This morning in the shower I couldn’t get the tune, “Land of our birth we pledge to thee” out of my head. It stayed with me through my drive to work and it is with me as I type this opinion. As I hummed the tune, I thought of Ghana, of course, the land of my birth.
My normal routine in a work day is that I will get to work a little early and get on my computer and go to Ghanaweb to check the news of the day. Today I was hit in the face with a picture of a man with an ear cut off and a headline like AMA something something cut off trader’s ear or something like that. I couldn’t look long enough to even read the headline. I tried to turn my eyes away from the picture so that I can read something about it and read the rest of the news. I could not. So today, I did not read the news from Ghana.
Having said that, I am writing this opinion without the benefit of what happened that got a man’s ear cut off. I have an opinion about the issue and I hope readers will indulge me a little.
A guy I knew many years ago graduated with a PhD and said he was going back to Ghana to “pull strings”. I told him that in order for him to pull strings, someone must be a puppet and who in Ghana was the puppet whose strings he was going to pull. It didn’t sit well with him. Wherever he is today, I hope he had a change of heart.
The point I am trying to make is that some people get a little intoxicated with authority that they look at their word as law and do not tend to consider the plight of people in the equation. “This is what I say and that’s it.”
For AMA (Accra Metropolitan Assembly), it is all about aesthetics. For the trader in the street, it is about finding the daily bread. To some of them, it could very well be about the next meal for a child or school fees for a child. Where does that figure in the equation?
For these men and women to be on the street trying to make a buck is a failure of our system, no matter how we got here. I will be proud of AMA and the government if they will make an effort to make it a little safer for these men and women rather than try and sweep them under the rug.
When President Obama visited Ghana, I understand the street traders were removed from the streets as if Obama wouldn’t know that they were there. It is said that no matter how bad your gums are that’s all you have to lick. I will so proudly stand with these men and women. A little twist of fate and I could have been one of those selling things in the streets. A little twist of fate and President Obama’s father could have been a street trader in Kenya just like these guys.
As I said, I didn’t read the article on Ghanaweb so I do not know what happened, but if AMA has any relationship with those responsible for this man loosing his ear, they should be ashamed of themselves.
Let me take a minute to remind AMA and the government of Ghana that a college graduate who couldn’t find a job and therefore resorted to trading in the streets in Tunisia who met up with the likes of AMA who were more interested in aesthetics rather than someone’s plight that led to the revolution that had ripple effects in Egypt and has brought Libya to a civil war.
I am sure if these men and women could wear a tie and coat or a nice dress every morning and go to an office they would do that. It is the government’s job to offer them alternatives. By alternatives I don’t mean; “you can sell here but not there”. They will go where they will find customers; that means where the people are. Solution will take time. While we work on that, we should try to make it safer for them to make a living rather than drive them away.
To the man who lost an ear, I wish I could donate my ear to you. I am sorry that you had this mishap. I wish you and your family well.
Tony Pobee-Mensah
