The lady from the International Centre for Journalists who was chauffeuring me was excited about my safe arrival and naturally was interested in reports about my flight from Accra and about conditions in Ghana. But seriously there was nothing comfortable to say about floating on clouds for well over 10 hours from Kotoka to the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York. After four hours of waiting at JFK, there was a one-hour connection flight to Washington DC, where the journey for the day terminated.
From the Dulles International Airport, we hit the four-lane asphalt road towards the city centre. The roads continue to multiply in various directions as we near the city centre. This is nothing strange. This is Washington DC, the federal capital of the United States of America (USA), the world’s richest and most powerful country, and one should not expect anything less.
Strangely, Washington DC, like many other major cities in the USA, has vast stretches of forests which give it certain naturalness. The city has many monuments and museums to satisfy curious visitors and numerous parks and gardens to break the monotony of concrete and steel.
Almost every previous occupant of the White House has a monument built in his honour in Washington DC. Some of the places of historical importance include the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol Building, the museum where in one huge multi-storey building, one could come face to face with the power and magic of the media, the Science and Space Museum, which is a storage house of historical achievements in science and technology, including the various stages of space exploration and landing of the first man on the Moon and of course the Washington Monument, which set the standards for the height of buildings in the federal capital.
As I continued to savour the beauty of this city of five million people, its broad and well-paved, neat and brightly lit streets, its drains that have not opened their mouths for the public to fill with garbage and human waste, its fluid public transport system, I refused to forget where I had come from.
Immediately my thoughts took me to Kotoka International Airport and the first traffic light a visitor encounters on arrival in the country. This traffic light most of the time does not work and the first-time visitor, if not lucky, would be stuck in suffocating traffic for hours. I remembered the almighty Spintex Road where construction work has been going for ages without any sign of ending — the Spintex Road that has become the nightmare of many motorists heading towards or from Tema and its various communities, Nungua and Ashaiman.
I could picture Tema, the nation’s once beautiful and well-planned port and industrial city that had been allowed to deteriorate over the years and stripped of its glory.
I could not forget the jungle called the Tetteh-Quarshie Interchange, which has compounded the traffic situation at that end of the Accra-Tema Motorway. The motorway, the only road, that come closest to international standards has no inner and outer markings to guide motorists, especially in the night. As I noticed the traffic situation in Washington DC and other US cities I visited, I shuddered at the thought of the situation at home, when commercial vehicles in the full glare of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit of the Ghana Police Service have turned the shoulders of our roads into speedways, call it the fifth lane with regard to other motorists and pedestrians.
Some of us do not have any evidence of different creations, but since we have gracefully accepted the tag of ‘Third World’ country, we have more than given credence to the fact that ours is a different world, different from those that have achieved so much as against ours which is actually stagnating.
Should it remain so? Ours seriously, is not about lack of resources. We just lack the men and women in political leadership with the vision to galvanise us into action. We lack a media that would set a development agenda for the nation instead of creating the platform for characters parading as politicians and social commentators to make careless statements that have the potential of creating unnecessary tension and endangering national stability.
A friend said we are lost, but I want to believe that there is only one world but with different people. If you come to think that China, which has assumed the position of the world’s second largest economy, and other countries like South Korea, Brazil, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore and others are still labelled as Third World countries, then we cannot afford to take consolation under that tag because seriously speaking, it is misleading. We need to begin to get our act together instead of wasting precious time talking too much on issues that at best could be brushed aside and stay focused on more serious issues.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
