In the Absence of Reasonable Blame

There seems to be a cut off point to when doing my laundry in the morning is feasible. The trick is to do all of your manual labor before the sun comes up, in the cool stillness of the morning, while the next door neighbor is cooking a robust breakfast and you can sneak free smells from over the wall and through the barbed wire. Doing your laundry is pretty hard work, for me at least, after being spoiled by the short cuts of normal life back home. Are we really more efficient with the time saved by the machines? Or does it just give us more time to waste idly and a lack of encouragement to be disciplined?

Every once in a while, although it’s probably more frequently than that, there are stark reminders that I am, indeed, in a developing nation. At the outside surrounding entrance to the University of Ghana, there has been a major renovation in the making since we have been here. Slowly but surely, a humongous ditch has been dug out in between the entrance and the road and every week, there poses a new challenge as to how to get around this morphing ditch. Where there once was a wide and easy walk way from the bush canteen, a winding entrance to the side of the campus, through which you walk through an alleyway of merchants selling pawpaw and phone credits, to the edge of the road, where trotro mates are yelling frantically their destination from a perimeter of their trotro which is parked in a nook to the side along with the others, trying to fill up their bus with exiting students so that they can be on their way to make their full potential of sika. Along this wide walk way was enough room for the women to set up their stands of roasted plantains and coolers of pure water, stumps for mtn phone credit guys to sit and plenty of room for the fan milk cart to pass through along with the mobs of students.

Recently, this walkway has been reduced to a narrow bumpy path that you have to balance across in a single file line, taking small steps, one foot directly in front of the other, keeping steady so that you don’t fall into the 20 foot deep ditch on either side of you. The path seems to be beaten down every day and the jump from the edge unto the path, and from the path unto the road has become steeper, so that the last time I walked across, an unspoken system had been implemented that the person in front of you, once assisted up the ledge, turned around and held his hand for the next in line, giving you a hoist up. The nook for the trotros had been eradicated in the vast influence the enormous renovated ditch has on the surrounding environment, forcing trotros to try to fit on the side of the road to pick up their customers, causing a major back up of traffic, one that even the most ingenious trotro drivahs have difficulty in finding a way around. The roasted plantain women is forced to back up against the ditch, trusting that those students fanned out along the side won’t back up and push her into the hole. The pure water girls only have enough space to wind back and forth through the thinly layered row of students. And the fan milk guy is forced to find a corner of his own and hope that his horn alone will be enough to attract the customers.

In the dark, this walkway is especially frightening and without a light, you best find someone who does have a light to walk behind because street lights, let alone lights to light the way through this strip are not happening. It would be so easy for someone to lose their footing, or trip over a lump right into the ditch. If this same project were to be undertaken anywhere in the U.S., the safety measures would be immeasurable. And if there were any way around it, someone may just purposefully throw themselves through the measures in hopes of getting rich quick by a nice fat settlement. But no, here, people are reliant upon their own smarts and the assistance of a helping hand that belongs to another prudent mind. If you were to fall, it’s just too bad for you. Better luck next time.