So, this is about 12 hours later than I usually post. Had to refill the Internet meter. Cause it's operated by a prepaid card. My apologies.
How is it that, when I go to the parcel office with my mother to pick up a parcel, sent by my mother to herself, we am stopped by the officials because the parcel note is in her father's name? No matter that I am his son, or that his wife (my mother) is present with both hers and my father's U.S. Government-issued identification. We are, instead, instructed to go just outside the building to one of four individuals. There, we can forge an Authority Note (a letter 'from my father' granting us permission to retrieve the parcel in his name). We were instructed to go here, as in the official says to us, "I just need a letter, and it doesn't matter where it comes from. I don't even have to know that your husband wrote it. You can go just outside here and they will do it for you." With the letter now in tow, and a signature which is not my father's (because he is not with us, you see) we can now process the retrieval of the parcel and go about our merry way, after we pay an arbitrary fee, of course.
So, a written letter, with neither official letterhead nor the signature of the one without which we "cannot" pick up the parcel, is more powerful than two government-issued identification documents? Moreover, the person who is guiding the entire transaction is instructing us in the aforementioned way? Can one expect such utter incompetence to be overlooked? Now imagine, this is just the surface!
What we have been confronted by is a systemic evil. This one, not originally of this country, but superimposed over all older and still extant modus operandi. There were colonists here who sought to implement a more complex--they would, no doubt, have argued for the word better--way of conducting all the selves in this environs. This way continued for quite some time, both long enough and too long. This way was ingrained into the habits of the indigenous peoples (whether with or without their consent is immaterial for the time being). When the time came to shrug off the foreign imperator, a new nation had already been crafted from what remained a divided land. Still, the superimposition had taken its toll, so that the foreigners' system was and is perpetuated under the guise that complexity and advancement are interchangeable. The system wins, then, unless the perpetuators can put a halt to the un-progress that has engendered a society of forced incompetence and condoned complacency.
What if people here, in Ghana, are trained to be themselves, and thus pursue authentic self-improvement instead of 'playing the game' that has been taught to them with such tenacity for all these years? What if Ghana--what if each nation is allowed to choose from the variety of opportunities made available through globalization, so as to organize and ameliorate its own glocal market? What if nations are not bullied, either directly by force or through more sinister (dare I say, financial) means, and are instead allowed, no, encouraged to develop a holistic, truly interdependent network of systems, both internally and internationally? What if may yet be a long, long way off, but it is on the way, and thus achievable. What if Ghana was allowed to grow and become all that she can be, without changing the fundamental essence of who she is?
How is it that, when I go to the parcel office with my mother to pick up a parcel, sent by my mother to herself, we am stopped by the officials because the parcel note is in her father's name? No matter that I am his son, or that his wife (my mother) is present with both hers and my father's U.S. Government-issued identification. We are, instead, instructed to go just outside the building to one of four individuals. There, we can forge an Authority Note (a letter 'from my father' granting us permission to retrieve the parcel in his name). We were instructed to go here, as in the official says to us, "I just need a letter, and it doesn't matter where it comes from. I don't even have to know that your husband wrote it. You can go just outside here and they will do it for you." With the letter now in tow, and a signature which is not my father's (because he is not with us, you see) we can now process the retrieval of the parcel and go about our merry way, after we pay an arbitrary fee, of course.
So, a written letter, with neither official letterhead nor the signature of the one without which we "cannot" pick up the parcel, is more powerful than two government-issued identification documents? Moreover, the person who is guiding the entire transaction is instructing us in the aforementioned way? Can one expect such utter incompetence to be overlooked? Now imagine, this is just the surface!
What we have been confronted by is a systemic evil. This one, not originally of this country, but superimposed over all older and still extant modus operandi. There were colonists here who sought to implement a more complex--they would, no doubt, have argued for the word better--way of conducting all the selves in this environs. This way continued for quite some time, both long enough and too long. This way was ingrained into the habits of the indigenous peoples (whether with or without their consent is immaterial for the time being). When the time came to shrug off the foreign imperator, a new nation had already been crafted from what remained a divided land. Still, the superimposition had taken its toll, so that the foreigners' system was and is perpetuated under the guise that complexity and advancement are interchangeable. The system wins, then, unless the perpetuators can put a halt to the un-progress that has engendered a society of forced incompetence and condoned complacency.
What if people here, in Ghana, are trained to be themselves, and thus pursue authentic self-improvement instead of 'playing the game' that has been taught to them with such tenacity for all these years? What if Ghana--what if each nation is allowed to choose from the variety of opportunities made available through globalization, so as to organize and ameliorate its own glocal market? What if nations are not bullied, either directly by force or through more sinister (dare I say, financial) means, and are instead allowed, no, encouraged to develop a holistic, truly interdependent network of systems, both internally and internationally? What if may yet be a long, long way off, but it is on the way, and thus achievable. What if Ghana was allowed to grow and become all that she can be, without changing the fundamental essence of who she is?
posted from Bloggeroid
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