Truly a man of the people
Ghana is divided into 10 regions which are further delineated into districts. Districts are governed by an assembly which comprises elected assembly-people from electoral areas within the district. Musah Zakaria is the assemblyman for the Mankpan electoral area in the Central Gonja District where I am working with the local government to deliver improved public services. To better connect with the beneficiaries of our work, I spent the Christmas holiday with my friend Musah and his family in Mempeasem, a small fishing and farming village off the White Volta.
The 5:00 a.m. alarm bell rang in the form of 20 chickens proudly exercising their audible strength. Before the sun had risen, the men were preparing for a day in the field while the women busily swept the debris gathered on the dirt ground from the previous day. The entire family headed to the farm together and I followed closely behind Musah for the three kilometre trek. By mid-afternoon, the blisters on my tender hands were starting to pop from digging up harvested cassava and shoveling new mounds for the next growing season. I sat watching for a while, and felt discouraged that I didn’t have the stamina to keep up with my African counterparts. Musah saw the look of frustration on my face and said “Would I be efficient working behind a computer all day long. We all have our different strengths.”
One day, I followed Musah as he traveled to four of the sixteen villages in his electoral area which he visited on a weekly basis to stay connected. We first crossed the river by canoe to visit a fishing village which the previous year had flooded, destroying half the houses. At the time, the district was not responding quickly and the World Food Program had delivered two months worth of rations but had suddenly stopped. In response, Musah took the homeless villagers into his village, filling ten to a room and feeding them even with his food stocks running low. Their school, which had also been flooded, was being re-constructed by the district on the opposite side of the river on higher ground. The community was expressing concern about transporting all the school children across the river without enough canoes. Musah intently listened to their problems and said he would take their concerns to the District Assembly, but not making any promises.
Musah and I hitching a ride from a local fisherman
Throughout the day, every person we passed would call out “assemblyman” and every time he attentively walked over to hear their complaint or grievance. One man’s daughter was very sick but had no method of transporting her to the clinic 50 kilometres away. At every village we visited that day, we would greet every household. I soon discovered that if Musah missed a household on a visit, he would get an earful the next time he came by. Being used to my private Canadian lifestyle, at least in comparison, my patience started to wear thin. But Musah kept on going like the energizer bunny. But he did stop at one pointing and asked “How can I continue to work under these conditions”. It was then that I found out he did not get paid for his services as an Assemblyman and was only provided with a one speed bike to travel from village to village. It was a slow mode of transportation and often broke down.
On my final day I got up at 6:00am and helped Musah to gather dirt for his new house. Recovering from a bout of malaria, he took the shovel and aggressively started ploughing into a new layer of compacted dirt which felt like a rock to me. After he finished three rounds with sweet beading down his face, he looked up at me from behind the pile of dirt and said, “how do people like me in these conditions survive without determination?”. I froze and thought to myself how this ‘village stay’ was an experience for me, but was life for Musah. He was farming with no fertilizer, no tractor, nor any other agricultural input besides seeds; performing assemblyman duties with no bicycle and no pay; and living in a village with no borehole, no latrines, no electricity, with the closest health centre 50 kilometers away. But still Musah had the determination to persevere through these many challenges.
After a week’s stay, I said my goodbyes to the village, biked two kilometers with Musah to the dirt road where I hitched a ride with a Fulani man in the back of a pick-up truck nestled between two cows. As the truck drove away I looked back at Musah who was enthusiastically waving goodbye in jumping jack fashion with a big smile on his face. Now that was truly a man of the people, and not just his own people, any stranger who passed his way.