They Don’t Care Anymore. Quiet! No one is chatting or talking to anyone. Everyone is on their gadgets, because that appears as a better comrade than the people holding them. Here I sit on my blue stool wondering why we are all quiet and not even exchanging pleasantries. It is as if we are aliens. It is as if we are from different lands and have met here. I should feel at home as I have come to my homeland’s house. I should feel cool, but as it is now, I am hot, I am summarily hot.
The possibility of hitting a zero degrees for snow to fall is very, very slim. No one is smiling at anyone. We have all buried our heads in our phones ignoring the very person sitting beside us. This is the sort of individuals, I mean sort of human beings mother brought forth to help offload her burdens on foreign lands. Up till now, mother’s baskets are breaking her neck though uninhabited. Her children have joined their private seclusion squadron and they are singing their own song, caring less whether anyone is playing them a beat or not. Brotherly love and sisterly care is missing. But who cares? Whose problem? Nobody cares. And that is why I sit here at the embassy, waiting for my turn so I submit my application and leave. Is this the sort of world we are leaving our children?
The world that care less about the carelessness of the brother or sister next-door? Is that what we are teaching our children? Very sadly, the children here are watching us. I am shocked to witness that, I am sitting to a human being, right from my homeland, Ghana, yet he cares less saying hi or hello to whoever he sees. Is he seeing me saying hi or hello? Or perhaps, he sees no one? Oh, Ghanaians! You were all nice and kind to each other until you left home in search of greener pastures. The nutrients from the green pastures has made you perturbed pots, floating on the surface of ignorance.
Now see us. Now see her. Now see him. You all came from the same loin and sucked from the same breast but how come you are not talking to each other when you meet at the bus stops, train station, airports, supermarket, etc. Why are we behaving as if we do not know each other? Sometimes when I visit offices like these and I see my fellow Ghanaians, I try saying hi. I approach them with brotherly love just to remind them that we are all from somewhere even if we have British Citizen. Yet, these same people will act as if they have not seen you when they meet you somewhere next time. We only talk to ourselves when we hear that a brother or a sister has left us to the other world.
Death has to remind us of who we are. And we only appreciate people when they are dead and gone. What a decadence generation of people we are growing into. This is not what mother Ghana taught us. Back home, if you will remember, we used to swim in rivers together. We played ‘ampe’ together. We ate in one big bowl to show that we are one people. Unity is strength. Because of Ghana Cedis, we are all amassing on someone’s land, we’re disarrayed. But how can we forget the songs we used to sing together? The games we played together? The food mum used to serve us? How? Nothing was too much to sacrifice just to make us all happy and secured back home, but now you meet each other and wondered why your brother too is where you are?
Oh Ghanaians! Why? The entire ancestors are looking on with tears in their eyes as to how and why you have all lost the brotherly love they embedded in you. Mother Ghana is saying, “My heart is heavy. It is bleeding to see how jealously and envy has taken over your hearts.
Ooooooh, my children! My own born children, what happened to the love you promised, to uphold the coats of arm that you were all proud of? You promised to be faithful and loyal to each other. You even said that, this is your only country, although it is hard and difficult, you will work together to build in unity and love. Where is the love for each other? Why are you not working together to build the legacy mother Ghana fought to leave behind during the independence? Oh no, my heart is bleeding.
What are you teaching my great grandchildren in those foreign countries with these bad habits? The more I think about it, the more I bleed. The more I see children travel outside home; I fear them dejecting each other. Please, can you promise me that, you are not going to love and share with your brothers and sister the little you have without feeling proud and arrogant? I was not selfish but gave you the care, love, and patient to suck my breast milk just to provide you with the necessary nourishment for your growth.
I had to leave home early in the morning to sell at the market just to ensure I had enough to cater for you and your sibling. Why do you go quiet on each other after you have left home to another man’s country? Why are my children planting pins inside my eyes? Do you want me to go blind? Please, help wipe away the tears in my eyes and heal my bleeding heart by going back to the love and care I thought you all.
My children, hear me and treat each other equal. None of you is better than the other. Please, my children, I want you to put a smile on my face by coming together in unity and love to build each other up. The joy of every parent is to see their children grow in love and in harmony. This is what I yearn for. I don’t yearn for your cars, properties, houses, title, positions or pride, please love each other and check the welfare of each other. Show love and be concern with each other.”
This was what hit me when I visited the Ghana High Commission in London. FERDINARD LAWSON, AT THE GHANA HIGH COMMISSION, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
