THE DARKNESS CALLED “GHANA”

Dear Father of The Heavenly Lights,

Hahahahaaa don’t be surprised that I have addressed you as in James 1:17. You know whenever I write to you, it is to complain about a thing, and this time I want to talk about electricity. Yes electricity, preferably called lights by the masses.

Father I want to ask oo, when you sit on your throne in Heaven and look down on earth at night, especially the West African portion, particularly where Ghana is supposed to be, what do you see? Do you see a “lighted” area or you see a large mass of darkness two countries away from an even larger and blacker mass of darkness (Nigeria)? Please tell me, what do you see when you look down on us from your heavenly throne at night?

In the beginning you made the heaven and the earth, and you separated darkness from the light and called them night and day respectively. To see in the darkness of the night, you gave our forefathers the wisdom to create fire in the prehistoric days; and wax and oil vats which were burnt at night to create light in the pre-modern days; and finally the brain to discover electricity and make light bulbs to light up our nights in the post-modern era. Now this is where the confusion begins.

In Ghana we created, established, constructed the Akosombo Dam and others to provide us with electricity, and also set up ECG, GRIDCO and other state agencies to create, supply and regulate the electricity. God, please let me ask you, do you know what is called “dumsor”? You don’t know? Ok that is your assignment for today, go and find it out. In the earlier days, when this dumsor began we only knew ECG as the one turning the lights off and on. Now GRIDCO also has the power to turn lights off and on. So sometimes ECG turns it on, then later GRIDCO turns it off before alerting the ECG of the need to turn off the lights.

It is so confusing. At first we used to go home to lights, and then it changed to going home to darkness. Now we go home to light, sleep knowing lights and fans are on, and wake up in the middle of the light sweating as though you just attended an oven. In fact, God, if you are not careful you will think you are in hell probably because you have woken up on the other side. At that moment if you are not a strong man like me, your sins come flooding to you like torrential rains in Accra (Father mark this one, it is the subject one of my future letters). Regret washes over you and you almost weep until you remember you are in Ghana. Then relief comes surging like the waves at Labadi, then anger like the stench from the Korle Lagoon when you notice the sweat on your body and the wet bed because lights or electricity has gone off.

And God did you intentionally give us our current leaders? God I swear – no – I believe the devil is jealous of our President. Our President promises more than acts these days. The timetable promising the end of dumsor has changed like plenty times. Now we don’t know what to do anymore. Did this dumsor come from the devil? Because our engineers are simply unable to resolve it and are blaming everything from increased population to low rainfall to low gas production to anything. The excuses are as desperate as the man who has to iron his clothes at 5:58pm for the next day’s job interview, when the lights are ready to go off at exactly 6pm.

Father, please can’t you bring us some of your heavenly lights? Ei remember us oo, we are your children oo, we go to mosque, church, shrine to worship you oo. Ei remember we say you are a Ghanaian oo or are you a Ghanaian only in football. So if you are a Ghanaian, why are you browning us your heavenly lights? Or you want us to buy generators? But if we buy the generators how are we going to fuel them sef?

Anyway Father, I must sign off here. Please touch the heart of my loved ones to contribute some money to buy the woman you gave me and I, a small generator so we can enjoy our fan at night. I know you have answered my prayer already, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Yours in the Dumsor,

Kobina Harrison.