The writer, Elizabeth Ohene

Surrounded by family, friends

Elizabeth Ohene Opinion Feb - 05 - 2020 , 07:54

Family and friends are on my mind.

It is the time of year when family and friends feature prominently in everybody’s life.

But then of course, in present-day Ghana, family and friends has become almost an indecent term.

I know we define family here in a much broader sense than other people, but it seems when the term is used as a politically abusive term, it would seem to include everyone you have ever known in your life.

I have been trying to tot up how many groups I belong to that could constitute my family and friends.

I could, of course, simply try to count the number of groups on my WhatsApp chat list, but that really is too difficult since a new group seems to be created by someone daily and I am added to it without being asked and without being told how I qualify to belong to such a group.

So, what groups do I belong to and what is the order in which such groups should be ranked?

Female, Ohene, Abutia, Mawuli School, Legon, Volta Hall. Ghanaian, Presbyterian, or, the Evangelical Presbyterian bit even though I am not sure there is a difference when it comes to beliefs.

Septuagenarian, sports lover, or to put it correctly, sports watcher, Kumasi Asante Kotoko, because of Baba Yara who made me fall in love with the game, Liverpool, because of my son who started following them as a 10-year old and is now 47 years old.

A passion for tennis, it started with John McEnroe, Arthur Ashe, Pete Sampras and went on to Boris Becker, and is ending with Roger Federer among the males, and Chris Evert, Steffi Graf and Serena Williams among the females.

Politician, NPP and all the groupings within the NPP.

I notice I have not mentioned I am black; if I had been compiling this in another jurisdiction, the United States of America for example, I probably would have mentioned being black before being female. In other words, am I female before being an Ohene? In church, being a Wednesday born is rather important.

Groups

How far do I go back in tracing the family tree to claim the family groups I belong to? My mother was a Miss Asempapa before she became Mrs Ohene and that means I belong among the Asempapas and do I go to my paternal grandmother’s people as well?

My cousins, uncles and aunties would constitute a group by themselves, I take it.

My nephews and nieces would be up there since in my part of the world, they are my children and there is no word that distinguishes them from the children I bore.

I notice in-laws become very prominent when evidence is being sought to prove family connections.

Now if we are going to include in-laws in the reckoning, then I have to declare relations from James Town, Adukrom, Winneba, Aburi, Norway, Juabeng, Cape Coast, Akim Oda, Akyem Swedru, Obosomase, Wa, Nigeria and it goes on.

The people I go to church with, would they feature in my family and friends definition? At Bubiashie E.P. Church, and at Abutia Teti E.P. Church, we see ourselves as belonging to one congregation and I certainly see them more regularly than I see my sister in France.

Where do I place Graphic and BBC?

I spent a large chunk of my life with these two institutions, much longer than I spent in Mawuli School or Volta Hall or Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Does everybody who worked at Graphic and BBC during my time qualify as part of my family and friends group?

What about those who went to the same school or universities that I went to?

Is the definition limited to members of my year group or course group or residential hall mates?

Do you qualify if you went to the same school 10 or 30 years after I left the school?

What is it that sets each of these groups apart from the other?

Are there distinguishing features that can be cited as characteristics?

I am able to say that anyone who grew up in a household under my mother will never litter; there are six of us surviving biological children of my parents but lots of people were brought up in our home and they would never litter.

Would they qualify as family?

Do we, therefore, then belong in another group defined as people brought up in the Ohene household? We all seem to assume that those who go to the same school learn the same habits, assimilate the same values and you can, therefore, be comfortable with them as you can predict their behaviour.

We extend this expectation to people who belong to the same political party, because we are supposed to believe in the same principles and, therefore, behave similarly.

Yet most of the people who are my friends don’t come from Abutia, didn’t go to Mawuli School and don’t go to church with me.

Ideologies

When ideologies dominated political activities, one could say that we were dealing with like-minded people in the political parties. These days I am not so sure.

Take the opposition NDC, for example, the party stayed in power and ruled the country for eight years, and when they lost power, they went to congress and decided that they were a social democratic party.

Did they look back on eight years of governance and decided they had ruled as social democrats and, therefore, adopted the name?

I know people in the NDC who would not admit ever to being social democrats.

We in the NPP hold on to our development in freedom and property-owning democracy.

I know card-holding members of the NPP who do not know and seem not to care about this belief on which the party is built.

Would they be members of my family and friends because they are NPP members?

When the only way to prove a government decision is dodgy is to show a relationship of family and/or friendship with the President of the republic, we are on very shaky grounds.

I have read quite a bit about the current accusations that the NDC is making against President Akufo-Addo.

The President is said to have granted a tax waiver of over 22 million dollars to an in-law.

This in-law is someone who is married to the President’s in-law, that is, the husband of the sister of the President’s wife.

I know we like extended families, but surely even in our culture, there is a difference between a brother and a cousin and an in-law “thrice removed”.

We need to know if the tax waiver would have been granted if the applicant came from Abutia and had no connection with the Akufo-Addos or Ofori-Attas or didn’t go to Kinbu School or Lancing College and doesn’t go to the Ridge Church.

At the current rate, we are demeaning family and friends.

I pray every day to be surrounded by the love of family and friends.