On oneness

I was driving behind this guy when he lurched into my lane. It must have struck him that the he really had no idea where he was going… or something like that. I had to slam hard on my brakes, just to save my day. He was completely oblivious of what had happened, as I passed him. He was focused on the road ahead, and seemed to be nodding to some music only he could hear in his air-conditioned car. Moments like these, make me miss driving in more predictable environments. Where I know that there is a communal commitment to rules and guidelines. Sometimes this dedication is really admirable to see. In a country not my own, I drove a manual car on the opposite side, with the steering wheel in the wrong place, gear lever turned all upside down… and I still had more peace of mind than I have driving in Accra on a quiet day. 

There must be a requirement to sign a certain social contract, that binds us to forge a certain oneness for mutual progress. Maybe it’s something about urbanization. There is a certain commitment to social well being that I have seen in the few villages I have been privileged to live in, that gets lost in the city. Sometimes it seems as if in outsourcing essential services to government agencies, we have also outsourced some of our humanity. Some of that innate capacity to keep an eye out for the other person disappears. So we live in small bubbles. The true actualisation of life in the urban jungle, is how secure the bubble gets to be. And in the rat race that survival has become, the walls of he bubble are reinforced for independent survival of each bubble inhabitant. Security is individually guarded with high walls and barbed wire. Water supply secured with a big black tank, a pump and a borehole. The waste disposal covered with a deep manhole, lodged in somewhere in the hidden sector of the compound. Sometimes the electrical supply is covered, with the silent generator and the shiny solar panels. And the SUVs parked in the compound, have the horrible roads are covered. 

Enter COVID 19, the game changer. This disease which has wrecked economies, ravaged health systems. It is here, and the transformations are clear. We seemed to have some control initially, not now. its tentacles have reached across societal lines, party lines, financial barriers. And the more impenetrable the bubbles remain, the faster it will spread. This virus preys on social irresponsibility. The only way to win any battles against it, would be for one to consider the other as a fellow bubble inhabitant. The only way to defeat this disease, would be to reverse all the work that has been done to build these independent bubble castles. There is a certain social responsibility that is needed to fight this disease. We do not have it… yet. The walls of our bubbles are too solid to transmit the care that social responsibility thrives on. There are just too many manholes, and generators, and SUVS, and boreholes for real communal initiative to thrive. 

The disparateness that has enabled us as a society to tolerate the gradual decline in health care quality, education, transport, political leadership, … Ghanaianness, rears its head against COVID19. Any failure in our battle against this disease, is berthed in the absence of oneness. The voice of political leadership has been split by our partisanship. The efforts at giving help to those who need it most during times of mandatory masking, and physical distancing, are torn apart by party loyalties. The medical voice, the scientific message is split. Even the media, the social influencers, the message on the streets is split. What is one to do, when authority one day locks down, and another day launches the most people aggregating activity in our history. 

And so, at a time like this when the disease has taken hold in the community, when people should be laying low, so that the spread slows down, we are moving people back to school. We are mixing them up at voter registration centers, and people are ignorant enough, to think that face shields can replace face masks. Slowly the number of those who do not believe that COVID exists, is growing. Fighting this disease is an information battle, and we have lost it. The viral tentacles continue to tighten their grip on our social fabric. The storm has broken. We have lost some battles, but we have not lost the war. We have learnt quite a bit, and we still have a little time on our side, to make the right decisions. 

But the war can only be won, if we are one.