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III. GHANA
	Chapter 4: TEMA, GHANA First Baptist School Teacher: Charles Opoku

Charles Opoku

History is replete with instances of humanity suffering from one epidemic or another. There are well-documented evidence of the effects of the bubonic plaque that hit Europe and Asia and the untold misery unleashed on world by syphilis as well as cholera and small pox.

The world is faced with yet another epidemic. The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

According to scientist AIDS is an infections, chronic, fatal disease caused by a virus known as the Human Immune deficiency Virus (HIV). HIV is largely a sexually transmitted blood-borne virus that attacks victims and renders them venerable to various illness and cancers.

Reports of this disease first appeared on the June 5, 1981 edition of the morbidity and mortality weekly report (MMMWR) a publication of the centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States. The CDC is an agency that is charged with the responsibility of collecting statistics on disease incidence throughout the U.S.

There is evidence that the CDC started documenting reports on the new diseases as far back as 1976. it was however, in 1982 that the CDC coined the name acquired immune deficiency syndrome for the disease while the media referred to as the gay plague.

HIV/AIDS has since then spread through all parts of the world and even assumed a pandemic levels in some continents, especially Africa and Asia. The United Nation joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

Estimates that there are above 40 million related HIV/AIDS cases worldwide. The report states that 28.1 million of the infected people are in Africa. Is that the quality of life we are all yearning for?

Here are some of the alarming facts of this tragedy.

- 3 million men, women and children died from AIDS in 2000

- 5 million men, women and children were newly infected with HIV in 2001.

- 25 million children will be orphans by 2010 because of AIDS

- 70 million men, women and children may die of AIDS in the next 20 years. Aids and HIV do not discriminate

Addition to the above started situation more than 1.6 million people are killed by violence around the world each year, a major report has revealed. The world health organization (WHO) said that million of others are left injured as a second leading cause of death among people aged between 15 and 44.

We can’t overlook the fact that Rape, Environmental degradation, pollution, poverty, hunger, bad governance and many more other factors contribute to this our God giving world that makes it unwholesome to live in hence

(1) Cultivating peace

(2) Recipes for good life

(3) Ways to have the planet earth

(4) And nature for ourselves quality of life

Current international interest in global poverty, epitomized by the world Banks 2001 world development report entitled “Attacking Poverty” gives the false impression that the world has just suddenly discovered poverty.

Looking around and the life style of people I live with, it is clearly seeing that real poverty is experienced right here in Ghana. In fact, the war on poverty is centuries old, and its persistence and the attention it still commands are ample evidence of just how far the world has to go to conquer this scrooge of human civilization.

The earliest recorded effort to understand poverty and deal with it dates back to late 18th century. England when the industrial Revolution emptied the English countryside and created urban slums of unemployed, under-employed, petty thieves and drunks. State of the poor and treatise and Indigence were two of several crude but ambitions attempts at the time to systematically understand the nature and causes of poverty.

Colonial and global commercial expansion as well as the natural transformation of nations helped reproduce these patterns of poverty around the world. By the middle of the 20th century, global poverty was in full bloom.

In 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman made this admission in his inaugural address: “more than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas … in co-operation with other nations; we foster capital investment in areas needing development.

A world Bank report the following year (on poverty in Colombia) and a 1951 United Nations report can how to fight poverty, along with Truman’s speech, constituted the foundations of what is now known as development economics. The global was on poverty was joined!

Among academics, there was disagreement over the best way to tackle poverty. Three dominant perspectives emerged.

1. Redistribute productive assets such as land, before growth can occur equitably

2. Redistribute income after growth

3. Provide basic needs, such as nutrition and safe drinking water, to the poor before they can work towards improving their plight.

The last strategy was rooted in the work of the Swedish economist activist, Gunners Myrdal who found in a three-volume work.

“The Asian Drama that when the poor were weakened by disease and malnutrition, they could not take full advantage of economic opportunities to improve their lot. Throughout the 1970s, the basic needs school working out of the World Bank and United Nations, carried the day. Governments provided basic social services throughout the world, and poverty began to decline.

Because of their focus on land reforms, the redistribution before growth school was dismissed as communist and discouraged by Western governments. Significantly, South Korea and Taiwan, two anti-communists nations and the only countries in over 50 years to reduce poverty substantially on the backs of strong economic growth, each carried out extensive land reforms before their economic miracle.

The rise of free-market evangelism in the early 1980s through structural adjustment programs ended the basic needs experiment, suffocated the redistribution-after-growth ideologies in the World Bank. The role of government in economic development was substantially reduced as structural adjustments advocates came to dominate development thought and practice.

In 1989, the economic commission for Africa decried structural adjustments by citing “declining per capital income and real wages; rising under employment and unemployment, deterioration in the level of social services, following educational and training standards; rising malnutrition and health problems; and rising poverty levels and income inequalities.

By the close of the 20th century every country that under went structural adjustment was heavily indebted, severely impoverished poor country and barely able to function without external charity. To qualify for such charity, they must each produce a “poverty reduction strategy by the very people who handed them into poverty in the first place!

In 1999, the United Nations Development Programme bemoaned:

“Inequality between countries has increased. The income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 6- to 1 in 1997 up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960.

The scourge of global poverty, it seems is far from being conquered and Africans are facing the real music!

Elizabeth O. and Bonna E.
I always dream to have children in the near future. But I am scared to the bone. Whom should I choose? I am just fifteen years old, and the young men are dying. How can we stop this disease?

HIV/AIDS is in the world. It is real and this deadly virus affects most people all over the world. Aids stands for ‘Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome’. The ‘acquired’ means you get something outside of yourself; you’re not born with it. ‘Immune’ means to be protected; in other words, the body has cells which protect it from infection). ‘Deficiency’ means the lack of something and ‘Syndrome’ means many signs of a disease.

‘HIV’ stands for Human Immune Deficiency Virus’. It is the virus that causes Aids. People become infected with HIV when the virus enters their body. This does not cause symptoms immediately. A person with HIV (the aids virus) can look and feel healthy for many years. The virus begins to destroy the body’s immune system and the ability to prevent infections of other diseases. The person will eventually develop symptoms of AIDS. Aids is the last stage of HIV infection.

If you are infected with HIV, that does not mean you have AIDS. Having HIV in your body means you are infected with the virus. It does not mean the infected person will get AIDS and eventually die. HIV/AIDS is spread through sexual intercourse with an infected person. It can also be transmitted from a mother to her baby during pregnancy or when a child is being breastfed. One can also be infected with HIV/AIDS by receiving blood from an infected person, being injected with an infected needle or using the same razor blade as infected person.

A person with Aids may develop the following symptoms: excessive sweating; fever and/or malaria for long periods; weight loss and loss of appetite; a dry cough lasting for more than a month; diarrhea lasting for more than one month; swelling around the neck, armpit and at the private parts; Shingles (Ananse in our dialect); Oral thrush and/or itching skin and rashes.

In Ghana, at the end of 1999, it was estimated that over 200 people were infected almost everyday. It is believed that over 400,000 Ghanaian have HIV but show no signs of sickness. In actual fact, the majority of people don’t even know that they have the virus. At the end of 1998, the Ghana National Aids Control Program thought that as many as 50,000 more people may have AIDS, but had not reported to any health centers.

However, one will not get HIV/AIDS if you get close to an infected person. You can eat, drink, sleep and even bath with the person. Don’t ever despise any person suffering from Aids. They need compassion and love from us, more so than ever. This is the time to get close to them. Let all of us show them that they are not left to fight the dreaded disease alone, but let’s rather fight and tackle it boldly, together! All of us can avoid HIV/AIDS. It’s as easy as "A,B,C, and D". Here’s what I mean:

A: Abstain from sex
B: Be faithful to your partner
C: Use condoms all the time
D: Do not share needles and syringes or razor blades with people.

I am therefore appealing to parents and students all over the world, as well as teachers. In fact, everybody reading this piece must remember that we are all at risk. Talk about it openly, frankly and encourage your friends, families, and members of your community to protect themselves! Remember what Nelson Mandela said at the World Summit, "When the history of our time is written it will record the collective efforts of our societies responding to the threat that put our lives in balance; the future of all generations. Future generations will record the adequacy of our response."

LEONA A. and EMILY D.
The young girls in my surrounding can’t go out alone; not without a brother or a man to accompany us. In fact, it is tearing us apart. Rape has become so rampant that we are all even afraid that our virginity will be protected till we marry. One in every 10 innocent girls has been raped or defiled. Almost everyday, various newspapers report rape cases. Some of the victims are raped to death.

Allow me narrate what happened recently in Ghana. It was so pathetic and unbelievable. A small boy, who saw his sister being raped, narrated the ordeal that his sister went through. Then I asked myself, "Will this rape ever stop?" Though names of defilement victims are not disclosed in the best interest of the child, the public knows of a specific case, involving a girl named Kafui, because she died a few days after she was assaulted.

The girl’s only crime was that she had been sent by her mother to sell iced water in order to augment the family income. Kafui was only 12 years old and Aminu Wadah, a Moslem popularly known as "Uncle Lion", injured her so much that she died. We, the children in Ghana, are praying that any man that rapes a girl should be castrated. The punishment for rape in Ghana currently ranges between seven and 25 years in prison. In Tanzania, under a 1998 sexual offences special provision Act, conviction for rape and defilement affords life imprisonment with or without corporal punishment or a minimum of 30 years imprisonment with corporal punishment.

Police statistics collated by the Women and Juvenile Unit in Ghana indicate that a total of 154 cases of defilement were reported in Accra, the capital of Ghana, alone. This rose to 204 in 2001. Most of the victims are between 12 and 14 years of age, with some as young as two years old.

Rape means forcing a girl or a woman to have sexual intercourse against her wish.

The victim goes through a lot of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual torture. Some go mad. Some even die of shock. Others go barren and most are infected with incurable diseases.

You may be surprised that the assailant of this heinous crime could even be a teacher, in the classroom, or your father, who you share your fears with, or your best friend who is so close to you or even your neighbor, who is there to protect you, or your Pastor, who should be there to set the record straight by leading an exemplarity life.

The men used to say that young girls lead them on. But it is crazy to believe that the toddlers who do not know right from wrong are also raped. Could you believe that a 2-month-old baby girl was raped in South Africa? That is ridiculous! Report anyone who approaches you to your mother or police. Avoid being alone with those of questionable character. If an adult sends you, a girl, on an errand just deliver the goods at the doorsteps and run for your life.

Never drink any beverage with those you don’t fully trust or else you may be drugged into a sleep. I have got much stuff to lecture you on but oh my — space! Just remember to wear dresses that are decent so that when you are out there you will not expose yourself and be a victim.