Letter to my Unborn Grand Children

My Dear Grand Children, I am writing you this letter in case you do not meet me in this world. Please do not be disturbed by this letter. I could not leave you assets because I could not join politics and my income from my hard work was not enough to built assets apart from educating your parents. You will find out when you arrived that our beloved Country, Ghana, is a bag of joy and pains. Enjoy when you can and cry when there is the need to.

When you begin to understand economy, you will realize that we have taken so much Loans for you to pay, yes from the year 2002 to 2011, we have management to go from debtor to Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and back and we have management to borrow after HIPC by 2009 we have external debt of $5.427 billion (31 December 2009 est.). More has been added since then and more will be added before your arrival for you to pay, so be prepared. That is the motto of Boys Scout. BE PREPARED

We have managed to use other people’s money to buy a new custom made plane for our president to travel with and be comfortable, we had one which was referred to as flying coffin by the previous government so they sold it for peanuts and purchase another one, never mind if the next government will sell it again and buy his own. We have also built presidential palace which we may decide to use as museum as we cannot be as bold as the Arabs who are fighting their rulers and showing people power, to tell the ruling party and our president to use it. We have decided to build houses for the Security Forces in order to get them ready to protect you from your peers who will not have job because of our mismanagement of economy. By the way did I forget to tell you that we have discovered oil in commercial quantity, so the more the Middle East continue to boil and instability continue we may earn more from our future oil sales, but do not be hopeful for others losses, the reward of the oil, you may not meet because we have decided to use the unearned income for things we may not need now as poor as we find ourselves. Do you know that some of your kinsmen still attend school under trees? Oh yes we are, never mind the fact that we have a 120 Billion Dollar Presidential Mansion and a Presidential Plane! Do you know that our trained professional do not want to work for us anymore, the Doctors are leaving in drove to more affluent societies to make the mega bucks, the teachers and nurses are also leaving, those who cannot leave abundant the class room for the glamour of politics or become pastors as the fastest way to be rich, my grand children be inform that politics pays, a teacher who could not survive on his meager income once elected gets a $50,000 car loan with government guaranty that if he loses the next election or fail to pay, well whatever, they do , he gets a house and car free.

By the time you come to this world perhaps your peers will be marrying their types, men marrying men and women marrying women. We call it human rights and freedom, something you may find quite disturbing but do not worry it all part of the passing faces till we meet again.

One thing though, that may hamper your coming to our world is the same politicians who are beating war drums in our years. Apart from not ruling we well and taken care of our needs, we are also bombarded with daily noise of how this country will burn if we do not vote them into power.

Perhaps you may be lucky, the President in his wisdom has realize that he needs to cool the tension in the country and has invited his predecessor to a meeting and have discussed some issue which may go in your favor. May be there is still hope for you my grand children. Our Parliamentarians have come together to approved the Bills that will control the oil money and they have included something they call collateralization of 70% of the oil money for the development of the country. Perhaps you will come to meet first class roads and good schools, better water supply, efficient electricity generation, unlike your kinsmen who have to go through life without such luck and have go to school in a hard way. Maybe things will get better during your time in Mother Ghana. But I doubt it, my reason is simple, the rate of greed and corruption will be worse during your time.

The last one I read about is the Parliamentarians attempt to get the government to approve 8,000 as their pay. Their argument is that they should be paid same rate like captains of the corporations and industries, never mind the fact that they spend few hours a day in the parliament and do not any appreciable qualification to be parliamentarians. So if you do not meet teachers in classrooms just know that they have all join politics. Enjoy whatever you meet and bye.

Joseph Ampomah Adu

Deputy Country Director – MSH – SPS Bangladesh

Joeadu_aa@yahoo.com