Snow Ploughs & Fractured Syllabi in Africa

A curious, colourful tale is spun about 1960s-Ghana. The facts are diverse and sometimes do not agree. Nobody has proved that it happened, but nobody has denied it too. I am going to tell you why I am about to tell you the story. Then, I will tell you the story itself. 

You already know that my pet topic is educating our young people – the practical, usable, developmental type that they are not getting. Well, the story is an analogy for our kayoed school syllabi not just in Ghana but many other African countries.

In the 1960s, the government was very committed to farming. Vast swathes of lush land were set aside for State farms all over the country. The government did not want to dump labourers on the land to till away like serfs. The country was still fresh from independence from British rule, and the government wanted to treat its people nice.

The government flew local experts to (I think it was) Czechoslovakia (remember that country?) to study from their own collectivised farms. Our experts were impressed with everything they saw. The preparation of the land, the sowing in neat, geometric rows, the tractors, detachable trailers, combine-harvesters; everything was agricultural heaven.

Our experts thanked their gracious hosts and resolved to come back and practise what they had learned in Ghana. Before they came, they ordered some of the wonderful equipment they had seen on the Czech farms.

A few months later, back in Ghana, the machinery arrived. Oh joy! They were trucked to the State farms all over the country and quickly put to work. BUT THE TRACTORS WOULD NOT WORK! It baffled the local experts because they had seen this same equipment on Eastern European farms.

The story does not end well. They did not live happily ever after. What our ‘experts’ had seen were not tractors. No! They were huge SNOW PLOUGHS! Our people had seen snow ploughs in temperate Czechoslovakia and imported them to equatorial Ghana.

Think back to my analogy about our school syllabi. Do you not see glaringly sad similarities?

(Picture credit - escocorp.com)

BlackBerry Call Card

My funny cousin, Nani, just told me something scant believable (by me). A man prints his BlackBerry PIN on his call card! This need of people to be ‘seen’ and contacted. Smh.

Where’s the Cheap Telecom Rates You Promised?

In the city of Accra, they promised candy-coin rates for telephone and internet use. They guaranteed that this nirvana would ‘snow’ on us with several network providers. We should have known from ‘snow’. We’ve waited for two years and more. The phone and ‘net’ budget is still running deep in citizen coffers. They play pretend-promotions and scrimp prizes you’ve paid for anyway through your bills. If you wanted a car or a phone or a paid dinner somewhere, you would have known where to go to.

(Picture credit - en.wikipedia.org)

Africa’s Dictators-in-Waiting

You brood of venomous vipers! How can you criticise the never-going leaders, when you yourselves have dominated the opposition for 20 years without letting new blood in? Wouldn’t you also (have) become stone statues in power?

How can there be only 1 person fit to govern or oppose out of millions. May whatever it was that exterminated the dinosaurs wipe you out – both the never-going leaders and the dictators-in-waiting who will become leaders who never go.

Disarming Mad Men with Weapons

A mentally deranged man stormed into a Takoradi hospital ER brandishing a machete. People ran helter-skelter. After many minutes, a brave youth faced down the aggressor with a cudgel. So, mentally deranged persons may be violent. Now wait for this. The police arrived at the hospital ten minutes late and “appealed to the public to always join forces to apprehend mentally deranged persons who might confront them in their vicinities with dangerous weapons before harm is caused.” 

The Demographics of Paedophilia in Ghana

Isn’t it strange that most of the men accused (and convicted) of sexual offences against children are block-layers, carpenters, farm-hands and mechanics? A new strain is pastors. What do you think? Are they victims themselves? Or...

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How a private funeral parlour came to be knocked together in an upper middle class residential neighbourhood roundly reflects all that is awfully amiss with Ghanaian society. (See here)

The delay by the city authorities to dispose of this deathly delict foreshadows why we might as well all be dead just like the cadaver sleeping in the morgue. Nothing is changing here.