I am benumbed, with a sadness not that far from grief, as I write this. Human beings are capable of the deepest evil, that is a fact. It just beats my mind how one recovers from loss like this. Tragedy as senseless as this is. How a tryst in the park becomes a death zone, how violent death heralds another week… it beats my mind.
And it is a stark reminder of the sheer tragedy of the human soul. This is the richest country in the world. This is the most innovative country in human history. And for it to allow itself, to be so torn apart between the forces of history that keep guns on persons, and the forces of the present pushing for the guns to be taken away… it blows my mind. It is a reflection of the double personhood that can plague any existence. To be or not to be.
There was a person sitting next to me on a trip to Ghana a few weeks ago, whom I have been wanting to write about. He comes to mind especially at this time because he was Ghanaian, and now is Sierra Leonean, and no longer Ghanaian. He puzzled me quite a bit. Here was this guy asking me for help in filling a declaration form for arriving foreigners in Ghana, and yet he spoke perfect Twi. He laughed away my questions. Initially he just pointed to all the liars in society, and then washed himself clean.
But it was a six hour flight, and he really needed the help in filling the form, so it was only a matter of time before he unraveled. This was a budget airline for poor travelers…. no TV, no music, just the blank plastic cladding the back of the next seat a few centimeters away from my face, and yet this was an international flight. So any conversation was welcome.
He started with his trip from Berekum to the North, the guided walking trip across into Burkina Faso, then Mali, then Niger, then Libya. He spoke of the Libyan deportation back to Ghana, his frustration when he came back, and how quickly he got on the journey back… same route. He laughed about how his language skills and rapid learning of Arabic, got him a liaison job… between traffickers and migrants, and how he got to Italy traveling across the Mediterranean in a boat for almost free, because he was a middle man.
He picked a new nationality then, because it was the only way to claim asylum. Two decades had passed since then, and for the last five years, he had been coming to Ghana annually. I had some admiration for what he had been able to achieve, but he seemed to sense my initial derision first.
And he had questions, like why I dared question him, about his nationality change, when that foray into the Trans Sahara, Trans Mediterranean adventure had made him who he was. He invited me to see his home in Italy, assuring me that I would launch into spontaneous applause if I saw it. He spoke about how he had bought land in East Legon, and was going to build soon. He spoke about his houses in Kumasi and Berekum. He talked about his family which was soon going to be settled in Italy, after a 20 year separation.
I really had no answers. I was the one who had had better opportunities than he had. I had gone to school when he had not. I had been blessed with prestigious training. I could write better than him. I could speak better English. But sitting next to him now, considering all that he had been able to achieve with what he had, I wondered about our comparative relevance to our country. Here he was with cocoa farms, executive mansions, relations sponsored in university, prime area Accra land, and no longer Ghanaian.
And here I am, a struggling physician in a country where gas explosions are common place.
Life is a long series of memorable moments punctuating passing time. Teddy samples some of his poignant ones. Here and there, memorializing otherwise fleeting experiences. Find more of his writing at Amazon
