A paradise is classically a place where no
sorrows abide; a place where happiness abounds; a place where want is unwanted
and needs are bountiful. That the place
has not yet been explored, we are told in the scriptures that it does exist and
that sometime to come, a section of humanity may occupy the place permanently.
No matter how beautiful and well resourced that
place might be, nature has also created paradises or mini-paradises on earth
for mankind to nurture and tender for his use and the use of generations to
come. Nations may not be equally endowed with physical and material resources
that make their environments paradise in the classical definition of it, but
surely, if what is available to them are properly and judiciously utilized, a
certain paradise may be created within available resources. Individuals can
create paradises for themselves depending on their appreciation of what life
is.
Ghana should be placed in the category of
nations where the abundance of natural resources should have easily made the
country a paradise. However, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve placed on this
land decided that they would turn this nation into hell and so we have over the
years. Meanwhile, other nations that were by their original creation could have
easily been put in the category of hells on earth, have conquered their
disadvantaged situations and turned their natural misfortunes into sustainable
fortunes and put themselves into paradise or near paradise.
Some nations have turned rocky lands into
sustainable food-producing nations, feeding themselves and exporting surplus
produce to other nations including Ghana. Nations that lacked adequate basic
natural resource like water in required quantities have protected the little
available to them and have added more to meet the needs of today and the
generation of tomorrow.
Bare lands have seen afforestation which
otherwise would have been deserts with time and are today green and very
protective of the environment. Human activities have turned places that could
have been described as hells into paradise or close to paradise through
deliberate and progressive efforts.
The opposite is the story in the case of our
beloved Ghana. We have turned green forests into semi-deserts by recklessly and
indiscriminately cutting down trees for today’s consumption without thinking of
tomorrow’s needs. In the process, the land surface was exposed to the weather
and its scorching tropic sun. We are told by international studies that last year
alone, Ghana lost 60 per cent of its land cover. This means that in spite of
the destruction of the past 60 years, we managed to destroy 60 per cent of the
remaining forest cover and the nation does not look worried about this.
Even though we are in the rainy season when
natural water supply is abundant, we are washing our faces with spittle because
the various pristine water bodies nature endowed us with, which should have
added to our paradise, have been systematically and deliberately destroyed for the
wealth of a few who live in their small paradise, while the majority of us are
in hell because we have been deprived of water, essential for life and second
only to air. We still don’t seem to care.
If we do care, the seriousness with which we
tackle the problem is nothing but a child’s play. Those who wield the power to
deal with this man-made malaise of decimating what nature has endowed us with
have almost always succumbed to the blackmail of political actors engaged in
destructive acts of criminal dimensions with no mercy for the future
generation.
No single known river body in this country can
we boast of it being pristine today; meanwhile, they are our sources of potable
water supply to the citizenry. The irony of this paradise being lost is that while
political leaders preside over the destruction of our world, including one of
the most single needs of humankind, water, they keep on assuring the people of
adequate supply of potable water for domestic use. Where are you going to get
the water from, import them? The people are just told lies – nothing less,
nothing more.
Arable agricultural lands have become death
traps even as we say we are fighting galamsey. We have done nothing to restore
fully or partially the natural state of the agricultural lands so painfully
destroyed by the self-seekers who want a paradise for themselves while the rest
of us live in want and penury.
It is heartwarming to hear that former President
Jerry John Rawlings is using the June 4 occasion to plant trees – a very good exercise
worthy of emulation and support. I have never been a fan or believer of the
June 4 uprising, but truth be told, if the senseless destruction of our natural
resources in the name of galamsey had happened at the levels that we have
experienced over the past 20 years and under J.J. Rawlings, the perpetrators
would have heard their ‘bobolibobo’. I never liked most of his style, but he
would not have tolerated these levels of national destruction as a leader, his
foibles notwithstanding. Who born dog?
Most of the time, we only see the destruction of
this country from the physical and material points of view. We see the
joblessness, the indiscipline, the filth we create and the attendant challenges
we go through in our daily lives. We pay little or no attention to the
destruction of our minds and cultural destruction or adulteration.
Today, even the creative arts which are supposed
to uphold our values and exhibit what we are to show to the outside world have
become very destructive of who we are simply because those in there want to be
who they are really not. Some virtually go naked on stage, copying foolishly
from other societies which do not have values.
The most outrageous points in these bizarre
spectacles of discipline gone mad, these caricatures of poor students of some
foreign immoral lifestyles, present themselves as celebrities. Who is
celebrating them but the young ones who are supposed to be the future of this
great nation. If the role models of these young ones are artiste who virtually
go naked on stage, organize thugs or musical vigilantes onto stages where guns
are pulled and chaos becomes the only constant variable in the scheme of
things, then the paradise which is expected to be an epitome of discipline and
peaceful co-habitation among mankind is lost in our case.
We are constantly bombarded with the exposures
from people who once upon a time were married couples but gone their various
ways with what should be a purely private matter between a man and a wife, with
each one of them shamelessly telling the world about his or her ex-partner in
the most foul of obscenity, in many cases, their sexual lives. These are role
models without scruples and values. These are the people a section of our youth
is copying from. Nothing is but what is not.
Indeed, if a nation has nothing very serious and
productive to occupy its citizens, and poverty becomes so endemic among the
generality of the populace, the few shining ones tend to take the rest for a
ride and enslave them mentally. They enlarge their lustful orgies and move them
to scandalous hills, and in the absence of the will to enforce laws that
regulate such acts, the shameful acts tend to become acceptable ways of our
lives.
Ghana will lose it all if we do not wake up and
deal with the problems confronting us. It is very terrible!
Daavi, some three tots for the evening.
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