I need your help: last night I had a terrible dream, please!

I dreamt of a black and white photo showing an old Ghanaian lady sitting on a bus at the Aflao border between Ghana and Togo. While she was knitting socks, her passport was checked by a Togolese customs officer. This piece of art went for a staggering 4,3 Mio. USD at an international Sotheby’s auction.

Next, I picked up a copy of Daily Graphics in Techiman reporting that AMA was forced by white politicians not to construct public clean toilets and that a woman was seen dressed well standing with open legs above the open gutters at the Circle peeing while others passed ignoring the scene. And on my smartphone I watched Metro TV reporting about the sparkling clean city of Kigali in Rwanda while reminding viewers that Nana Akufo-Addo promised the good people of Ghana to make Accra the cleanest city in the world. Dr. Randy Abbey in his Morning Show made reference to Singapore which is a hygienic clean city with heavy fines when littering the environment. And they mean business. With his cynical smile, he stated that NPP and NDC would be threatened not getting the usual votes anymore if they tried to fine Ghanaians seriously and do what Singapore does to their citizens.

Then I saw myself sitting in a gigantic drone flying over Ghana. I looked down from above onto Accra not seeing any waste paper bins in public places every 400 or 500 meters for pedestrians to dump their litter, not in Cape Coast, not in Takoradi, not in Kumasi or Sunyani; in fact nowhere in the country of Ghana. And I saw a banner over Aflao stating that if Ghana would decide to put waste bins in each city, town, and village like in the West citizens would come to destroy them or use them at home. The threat was clear! Even they could easily be sponsored by corporates and used as marketing platforms; all for free for the nation.

When I met a friend at Kotoka Airport in Accra, I saw two young girls. The black girl dumped her empty water bottle, asking the white girl to do the same, as the bottles were useless to her. The white girl refused, arguing in her society they respect nature and use such bottles for recycling. The black girl insulted the white girl very well.

When my visit to Lavender Hill was completed the awful smell of urine and human pupu was still in my nose and clothes having witnessed human sewage being offloaded into the ocean from which the fisher folks caught their fish for human consumption. And in Greda Estate, a residential area, a Turkish company next to a gigantic hill of smelling rubbish built a recycling facility, seeing Zoomlion trucks arriving by the minute. Zoomlion workers were the once while eating lunch dumped their emptied sachet water rubber below the bench they sat on to enjoy Kenkey or Indomie.

I saw myself feeling weak below my feet when passing by the huge property of the young Togolese President sitting in power on a family assignment, and when looking down I saw sand mixed with rubber shoes and T-shirts used to fill potholes around the stadium of Lomé. This sequence jumped right over to 1. Junction in Accra on the Accra-Tema Beach Road, where I saw before the taxi rank a young lady finishing her plantain chips and dumping the rubber below her feet. I stood upright before her, making myself big, asking her to pick up the rubber otherwise I would do it when a Ghanaian man approached me saying loudly that I would be a true Ghanaian.

Then my mind took me in my dream to Tema and the central market. Sitting in my car I looked behind the market seeing Zoomlion containers filled with waste overflowing and stinking to the heaven above with traders not being concerned at all. When I got out of my car wanting to use a taxi instead, not familiar with the streets, a lady walked in front of me. It was between Christmas and New Year when this lady dumped her empty water bottle right between the legs. I asked her to stop and confronted her with her offense. She was scared of my nearly two meters height and a white man. I picked up the bottle ready to put it into my shopping bag but as she felt ashamed, asked for it and I handed it over to her. On my way back to Kaneshie I used the newly constructed Circle overpass seeing the Brazil construction company did not put waste bins there for AMA later having to come to use big plastic containers to correct the construction mistake. While high above ground I looked over to my right seeing a newly constructed area behind the Arts Center at the Circle ready for traders and their daily work to take them off the streets; empty. And to my right, I saw cows around Avenor eating the plastic in the hip of waste lying around partially blocking the nearby river in its concrete bed for the river ready to overflow and kill innocent people.

Before I woke up in sweat, I saw myself walking outside Agha Khan’s Hospital in Kisumu at Lake Victoria along a row of small bushes filled with rubbish unattended to, ignored by everyone. And in the air, I heard many loud voices demanding from the leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Niger to use their military strength and turn their people into disciplined folks to ensure the new development would become sustainable.

Just before my eyes got open again and the sweetness of an advanced society would touch my lungs again seeing the flowers on my balcony in green and red with fresh clean air all around I heard the warning of the white people around the world Ghana should never ever put electric wires or any other wires into the ground, should never raise safety standards at gas and petrol station, never to use the laws of the country and enforce them and close open gutters to kill mosquitos rather use underground pipes to supply citizens with fresh water and empty the city from sewage, never to make all streets have names, all houses a number, never end corruption on all levels, never work as a nation, never stop family pulling down effects and so many for my head to burst in pain and tears.

Please, my readers, help me to identify the true and the fake stories in my dream of last night. Thank you, very much appreciated!