“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by, the past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting”-Haruki Murakami.
It has always been said that the past is no place to make a home. But we keep looking back and lurking in the shadows of the past for whatever reasons. Maybe we fear something great that happened before wouldn’t happen again or an atrocious happening would repeat itself. Either way, letting go of the past has and will always be one strenuous decision to make.
Undoubtedly the world has evolved. There is a vast difference between what was and what is now. Ghana, just like any other country, has been an active integer in the revolutionary process, though we constantly lag behind. From the way we relate to each other right through to our concepts towards life, it is evident that there has been a shift, a tremendous change. Change is good but sometimes one just misses the way things were. We’ve been left to cling onto memories which are often not enough.
Do you remember the cold mornings, where in the quietness of dawn the only ‘music’ one looks forward to was the chirping of birds whilst they hit their tiny legs against the window seal? Listening to this music of course couldn’t be as pleasant as sleeping to Rihanna’s ‘Love on the Brain’, but it was beautiful, knowing that at this precise time nature would come put up a show. Today it is either all the birds died, were taken to the zoo or we are simply too pressured with societal issues to notice their presence.
I remember when we needn’t have to worry about ECG or Ghana Water Company because we had over flowing rivers and the brightness of the moon. Now you open your tap to nothingness, how pathetic could that be? Knowing that you are just throwing money away because you don’t get to enjoy the worth of your hard earned money. Need I even touch on electricity? The service this company offers is as distasteful as stale groundnut soup. Sadly we have become a passive audience, we just sit and stare.
Do you remember how it felt living in a small town? Where everybody knew everyone and how everybody was treated equally irrespective of their financial status? How can everyone know everyone when a child sees her parents once in every week? When neighbours seldom look your way because they feel they are way up the success ladder and you are somewhere below or yet to start climbing. The world indeed has become a global village but the globalization of this village is only behind the internet and anonymity.
I remember when death came for the aged, people with grey hair, people who were literally dried in the sun; people who were frail and literally craving death. Death was discriminative then, you hardly saw obituaries of teenagers; but the tables have turned. Death, though a natural phenomenon, comes for everyone, sometimes in compromising and mysterious settings; regardless of age, race and religion.
I remember days of “kaba and slit”, the traditional Ghanaian outfit, where people do not clad themselves in nudity in a bid to be in vogue; where keeping an “afro” was the ‘ish.’ It would appall you to see the kinds of haircut men keep these days, some drawing all manner of things on their heads, making them look like the all the oceans of the universe took residence on their heads.
Do you remember the industrious games? The pililo and ampe, the oware and kpiting3r, where the evenings were graced by gathering under one big tree to listen to stories of old filled with so much wit and wisdom? The influx of the Play Station brought a halt to all that.
I could soak gari without back then without being tagged starved, I could soak my bread in tea and wait for it to drench before I swallow it without the “archaic” tag. I wish I could relive those times, if wishes were horses…

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