LOVE IN THE DARK

I remember standing at the gate of that famous house along the banks of the great river. Dusk was falling rapidly. My mind was troubled. I wondered what the future meant for me. I was drinking and I knew I was going to have a terrible migraine and a hangover the next morning. The house was an old lakeside resort in Sogakope. The bar was closed to the public at that hour but a few of us – acquintances of the owner – bundled together for a bottle of whiskey and pork chops. It was an annual affair for Christmas eve. And I have been a regular guest since 2016 since I met Patrick in Somanya. I remember the first morning I woke up there with my buddy, Kofi, beside me. I had passed out the previous night drinking what was referred to as the house specialty. My memory of that night is still hazy but I do remember the drive back to Somanya. Andre had offered to drive me back to Kaneshie where I was going to pick a bus to the higher civilisation. I remember distinctly the migraine I suffered that day.

I sat at the café of the resort the next morning sipping a tepid coffee to a background music of Adele’s Love in the dark. I wondered about what love meant in a world devoid of loyalty.

It is a Thursday, early morning. It had just rained in the port city of Tema, and the day, despite the earlier rain, was shockingly sunny.

I drove to work still reflecting on Yewande Omotoso’s ‘An Unsual Grief’. Why did Yinka blame her mother instead of her father for the man’s infidelity. Who was at fault? The mother who lacked the language to explain Yinka’s sadness and confront the depression that had afflicted her as a fifteen-year old or the father who had stayed in a marriage in which he was unhappy but simply keeping up appearances and then cheating? I bet there are no easy answers there.

These days I’m learning with great trepidation that the confidence I had in the country of my birth during my teenage years is fast eroding. It’s been close to a year and the traffic lights at the community five intersection just around the Baptist church remains broken. It is the same with the traffic lights around the Melcom supermarket area in Tema. Same for the one at the Ashaiman overpass. It took ten months for the one at the Awoshie junction to be finally repaired.

I mean how long does it take to fix a broken traffic light? Driving along the Tema General Hospital during the rush hour now is an exercise in recklessness. Certain inconsiderate drivers, taking advantage of the faulty traffic, use that mishap as an invitation to misbehave. I have seen at least four accidents at that spot since the traffic lights stopped working. I am left wondering about these drivers who time and time again take the same reckless decisions, casuing unnecessary discomfort for other drivers and road users. What at all will they lose if they are a bit self-restraint?

Then there is the issue of street lights and road markings on our highways. If we can’t provide street lighting, can’t we at least provide clear road markings to aid driving at night? A couple of weeks ago, two young guys died in a fatal accident on the Cape Coast to Accra highway when their vehicle slammed into an abandoned, broken down truck by the road. As I read about the news of their death, I saw the fatal consequences of a state where the lives of citizens meant little. Yet this state demands our love and affection – such a paradox! For many Ghanaians of my generation, they have come to convince themselves that the only way to prosperity is by leaving the shores of this country. That to my mind is a national tragedy and a shame to our collective resolve. We are back to the 1980s… I drove off from the minor accident scene at the Ashaiman overpass caused by the dysfunctional traffic lights, playing Fela Kuti’s Beast of No Nation.

Distinct Ghanaian noise, had we always been this loud and noisy? I cringe whenever I enter a pub in this country. Churches are no better. The mosques too don’t also want to be left behind as the one two blocks away from my apartment has been proving to me in the last two years since it was built there. Even the beach is not spared as the plethora of bars and resorts springing up across our shores are competing on which of them have the loudest speakers? I miss my childhood walks in the higher civilisation, when I could walk for miles in silence with my headset on, listening to a Bob Marley or Fela Kuti record whilst imagining what life was going to be in the near future. I still remember the bookish little boy, in the corner, reading quietly during after school hours at that basic school few metres from our house. These days there is a bar just two hundred metres from the school, with their cranky loud speaker always on full blast. I understand that bar belongs to one of the teachers.

I remember a story I chanced upon in the Daily Graphic that  has remained, even now, indelibly in my mind. It was a story written by the brilliant columnist, Kofi Akordor. It was titled; “When the dead come passing fast”. I found myself thinking about that article as I thought about this phenomenon. Had our funerals and weddings always been this noisy and flamboyant? And where did the solemness that is supposed to occasion the dead go to? I refused to attend the graduation ceremonies of my both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees because I could not simply negotiate with such flamboyancy. A colleague remarked that there was something wrong with my stubborn sense and refusal to celebrate when there is a reason to. I sometimes wish she was right but I am afraid she is not. We must learn to tune down the noise to allow for periods of contemplation.

As Greg Holden’s ‘The Lost Boy’ comes on once more, my mind drifts to that BBC documentary on palliative care in Kenya, which I had listened to the previous day on the Heart and Soul programme on the BBC World Service. It is 6 a.m. and I am sitting in the car alone just opposite the St.Joseph the Worker Catholic church in Tema, Ghana. I love to drive around the city at the wee hours of the day to observe the city when it is silent. When it is asleep and spared the vagaries of its resident. I’m observing the many residents jogging or brisk walking on the street. Most are wearing reflectors to caution oncoming traffic. It is an indictment on the city. Some six thousand or so years ago since the Biblical God said, ‘Let their be light’, this city is still grappling with the provision of something as basic as street bulbs. The pavements and the pedestrian lanes have all been taken over by container kiosk. So by night, the joggers in their reflective coats have to compete with cars for a right to the road. By day, the struggle will become intense with stray animals joining the fray. Another crop is at the car park of the church doing some aerobic exercises. It is a group of 11, females outnumbering the males. Is it the case that women take their health more seriously than men? Does that explain the higher life expectancy of women compared to males in the country? I do not know the answers now. The group also have two elderly folks in their midst. Their presence fills me with amusement. The other day at the George’s pub in community two, it seemed the young were rushing to the grave. Yet today, I see the elderly doing everything possible to delay the inevitable journey to the grave.  Quite a paradox!

I am once again thinking of mental health in Africa and the question of care for the aged. We appear to have the twin social problem of a mental-health crisis and the neglect of the aged on our hands. I have already written about care of the aged before but it is a subject I intend to revisit. It is a subject that scares me. I am wondering how the aged are able to afford the ever-increasing cost of medicines. How is the NHIS responding? With even the ‘well-to-do pensioners’ struggling, as we saw on the television last year when they were resisting the government debt exchange programme from touching their funds, what will the poorer ones do?

My friend, Kwaku, told me years ago that the reason he married his wife -who is fifteen years younger than Kwaku –  was because he wanted her to take care of him in his old age. I found that ludicrous. Kwaku was rightly worried about old age. He is in his mid-forties. He has largely stayed off alcohol in the last decade. H has made all sorts of changes to his diet in the last five years. He intends to go full vegetarian in the next two years. Yet he is still worried.

They say one of the main purpose of marriage is to provide companionship. I think that is very true in old age. It always gladdens my heart to see age-old couples at social functions. I always try to talk to such folks. So much wisdom gleaned from those conversations. But what if one partners dies years before the other and the surviving partner doesn’t want to remarry? Where will the companionship come from? Children? What if they had no kids? What of divorcees who never remarry? Will they stay the rest of their lives miserable? With increasing urbanisation  and the ever-increasing fast-paced world, how will children make time to care for parents in their old age? What should the children sacrifice? In the days of old, the external family could serve as that social safety net. My grandmother who lived to ninety years was close to his brother till he died, also in his nineties. That bond was possible because they had practically lived all their lives together in the same town, if even marriage had meant a few houses away from their childhood homes. That beautiful scenario which just yesteryears was the normal is now a rarity. The extended family itself is under onslaught from urbanisation, economic anxiety and social media. It is amazing that the extended family which used to provide the social safety net is disintegrating because of modernisation.

How about hospices and homes for the aged? Do we have them here? And what will be the reaction of families if relatives in old age are taken to care homes?

The music has a funny way of twisting our minds to questions which evades answers. I am playing Kanye West’s ‘Devil In a New Dress’. It is an incredible record of such magnificent beauty. I love what Rick Ross did on that record. He roared; ‘I never needed acceptance from you outsiders’. I am contemplating those lines as I drive back to the Dikan centre at South La estates in downtown Accra to visit the photo exhibition, Obama: An Intimate Portrait.  This exhibition features photographs by Pete Souza, the former official White House Photographer.

I allow Kanye’s music to keep replaying in my mind as I take in the moment of observing the beautiful photos of the Obama family. There was a poignancy about the photos. Even solemn and that solemnity quietens my distressed spirit.