File photo
Walking along the towns of Accra, I came across a town called Jamestown which is usually called "the other Side of town" by its inhabitants. It is a place where filth, hunger, poverty just to mention a few exist in leaps and bounds.
Jamestown is the blind side of Accra but in the light of all these, it is a very important town in the history of Ghana. Just to mention a few are; It is the town Late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was imprisoned on 12th March, 1948 after being myopically accused of being the cause of the 1948 riot; the first Gold Coast harbour is also located here but one thing that struck me was what I have yearned to see the Ghanaian people do for long time "Togetherness".
Going into the lives and activities of the inhabitants of Jamestown, one can clearly see that the people are together in every facet of their lives. Everything is shared by the people right from their school, toilet facilities, fishing activities, in fact everything!.
Chieftaincy disputes, land disputes among people of the same community and families, brothers turning against brothers, wives against their husbands all because of human greed and selfishness are the problems some part of Ghana are still bedevilled with. Simplicity which frees the heart from the clutches on materialism, greed and selfishness is ignored by them.
Everybody wants to be the head forgetting that two big heads with horns cannot pass through the same gate opening. Everybody wants power to satisfy their greed and that is where the white man will come to help a black man satisfy his greed.
During the time of the slave trade, Ghanaians were the middlemen, that is, no slave could be sent without the support of the Ghanaian. No love, No trust, No togetherness among the Ghanaians. Isn't it appalling?
The Whiteman is not to blame for our iniquities but our very selves. We have moved to the level that when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah wanted to unite Africa, to bring the people together, we ourselves stood up and said 'NO' and the Whiteman had to only say "OK, it is you who want it".
Land disputes everywhere, brothers killing one another over lands they grew up to meet, is this the kind of life we envisioned for ourselves? Killing your brother over a piece of land? What has crippled our mental faculties? Even though the devil is working, the devil has done nothing.
It is we that are harming ourselves and until we begin to realise that; Together we can build a noble community; Together we can have a strong roof; Together we can have a best generation; Together we can achieve what we are yearning for, we cannot have positive impact in our lives, we will never save posterity from the ills of today. The strength of a broom is indeed in its numbers.
Let us endeavour as a people to live as one. Even though “perfection was made for Angels not humans" as the adage puts it, let us strive for perfection and one day, maybe not immediately but absolutely and definitely we will have a perfect community.