Like most Ghanaians, I made my Christmas shopping relatively early, on the afternoon of December 21. I went to Makola in Accra. I had parked my car at the supreme Court car park, quite a distance from the shopping area, to avoid the terrible telling traffic in the city after shopping.
Unfortunately, I could not carry the goods to my car without help, for they were heavier than I could bear. Well, so I thought. Perhaps, I was simply shy to carry those goods publicly in my well suited suit.
The shop owner even without my prompting, had arranged for one poorly dressed, beautiful, dark skinned Northern teenage lady to carry the goods. She was a kayaye. I felt guilty immediately. For it was as if I was encouraging 21st century slavery.
I had never ever anticipated a day like this will ever show up, when I will engage the services of a so called kayaye. Even worse, that a little girl, whose age is about a third of mine, to carry goods I cannot carry for as little as Ghc 3. What a shame!
Why should she bear a burden I am embarrassed to bear publicly? Am I a better human being than her?
Growing up, I had never understood why other families kept children of others who were much younger than their own children yet made them do the works of everybody in their domestic circle while their own children idled about.
In fact, reports abound about how most guys had their first sexual experience by violating their domestic helps. In most instances, parents encourage it, not that it should lead to marriage but rather, to encourage anything which makes their own children happy.
We are aware some house helps go without food for days, even when they prepare the food. Some are manhandled, physically abused and become alternatives in bed, when their mistresses starve their husbands of sex.
All around us, we see them. Those pounding fufu, those serving as watchmen, those who sweep the streets, those who drive the ‘bigmen’, etc.
Dr Otabil was right. Our problems are wisdom problems
Africa is suffering because we have turned our greatest assets, the youth, into burdens and liabilities, by refusing to make them productive with education. So, like the isosceles triangle, we have stood our productivity on its head, with the few educated supporting the bulk of uneducated people in our homes, and society at large. As a result our nation is underdeveloped, poor and indebted.
Education is really the secret of the developed nations. Where more hands are trained, more revenue is accrued. But more than that research has shown that the educated person is healthier, decent, not a threat to society and contribute to income generation. It is not so with the uneducated.
With few exceptions, they are those in the squatters, they are those selling in the streets, the kayayies, they do the armed robbery and likely to end up in Libya.
Huge percentages of national resources end up just addressing challenges from unhealthy lifestyles, fighting armed robbery, teenage pregnancy, and social vices arising as a result of the life styles of the poor, who are mostly unlettered.
I conclude that the solution to building a successful life, family, church, organization and country lies in Education! Education!! Education!!! Educate yourself and you will succeed. Similarly build your family or organization with educated people and it will flourish.
It is the most effective way to abolish 21st century slavery perpetuated by all including our religious institutions, government and the constitution, which trumpets freedom and Justice on the rooftops and practice otherwise.
Akyena Brantuo Benjamin.
Broadcast Journalist and Director, BLC.
benakyena@yahoo.com
ahotoronline.com|Ghana
