There are three Ghanaian languages I speak well.
In each of them, the word for travelling is a transliteration of : build a road.
It would seem as if somewhere ingrained in us, the whole concept of travelling was never a one-man show.
Somewhere in our DNA as a people, we have always seen travel as a communal contribution to changing location.
I have been reminded of this fact recently, in the shadow of the tragedies that the rains have brought.
Suddenly, the sins of forgotten responsibilities come to haunt us with the images of dirty water filling the places that should be dry.
In my area, the roads were supposed to have been coated with bitumen on compacted red soil, with covered gutters on each side.
Instead, they are gutter-less, with thin sheets of black bitumen painted on laterite, and raised concrete medians designed to accommodate the future coats, which never come.
Now the bitumen creases like a bedsheet that does not belong on a bedstead.
The crinkles rupture into potholes that suddenly ravage the tyres that hitherto rolled blissfully on these same roads.
The ride to work, which was for a time a swoosh to productivity, is now a roller coaster ride of frustration, with the soundtrack of morning show presenters bemoaning our repetitive, collaborative, self-destructive national escapades.
And sometimes describe a version of ourselves, which I do not recognise.
When the rains came, they washed the painted bitumen away, and suddenly the holes that haunted our journeys some years ago are back, and bigger.
And the gutters that we have not emptied have been overrun with water… and here we are, suffering the indignity of land vehicles floating like Noah’s arks, without resistance to the rising waves of the dirty water of our misdeeds.
Now that there is more rain forecast, there may be more rising waves to come.
And what response do we have?
Where is the earth-moving equipment?
Where are the clean- up campaigns?
There is something about isolation, and the individualism that urbanisation brings, especially when the structures that must gird the systems fail.
Just a one-hour drive away from Accra, there is a small town with pristine streets and gutters.
I wonder what happens as the web of urbanisation slowly spreads its tentacles of unstoppable disruption.
Urbanisation without structure is chaos that rids societies of their capacity to self-protect.
True community deepens relationships that enable organic growth so societies expand without losing humanity.
Maybe the way to make our urbanisation work is to figure out a way to retain our humanity even as the communities grow.
We must find ways to promote leadership patterns to retain the power of organic growth.
Leadership that does not lose touch with who we are.
Because we are not all this filth that I see the water has carried recently.
We are the villages whose gutters are kept clean by the community.
We are not the people who cannot solve the engineering problems that have plagued us over decades.
We are the villages which have communal meetings every 40 days and assign roles to leaders to deal with challenges.
We are not the people who give up and watch the rain come to devastate our communities.
We are the people who bunch together against a much fancied England team and refuse to let a goal in.
Nowadays, every time I feel like ranting about how bereft of service culture we are, I remember the lady I buy roasted corn from close to the Elwak Stadium, or the guy I get the coconut water from in Labone.
I remember their warmth and conversation, and I say no more.
We are not the people some say we have become.
We must find a way past this.
*The writer is a neurosurgeon
