Covid-19: Letter From A Village Youth To His City Counterpart

Dear ACCRA-KUMASI,
I bring you greetings from Nkrankrom (Accra-Town), my place of abode.
The crowing cock wakes me up from my golden bed (student mattress laid on the bare floor), even as I am yet to wash my face, I have grabbed my ‘touch-phone’ to pen you this love letter. I hope it finds you well.

Accra-Kumasi, Imagine having to live in a community where electricity is a luxury, running water is mirage and going to ‘tiafi’ in a ‘building’ koraa ‘Odikro’ cannot afford.

Imagine you wake up without knowing the next revised protocol on Covid-19. Imagine you wake up not to know what today holds for you, not to think of the future. This is what I am, live for the day.

I am an educated youth who left the city to the village to make an impact, only to be impacted upon by the realities of the village. We are a community without life. I heard of COVID-19 on an Accra based radio station transmitted through an affiliate in my district capital. What it is and how it came about, government hasn’t educated us. The NCCE is I’ll resourced to educate us and so we don’t know what it’s protocols are. The village herbal doctor has found a cure, and we are happily drinking before COVID-19 shows up.

For days or weeks sometimes, when the weather changes and the networks goes off p33, I become like our uncle in the Amazon with no access to the outside world. Your worries are not my worries. You wake up and and use toothpaste. I, on the other hand look for the nim tree to clean my mouth. You then may use bathing gel/lotion. Even the ‘hotels’ in the district capital finds it difficult to buy alata sermina not to talk of me. The deodorants and cream you use will keep me for a long time. You wear Horseman shoes, visit Elikem the Designer, shave up every week and look presentable. My fashion taste is more towards nature. The shoe I inherited from Uncle Allotey is still what I wear. The blue white-wear-die top is my favorite.

Your needs and wants are different from mine.

I need to feel Akosombo. Sending my phones to Nana Tabri Akura for charging using the solar panel DCE in 2013 brought to us is embarrassing.

You blame me for using hoe and cutlass when farming, what should I use? When our roads are dilapidated, rougher than the shell of the tortoise and deadlier than the venom of the viper. When the light pole that was fixed planted in 2015 have been left to rot, when will the ‘rope’ come so I can be human once again.

Do you know, Accra-Kumasi, that your cousins, nephews and nieces pre-Covid19 were doing shift system? They would walk 5 miles to attend school at Betoda. Sometimes they meet the absence of a teacher and are unwilling therefore to further their education. Post-Covid19, should I send them back to school?

Dear Accra-Kumasi, respect me when you meet me dirty and stinking. The nature of the life I live is to be blame. I live in the bush, tilling the soil that I do not believe Covid-19 will come visiting. And if you see me post pictures on Facebook, be careful to riddicule me. That is how I see life. Life is different and difficult here.

I therefore ask that you increase your advocacy on the need for infrastructural development. Roads should be continued, electricity expanded, schools built and running water provided.

As for the nosemask, I am waiting for the FREE one before I wear some. Life no be easy.

Edem Koku Edem,
Ahafo.