Dear Accra, We Need To Talk…
It was never supposed to be smooth sailing. But it wasn’t supposed to be an orgy of incompetency either….
I’ll be honest. It’s really hard for me to love Accra. The city and I do not see eye to eye on anything. There’s nothing in common between us. I’ve always seen it more as a address or a simple place of living than a “home”.
I came back to Ghana in 2012 after my college experience in the US. I had heard good things about Ghana from “some” people about how things were moving in a positive direction. They said that things were better. They said that things were moving. We had upgraded. We are fully in God’s graces.
Here’s a problem: Those “people” lied to me.
Now, let’s be fair. Ghana had changed. We had recently discovered oil off our shores and now foreign oil companies were all coming in with bags of cash to get a piece of that black gold. The economy was doing well. Fastest growing economy in the past years according to the statistics.
So why am I saying that people had “lied” to me?
Had infrastructure gotten better? Yes.
Has more businesses come up? Yes.
Had economic numbers improved? Yes.
But that means it’s better right? No.
It’s still the same Accra that I love to hate. It’s still the same city full of piss poor customer service. It’s the same place where public service is awful. It’s still the city place where people don’t give a f**k about time when starting meetings or events. It’s still the same place where traffic is at a stand still because some people are morons behind the wheel. It’s still the place where people expect to get paid handsomely for doing inferior work.
Nothing has changed. All Accra got was a paint job, opened up more roads, built more malls and then called it “an upgrade”.
Don’t believe the hype. Accra is still the same place it has always been. Just because you put make up on a turd doesn’t mean it’s not still a turd.
Rural, Urban, Middle Class?
There have always been street hawkers on the roadside. Selling you chewing gum, plantain chips and water. It was the norm to see hawkers on the street.
Then I came back to Ghana, the number of hawkers seemed to have quadrupled. Now they sell you everything under the sun. They sell you lint rollers, deodorant, a six pack of malt, phone chargers, massages for your back…you name it.
But that has increased the amount of human traffic on the road. If you really pull back and look at the bigger picture, you kind of have to ask yourself: Where did all these people come from?
Is this a result of rural-urban migration where the impoverished citizens from other regions all decide to descend to the capital and make money to send it back home to their loved ones?
Or are they trying to make a living because they have been kicked out of the properties that they used to live because of all the new estate development that’s coming up?
Affordable Housing
Speaking of that, I have actually become really bothered with this new estate developments. Where did these damn high rise apartments come from?! And who the hell is able to afford living in those places?!
Definitely not me. And probably not you either.
Where aren’t we seeing more affordable apartments in the city?
You know what happens when you build all these nice places? You push all those in the surrounding areas out. That ladies and gentlemen, is gentrification.
They say gentrification is supposed to improve an area to conform to middle income taste.
I’m sorry but selling an apartment for $2000 — $3000 is NOT middle income in Ghana. Get that sh*t the hell out of here.
When I lived in the US, I stayed with my brother in a two bedroom apartment. Our rent was about $600.
But someone wants to charge me rent in the $1000s for their overrated apartment? No thank you.
Overpriced and Overrated
If you want to talk about overpriced and overrated, look no further than the Accra mall. There’s a reason why most of the stores in there are not as busy and populated with shoppers. The main reason people go to the mall is to purchase groceries, eat food and watch movies. Apart from that, there’s nothing cool about the mall.
In fat, everything in this city is overpriced. A restaurant will probably try and sell you a regular cheese hamburger for 45GHC. That’s ridiculous! I’ve tasted McDonalds from drive thrus which had better taste that what you try to serve you in Ghana. And since when is a burger a f**king luxury meal??!
You’re better off buying waakye from the seller by the roadside. Don’t believe the hype of some of these fancy new places that keep coming up. They’re trying to sell you an experience which they can never promise. They just want you to pay for a “premium” experience which is actually a subpar one.
We Are Disgusting Pigs
This city is filthy and disgusting. Everyday I drive around town, there’s at least one idiot who has decided that the gutter is his toilet. For someone to openly relive themselves in BROAD DAYLIGHT and not even have the f**ing courtesy to look for a place to wash his hands afterwards is BARBARIC!
And no one bats at eye! This is not normal!!
Have you gotten the chance to drive through the Lapaz area? It literally smells of piss! And people are busily trying to sell you stuff in filth?! How did we get this way?
Speaking of filth, how has this city not found a way of disposing of its trash properly? When the rains come and wash out the gutters, the streets look like someone dumped a heap of trash all over the roads. I think the rains are just a nice way of God telling us that we’re filthy animals by showing us all the trash we keep in our gutters.
Even at the newly circle interchange, there is filth and trash piling up and nobody cares!
I once drove behind a taxi and a passenger just decided to flick out his water sachet out of the window. I have never been more ashamed and angry. That same person will probably bitch and complain about the government not doing anything about flooding when the rains come even though he’s unknowingly contributing to it.
Yes, the behavior of the people needs to change. But on the other hand, are the city officials doing anything to help?
I can drive for miles and not see ONE trash bin around. Not a single one! Where are people supposed to deposit their trash?! In their pockets??
Even if I do see a trash bin, it’s so small in size and is filled to the brim with trash. Where are the trash collectors?
I had a chance to visit the UK last year to see a family friend. Just by walking down the street, I saw about five trash bins lined up, all having different types of trash for people to deposit. It was all so organized.
But in Accra, you can’t even find that type of stuff here. Just observe any bus stop in the city and just look at the floor. You can see water sachets lined up. Probably being dumped from people as they get out of trotros and taxis.
No Car, Will Travel
Public transportation is such a joke. Accra is such a frustrating place to drive. The taxi drivers and trotros are apparently have no regard for human life. The trotros take over the bus stops, causing everybody to log jam. Don’t believe me? Just look at the situation near the mall? And to think, there are police officers just a few feet away watching all this crap happen.
What the hell is going on?!! Is nobody in charge?
I feel like whenever I decide to take my car and drive, I should be compensated for enduring the stress of traffic in the city. In fact, we should all get compensated for driving on the crappy roads that we all pay tax on. We should all get a cheque for driving on inferior roads which damage our cars.
I just saw a news article from CitiFM that the new road at circle has pothole. It’s barely been 6 months!
Who is charge? Who’s house do we need to go to with our pitchforks and torches demanding change?
The President? The Mayor? The Accra Metropolitan Assembly?
Or do we need to take a hard look in the mirror and finally admit that we’re part of the problem. Do we need all come together and have a group session in which we all admit that things need to change?
So…What Now?
Well, I have NO idea what’s to come next. Officials and authorities keep coming to the podium and speaking into the microphone, all spewing the same rhetoric I’ve heard since my childhood.
Talk is cheap! When are we actually going to do something?! And I’m not talking just about the officials and authorities in charge. I’m talking about us. WE the people. The ones who are supposedly in the middle class (lower, upper). Seriously, do we really care about this city? Do we really want change?
Wait…hold up…I forgot. You don’t actually care. As long as YOU can get from point A to point B, go to the Accra Mall and East Legon and afford all the overpriced crap, why should you care right?
Why should you care that roads in Kwashimen are in terrible shape and the gutters are filthy? Why should you care about the hawkers in the open street, underneath the punishing sun? You’re in your car with the windows up and the air conditioner on. You’re driving that 4 x 4 with good suspension. You probably don’t even feel the potholes as you drive on them…
Why should you give a sh*t if trotros are causing traffic? As long as they don’t affect your drive, you’re good right? But then again, you’re probably in your comfortable car. Not caring that some poor guy is probably dreading that he will run out of fuel because traffic hasn’t moved for an hour and that he will probably have to park, go and ask other drivers for money to buy fuel down the street….
Why should you care that all these real estate developments are pushing people out of the area? You’re living comfortably in your gated apartment area, right? With the nice security officer who salutes you as you drive in.
Why should you care that this city is filthy and disgusting, with water sachets everywhere and trash piled up on pavements? You probably live in the nice part of town where the trash collectors come everyday to clean up.
Yeah. Why should you care? It doesn’t affect you right? Your kids are probably not going to live here anyway….
In fact, why should we all care? We’ll all just tweet out our frustrations and send comments to the radio. We don’t believe anything is going to change.
Yep. Let’s just keep doing what we always do.
Nothing.
