Kwaku Does?

Apparently, there are so many more Kwaku Does in Accra than I thought. Yesterday, on my way home from work, I saw one just at the TUC traffic light. Again, he had no visible disability, he looked and acted sane and was moving from car to car begging for money to buy food.

Now if not for the motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic, I could have sworn this guy was ready to go down on his knees and beg especially since no one seemed to pay him no mind. Me, I still had only GHc10 notes on me so I just looked at him and shook my head (I doubt if I’d have given him anything though if I had coins. He's not the subject of my experiment).

Naturally as humans, our survival instincts tell us to do any and everything in order to survive including hawking in the middle of traffic (very dangerous), begging (very demeaning) and even stealing (extremely dangerous). Some have come up with interesting ways to make money though. They beg but they try to provide a service so it doesn’t seem so obvious. There’s this gentleman (actually, now there are two of them) who has taken it upon himself to direct traffic somewhere near the Odorna Clinic heading towards the Graphic road. I see him every evening doing his thing. Unfortunately these days there isn’t much traffic but he still stands there (he’s probably just about the only one who prays for traffic. Well, him and the hawkers. For us motorists, we pray the opposite prayer). There’s another gentleman who also directs traffic near the entrance to ICGC (Christ Temple) on the road leading from Agbobloshie market to Abossey Okai. 

Then there’s also the young women with twins who sit by the roadside to beg (I guess they weren’t exactly expecting twins when they got pregnant). There’s also these kids and their parents (I don’t know what country they are from. Some say Chad some say Niger. Well, they are from one African country or another) that also beg on the streets (some of those kids are so cute but boy are they persistent).

Whose responsibility really is it to ensure the citizenry (and of course visitors as the situation is now in Ghana) of a country have jobs, can fend for themselves or at least can get food to eat to survive? Again I say driving them off the streets will not solve the problem. They will either come back or find other (maybe disturbing) ways to make money. Hey, they do got to survive too.