Where Is Home?

Homeland is where birth happens. Indeed, where people find peace and fulfillment is where they affirm to be the land that is their home. In a home, nobody goes to bed hungry when others have feasted and wasted what was supposed to be for everybody. A home is a place where something greater than birth ties the hearts of people to.

A home is a place we can feel at home. In a home, there is enough to eat. Nobody is satisfied until everybody is satisfied. A home is a place we help build because it first built us. It taught us the values we so badly hold on to. A home, hence, is the last place that will destroy its own. It is the last place that will give us enough reason to lose faith in hope.

People will die for their home because that home is ready to die for them. Their home is ready to lose it all to gain them. Tell me where your heart is, and I will tell you where your home is.

In a home, the political party one belongs to means nothing because we are all one ─ one people with one language. A home is where politics is a solution to society’s problems and not a multiplier of those problems. Is it, therefore, a home if one’s party card can get them jobs their sweat-earned certificates cannot? Where is your home? The place where political allegiance is regarded above competence?

Is it a home when we become poorer the more we discover natural resources that should make us richer? Is here your home when our natural resources only leave us naturally underresourced because of mismanagement and selfishness? Do I still call a place a home when it has not been able to multiply its resources simply because greed has become its creed?

Home may no longer be home The mass exodus of our youth to seek greener pastures abroad points to this ugly fact so well. Indeed, this place we are supposed to call our home is not well. It is sick of dishonesty, greed, and many other ills. Like an epidemic, it is gradually spreading from the top to the bottom. Our home has gradually become a jungle. You either eat or be eaten!

Where is home? Is home just a place where we were born… or a place that creates a favorable environment for our dreams to be born? A home is like soil that nurtures our seeds of hard work. Is it still called a home when it always looks like we are working hard in the wrong place?

Tell me if a home is just a home. I want to know if a home is where politics looks more like an investment opportunity than public service. You tell me where home is; whether or not it is the place where people who claim to want to solve our problems end up being the problem. Cheers to galamsey!

I have been looking for the route that leads home. The only route I keep finding leads to a home where mediocrity cuts across every sector; from education to sports to even health. In this home, our problems are as predictable as BECE (Basic Education Certificate Examination) and WASSCE (West African Senior School Certificate Examination) papers leaking every year. One doesn’t need to be a minor prophet to prophesy that every rainy season will be a flooding season.

Is our home where parents never get to reap the investment of their children’s education because a chunk of our graduates never get decent jobs after school and those who do end up in the ditches of poverty because of some pittance they earn called salary? Is it still a home when state-built affordable houses are never affordable and so-called decent salaries sublime by the middle of the month? Is a place still a home if it is easier to live a façade of decency only when you are somewhat corrupt?

When people say ‘motherland’, where exactly do they mean? Is it compulsorily a place where there is always a need because there is always greed? Is it the land where there is selective justice when a politician is involved; the land that puts the petty thief behind bars for the rest of their lifetime when the politician who stole from the masses travels around bragging how they started their poultry farm with a feather?

Is home that place where the greed of a few has plunged the masses into eternal poverty? If home is where brothers and sisters belong, why would we needlessly waste days of productive time being baked under the scorching Sun year after year giving out the same data for the same national identity cards?

Where is home? You tell me. Is it the same place where our leaders pay millions for temporary solutions despite our permanent problems? Do I still call it a home if leaders voted into power by the hopeful masses consciously prioritize their party’s interest above the hope of those masses?

Show me where home is. Is it the same place where it is safer to die than live when you need critical health care? Maybe home needs a redefinition because our home is no longer home.

I need to know. Where is home? Is a home where politicians who will not live beyond a century steal money enough to take care of the masses for a millennium? Is home where the poor masses pay for almost everything while the rich politicians pay for almost nothing?

A home is more than a burial ground. A home ought to be more than a place we will be buried when we have lived the essence of our lives abroad. A home should be green enough for everybody to find the greener pastures they may seek elsewhere. When our home becomes a home, we will only travel to another’s home for vacation and not migration.

The reality of every (wo)man’s dream makes them define where home is. It may be here. It may be there. Some will leave home… never to return home. They will make a home out of a place that is not their home.

Gradually, we are breeding a generation that will prefer to be strangers in someone’s homeland because they have lost faith in the place that was supposed to be their home. Day in and out, our generation does not expect much from this place called home. A nation is on the brink of death when patriotism dies.

Patriotism is not conjured. It is earned. Ghana must be a home!

The writer is a playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications, an Accra-based writing company ( www.scribecommltd.com ). Kindly grab copies of his illustration books, Animuonyam The Bully Stopper and Animuonyam and The Queer Man, via 0243752793.