- GHphoto
I
happen to have a window office on the last floor of my office building.
The building is located in Airport City, perhaps the evolving Times
Square of Ghana. I will usually stand by the window during lunch time to
reflect considering the philosopher I would have loved to be (Who
wouldn’t like a legacy of him as a man in a big chair with a pipe perhaps).
My
flow of thought was interrupted by the images you see in this post,
chaos may be the kindest word to express what was going on. This is unfortunately not the first time, most Ghanaians reading this
may find this usual, a story from which no particular insight may arises. With my passion for speed cars and adrenaline rush, I
apologetically am not strange to enjoying the thrills of some terrible
driving but this post is not about the traffic necessarily neither is it about the
dangerous driving. It is really about the artistic nature of the chaos. Indulge
me to share my insight of this scene.
- A roundabout in a lawn: A look without effort reveals in the lawn a practice where people change direction. The picture reveals a car driving across the road. The thought on my mind is, why in the name of beauty will we create a roundabout in a lawn? I presume one person did it for the first time without being questioned, then the second person followed and gradually Ghana has officially instituted a traditional roundabout in a lawn. After all, what is the cost if we drive through the lawn? I wonder as the many who may have used the lawn as a roundabout do. The pictures however provide sufficient answer, we pay the price of chaos, drive across when we ought to drive to the left or right, we waste everybody's time, frustrate everybody and eventually create on our road the drama of rage from which the consequences are countless.
- It is also interesting to note that, majority of the cars in this scene were drivers of private cars. Presumably, this chaos is caused by drivers whose trade is driving for a living. If a man's trade is to drive, let him drive with honour. Assuming the all the drivers don't even drive well, we may find hope because we may conclude, only our drivers have a faulty thinking. But if the private cars mean that they are not drivers by vocation and have other contributions to life either as employers or employees then I shudder to imagine the thinking pattern in executing whatever their jobs maybe. Politician drive through this, doctors, teachers, everybody of any imaginable profession and yet as a people, we find this normal. I pause without many words to ask if a dual lane becomes four lanes with no specific order and when chaos become a way of life, where shall the hope be?
- Finally, you may observe in the picture a middle aged woman selling. I can in my imaginative mind hear her with all certainty thank God for creating a market this afternoon that she may perhaps feed her family. This blog is dedicated to Ghanaian stories for change. This is not right, but can anyone blame her? Of course not, if we could create for her a market, and create the order so as to aid the traffic flow, people may have driven peacefully in few minutes to that market and perhaps she may have made more. She may save herself from the scorching sun just to make perhaps less than she truly needs to survive.
I
can only write of what chaos we've created, and hope we find such time wasters unnecessarily painful, a life drag so burdensome that we may build order in this country. God
bless Ghana.!
- Artistic Chaos
