Random Episodes Vol. I

It was one of those typically wet mornings when for many young workers, we would rather be in bed than go to work in the cold. I was perched at the back of a trosky – laptop in hand - imagining what the day would be like.

 You know at some point of my usual journey to work, I’m able to sniff into the troubles of commuters without opening my senses too wide. Trust me, lots of Ghanaians prefer to lay their frustrations bare whilst aboard on their troskies.

Oftentimes the bus conductors or “mates” as we choose to call them are not spared. It’s only in a trotro that you hear how really bad the government of the day is performing or how "destructive" their partners were in bed.

And by the way, I was right when I called going to work, a journey. Spending two hours of ride in rickety troskies using the bush roads just from Sakumono to Accra is nothing but an unavoidable journey of squeaky mechanical parts and near-whiplashes. God save you if you are sandwiched by two heavy women.

So like every day, by 25 minutes past 8, I’m almost always stuck in a traffic right before we hit the life-threatening bridge across the Kpeshie Lagoon. And hey, like Obama unconventionally interspersed one of his speeches with the clause, “we must fix that”.

As we snailed through the anchor of traffic before the bridge in question that day, I saw what seemed slightly unusual.  Here was a smartly dressed military officer attempting to get one lunatic over to the other end of the street. 

Now what caught my attention was the method of force and the impatience he had employed to accomplish what seemed like saving the mad guy’s life from being ruined by an impatient driver.

This is what I observed; the military guy had a long cane in hand, would hit the mad guy with the cane, obviously not without screaming and sometimes he would raise the cane so high that we all got frightened for a naked mad guy.

After observing for a while, I thought to myself : I mean I read somewhere that the military is the only state institution with somewhat monopoly over coercion but then again, couldn’t papa soldier have used a much simpler method, because here was a mad guy who was actually on his kneels begging as he was beaten. To him, the soldier whose authority he obviously recognises – though mad - was merely trying to beat him than get him across the street.

Then it occurred to me that we use too much force in this country even when people recognise our authority, and even when we want to help them or save them, we prefer to shout and throw our ranks around to assert how high and mighty we are. 

On radio, in parliament, on very important national fora, you hear opposition members and Ghanaians alike rant and rave on government for their actions on inactions. You hear teachers and lecturers abuse their students in class and act like teaching them is a favour they are doing and land owners, eject their tenants with force and disrespect.

 You would be amazed by the vitriol and hard temper with which people attack others on social media for expressing what’s supposed to be their opinion. We live in a country of heat. Husbands order their wives to do their bidding, teenagers force their girlfriends to dress and act in a certain way. People would just shout when they feel they are right. People mount up in heat to face situations they could have dealt with gently. 

My reflections - must people always shout to make their voices heard? Must people apply force to command respect? Must people always use force to correct wrongs in society? Does our nation, our economy, our relationships, our families and our jobs get better with all these heat? Can’t we take it easy for once? 

My point is this, every day in our lives, we would encounter some lunatics or some crazy situations; oftentimes ones that would inconvenience not just our lives but that of others but our reasons must dictate to us that, we can’t always rant and rave like the lunatics do.

 Let’s give our problems a gentle push, at least for the first time, let’s talk people into agreeing with us, let’s appreciate when people don’t reason like us, let’s learn to command respect with our heads and not our berets, let’s use our diplomatic skills as weapons of resolutions instead of relying on ranks and uniforms. And when even our lives are ruined and in a mess like mad people, let’s take heart and chill.

Sometimes our most reasonable self is portrayed by our inactions and our silence makes the sweetest sounds.