2023 closing

Aviation highway runs through my community, its everyday appearance belying its high flying name. Nothing about it looks like a highway. It may be broad enough to take 3 cars abreast, but has no capacity for handling fast traffic. It’s barely one kilometer long, but sometimes, walking , one can understand why it could aspire to its name. It plays a very important role in my area, being the main tarred road. It also unfortunately serves as the main border between the footpath networks to the North and sprouting roads in the South.? I have?walked around enough to notice.

I had just concluded one of my increasingly infrequent walks, when I bought a breakfast supply of bofrot (buffloaves, puff-puff… there is a Gadangbe name that is unprintable…).Mohammed had sold them to me via moblle money, and I was happy breakfast was awaiting. Walking up Aviation Highway i stayed on one? pavement-less side, cars whizzing? by on the tar job that had been began showing large swathes of red earth, almost immediately after completion a few years ago.

The drains on both sides are still uncovered. We the residents paid blood sweat and tears for those gutters. I remember waiting in long queues just to get? out into town because of the large trucks laying down the red laterite , along with the piles of red earth every? few metres. The last time it was? fixed was during the last election, Maybe next year , we get another facelift…

In the back and forth of the construction of Aviation Highway, I can still see some? consistent steps forward. The shops and businesses along the road on both sides have continued to grow. There is the shoe engineer who never returns shoes on time, the mobile money boss who never smiles, the ever professional pharmacy owner, and the Rastafarian barber who always has a big question on his face when I enter in all my shining baldness. So many other entrepreneurs have continued to grow along the banks of this highway which has the two uncovered gutters running along its length, waiting to getting blocked with the silt that persists in? the pavementlessness.

This has been a harmattan of discontent, and yet the light of our Ghanaianness has continued to shine. This Christmas I have food to eat because the Makola women did not give up. This Christmas I have electricity, fuel, water, because people just did not give up. eCG Even the cedi did not devalue much,? because our diasporans are in town with plenty dollars… No matter what difficulties we have as a country, the doomsday just has not ? arrived. We have a soul that has not lost humor, a people who have not slowed down in the face of debt exchange. It’s been a hard year, and many people have left for the greener grass…

As the year closes, like many ones before and many more to come, I am reminded to be thankful. Through the wild? fires of Hawaii, to the earthquakes of Turkey to the wars if the Middle East, Ghana has remained a haven of some peace. Maybe my heart has been pumping hard through the uncertainties of disowned economic strategy, but there also has been the space for reflection and venting, a? impracticable in many countries in? subregion, and I don’t take this for granted.? ?

I am thankful to be here.