Creation, full of wonders

L-O-N-G AGO, I once had a chance to accompany a man to a place in our Republic, called the Afram Plains.

Today, the area in question exists in patches, but most of it is inundated by the Volta Lake. My escort was my dad's employee. He was tall, just about in his mid-thirties, big, and vibrant, and what impressed me most, was that he could swim - let me say, better than most fishes, and I am not exaggerating.

There was something else I liked about him, which I almost had forgotten. He liked children very much, and even “spoiled them” whenever he got the chance.

He could cook fish as if he had a degree in that branch of hospitality. It was much later that I tried to imagine why my dad let me accompany this giant of a man, who worked for him.

I could not contribute a thing to the mission. Indeed, I must agree, I was an encumbrance to the giant in all his steps. He was to harvest fish for “my old man's household.” And, at the time of my encounter, there was no way I could contribute anything to such a mission.

But, somehow, there ought to have been a reason why my dad, whom you might describe as anything except a fool, sent his twelve year old boy with his worker on a trip so rough, and even so uncertain. Was I to spy on him for him? Probably, yes.

We arrived, after walking the whole morning, at the village where, not only my dad had huts for the workers, but two of his friends did as well. There were about eight giant platforms, partly of clay, and partly of cider wood to smoke-dry the fish.

They must have mutually arranged it, such that, when one man's worker arrived, the other's workers would have arrived before the first arrival would depart.

Two days into our stay, the onus had fallen on us to hoist six giant fish traps, which a previous team had submerged one week before.

We, (it is better I say “he”) solicited the help of the neighbour's workers, to accomplish this onerous task. This was all from a tributary which drained its waters into the Afram River (later to become part of the Volta Lake). Whilst they opened the rear-ends of the traps made of bamboo-shoots, gigantic and fattened fishes, but small ones too, wriggled out, and even on dry land they tried to escape back into the waters.

Two muscular men were ready for them with wooden-made, but heavy bludgeons, to take away the “lives of all the fishes.” I watched with disgust, but at the same time, a thrill as well, if you could imagine what I am trying to get at. There was one big fish, which occupied almost alone one of the traps. Then came out another, small but just big enough, such that it could not wriggle out of the rungs of the trap. My dad's worker, in a hilarious mood, turned to me, called me by my pet-name, and drew me close to the giant fish whose carcass rested in one long piece, not quite a foot away from the little one which bore such little resemblance to the gargantuan.

He all the same, succeeded in convincing me that “given another year or two, the tiny one, would become just as big.” The 200 kilogram fish was once as tiny. The big fish had metamorphosed out of something really very tiny. Years later, even as a medical student overseas, the details of the trip did not leave me for many years.

He had gone further to lecture me that the “territory they go out to spawn in was not very far away from where our undertaking took place.” He continued, the period of about April to July was the spawning period. The female giant fish would keep an eye on the tiny, just hatched-out fish. They are in that period so ferocious that any object which ventured nearby would be made minced meat of.

That would include even crocodiles, which otherwise eat antelopes and fishes alike as a habit. It seemed the urge to protect the tiny, helpless little “giant barracudas-to-be” to become the bravest, and hence, the most dangerous aquatic creatures. The men who deal in this kind of fishing learn as the first thing, for survival, to stay out of the territory of this kind of fish during that period.

Come December, it becomes a lot easier to catch them, using the traps or some specially made spears and hooks. My teacher, thus far had never entered the classroom the way we know it, let alone the university, which I thought all smart guys should pass through. Well, it was much later I appreciated what he knew. I doubt who would tell him. But, even before then, as a teenager in my biology classes, and later in Zoology, it was not any longer impossible to imagine how in nature, plants and animals start up tiny (the eggs and sperms of men are visualized using instruments, which are more special than our naked eyes -MICROSCOPES).

Only recently, I encountered something which I feel may not receive the attention it ought to in our society. A man in his forties sought the advice of a friend of mine still overseas, on recommendation. It did not surprise me, because it seems every Ghanaian, big or small, would seek the “help” of a doctor overseas, if somehow it could be facilitated. Trading, other than Governmental connections, do frequently facilitate such an undertaking. About forty-six years ago, a lady delivered a baby boy, who is believed to have “carried a swelling” on his forehead -detected at birth.

As it turned out, the baby died not so long thereafter, and please don't ask me the cause of death. The narrative goes on, to say that his mom got pregnant with the same husband almost “seamlessly”, as expressed by the sibling carrying the history today. Nine months later, she delivered another baby, same sex, and “believe it or not”, the new baby had the same “condition” on his face, as the one the parents lost nine months previously.

This time around, the child was sent to the “corresponding district hospital,” where a “German Missionary-Doctor” successfully excised (cut off) the “lesion”, and two weeks later, with the wound well healed, the family took their “newly born” home. The boy is said to have come along normal milestones, initially.

When it was time to start school, however, the teacher was the first to recognise the disturbing mental retardation.

What was doable was at the time undertaken, and he could pull through elementary school, with just under average grade.

He “was lucky”, as the family puts it today, to pick up a labourer's job in the neighborhood, and was able to keep the same job over three decades. Thereafter came a speedy downhill course of his mental, as well as the “stato-motor” state. He could not sustain the job he had so loved doing.

He developed what is called “Jacksonian” convulsions in addition. His mental status dropped such that sustenance of normal conversation was no longer possible. The family believed it was “the same child,” who did not survive in the previous pregnancy, or delivery, who “had returned”.

The belief that this could be so (indeed the reality), is held by many until today in the Ghanaian society, “wide across,” except of course (with apologies), those who have attained biological scientific education in the “biological fields”, so enlightened.

In the case just described, his brother, who did not survive, is believed to have immediately returned from his previous life, with the same condition.

In reality though, it is a matter of simple biological science. A previous article (Ghanaian Chronicle, February 2, 2010, page five) elucidates on the issue with the events during the 1st Trimester of the pregnancy, where the anlage of the Central Nervous System goes through a cataclysmic turn-around, and elements of the brain formation may suffer failures to develop fully, or fail to move to settle and form where they should. Circumstances that might trigger the mishap may prevail with either male or female of the parents (the couple, Blood-Type incompatibility, or dys-union), or the environment, and agents that may obtain in the nutrition; toxins, (the potato blight, Vitamin deficiencies, and Aflatoxin, among others). The abnormal situation, and its dynamics or persistence, could lead to persistence in the penetrance.

In reality, recurrence of the “miss” in the development in a particular set-up is not unusual. The case cited above should not be seen as a mystical event, but scientific issues that may be avoidable or preventable, if given the circumstances appropriate steps were taken. Avoid ability, and preventability may both be achieved through counseling (i.e. genetic counseling), or supplement of vitamins, such as Folic Acid, or any such essentials that might be detected in the critical 1st Trimester.

Ultrasonographic detection of the catastrophe facilitates termination of the pregnancy under “civilized law”. Development for the small macroscopically invisible cell, and its development into the giant fish, in the example at the start, and our own human development, including that of the whale, entails in it, failure of cell migrations that may lead to catastrophes. Look for, and ask for scientific explanations. They should be available in almost all cases.