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I have always maintained from day one that, Government's approach to this whole menace of galamsey was dead on arrival. To me, it is a lazy man’s approach and very discriminatory in outlook.

Numerous rhymes of praise by famous poets have been written for mothers since the beginning of morality.

Many more artists have made virtuous attempts at the topic since Allan Poe’s blue, ‘To my mother’ in 1894, to this day of easy education and fleeting artistry.

One of the few whose impact have rung in the walls of many nursery schools, and easily on the mouths of many a school children is very revealing and alas, has no known author. It goes like, ‘mama, mama I am sick. Call the doctor very quick……….’

In my simple awareness I try to imagine what the absent author had in mind when he came up with the easy rhymes ‘doctor, doctor, shall I die? No my dear, do not cry.’

Honestly, very little comes from my deep thinking.

It is very easy to accept and glorify the major roles of mothers, especially on occasions such as mother’s day. However the ones we forget to mention and brush aside as insignificant are the most worthy of our gratitude.

Like the million times we have called on her to call the doctor because we were sick and the million times she went on her knees……to tie your shoe lace and not to pray for herself.

Or like the time she had to wash your face with a pale of water out of her half bucket full because you had your inquisitive eyes wide open while she bathed you.

And again the night at your grandma’s place when she had to wake you up every hour on the clock to ensure you didn’t wet the bed so your cousins couldn’t tease you in the morning.

Everyone else couldn’t be bothered by the nonsensical questions that came from your play filled mind as a child. But she would. Occasionally spanking some sense into your head through your buttocks to leave her be. But not for long. You’d return, unperturbed by the pain, recently past.

She took you everywhere.

To school on your first day because the stories you heard from your peers about the KG madam were enough to kill any ambitions of education. But you were sure your mother was stronger than any teacher wielding a cane. The only beatings you could comfortably take were hers only.

Then to the stone quarry too. Strapped tightly to her back, you forgot all your worries and dozed to the rhythm of hammer hitting stone in the oddest melody, catching only the notes of her splintered palms.

She loves effortlessly. You fault her as often she breathes. Then she forgives. Period.

A quick reminder that her job isn’t done. Even in death, you call on her. In every vein, memories of her flood your system and you wish on a stone to trouble her once again.

Oh, when fate is cruel enough to take you first, you leave behind a frail being, detached from the very essence of her existence, till the day she is laid to rest in sublimity.

Finally, when all is said and done, we are left with pieces…….pieces of a whole that used to be a woman who gave up chunks of her dreams to ensure that you lived yours to the fullest.

Mothers rock!

 For comments and contributions please write to the author, Emma Wiafe at twumwaa94@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Of all the harms we have inflicted on our environment, including open defecation, bush burning, reckless littering, illegal mining also called galamsey in local parlance ranks high. Galamsey operators are a minority group but the extent of damage they have inflicted on our land and water resources affect us all.

Although many countries are saddled with stereotypes, in Switzerland’s case they’re dead on.

The alpine nation really is highly efficient. And meticulously punctual. Clean, too. For chronically tardy, resolutely inefficient (not to mention slovenly) people like myself, a visit to Switzerland yields a cocktail of emotions: awe, relief and a dash of irritation.

For the Swiss, punctuality is not merely a nicety, a bonbon in the buffet of life. It is a source of deep contentment. The Swiss, it seems, subscribe to the German philosopher Schopenhauer’s definition of happiness as “an absence of misery”. They derive genuine joy from the fact that life unfolds on time and in a highly efficient manner.

Whenever I visit Switzerland, I go through several stages of punctuality reaction. At first it delights me, especially if I’m coming from neighbouring Italy or France with their rather more flexible approach to timekeeping. By contrast, life in Switzerland is sturdy and dependable, like a Saint Bernard dog. If someone says they will meet me at 2 pm, they arrive at 2 pm not 2:05 (or 1:55, for that matter). I like this. For a while.  

Then it annoys me. The extreme punctuality strikes me as a kind of stinginess, and I find myself agreeing with the English writer Evelyn Waugh who said that “punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”

That is unfair though, and finally, invariably, I come to appreciate Swiss punctuality for what it is: a deep expression of respect for other people. A punctual person is a considerate one. By showing up on time – for everything – a Swiss person is saying, in effect, “I value your time and, by extension, I value you.”

Punctuality is alive and well in Switzerland (Credit: Rohan Van Twest/Alamy)

It’s no coincidence that the Swiss are the world’s watchmakers. Which came first – the precise timekeepers or the precise people? Hard to say, but the result is the same: a nation where the trains – and everything else – really do run on time. Then there are the toilets.

“Have you seen our public toilets?” asked Dieter, a Swiss doctor, over an afternoon beer in Geneva. “They are very clean.” He’s right. Swiss toilets are indeed clean, as is everything else too. In some countries it would be suicidal to drink the tap water. In Switzerland it is fashionable to do so; the water comes from natural springs.

How to explain this cleanliness and punctuality? No one knows for sure. But a popular theory is that, historically, it stems from the unforgiving, mountainous terrain. Either you planted your crops on time and harvested them promptly or, well, you starved.

Swiss trains are highly efficient, as are the taxis (Credit: Olaf Protze/Alamy)

Punctuality, sadly, is a dying art in many parts of the world. Mobile phones are partly to blame. We feel less compelled to arrive on time if we can always text to say we’re running a few minutes late. I don’t sense that is happening in Switzerland, though.  

Susan Jane Gilman, an American author who has lived in Geneva for the past 11 years, recounted with awe how she’s “never had a taxi that arrived late, that wasn’t there exactly when it said it would be”. She marvelled at how, for instance, when she’s ordered a new refrigerator, the company gives her a precise two-hour window for delivery – and sticks to it.

A decorative flower clock in Zurich, Switzerland (Credit: Carpe Diem - Switzerland/Alamy)

Switzerland has changed her. Once a “chronically late person”, Gilman is now meticulously punctual. “I feel a greater respect for people’s time,” she said, sounding very Swiss.

The flip side, though, is that when she visits New York, her hometown, she is annoyed by the relative lack of punctuality: the bus that is 15 minutes behind schedule or doesn’t show up at all, the friends who saunter into a restaurant 30 minutes late. “My friends will say ‘Suze hon, this isn’t Switzerland, relax. They’ll hold our table.’ But I’ve gotten anal. I get annoyed if people are late.”

Punctuality is not without its drawbacks. For one thing, it creates a kind of bunching effect. Coffee shops in Swiss cities tend to be crowded at 4pm every day because everybody takes their coffee break at exactly 4pm. In apartment buildings, residents must abide by a strict weekday schedule for use of the laundry room.

Swiss trains are expected to arrive within three minutes of their scheduled time (Credit: Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy)

Extreme punctuality also creates an expectation, and if that expectation is not met, disappointment ensues.  On those rare occasions that things do not function smoothly, the Swiss get flustered – and angry. Recently, the country was thrown into a tizzy with the disturbing news that only 87.5% of the trains run by the federal railroad arrived within three minutes of their scheduled time, shy of their 89% target.

But perhaps that frustration has some merit. After all, Switzerland has some fierce competition when it comes to punctuality. In Japan, the Shinkansen bullet trains make the Swiss railroads look downright tardy. The average annual delay? Thirty six seconds.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray: An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard.

We strongly believe that looking seriously into this matter of potential conflict of interest falls within the jurisdiction of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ).

It was a cold winter’s night in Cardiff, UK, five thousand miles from the soft and calm bosom of my mother in Ghana. I was to spend the next year chasing a dream qualification, a communications degree from Cardiff University.

On the way to the Kotoka International Airport five months earlier, I had brushed off suggestions from my Dad that I would soon be missing home. When I stepped foot on this Welsh land, the resolve was still fresh, nothing could convince me that the burning desire for higher education will in anyway be made difficult by the love to sit behind a bowl of fufu and aponkye krakra (Goat meat soup) served before my skinny body by a loving mum.

I had hit a jackpot, a scholarship, and nothing would be allowed to interfere with my studies for the next 12 months, a big man like me should easily sail through a year without missing home…well…so I thought.

It’s been five months of intense classes and assignments, temperatures well below freezing, over indulgence in fish and chips taking a toll. Everyday was lonelier, not even the presence of my three Ghanaians housemates, nor the regular calls and chats with folks back in Ghana could water down the strongest desire I’ve ever had to be home.

Suddenly I found the importance of the scorching sun I so complained about back in Ghana, its bitter cold, a few seconds of sunshine felt like heaven.

It was the finale of the 2015 edition of the African Cup of Nations football tournament that cold winters night. An uncle invited me and one other housemate to watch the match in his home.

Certainly its football, a pack of cold beer was neatly tacked in a corner of the room to take us through the game, a bottle of red wine reserved. It would be the celebratory drink if Ghana, after over three decades managed to beat West African neighbour Ivory Coast to clinch the elusive title.

Players assembled on the field, national anthems to be played before commencement. The Ghana National Anthem began with the strong and powerful beginning “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana”. Like a jolt of lightning lifting me off my seat in an involuntary action, I found myself up, right hand on chest, singing so loudly along, my eyes filled with tear of joy. At the end of the anthem, tears were streaming down my cold winter battered face.

I had watched football several times in Ghana, and frankly I had never be moved in anyway by the national anthem played before the matches began. Neither had I bothered to attach any emotion to the game since 2010, when Asamoah Gyan blew over the goal post a penalty, that would have taken us to the semi-finals of the Worldcup.

Things were different this time though, the sound of my national anthem and the sight of a hoisted flag had overwhelmed my emotions and rekindled the pride in my heart as a Ghanaian, after being away for only five months. I realised then, the powerful effect of national symbols when one is far away from home and the importance of the symbols of State to my identity, pride and ego as Ghanaian.

Last week President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo received his Gambian counterpart at the Jubilee house. Behind the President was the Ghanaian flag, red, gold, green with a black star, this time redesigned. It was green, gold, red with a black star.

I recalled the emotional national anthem of the AFCON and asked my proud Ghanaian soul two questions, “How would I have felt that fateful day, had the anthem been played upside down? How would I have felt, had the colours of the flags, flown on the field during the anthem were in an upside down order?

The disappointment would have been immense, I would have been incensed and cursed whoever was responsible for the blunder, no matter the reason for which he/she had to mess up my anthem and flag.

A careful look at the flag behind the President tells me the national symbol is not hanged wrongly, it rather twisted around the post in a way that turned the colours the other way round. This notwithstanding, the bottom line is the flag was upside down. I can perhaps forgive a foreigner for mixing up the colours, but the seat of government, The Jubilee House, hell no.

Any reasons State Protocol puts up for the grave error, won’t cut it. Conscious efforts were made to turn the flag in such a way the black star was conspicuous, why was similar efforts not put into ensuring the colours were in their rightful positions?

Yes, flag upside down, so what?...Well it’s upside down so my national identity and pride has been desecrated by the very institution tasked to uphold it at all times and in all places. My heart has sunk, my ego is bruised, perhaps Theodosia Selome Okoh is turning angrily in her grave and my president has been rendered a laughing stock by no fault of his, because of the actions of some State officials who were not vigilant enough to do the right thing.

State protocol should be ashamed of the gaffe, please don’t come and tell us the wind blew it, the meeting was held indoors, don’t even attempt to defend it, just render an unqualified apology to Ghanaians and make sure you get things right moving forward.

On Thursday, I observed that social media were awash with jokes about the Kumasi Mall. It started as a Kumasi-Accra rivalry, and developed into a joke that, in Kumasi, the mall would be called “more” because the people there find it difficult to pronounce the letters “r” and “l”.

Monday April 17, 2017 marked exactly 100 days since Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo took over the governance of Ghana from John Mahama, whose governance the former described as incompetent. As expected, the 100-day record of the Akufo-Addo-led government has since Monday been on the chopping board with a mixed assessment.

Recently, the salary levels of some Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of some state-controlled corporations in Ghana have come under quite a bit of public scrutiny. What has been in short supply is a discussion of the thematic underpinnings of the subject.

The proliferation of Vigilante groups in Africa and Ghana in particular has been attributed by many scholars to the failure of the security services to guarantee safety. But this is only part of the story.

The message landed on a social media platform I am on less than an hour before the Resurrection. My gut feeling was, this amounts to taking away the producers’ power over their own show.

I embarked on an unplanned hiatus from writing and in the past 18 months I have been on the wildest rollercoaster ride meandering in the world of E-commerce, Fintech, Digital media and even Music showbiz.

This week marks the 23rd anniversary of the Rwanda genocide and our prayers are with the people of Rwanda whose foundations were shattered and who are still healing from this terrible genocide over two decades later.