The Rise (Poem)

I
Your rise
Starts as a burn
A desire to learn
You take a step 
Not afraid 
That you'll slip
You are raised
Not to succumb 
To a fall
But to rise 
And be tall
To each demise

II
Your fame
Starts as a passion
To tame
An unruly desire
To set free
An inborn talent
To lose free
A tangent
You take a step
Not worried you'll lose your grip
You are raised
Not to give in
To failure
But to keep fighting 
And feel sure
You'll win someday

The Government Dependency Syndrome

As a young boy, I learned the power of collective effort. As boys we will get into groups to work in turns on each other’s farm. It was an initiative that someone might think is the same as working on your own farm the number of days equal to the number of people in the group. But if one could work that much then what was the purpose of having the group anyway? The logical answer is that it is not that simple working alone on your farm that much as compared to working together as a group. It was most times daunting going to the farm alone. Then when you get there the quietude of the fields and the imposing posture of the elephant grass scares you. You are not able to work that long and that much and you quickly return home when the sun begun to unleash its venom.

But working in groups is something special and inspirational. It is as if you do not get tired. It is competitive whether you are working on your own farm or others. The presence of your friends next to you bent over with their hoes in hand mauling shrub and grass on their way pushed you to do same. Moreover, some colleagues would go the extra mile and work more than the average making you do same for them. The chitchats, gossips, teases and the mimics made the sun passed away without noticing its venom. In a group we were able to accomplish more than as individuals. After all we were taught that unity is strength. A broom sweeps better than a broom stick.

So I learned that it takes much more and many days for an individual to achieve something that will take fewer days in a group. I got to know that as a group we could achieve much. And in those days the spirit of communalism was widespread and strong among the people in our community. I remember when the first junior high school block was built; it was not the government that did it. Community members contributed money and volunteered their time and skills to erect the structure in which I had my junior secondary school education. During what is called communal labour, community members gather to clean gutters and weed their surroundings to keep the community clean.

And back then there was a government. People did not wait for the government to come clean their communities for them. People did not wait for the government to come and lay the foundation for a school or a clinic or a toilet facility for them. They started all on their own and if they are lucky the government comes to complete the rest.

So what went wrong? Why all of a sudden each one of us has developed cold feet towards what concerns all of us? We have become more talkers than doers while in the past we talked less and did more. We are now looking more to the government to solve all our problems for us including sweeping our homes and cleaning our gutters whiles in the past we took those initiatives ourselves.

Imagine in a number of communities in Ghana pupils have no classrooms but study under trees. Imagine they do not have tables and chairs but to sit on the floor to study. But in the same communities we have wood that is being cut illegally, sold and exported outside this country. And the people responsible for these illegal activities are the ones we entrust with the responsibility of ensuring that the children have good education. They connive with the chiefs and some members of the communities to log these woods and ship them outside while their children sit on the floor. When all it takes is just cutting some of these woods and with the help of the carpenters in the community they could have made a table and chair at a time for their children to sit on. But we still wait for government. Is it not also possible to erect classrooms for our children if government is not coming to do it? Especially in remote areas of this country where most of the houses are built with mud and roofed with thatch, all it takes is just a few days of communal labour and that will be done.

We have also depended on cutlass and hoe for so long that in this modern era, while it takes less than 5% of some countries population to produce food to feed the whole country, the more than 60% of the population engaged in farming cannot feed us. It is a shame that it is the older population who still engage in farming while every young person is either looking for a government job or leaves the village for the city. Farming is typically unattractive because it still involves the use of the old ways of doing it. How much will it take for communities to own their own farm equipments like tractors, harvesters, harrowers and planters? I know in our country some areas are noted for growing certain crops. Is it not possible to identify these areas and provide farm machinery for the farmers in these communities, constitute them into groups to own large farm lands? Except for vegetables and fruits storage should not be a problem, since our farmers have age old methods of storing their produce. These methods can be improved upon. The farmers could have a strong collective bargaining power through this process ensuring that they get value for their produce.

What happened to the native doctors in our remote communities? The traditional midwives? These people could be at the forefront of saving lives. What they need is a little training. We cannot abandon absolutely everything we have. In our villages we still eat yam and cassava, pound fufu with pestle and mortar and still cook yakayake in clay pots. Nothing prevents us from doing what has worked in the past. Just a little training and improvement our lives could become much better and we could meet the millennium development goals. Just in the case of building a community school through communal labour we can build a community health post.  Even if we cannot get medical doctors and nurses to work there we can have our own trained native doctors and traditional midwives working to save lives.

There is no reason where people should still drink water from streams. Is it not allowed anymore to dig wells? All the wells that I used when I was growing up were dug by members of my community. Communities could provide their own good drinking water. It is true good underground water is not something that can be found everywhere. However, there is no harm in trying to find good water so that people can live healthily

Somehow many of our problems can be solved without necessarily waiting for government. All it takes is mobilizing ourselves as members of a community and committing ourselves to a purpose and project. Government has a responsibility to provide every community with basic social amenities like schools, health post and water. My point here is not to absolve government of that responsibility. The thing is that we as communities have a lot of resources at our disposal and instead of misusing these resources it is better to use it for the benefit of our communities.

Maybe we have just become more individualistic, selfish and corrupt. There is nothing anymore like ‘we are each other’s keeper’. Just like our government which depends on outside support while misapplying those donor funds and exploiting the nation’s resources for selfish gains we too have become government dependent. Can we break these chains that enslave our minds and hands from using what is ours to solve our own problems?

I think that just like when we were kids we worked in groups to help each other on our farms, we can do the same to help our communities. The time to start is now. Let a new generations of Ghanaians develops a sense of belongingness and put the group, community and nation interest before individual ones.

The Cause of Ghana’s Middle Class

All societies have in one way or the other created social classes consciously or unconsciously.  The Indian caste system is an example of a consciously created social class system based on religious beliefs that have persisted till today. The aristocracy and commoners is a class system created in the middle ages based along political and economic lines. Even in our African societies there were class systems. Class systems are an inherent part of every society. It is there even though it is not acknowledged most times. Even when Marx envisaged a classless society, that never happened in communist Soviet Union and China.

History has taught us that class revolt occurs when there is a wide economic inequality between the haves and have-nots; when the aristocrats flaunt their wealth while the common herd wallows in abject poverty.  In other cases class conflict is deepened by the absolute suppression of one class by the other denying the victim the dignity of being a human being. The Arab Spring is a modern example of this.

However, in most cases the common herd lacks the initiative to undertake a class rebellion until a savior comes around; an enigmatic individual who is more aware of the circumstances of the suffering masses than they the masses themselves. Albeit sometimes for his own selfish pursuits, he becomes a hero in the eyes of the masses because he identifies himself with the common people. In the 1980s, this phenomenon swept across the African country with the emergence of leaders like J.J. Rawlings and Thomas Sankara.

The painful truth is that we cannot all be ‘equal’. But this does not mean while some people have others should not have. Every human being has the right to be treated with dignity and must have access to the basic needs of life: food, shelter, cloth, health and education. And in all organized societies it is the responsibility of the rulers to provide the conditions, the enabling environment for every citizen to have access to all of these. The failure of any government to harness the resources under their disposal for the provision of basic needs to her citizens so that they can also live in dignity is a crime to which these governments must be held accountable.

Moreover it is worse when the rulers live in glass houses, drive expensive cars, drink fine wine and eat good food while their citizen roam about scraping for a living. Such leaders are unwise. Thomas More in his Utopia argued that it is better a leader is poorer than the lead.

So it is alright if the citizenry once in a while demands responsible governance from the leaders of their country. It is the collective responsibility of all of us to talk about the ills of government. Because such ills cost us much more than the bailouts and handouts we receive from our colonial masters and development partners.

The emergence of a middle class purporting to demand a better Ghana from the government, an agenda that brought the government to power in the first place, should be commended and signal the government that certain things are not working well. The derision and contempt expressed by government officials towards the actions of this group spells amateurism.  It underscores the apparent lack of discipline that characterize the actions and utterance of some government officials without regard to retrospection.  This form of exuberance to please a higher power without thought to what is expedient is one of our problems in leadership.

But to what end? To what end will the sycophancy bring the rest of us? The crowding of critical minds by a small minority of the population can be a boiling point for revolt. Again the Arab spring should be a lesson. People should be allowed to express their anger and frustration the constitutional way provided by the constitution. It is an outlet to diffuse pain and anger. But this also does not mean we should engage in wanton disrespect for authority with insults. It is not an African value to insult elders.

However, the momentum of this group in articulating the course of the have-nots has died down. One reason for this could be the label; middle class they gave themselves.  In fact listening to the reasons some of them stated in going on the first demonstration one can construe that if their personal circumstances change they will be become oblivious to the plight of the majority.

By labeling themselves as middle class they alienate themselves from the majority of the people who are really feeling the brunt of the economic conditions. The middle class is just a small fraction of the populace just like the ruling class. Their needs do not supersede the needs of others. Though one will acknowledge that their success will have a ripple effect on the rest of the populace it is a fact also that our political elite today were also once middle class. One is skeptical to identify himself with them because their label is seen as a means to make transition to the political elite of this country. When they get there then they will close their ears to the incessant cries of the struggling majority because they are now satisfied and have opportunity to amass wealth for themselves. This is evident everywhere, both in government and in the opposition parties.

So though we are all not equal we need to fight to have what everyone else deserves. But in my opinion it is wrong to think that fight belongs to a particular class. That creates division and apathy in the majority and a recipe for the ruling class to interpret our actions as political no matter how hard we try to alienate ourselves from any political party.

These are my personal views and should not be attributed to anyone or group.

 

What is Good for the Geese……….Part I

I have been confronted with the issue of moral uprightness a number of times, and I cannot vouch that I have stood tall all those times. In a society where right is wrong and wrong is right especially if it involves us sometimes it is difficult to say what exactly the touchstone of morality is. So we waiver and bend to what majority holds upright or what wind is blowing at the time or what favors us.  I am culpable as anyone else and also a victim as anyone else.

I believe the only way that one can escape this prison of moral degeneration is to accept the life of Jesus as the moral yardstick. But I am not speaking from the Christian point of view, but from the point of view of what we all have to do so we can have a moral just and fair society. I am not proposing what needs to be done, but just sharing what I meet with everyday as a common teacher in neglected school.

What we do today whether right or wrong affect present and future generations. One way or the other, we all profess a belief in one faith or the other.  It beats my understanding that irrespective of the number of faith and religious groups that spring up every day; greed, injustices and all forms of moral degradation envelope our society today. The corrupt politician, civil servant, public servant, businessman, student, individual are all part of the society, attend a religious meeting and upholds the beliefs that we all share. 

Every year when my students get to the final year, they become obsessed with passing their exams through any means possible.  The means do not involve working hard at their books but cheating in the exams to pass. Such penchant for cheating reached a crescendo this year when very earlier before they even got registered there were rumors that someone could help them have their grades changed. Some of my students approached me and said they actually spoke with the person and he wanted a teacher to be a liaison between him and the student. I declined. My students were disappointed. To them I was the only one they could trust to do that for them and since I declined that means their hopes were dashed.

I did not feel completely heroic. I felt some dint of guilt that I was unable to help them achieve their dreams. But was I not doing that already? Teaching them and inspiring them in the classroom, showing them all the opportunities that lie ahead of them if the study hard! My students believe that is not enough and that we should do more including cheating in exams for them to pass.

What makes this situation precarious is that they have evidence that other schools are engaged in such practices to make them pass. The harder I try to explain to them why they should not do that, the more they point to what is happening elsewhere. How other schools are passing courtesy their teachers but not the students efforts. And I will give in to defeat and accept what they say but not agree to do what they want.

But it is an open secret that some schools buy grades for their students. It is also widely known that some powerful parents buy certificates and grades for their wards. There have been a number of leakages of exam papers emanating from WAEC. If not from WAEC then where? After all they are the ones that have access to the papers. So what happens to many students who find themselves in situations that do not give them that access and chance others have?

Many of the students I teach already have poor academic backgrounds, are from poor homes and remote communities. They are in a school that has limited resources. Majority of them even lack faith in their own abilities and even that of us the teachers to motivate them to study and pass their exams. Cheating in exams is unacceptable. But where others use that and get ahead of others is also unacceptable and an injustice. And one feels cheated if he is unable to cheat so he can keep up with the Joneses.  For someone like me I feel guilty if I am not able to do that for my students. That is the guilt I carry all the times especially this year when only twelve out of over five hundred students pass their core Mathematics in my school.

Unless we create an equitable environment where everyone sees himself or herself being treated fairly, we do not have they moral right to judge the actions of others. We will accept that our society is corrupt, but it takes an uncorrupt leader to change a corrupt society. And we are all leaders in our own small ways. Where what is good for the gander is not good for the geese persists our fight against corruption and any form of moral degradation will be futile.

Time to Hold Politicians Accountable

Last year I was one of the people who felt the Electoral Commission should go ahead with the creating of new constituencies though some section of the electorate thought otherwise. The argument put forward for the EC not to go ahead with the creation of the new constituencies has to do with the timing. Those people felt that with the elections very close creating new constituencies may create chaos during the elections. But the new constituencies were created and the elections held and the elections results showed that those fears were unfounded.

I am, however, opposed to creation of new districts in principle as specified by the constitution that gave mandate to the EC to do so anytime the government creates new districts based on the data from a national decennial census. Such constitutional mandates for both the government and EC should be repealed. The government may argue creating new district and constituencies is a way of strengthening local government and deepening participatory democracy. But I think that this is hypocritical on the part of government since local government and participatory democracy are not enhanced by creating more districts and constituencies but strengthening institutions and structures of local and national governments.

Newly created districts will benefit from infrastructural development, but I ask the question, should we create new districts before we develop those areas? It is our right that our communities have good infrastructure whether or not they come under new districts. And it is the government’s responsibility to ensure these areas are developed. We should not make the government feel as if she is doing as a favor by creating new districts and promising that they will develop those districts through that. One should ask if governments are truly committed to making local government work and supporting metropolitan, municipal and districts developed the communities, why should she wait to create a new district before investing in developing that district? Where does the money all of sudden come from? Such act to me is insincere and a political strategy to keep the citizenry at the mercy of the politician.

An MP of Ghana basically has responsibilities to the Nation, constituency and party. Such responsibilities according to the Ghanaian Parliaments includes exercising legislative powers to the state through the introduction and passage of bills, explaining government policies to his constituents and monitoring development projects in his constituency and offering constructive criticism of the party’s policies. There is no mention of the MP providing development to his constituency. The MPs are the representatives of the people so is even our President. Does increasing the number of MPs in Parliament enhances the quality of their work in parliament and have positive effect on the electorate who put them there? If our argument is that number of MPs in parliament should show a proportional representation of the population, do we have to elect two presidents just because our population has increased?

I believe that the number of MPs should be fixed like the US House of Representatives. If this is not done every ten years we will be forced by the constitution to keep on increasing the number of MPs in our parliament. Increasing number of MPs will not improve the quality and standard of living of our people but rather put a further burden on government. Governments are quick to take on these new responsibilities but are not ready to take the necessary actions that safeguard continuous access of an increasing population to electricity, water, food, education, jobs and shelter. Let’s watch whether these new MPs in the current parliament who came as a result of the newly created constituencies will bring any difference to the lives of their people.

Finally we are one people and creating new districts only ends to bring sharp divisions along ethnic and chieftain lines. We are all witnesses to what happens when governments creates new district as to the situation of the district capitals and even boundary lines. The act of re-demarcating boarders and creating new districts out of old ones is a colonial tool to keep people in servitude to their masters.  I think that what we need to do is empower our assemblymen and women, unit committees and the chiefs so they can help mobilize their people for development.

Mathematical Commentary on Genesis 1: 27-28

Below I tried to use mathematics to explain the biblical viewpoint on gender issues. Men have used the Bible to place women as second fiddles. Much of this debate is not centered on just verses from the Bible but the use of the word 'man' which has been used to refer to 'humankind'. The position of most women is that such use of the word 'man' to refer to 'humankind' is a travesty of the fight for discrimination against women. As a result of this, these days it is appropriate for example to say 'chairperson' instead of 'chairman' or 'headship' instead of 'headmaster' etc. It is believed that such words as 'chairman' denotes the position as the preserve for men. My exposition here is to support the argument the word man means both male and female and both are equal in the eyes of God.

This is my absolute view and I am responsible for my own comments in this article.

"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. And God bless them and God said, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it...' Gen. 1: 27-28.

First of all what is established here is there is a relationship between God and man. For the sake of what I want to do I will explain what relation means in Mathematics.

A relation is an association between, or a condition satisfied by, ordered pairs of objects, numbers, etc such as ab=1, ........is greater than......or...... is the father of......or.......is the god of(mine).......(The Harper Collins Dictionary of Mathematics). An ordered pair is an ordered set of two elements; example {Mrs. Quansah, Adwoa} will be an ordered set for the relation 'is the mother of'. What it means is that this order cannot be changed to maintain the same relation. If the order is changed then we have what we called an inverse relation. In the example I have used {Mrs. Quansah, Adwoa}the ordered pair of the inverse relation 'is the duaghter of'' is {Adwoa, Mrs. Quansah}. So if the relation 'is the mother of' then the inverse relation 'is the daughter of'.

There are types of relations in Mathematics such as one-to-one relation, one-to-many relation, many-to-one relation and many-to-many relation. I do not want to go into the explanation and examples of these types of relations, but one-to-one and many-to-one relations are regarded as functions in mathematics. A function is denoted by using the letter f or g or h etc.

Since according to Genesis 1: 27-28, God created man in his own image we can define the relation 'the creator of' as the relation between God and man. So, man is the second element of an ordered set. The first member is God. The set is {God, man} and is defined by the rule 'the creator of'. This relation is one-to-one or injective and therefore a function. We can show if this is so. Let the first set of the ordered pair be denoted as G={g} where g=God and the second set be denoted M={m} where m=man. Let the function f denote 'the creator of' then we show that g₁, g₂  G with f(g₁) =f(g₂)=m, then g₁=g₂. So it is the same God. So this means there can only be one God.  

All we can say is that our function f is an injection of G into M. But let’s take the expression ‘of male and female’ in the verse quoted above. The question is, is the female also created in the image of God? Is the female a second fiddle of man? To look at these questions the members of our second set are now two, M={male, female}. Our ordered sets are now {g, m} and {g, f}. where male=m and female=f. g means the same as stated above.

The relation is no more one-to.one or injective. In mathematical terms it means there is more than one image of God because we can show that if g₁ , g₂  G then f(g₁) f(g₂) and hence g₁ g₂. This result would mean there might be more than one God for each to created male and female in their own image.

For the polytheist this is a good result but for the monotheist this result shakes the very foundations of his/her faith. For the monotheist female activists though happy with the inclusion of female in the proof will not appreciate the result. The monotheist male chauvinist is all the more happy. Mathematics has shown all along that he has been right in treating the woman as second fiddle but not as equal.

But the acceptance of the first proof in the line of thinking of the male chauvinist is a denial of the image of God in females. But this is a contradiction to the statement ‘male and female he created them’ and therefore his reasoning cannot be accepted. 

The implication is that God created male and female equal, that is {m} and {f} are equal sets. God named the set Man i.e. Man=male =female. The set {m, f} is not an ordered set (in this sense) since we can change the order and it will still remain the same. Whatever man can do women can do!

The proof of the invertibility of the function f :the creator of, leaves the question so what is the inverse relation (function) between God and man? If we invert the function then the ordered pair will reverse. But the first function is an important functio which places God at the center of man’s life. It is important for man to keep this relation.