Still We Get It Wrong?

Let's say there's a sanitation problem in my city. Before I go making noise about it and complaining that whichever person or body is in charge of ensuring the city is kept clean, isn't doing their job well, wouldn't it make sense to first clean the gutter in front of my house, weed my front lawn, encourage my neighbours to do same, and other neighbourhoods as well, then, I mobilize them all, so we make noise about the general sanitation problem? Or?

It takes about an hour for me to drive from my house to work. I leave home at about 7am and (hopefully) get to work by 8am. By 7am, I'd say day broke about an hour and a half before and the sun's most likely out.
This morning, I set off from my house, drove through my neighbourhood, through quite a number of streets in Accra and I couldn't help but admire the bright lights. Oh no, not from the sun, but from the outside lights of some houses and some shops (which weren't even open). I encountered these bright lights all the way, through where I live to where I work. This happens every morning. The bright lights, I encounter in different areas depending on whether there is a dum or a sor in a particular area.

How about we get our house in order then we make noise? I won't deny that there's a problem in the country now and we (myself inclusive) are really suffering. But has anyone stopped to ask how we got here? Has anyone stopped to ask how they contributed to us getting here? Oh yeah, trust me, we all contributed. Yeah, there's a higher power we can lay all the blame on, but bottom line is, we all had a part to play.

So yeah, #dumsormuststop
Have you played your part to ensure #dumsormuststop?
And yeah, I love my Ghana, that's why I speak out (spare the rod...), but still, we get it wrong! And oh, I didn't even vote in the last elections or the one before. So, suffice to say I have no political inclinations?

How Do We Get It Right?

Certainly not by doing this...

or this...

or this...

or even this...

Driving through my neighbourhood on Sunday morning (heading to church). It's after 7am, it's raining, but day broke over an hour ago and the area is all lighted up by the outside lights of neighbours. Thing is their lights did nothing to illuminate the area (it was already illuminated by natural light).

The current power crisis we experiencing in Ghana has all of us hot (literally) and bothered. Yes, we (myself inclusive) want the government to solve this problem ASAP, but really leaving outside lights on at 7am won't help the situation. I get that we sometimes leave the light switch on, the lights go out, we forget about it and maybe leave home or sleep or something. But let's all do our little bit to help. Let's turn off all switches when leaving home. Makes no sense to have outside lights on for all the 12 hours we get to enjoy electricity (and then 24 hours no electricity) when there's daylight.

There are moments when we experience a problem. It isn't our duty to solve the problem, but we are suffering. How about not compounding the problem? If it's not your duty to solve it, and you cannot solve it even if you wanted to, how do you help by making things worse, especially when you are the one suffering, and the person supposed to fix the problem is not suffering as much as you are?

We get it right by not making it worse!