What Would Adokwei Do?

1. Be more upright
2. Be more forthright
3. Be more caring
4. Be more daring
5. Be more giving
6. Be more noble
7. Be more able
8. Be more thoughtful
9. Have more empathy
10. Have more tolerance
11. Show more love
12. Give of a lot of you
13. Expect little back

Versatile Sex

Women can wear pant suits with button up shirts and look completely acceptable. Do you know any man who can wear a skirt suit with a button-less blouse and not look ridiculous? Women are the versatile sex and men are........what? 

Making Choices

When dawn breaks and you first open your eyes, you are immediately faced with two choices; to continue sleeping or not to continue sleeping. Throughout the day, regardless of the first choice you make, you will continuously be faced with making two choices; to do or not to do. It should not matter which you choose, all that matters is that you are comfortable with your choice and are fully prepared to accept any consequences which arise from that choice.

Human Justice

As humans, our sense of justice is so strong that we have an inherent need to believe in a higher power, in life after death. To seek justice for those who were mistreated, to punish those who went unpunished for all inhumane acts and to have recognition for those who were never acknowledged for their believing in and caring about humanity. If we are honest with ourselves thou, we will acknowledge that no one is truly ever only good or only bad; both reside in us and its our experiences and ultimately our choices which will let one prevail over the other. 


So if you believe there is life after death, then maybe, regardless of how much you hope your fellow human will get a reprimand from 'God' for all their evil under the darkness of night, in the end we may all be treated equally because you may not have been aware of the 'good' they may have done.  

Eradicating Malaria: 2

I recently read about the scientists genetically re-engineering the malaria carrying mosquitoes - Anopheles. They intend to alter the immune system of the mosquito so that it destroys the malaria parasite before it can reproduce and be passed on to other humans through the blood. When they create this variant of malaria-proof mosquito, it will be released into the wild to mate with and ultimately replace the current breed of Anopheles mosquitoes. We are going down a path to replace a mosquito created by nature with one created my man? Do we really want to erase the anopheles from the eco-system without knowing what the effect will be? 

Now don't get me wrong, I am all for science and research and appreciate the advances science has made towards human longevity, whilst possibly increasing the number of chronic illnesses we now have to contend with, but, I digress. After reading all the horror stories about the effects of so called clinical trails on this continent I can't help but be a little skeptical about why, once again we can't seem to want to get rid of malaria the easy way, but have to resort to toying with genetics  (on our little 'dark' continent, non the less). Isn't it much less expensive cleaning up our environs than it is conducting all these back and forth experiments to create a mutant mosquito?  

Call me paranoid or a conspiracy theorist but if you've seen (or read) I am Legend, but could unleashing that mutant mosquito on our continent be a (unintentional) ploy to get rid of the sub saharan people?  This may just be one of the cases where our ignorance is not so blissful anymore. 

Peaceful Existance

God may not live in the skies nor the devil down in the earth. They both just may live in us; in our minds and in our hearts. Its our life choices that either takes you to heaven or to hell; when your good triumphs over your evil, thats your heaven and when your evil triumphs over your good, thats your hell. 

When you are at peace with yourself, when you are at peace with those around you and when you are at peace with the earth, thats your heaven. 


When you have achieved an almost perfect state of balance, when the bottom line is not always the money, when you can resolve your conflicts with those around you amicably, when we know ourselves enough to be honest to our true self and with each other, when we are wide open enough to see other's point of view, see where they may be right but be brave enough to tell them where you disagree with them. When you think about and act on your life's impact on the earth and future generations, thats your heaven; where your God resides.

When you are not at peace with yourself because everything you do puts you in conflict with the earth, with those around you and with yourself. That is your unhappiness, the place where you weep and that just maybe where your devil resides. 

Eradicating Malaria

Don't you love the commercial where a man wants his girlfriend to spend the night with him but she refuses to do so because of the mosquitoes that keep buzzing in her ear? After countless efforts of spraying and lighting a coil, she eventually stays the night when he puts up a mosquito net. The commercial fades whilst Nana Boroo sings 'Aha yε dε o, aha yε dε ooo....'  

First of all,  does anyone actually sleep under the mosquito net? In this humid and hot Ghana weather with no fan or air condition to cool off? How exactly am I supposed to hang the mosquito net anyway, when I sleep in a hut with six other family members? Have the mosquitoes now been programmed to wait and bite you only when you are sleeping?

 

What about the one on radio promoting the use of the 'A.C.T's with the Green Leaf' where it is announced at the end of the commercial to 'Come together and lets drive malaria away, use the A.C.T with the green leaf'(or something to that effect).

Global Fund's ACT with Green Leaf Logo

Really? Does taking medicines 'drive a disease away' now? I thought preventing the disease did? 

I am quite certain there is another way of eradicating malaria (and a couple of other diseases along with it). How about.... improving our sanitation? Cleaning and covering choked gutters? Weeding to prevent overgrown bushes? Properly disposing off cans, bottles, which can store water to breed mosquitoes? Properly disposing off all trash in general? I am quite certain I was taught this in basic school. 

Maybe I'm oversimplifying the issue but is it that difficult to prevent malaria? Certainly, because, a large chunk of our population has no 'formal education', we can't possibly make the connection between choking the gutter with our waste, preventing the water from flowing and thus providing a breeding ground for malaria carrying mosquitoes? I am not quite convinced about that, because, a while back, there were not as many people attending 'formal school' as there are today, but our surroundings were clean and pristine and not a lot of people died from malaria. In those days, the town council or 'tankas' as they were called, would inspect and fine houses whose compound was unclean. When did all that change? 

Yes, we are a much larger population now but what is preventing us from embarking on a massive public education campaign that will help people make the connection between the state of their environment and diseases that frequently afflict them? And bringing back the 'tankas'? Isn't that what decentralization is all about? 

Oh wait, if we eradicate malaria in Africa the good old fashioned way, a billion people may be out of jobs and countless industries will suffer major revenue loses. We wouldn't want that now, would we?  

What I will really like to know is how many of those products (nets, ACTs) are developed and produced right here on this continent? Are we growing our economies from using these items or is it business as usual when we are growing someone else's economy? Hopefully the few Africans who will 'benefit' from these large scale operations will infuse majority of the 'benefits' into our economies so that next time when I lay my head down to sleep in my mud hut, I will not have to worry too much about not having a mosquito net  or not being able to afford the cheap ¢1.50 ACT drug when my five year old daughter gets malaria. Then maybe, I can think about what I can do to keep the river outside the village clean,  the lives of those in my village much better.  

Perhaps, I need to be educated on the intricacies of how such agreements come about because from my ordinary citizens vantage point, something just does not smell right and looks like once again, money is the bottom line in how we deal with the problems facing Africans.

**Ehɔn a wɔnnyim no, wɔse dɛ, hɛn anom 'chloroquine' no ma abor do, dɛm ntsi  ɔnnyɛ edwuma bio. Dɛm ntsi ɔsɛ dɛ yɛ nom artemether lumefantrine na artesonate ammodiaquine (Artesemine based Combination Therapies, ACTs). Ɔno na seesiara otum tu ebun, ɔyɛ mɛcho.