Sometimes it takes the smallest thing to turn me in to a
philosopher (or a wannabe one).
Since Sunday I have been, with a group of programme staff,
retreating to the Savannah of Ghana. We are staying at a guest house just about
in the middle of nowhere, with appx 5 minutes drive to a village that is the
district capital of this nowhere. But it is a village worth noting though, as
it is the home town of the current President of Ghana.
We are here because they did not have room for us at the
spot where we are having our retreat conference. So we drive 30 minutes there
in the morning and 30 minutes back in the evening. On the way to the conference
spot (which by the way is in the Mole National Park – and has treated us with
the sight of Elephants both Sunday and Monday) we pass through two larger
villages (one being the above mentioned). The latter of these villages is the
home of the oldest mosque in Ghana (this is just bonus info), it is also the
village where you turn right to go towards the national park, where we are
having our meeting (if you go straight you will pass the mystic stone, and eventually
end in Sawla, where you can turn left and go towards Kumasi or right and go
towards Wa (and yes those are your actual two options).
This village, home of the oldest mosque in Ghana, is called
Larabanga. Now Larabanga has not much to offer, except room for thought, at
least when you pass it in a 4x4. The village has appx a 1 km radius, and if it
wasn’t for the fact that the road is quite bad, you would have gone through it
in something like 2 minutes in a car. But the road is bad, so it takes you somewhere
between 5 and 10 minutes to pass through.
When we pass here, and turn right, in the morning, we meet a
large number of children – I am happy to say that the majority are in school
uniform - and these children along with comments are what have spurred my
philosophical tendency today. Actually it started yesterday where I thought,
“well, at least here the things I go on about don’t really matter”. Today my
colleague stated the following; “these people, they don’t care about these
hectic Accra things. Fuel Prices, LPG (local produced gas (I think)) – the
politicians can raise the prices all they want, it won’t affect them. Life
stays the same”. A few moments later my other colleague was drawing our
attention to the children walking without shoes, and the first colleague said
“well it is priority”. Now this might sound strange, why wouldn’t someone spend
1 Ghana Cedi (50 cent) on slippers if you had the money – I would think that a
priority. But apparently here it is not. My colleague explained that most
people can afford it, except maybe that one old woman taking care of orphans
(grandmother who is caring for grandkids, due to parents not around, or dead)
they just don’t see the need.
This got me wondering. What does it matter? Who am I to
project my priority on to people living in this village? My colleague
emphasised this by stating, “these people don’t have fancy Accra ideas about
fried rice, for them you shouldn’t go and bring that here” (potentially it
should be explained that fried rice in this context is a foreign element, and
thereby somewhat costly. Also this is usually made with some level of vegetable
– which is not really in existence here).
My question to myself and you is – are the people living
here poor? Or is life just that much more simple because the needs I (we) have
created in life, don’t exist. What constitutes poverty? Granted monetary
economy is not in abundance here. If you pay somewhere with a 20 Gh Cedi note
(appx 10 USD), then it is difficult to get change unless you have been a big
spender and used almost all. But is money the only value – and is it
necessarily a value here?
If I had grown up here, and never left – would I think that
my life here was not rich? Granted, I would potentially see all these fancy
cars, and plenty white people, go to the National Park, and I would know there
was a very different world where they came from. But would I imagine what it
was like – and then translate that into me being poor?
With globalisation and mass communication media of course it
is not possible to live in this simple equation, there will always be
information reaching even the most remote areas about what life is like in
another place. But until you have been, it is difficult to fathom (that I know
for a fact, as I have gone through a recognition process like that several
times).
Leaving the meeting today, my colleague got into the car and
said “I could never take my family and live in the forest”. Which made me think
– I could. Question is for how long? How long can you give up what you know, to be in a world so
different, without access to things you find basic (like chocolate), when would
the limit be reached?
Are we as humans not able to adapt to almost everything the
minute we can make it our own? I think so, and I am basing it on something a
friend said when we were staying in a bat infested Banda, in the middle of
nowhere (another nowhere than the one I am in now) in a national park in
Uganda. I asked her – how long do you think it would take someone from outside
to get used to staying here like this. She answered: well if it was this
specific person, she might never adapt fully, but you and I – 1 week!
One week - that is the time it will take me to get used.
This brings me back to the question of; how long till I have had enough? Could
I (or you), as a human being, leave a life behind to adapt to a new one on its
terms and conditions, without trying to change it? And without the comfort of
knowing – it is only for a limited period of time?
