Right now in Ghana, when you wake up in the morning you have to hold your breath for about 2 minutes if not, by the time you realize, the government will be taxing your breathing. It’s not even a joke anymore. I schooled in the Northern part of Ghana even though I was born and raised in the south. Those times in school, it was just happy moments because food was so cheap. Even at that time, my friends in the southern schools used to complain and I would laugh at them that life is not hard, they are the ones that want to live Accra life(expensive lifestyle).
What about now? Now the food prices in the north are almost the same as the south. When I was in school I used to come home every vacation even if it was just a week because the transportation was cheap but now, the transportation from Takoradi to Navrongo is not a joke and I’m not talking about flight, just bus. Now, everything is just going left in the country. Let me give you a breakdown of the expenses of an average Ghanaian.
I was going to start saying let’s buy porridge with 5 cedis but I just remembered something. The other day I was buying porridge and the woman told me there’s no 1 cedi koose( bean cake) so I asked for 2 cedis and she said no, it starts from 5 cedis. I shouted “common koose”? In fact everyone around me was laughing. Ei! Koose that we used to buy one for 50 pesewas? I’m not even going to do the breakdown again, let’s focus on just the breakfast. So now, breakfast is almost like 10cedis and that’s if you want cheap food.
Do you know how much the minimum wage in Ghana is? 18.15 cedis. Did you say I’m kidding? Naa, I kid you not. 18.15cedis which is 1.21dollars. Someone’s father will go and suffer in the sun only to receive this amount at the end of the day. So you subtract the breakfast from the money. How much is left now? 8.15cedis. Oh Ghana! I haven’t even come to lunch, supper, bills, transportation, even savings. Let me remove savings because there’s nothing to be saved from this amount. The only thing the person can save is definitely his/her soul.
It’s really sad in this country. Very sad. Now people don’t even go to the gym to lose weight. Already, there’s no money and food so you end up doing intermittent fasting without even realizing. See, a lot of people in this country haven’t eaten for about three days. Oh mine is even 2 weeks. The economy is just doing anyhow. People don’t even call on the government again because it feels like they don’t care about us.
One thing I’m happy about is the amount of charity foundations people have opened to support ourselves as Ghanaians. I get so happy when I see donations going on with people feeding the poor and all. It just gives me some kind of hope and I know that at this point, if better days don’t come to us, they’ll hear our knocks on their doors soon.
All images are mine