You Can Run But You Can’t Hide!

Inevitable

The cacophonous pleasantries
Heard in the house next door
Yesternight has dwindle to
Silence that deafens
Faces known and unknown
Drags their feet in and out
In a countenance of nothingness
Throwing heads side by side
Not wanting to foreknow
The inevitable visitor
Dearest and nearest soon clouds
The ambience
Gasping for breath that pains
The not expect has arrived

Yesterday's aglow faces
Becomes darker than ebony
With contours that defies description
And faces masked with intermittent
Showers that comes unannounced
Eroding hopes and happiness
The barrel of laughter mouth
Is shut with zipped lips
Only gulping down
Tasteless saliva that heartburns
The sorrow bearer has arrived

It appeared all destructive
Unheralded from nowhere
Without shame and conscience
Crumbling ties that try to thrive
Thrusting away breadwinners
Absconding with mothers that give breast
Eloping brides for a honeymoon
Abducting sinless toddlers
Embarrassing anticipators

The acquaintances are derailed with sympathy
The near are strangulated with empathy
The consanguinities sophisticated with apathy
All starring the departing visitor in antipathy
Yet with unanswered riddle of ages
When Again?
And to who?


Comment:

I decided to write this poem after the “untimely”, never timely death of my uncle's wife at the Tamale Teaching Hospital on the 31st July 2009. Death is not my admirer and no matter the magnitude of my good deeds (if I have any); I will never make him a friend. I am screamingly baffled why he (Death) could not exercise patience for her little suckling child to turn at least a year before he comes in. If Death was a woman, she would have hesitated in her actions. Besides that there are mothers who are no longer needed by society. If Death had any moral conscience, then I had expected him to go for “Maame Abrewa”, 92 years old woman and mother who has almost become a nuisance cum encumbrance in the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, Death seems to love the most loved and cherished in the society. He allows the societal wrecks to merry all the time. I believe Death can do us good by sanitising our political scene for society. The world of politics is full of persons who hardly believe in Death. He ought to announce his presence in their midst. How will our society be if Death consumes all corrupt politicians who are protected by so-called powers that be?

I hesitate to say that my uncle's wife death is as a result of poor facilities and understaffing at the hospital, even though I am part of the hospital as a career nurse. But I cannot help myself saying that needless deaths in the hospital are of considerable percentage. However, when the time is up, it is up. Not even the World's Medical Team can help.

Can there be any law to bar politicians or public office holders from seeking treatment abroad? I think Ghana will have a least one technologically-sophisticated world class hospital a month after passing such a law. Politicians are not frequently visited by deaths conceivably by virtue of doorstep and prompt access to healthcare. Did you observe that it took Omar Bongo, a serious smoker a long time to die in his sick bed in Switzerland?

If you or I was in Omar Bongo's condition, an hour would have been so much for us. His detractors could no longer wait but pronounced him death many weeks before death came. That was the power of good medical interventions. Majority of the poor in Africa and Ghana are perishing of common cold, headache, malaise inter alia.

As matter of fact, I will not allow myself to be admitted at that hospital when I am sick, because it is tantamount to fast tracking your death or even committing suicide.

Believe it or not, the hospital has not the privilege of rehabilitation since it was erected in 1974 by the I.K. Acheampong's government. The elevator has become a death trap so patients are shouldered up the floors. Is this not enough to catalyst patients' moribundity (point of death)? Patients lie on the floor making them prone to nosocomial infections (health problems acquired at the hospital environment such malaria, pneumonia etc). Most procedures are carried out with bare hands which might ideally require gloves – putting the health provider at risk and deteriorating patient's plight. The psycho-therapeutic touches under the gloves are therefore apparently missing. And regrettably, common spirit (methylated) and cotton wool is sometimes a treasury at the hospital.

These problems have remained political turning points for gains for the past decade. The hospital now makes an angle of 60 degrees with the level ground and no one seems bothered. As reactive Ghanaians instead of proactive, authorities are waiting for the dilapidated lost-lustre edifice to crumble on many innocent unlucky patients before they think of doing something sensible. Or could this death ear be the marginalisation of the north?

Regrettably, this hospital is called Tamale TEACHING Hospital. What a misnomer! A TEACHING hospital where student nurses know most basic medical equipments only in books! And sometimes student nurses are forced to only visualise equipment after its description. A TEACHING hospital where student nurses cannot practise with syringes, needles, catheters inter alia because they are almost gold dust – it is virtually not available! A TEACHING hospital where nurses work with candles when there is blackout – no generators! A TEACHING hospital without regular water supply for lab investigations! A TEACHING hospital with paltry number of doctors and specialist! A TEACHING hospital where patients.................! I will not complete this sentence for it will break your heart provided it is not a stone.

The nursing term “IMPROVISE” is now written on the walls of all wards in the hospital. Improvise thermometers, Sphygmomanometer, gloves, cotton wool and what have you!

Sadly, University for Development Studies has stopped enrolling students for the Medicine Programme; because they cannot continue to produce Fast Track Murderers (doctors) under the barren so-called teaching hospital. Is that a plus or minus? So why won't the north lags behind. Where is the northern intelligentsia? Apart from the commoners who sometimes cry about the sorry state about the hospital, one hardly hears any organised noise from the northern literati. It is a big shame!

So, who is responsible to ensure that this death trap that provides health care to over one million northerners is given the attention it deserves? They know themselves. Why should they be bothered when they run for health abroad by the slightest headache? You can run but you can't hide!

Methinks politicians have lot of questions to answer from many souls on the day of reckoning. Most politicians who happened to go to heaven on Judgement Day will hear chorus of innocent voices demanding to go to Appeal Court for Re-Judgement. Abraham Lincoln observed “Nearly all men can withstand adversity, but if you want to test man, give him power”. Power truly corrupts. Any politician who comes begging for the peoples' mandate always turns to sacrifice the people to aggrandise his animalistic instincts.

People are dying with diseases not worth pinch of their lives; no money to buy drugs; horrendous and poor facilities; unavailable medi-equipments; inadequate staffing et cetera. Yet in the midst of all these soul troubles, our politicians think about how to commit more harm to humanity – sinful and senseless ex-gratia or gratuity; wicked $50,000 dollars for rides; gazillion pounds of dog's chains for self-appraisal; and all that “sinning” you and I can only make noise about.

I will end this write-up not only with an APPEAL for expedient actions to save the Tamale “Teaching” Hospital from its dejected state but a food for thought from Susan Sontag on illness: “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place”

May The Soul That Necessitated This Write-up Rest In The Bosom Of God In Eternity.

Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence
Tertiary Institutions Network (P.R.O.)
Northern Ghana At Heart, NORGAH (Secretary)
Tamale
confidencegh@gmail.com

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