed to its power. The only memorable experience in my chequered trade is my two day association with a Tema Station Kaya-yee years ago. I befriended the girl, ate Papaye chicken and rice with her, and walked her to her sleeping place in a terrible ghetto down in the belly of Agbobloshie. She confessed that some of her roommates were prostitutes. She had taken the dignified way out: Street porter. I even traced down her parents to a village in our poorest region, to say hello. They mistook me for a prospective son in-law the moment I told them that I had met their daughter in the city.
In my present location, I don’t see Kaya-yee and street hawkers very often; instead, there are daycare centers for dogs and homes for lost and homeless animals. Well, occasionally, a drug hawker would approach you on the streets and try to sell you cocaine, depending on your appearance. Of course, there are prostitutes, some of whom are dirtier than those you would see at the Soldier Bar at Kwame Nkrumah Circle. There are also thieves and vandals who just go about destroying everything in the night. Often, they would beat up innocent people and film it on their mobile phones for pleasure. There are corrupt politicians and lazy civil servants. Looking at the various incidence of poverty in my country through the prism of my new reality, paints for me a clearer picture. Today, local social problems are discussed in the context of the global economy. It is also hard to imagine any activity in the 21st Century that does not involve practice or problem situations with a global dimension. That is what globalisation is all about. Of course, it is difficult to monitor how western aid would trickle down to a certain economic unit called kayayee in Agbobloshie, but it is not impossible to assess the contribution a street porter would bring to a poor economy if she had a good push earlier in life. So often times, there is the need to juxtapose certain problems with practices in another setting, even if it means comparing two very dissimilar circumstances.
We own a dog, a Shih Tzu called Lucy. She was not named after anybody in particular. My wife already had her when we met. I wouldn’t give an animal a name I could give to my daughter. My cousin in London bears the same name. She wouldn’t be pleased to see a namesake that can only talk with a tail. The dog is very much a part of our family. She sleeps at the tail end of our bed, and I sometimes feel like a beast making the beast with two backs when a real beast of a Lucy is starring at me. But that is the privileged upbringing she had been blessed with. We budget for her food, pay for her grooming every four months, and even pay extra for her nails to be trimmed. That is a real doggy manicure. We necessarily need to take her out everyday in the field, where we watch her poop and also watch ourselves collect the substance into a polythene bag. Sometimes, we take her along when we go shopping. We have also recently started teaching her some basic tricks. And we have been wondering how nice it would be if she could answer the phone when we are busy, or at least lift the receiver and bring it to us, as some of them do. I could bear with all that, even though it sometimes goes against the stomach of my sense. What makes me uncomfortable is when we take her to a daycare centre before we go to work. The dog costs us $17 a day, excluding playtime charges, which is fixed at $3. That makes it $20 everyday. It excludes her food. There is also a $10 fine when we are late in picking her up. And as usual, we need to give tips for a job well done.
When we travel on holiday, we take her to a dog boarding house, where we pay $20 a day if she would stay for less than a week. Last week, our favourite Doggy Daycare and boarding service sent us a letter that they are increasing their charges from 1st June. Now, Lucy would cost us $23 a day. Occasionally, we send her to partake in dog camping activities, where they teach them a few tricks and take them through obedience lessons. That costs us a $100 for a weekend. There are vet charges, which could also be quite heavy, depending on the problem. Routine vet visits do not cost much. We are doing all these for a pet when thousands are displaced and barely have anything to eat in Darfur. While I have reneged on my promise to sponsor the son of the woman who babysat me for free, I have never failed to pay for any of the luxuries we needlessly dump on Lucy. It makes me feel very guilty, because I always pay for Lucy upfront, usually with my credit cards, before she goes to her daycare. She has a lot of toys to play with.
So far, Lucy has not caused any problems between us. My wife sees her as an adorable pet, but for me, she is a nuisance. Lucy isn’t the inspiration for this week’s issue. In many ways, this story is not about dogs or cats, even though it was a newspaper story about pets that provided the rising action. 24 Hours, a free newspaper in Ottawa, had published a front-page story about a new shelter for dogs. How is that front page news? A photograph of the facility had been plastered on the page, with lines of ink pouring down about how homeless dogs would now sleep comfortably in a home of their own, where they would be cared for by experienced professionals. Beside the newspaper box, usually a string of them stationed at popular locations in town where people pick their free copies, sits homeless people begging for food. Some of them have written on placards exactly how much they need to survive the day. Most of them adopt the minimalist approach, where they tend to ask for ridiculous figures: “Please can you help the hungry with $1.75 cents?” Others simply write: “Hungry and Homeless.” The ingenuous ones display drawings in front of them. A little bowl is placed beside the pictures. There is no communication beyond that, but everybody gets the message. They sit there all day and usually only manage with a few cents. There are also those who pretend they only need a few cents to buy a bus ticket. They don’t have homes to sleep in or food to eat. Yet, there are shelters for homeless people, where any homeless person can walk in and take a nap. There are also food banks that give free food to the hungry. They sit very close to the Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where welfare policies are debated.
These are challenges in a welfare country that is also a member of the OECD. I live in a middle class neighbourhood, where everybody seems to have a job. Nearly every household owns a car, sometimes three. Most of the houses were bought on comfortable mortgage arrangements. We pay some $1,200 on our flat. It is not particularly difficult for two working adults, even in a recession, I would hasten to add. But it is not the same for everybody. Directly beneath our flat is a middle-aged woman, who lives alone. Well, she has a cat called Tiddles. We have lived there for about seven months but I have never known her name. The only thing we share together is the parking space in front of the flat, which is large enough to accommodate four cars. On the exterior, she appears very comfortable, always dressed in sleek designer clothes. It is not customary to ask what jobs people do, and you can’t really get close until there is an emergency. The incident that got us close to her was not exactly an emergency. We overheard her wailing uncontrollably in her flat, so we went in to check on her. Her benefit package had been cut by $900, and that is about how much she pays in rent on her apartment. She had been on the allowance since she was declared unfit to work due to depression, which, she confesses had been caused by her loneliness. She was devastated.
Sometimes, the welfare system appears too pampering. A healthy-looking person maintains two good cars and lives in a luxury apartment on state resources. Her disabled sister is in an even better situation. She has everything in her flat specially made to answer to her very peculiar needs. Her toilet bowl can be adjusted up with an electronic device, which also controls her bath. Her kitchen has been built specially for her. It is delightful watching her go about her household chores, which are usually catered for by two state sponsored care workers. She also has a car. And she is not even a natural born Canadian. Her adopted parents had picked her on the streets of Guatemala, where she had been left to die because of her severe deformities. She hasn’t been back since.
Well, that is not very surprising in a society where dogs are paid for to attend camping activities. My old university friend in Kumasi found the life of poverty quite bearable. He had been born into it, lived in a compound house, where he queued for nearly everything, including the bathroom. The only thing that he couldn’t get his head round is how his parents managed to produce six more children after him, when they all shared one bedroom, which was also their living and guest room. Today, his children, all of them under five years, have a room each to themselves. His bathroom is as big as his living room. To everybody, it is a waste of space, but for him, it is a big statement: a clear departure from his childhood where he had to navigate his way through worms, and millipedes, and sometimes cockroaches, to take a bath. He is happy that his children will not endure such shame and deprivation. What about the millions of children who do?
Well, there is not always a good basis for comparison. Suddenly, our honourable MPs do not appear as dishonourable as we would have them be. Their British counterparts are also doing a few dodgy things, and Gordon Brown is not happy. Civil servants here are also quite lazy. Maybe the only difference between the rich and the poor is my dog Lucy.
Benjamin Tawiah
Email: quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk
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