KWAKU NTI’s Library: Letter from 37 Morgue to Ghana’s vultures

It is with deep sorrow I write from the mortuary freezer where I am currently struggling for space with more than 200 persons just to get our useless bodies preserved for the personal interest of your ilk in Ghana. Currently, we await your final sympathy for us to be discharged from this stinking cold room and forever planted in the belly of the planet earth. Unfortunately, we cannot germinate like seeds put under the ground do because after we get corrupted, it is only our scars and bones which would remain and since we currently lack Prophet Ezekiel of old in current Ghana, we can only wait for our creator to come in to judge us some day according to our deeds during our short stay in the West African country.

I can’t hide my pain as I admit that I looked forward to completing a great task when I first arrived from my mother’s womb. Indeed, the joy and smiles that I saw in the faces of persons who stood by my mother’s hospital bed encouraged me further that I had come to meet my kind that would help me accomplish all the dreams I had since the day of my conception. What about the warm gratuities that persons who came to my father’s home to congratulate my mother brought? I must admit they further added to my hopes and I was encouraged to dream further.
Gradually, this compassion and sympathy for me vanished as I crawled and finally started walking through the different stages of life put in place by colleague specimens of the human species. By the time I finished Junior High School, I fully understood that ‘life is indeed the survival of the fittest’ since no one and I repeat no one came on board to help my mother raise us up when my father passed on at age ten. I can vividly remember how I had to help other people in their farms just to raise money for my school fees. The wickedness of man was practically displayed when in one of my rounds; I weeded the farm of my classmate’s mother while my classmates were studying in class. Like you are thinking, I asked if I would be subjected to same treatment if I was his child.
Finally, upon completing JHS and the abysmal report released, I was compelled to migrate to Kumasi to find a non-existing job to help me meet the needs of my mum and the other younger siblings. But as fate would have it, I ended up in prison after I was arrested as part of some ‘kubolors’ in a suspected robbery. After my release, a friend introduced me to carpet business and I was promised heaven if I could make it to Accra to engage in it. And today, as I lie in this stinking cold room staring at mutilated bodies of like species, I curse the day I decided to migrate to Accra to earn a living. Of course, I have to because I never made the millions despite walking several miles to market carpets to persons who only trooped to Kwame Nkrumah Circle to watch my drowned and persons charred bodies being loaded onto a KIA truck by colleague hustlers.
At least, as a guy from Ohia ma Adwene, I know little or nothing at all about happenings in other countries because I never knew where the Airport even was. However, I watched on TV how dead bodies were picked and carried in bags after tragedies, so how come we were dishonuorably packed into KIA trucks intended for goods? The first sign of disrespect for the dead was by doing that. What a shame. Ghanaian vultures must bow their heads in shames for loading us like sand and stones instead of putting us in body bags and then into ambulances.
What on earth did I bother to go and do at that filling station on the night of the rains at all? The telephone call that alerted me that my carpets are getting drowned did me in. But be it as it may, fate is fate and no man has escaped it – whether good or bad.
However, I believe I wouldn’t have attempted to travel to Kumasi or end up in Accra at all if as a teen, I had gained employment in my hometown. The District Assembly at my end is occupied by persons who though are nearing retirement, but have either back-dated their dates of birth or all working to get their family members to take over from them. ‘Aban Adwuma’ but yet people think it should be family business so what would I do? I blame the government for not inching further to provide more work at the local level, if it has, we wouldn’t have been choked in the cities. Though am gone, and everything I have to offer on earth has ended, I still see more sufferings especially as many more of my likes are waiting to complete JHS and join their brothers to sleep in the open in capital cities.
Life in Accra was not easy at all, for the five years that I started life in the busy for nothing city, we awaited for the annual ritual of flooding. And like the Canadian who placed a bet of $10,000 on the re-occurrence of Accra disaster said, we always received uncountable promises of fixing the problem. Though my eyes are forever shut, and my brain would very soon decompose under the heated earth, I can still remember the day uncle ‘Abodwese’ came to promise to deal with the floods. Who was I then to disbelieve him, as a neophyte I jumped and clapped for joy because we lost some carpets that year, but for five years running, he did what every one of you on earth can see – billboards celebrating a vague achievement. And today, I lie here awaiting a judgment from a maker who has given us the will to reason but we have thrown it to the dogs.
I know you are waiting to know how I ended up here, but before then let me categorically condemn the vultures in Ghana. Our leaders are vultures and I repeat they are vultures. My reason is that like the scavenger, we always say within our hearts that we would build a nest anytime the rain beats us. However, when the rain stops, we hop straight to eat carcasses forgetting about our vowed promises. For how long have Ghanaians not complained and yet nothing has been done about our problems, my living friend, we are all vultures and we must admit.
So as I stood chatting with my brother, Oluman, about the floods and how we will vacate for a different location after that, a friend informed us that there was ravaging fire approaching us. Before we could say jack, the fire was already burning on the surface of the flooding waters. After engulfing the environment, it finally made its way to the filling station, causing the fuel to explode. According to a mortuary mate who was in a sprinter vehicle, their driver decided to pass by the filling station for a top up and also park for some time and wait for the floods to subside before moving. He said their vehicle was the second to be consumed after the petrol tanker and he and the several persons had no time to say their last prayers. ‘Over twenty people in the bus all perished…,” he said as he wept in this freezing weather. Well, I was drowned but I am no way better because we are all dead.
Once again, I blame the vultures in Ghana for this. And in a weeping mood, I, Joe together with all the dead mates in 37 and other mortuaries, say the vultures in Ghana must be up and doing before we get more mates in the coming years. I promise to write back to you when we finally get to Asamando and tell you about Ghosts reception.
Before I say Adieu, let me repeat the calls Anyansafour eeeiii, mowo hen? Where are the sensible persons to help us kill the VULTURE attitude in us? Are they waiting for you to die and once more, jump unto your carcasses like they are doing with ours for sympathy? Enough is enough. Ghana VULTURES. Adieu.

Your friend,
Drowned Joe
From 37 Mortuary
(On behalf of all dead in Accra twin disaster)