Chorkor In My Eyes; A Beautiful Social Unit.

parts of chorkor slum

A closely-knit community, usually bashed for their way of life generally, and known for their predominant fishing occupation as a result of their proximity to the sea in the greater Accra region of Ghana, Chorkor is densely populated, with settlements scattered here and there, not your trassaco or east legon-type area, NO.

The inhabitants, despite their below average income earnings, are easy-going and open-minded, one of the reasons why I would love to live here.

It is a rainy day on Thursday, Ghana's celebrating her 57th independence anniversary, I have decided to travel to Chorkor to experience how a typical holiday like this means for the people here and their daily activities.

I alighted at "White House" and walked some meters up road,and before I got to Naa Tsotsoo's place, I had gone through three other people's compounds, with some sharing a common corridor.

It was slippery though, and my small umbrella I purchased at Tema station earlier at six cedis bargained price, could not prevent me from getting drenched by the rain drops. If there is any word like shyness, certainly not in Chorkor.

[Sowah is urinating in the drain opposite the road which faces the frontier of Korle's father's house, seen that anywhere in urban Accra?]

Many of the children I met here are not schooling, just a handful are.

Gaming is their pride, especially of the young boys. They have become so addicted to TV games so much that, the least chance and coins they get, off to Nii's TV Game Center.

It costs just twenty pesewas to play.
Holidays are interesting days here.The boys and girls organize themselves and go for 'excursions'.

What they mean by excursions are trips to the beach, cinemas, hotels- especially when there are 'jams'.

Some go to the children's park, national stadium, but for others, another day at the Game Center.

This is exactly the situation today. Everyone is busy at something.

At the local spot further down the street, some of the guys are seated with their female counterparts, I'm told are their girlfriends nodding to "Shatta wale's dancehall king" tune, while others are busily 'buggi-ing' the azonto and alkaida to match.

[Many of the guys prefer going fishing @ Chemuenaa with or without their parents on normal days, so I sought to find out if they still go fishing on holidays. I get to chemuenaa and my word,this time not fishing, everyone is swimming and chatting with their friends, with little time to have a chat with me.]

Some young guys are burrowing the sea shore in search of crabs. Its amazing how they do this. All they did was use an empty can to dig into the sand, and as they do this and pick up signals of crab presence, they dig on. They are very smart to detect whether crabs live in a particular burrow or not.

After harvesting them all, they sell them to some inhabitants. Kojo tells me he sells five crabs for a meager twenty cedis. He is only eight years.

A few other children having put their creative caps on, have improvised swings which they play with. They have hung ropes from some fishing nets around the edges of the docked boats and are seen swinging back and forth, all in excitement.

[Some mothers are using this day to clean up their fish ovens, baskets, and trays ahead of the next normal business day, while others are busily smoking their catch.]

a resident smoking her catch

daniel and myself at his brother's shop

Do they know about Ghana's Independence anniversary? Well yeah, they do, but there's very little they can do to celebrate.

[Unlike in urban Accra, where many stores and shops do not operate on holidays,over here it's different. All the shops and stores are open,and petty trading is still going on.]

[Daniel is twenty one years old, he is by far the only one I have met today, who speaks average English, not too surprised. He recently completed Osu Presec.]

[While his friends and the community folks are out and about 'chilling', he is attending to customers at a small [building materials store-"God is able ", the name of the enterprise, which he tells me his elder brother owns.]

Although he was born and raised here, he has a different opinion about life.

He revealed to me some really shocking issues. Not that I had not heard, that teenage parenthood is rampant here, but the admission by an inhabitant, to me was deep.

[He tells me everything. Amorous relationships among the youth here is over the top. And sex happens to be a normal exercise among the youth. The new normal.

No wonder I see many very little children under three around here. Their mothers, are hardly seventeen years old themselves.]

Atwei, who had a baby a week ago, and I suspect is less than twenty years, is having an outdooring ceremony in the middle of the street which separates the local Guinness bar and her parents’ home.

It is fascinating how the outdooring is panning out. The MC calls out to residents here via a microphone to come and purchase rice mini packs and tins of milk at fixed prices of five and three cedis respectively. This, I am told is done primarily to raise some funds to support the upbringing of the child,

who was being outdoored on Ghana’s 57^th independence commemoration.

Amidst music and some jamming commentary interspersing each sequence, well-wishers thronged the centre where Atwei sat, to offer their widows might, a gesture which kept me wishing I had a child myself. After a few minutes of observing a typical outdooring here in Chorkor, I return to Daniel’s shop.

According to Daniel, he has very few friends, he does not want to get corrupted. He tells me he is one of the rarest non-sex having young guys I would find here. He holds a dream of remaining chaste until marriage, which inhabitants here are less enthused about.

There is an activity in the vicinity, everyday-funerals, parties, and naming ceremonies, and on Sundays, they go for church service. On a holiday, he comes to work like any other day,and hopes his elder brother who's shop he operates, will foot his polytechnic education bill soon.

Evenings are the more fascinating. Inhabitants hang out in their numbers just to chit-chat and deepen neighborhood ties.They seldom bear grudges against each other.

It was dusk, the community was still wet, and was loosing the brightness of the sky, I had to be making my way towards the roadside to get a Troski back to tema station. Making my way onto the streets, I came across women preparing kenkey and frying fish for sale in the evening. They will surely spend the holiday evening at work, as their other neighbours pop a bottle or two at the closest drinking pub.

kenkey and fried fish ready for sale

myself,preparing to leave chorkor

There was a certain 'feel good'sense around the community, apparently there were holiday bashes all over later in the evening, so the kids were preparing.They are pretty excited, both boys and girls, and hope to have a Funtime.

It was time to leave a lively community, to leave my new friends.The people here live life without the stress associated with living in some of Accra's urban areas, the stress of trying so hard to please neighbors in our communities, and the stress of keeping up a certain 'class' to feel valued in society.

Everyone here relates well with their neighbors,and the kids appear even more united in their own small corners where their parents and grandparents reside.

These are the positive features of this community that make me feel like living here.

I wish I could join the "boys boys and girls girls" to the area jams this holiday night already. I certainly have found a new home here,

but there has to be an intensive sex education drive ( Sex education which is the lifelong process of acquiring information about sexual behavior,sexual relationships, and sexual health and of forming attitudes, beliefs and values about relationships, identity, and intimacy) for these kids, for it is surprising how many of them at my age and lower have their own children not one, some two and even three.

The writer is a Journalist
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