A dumsor story[1]

It was Thursday, 12.30 in the afternoon. She had been driving around the university campus in her sleek, grey new BMW 5 series, looking a suitable place to park. It had to be a quiet place, away from the usual pedestrian traffic that characterized a campus as populated as this one. Quiet and shady. She needed urgently to express her milk.

So far she had tried three locations, one near the Catholic church (shady and quiet but the occasional curious worshiper passing too close), the university gardens (gardeners pruning hedge next  to her) and near the VC’s house (security guard looking suspiciously at parked car).

‘How did I get to this situation?’ she reflected.

The past three years have been the best in my life. I worked hard and success followed me. A Director before I became thirty, acknowledged and respected by my peers and my elders in the field of accounting and now on the fastrack to a PhD. Better still, married to the most adorable man on earth, John Paul. JP, as he is known to his closest friends, owns a large and successful consulting firm and is kind, loving and generous, ergo new sleek car. Life is good.

‘Except for this blasted urge to express my milk before my next class,’ she thought to herself in annoyance.

Pregnancy came within months of marriage, much to the pleasure of both mother and MIL[2]. But pregnancy coincided with admission into PhD program. Why should she choose when she can have it all? She took a long leave of absence from work and decided to have both the baby and the PhD. After all, women have been juggling career and domestic life since the 1950s. Look at Araba, who had twins whilst in medical school and still came top of her class or Michelle, who built her consulting business single-handedly whilst taking care of her three boys as her philandering husband chased everything in skirt! It has been done before and can be done again. Female power rocks!!

With determination and a Gucci handbag (wedding gift from girlfriends), she set off to the classroom.  In her mind, everything had been planned out for when the baby comes, six months into the semester. Buy breast pump, find dependable Nanny, express breast milk for baby at home , at school express breast milk at school enough to feed baby for the day.

But the devil is in the details, init? Thus her current drive around campus six weeks after baby Kay arrived. The College of Social Sciences was a difficult place to find a quiet place in which a female can calmly expose her mammary gland, attach a pump to it, pump it for between ten to fifteen minutes and repeat procedure on the other mammary gland without anyone interrupting. She had therefore resorted to expressing her milk in her car. Thanks to its tinted windows, she could do this quite discreetly without attracting too much attention. But on this particular day, the car park had been turned into fair grounds for the annual college week celebrations and she had to find another place.

She finally found a suitable location next to the examinations centre and with her car air condition turned on full blast and the car windows rolled up, she proceeded to express enough milk for Baby Kay. Whilst she expressed she reflected on how her well laid out plan for taking care of her baby had to be revised over and over again.

Her first Nanny quit without much notice after only one week, both grandmothers were too busy with respective business enterprises to be of much help and Baby Kay loved his milk. Baby Kay was born at 4.0 kg. which is very  big for a first child. And Baby Kay wanted his milk and wanted it NOW!! And always. So much for her plan to do exclusive breastfeeding. Having a baby mid semester meant also that she could not take the mandatory six weeks post natal leave to allow her to bond with her baby. She had to continue with lectures within weeks of giving birth. Thursdays were the worst days as she had back to back lectures from 7am to 4 pm with only an hour break. Thus she could not do the usual shuttle between school and home to breastfeed.  

After releasing the pent up pressure from milk, she efficiently stored the expressed milk in her thermos flask and put the flask back into her Gucci bag. Thank God for making large hand bags fashionable. That was a life saver. Not only had it been difficult for her to find a place to express her milk, but it was also more difficult to find a place to safely store the milk until she could get it home. She once tried leaving it in the car but temperatures had gone so high that day that the milk had curdled and had to be disposed of.  The solution now was to carry it with her to lectures. At least lectures took place in an air-conditioned room.

How is it that with a University this size, with more than twenty thousand students, at all levels of study, from undergrad to graduate level, the VC doesn’t think that there is the need for a nursing room or a nursery? How paternalistic of him! There is nowhere to safely take a six week old baby! Best university indeed!

But this dumsor kwraa was not helping, especially with storing Baby Kay’s milk at home until he is ready to eat. With this 24 hours of, 12 hours on electricity business, it meant she could not keep the expressed milk for more than only a few days. The generator could not power the fridge without causing damage. She had had to throw away milk on several occasions due to the erratic at best and non existent at worst power supply situation currently going on. One particular day, she expressed almost 12 ounces of milk, enough to last Baby Kay the whole day, very proud of herself. Only to have the milk curdle because the lights were off the entire weekend and the milk went bad by Monday morning. 

After being in labour for 12 hours, she had had to be rushed into emergency caesarean surgery. This was delayed because there was no money to buy fuel to power the hospital’s generator. John Paul had to volunteer to buy fuel for the generator before the Doctor could go ahead with the caesarean section. That was a close one. Thankfully, baby Kay didn’t need any intensive care support. She heard the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) had to be shut down because the incubators were at risk of damage from the erratic power supply.

So Baby Kay’s meals have to be supplemented by formula milk as and when his milk runs out. This also has consequences. The cost of the milk is the least of her problems. Afterall when she was working, she spent more on lunch than she spends on one tin of baby milk.  First, the public health nurses must never know of this during their regular monthly weighing sessions at the hospitals. All this exclusive breastfeeding mania that has taken over the country brouhaha. Second and most significantly, Baby Kay suffers from serious colicky sessions when he drinks the formula. It is such a sorry sight to see and hear a baby cry for hours on end suffering from gas. She and John Paul have changed the brand of formula a few times but with no significant results. Internet also says that it is not advisable to keep changing the baby brand of milk as it takes up to two weeks for a baby to get used to a specific brand of formula. Finally, she had to order a brand from  the US and had it delivered by courier.

She has heard other horrifying tales of how mothers and babies are suffering from the ongoing electricity load sharing exercise. From babies not sleeping well in the incessant heat to mothers losing their newborns as a result of equipment failure in hospitals. It is  scary to be pregnant and expecting in these times. These are really tumultuous times. We hear stories of midwives having to deliver babies with torchlight. Infact, now in Ghana, everyone has a dumsor story and there seem to be no end in sight.

It is no  longer an individual’s pet peeve but it has become a national issue. Ti is not just about the lights going on and off at irregular times but how electricity or the lack thereof, affects us all. Electricity is a key foundation of modern times. Without that form of energy, life will be difficult. Nii Lante lost his job at Fanmilk after a redundancy. His wife is also pregnant and not working. Nana Aba also had to close down her coldstore and literally gave out her stock for free because the lights had been off for almost a week. Not sure she would even break even. Poultry farmers are also losing out because the chicks are not putting on weight as fast as they should. Hmm, Ghana my motherland.

How does a middle income country survive without energy? How can we grow when our industries are suffering from lack of power? How do our children write their exams and pass when there is no lights for them to study at night before exams? thinking thoughts.

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[1] Based on several true stories and true events with a dash of poetic licence

[2] Mother-in-law

I Dream of a New Africa

I dream of a new Africa[1]

I dream of a new Africa

Free from poverty, hunger and inequalities

Working on growth, rising with anticipation

Brimming with knowledge, skills and innovation

Showing, sharing, learning and knowing

I dream of a new Africa

Leading on the cutting edge of technology

Showing the way into cyberspace

Present and active in outer space

Innovating into the world of the unknown

Showing,  sharing, learning and knowing

I dream of a new Africa

Borderless, passportless, one big community

Highways linking Giza to the Cape of Good Hope

Railways moving goods from the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Aden

Growing what we eat and eating what we grow

Showing,  sharing, learning and knowing

I dream of a new Africa

Kwame Nkrumah’s Africa- united

Ahmed Ben Bella’s Africa – economically strong

Nelson Mandela’s Africa- Peaceful

Haile Selassie’s  Africa – welcoming

Showing,  sharing, learning and knowing

I dream of a new Africa

Clearly do I see attitudes changing

Loudly do the youth cry-arise , arise and build

Strongly is the narrative changing- forward, forward ever

This too shall surely come to be.

                                -End-

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[1] In honour of Founders day

21^st Sept, 2015

Of treated mosquito nets and malaria

I love mosquito nets. Have used them since the nineties when in boarding school. It was a staple item in my list of things to have whenever getting ready to begin a new term in boarding school. And after finishing school I continued to use them on and off. Especially after childbirth and with my young children. Under five maternal mortality is real, you know. 

In my working life as well, I have been privileged to have been part of the ‘Kick Malaria out of Ghana” Campaign. And was impressed about the massive country wide drive to give free mosquito nets to all Ghanaians. And  we succeeded. For about two years. The rate of malaria dropped significantly in endemic areas. Children's lives were saved. Mothers rejoiced and the donor community shared stories of the expected outcomes. 

Since then, everything has evolved. Mobile phones have evolved, school curricula have been changed   and even the dreaded process of preparing fufu has been modified. We now have a fufu making machine, in both local and foreign variety,  sold by Samsung, no less! Even the mosquito itself has evolved.  We no longer treat Malaria with Chloroquine and quinine but rather use artesunates. 

My big question is, why hasn’t the mosquito net evolved? What is with the design of the mosquito net? Are there no inventors, creators to change the design and functionality of the mosquito nets? We still only have it in two possibly three colours- white, blue and green, I believe. You still need sticks nailed to your bed to hand it up and only has two sizes- single bed and double bed. 

Our beds are bigger, our rooms are plusher, who wants to spoil the beauty of her bedroom with ugly sticks nailed to her bed and a blue or green coloured mosquito net when her colour theme is fuschia? Why cant we have structured nets that can be drawn together with a string and opened the same way? The way blinds have nowadays? Why do we still have to roll the nets and tie them in an unsightly pile at the top of the bed? 

What hasn’t anyone noticed the need to improve the design and functionality of the mosquito net so as to imbibe them more and more into our culture? We are still stuck with a mosquito net design from the dark ages.

A German friend of mine who visited Ghana for the first time insisted on sleeping in her mosquito net in one of the high end hotels in Accra. Despite the high rate of mosquito infestation in the general area of the hotel, they had no facilities to accommodate her mosquito net. Generally hotels in Ghana do not use mosquito nets, has anyone wondered why? Similarly with hospitals. Even the maternity and children's wards of all hospitals have no mosquito nets. There must be a reason for this lack of adherence with the one thing that will help eradicate malaria. I believe it is the design and functionality.

I think the Ministry of Health and donors are doing well with this new Malaria campaign with the treated mosquito nets. But they should go deeper. Change the functionality of the mosquito nets. Train carpenters to include mosquito net sticks as part of the bed and not as an ugly add-on. Recognise sizes and new shapes of beds the Ghanaian uses and design to meet our needs. And give us more variety. We want frills, flowers and frostings, and many more.  Then you will see mosquito nets in hotels and in high class homes and bedrooms. Not only in the rural areas and for bunk beds. And then malaria can really pack its bags and leave.

Of public places and open spaces

 I had the pleasure of going to watch one of Uncle Ebo’s plays at the National Theatre in Accra. Yep. That one in which he used humans as props. So the sofa was made up of four people. Two of them were the seat and the other two were the stand, the TV was also a pretty girl with a box around her and the flower pots were girls with flowers painted all over them and so on and so forth. The plot of the play was also nice. Started off like a prodigal son-esque theme that slowly metamorphorsised into a mistaken identities issue, ie. the virgin who really isn’t so innocent, blah blah. All in all, a nice, well staged and well executed play.

 

But that is not why I am writing this piece. We were almost late, as usual Ghanaman time. Got there a few minutes past 4 (play starts at 4pm on the dot) and the queue of people trying to get inside was so long. It seemed as if the entire Accra had shown up. A typical example of ‘sold out’. The theatre was full and yet more people kept coming.

Of course we had a good time, but that is not why I am writing this piece. My  beef is about the conspicuous absence of family friendly public spaces in Accra. Our weekends are empty. There is nowhere to go for any type of relaxation. Oh! Unless you count the numerous funerals and weddings that fill your weekends. But then the children are left out. Have you noticed the lack of play grounds, public parks, community centres and open spaces around? Even those that are available are being turned into ‘functional’ spaces. There is an ongoing battle on a small parcel of land within the North Legon enclave which is supposed to be a community park. Over the past five years, the community has fought over and over again from that parcel of land being sold for private development. 

Where I currently live, a stretch of land originally reserved for a community school has been cut up and sold for residential purposes. I hear that the current government has now promised to build a hospital for the community. The community is supposed to provide at least a hectare of land for the development and the elders cannot find any. All have been sold out. 

See even what is happening to our forest reserves. The Achimota Forest has, over the years, been encroached upon and litigated upon to the extent that the current forest is less than half its original size. 

Even our private schools do not have enough space ad greenery around them to enable our children to develop properly. One of the key criteria for choosing any school for any of my children have been the fact that the school should have trees on its compound. No trees, thank you madam, my children will not attend your school, no matter how great the school is said to be.  The worst case so far is when the toilet of public school was pulled down by developers who wanted to use the space to build a high end entertainment centre. And city officials looked on unconcerned fighting over whether the developer had a permit or not and not whether it was in the interest of the community to pull down their public toilet.

Town and Country Planning Department or whoever Department responsible for this must surely sit up. it is not enough to hide under the excuse of 'lack of funds'. What is the use of rezoning the use of open spaces if it is only to line the pockets of politicians and corrupt public officials? Posterity shall surely judge me and you, Mr. corrupt public official.