Links

Dreams, Road accident, Safety, Save lives, Young lives

CRushed young

Link Leave a comment

KILLING THEM BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN LIVED

For some time now, Multimedia Group Ghana has been running a campaign on road safety in a quest to reduce mortality on our roads. As part of their efforts, they released a documentary last week titled, “Crushed young”. The documentary chronicles the lives of children who have been crushed by vehicles , some to death and others being maimed for life. The worrying statistic from the documentary was that 6 children died every week from road accidents, accounting for 300 lives lost to road accidents, 300 families who mourn the loss of a child and many more having to deal with caring for a child with increased vulnerability.

The average Ghanaian lives on the benevolence of friends and family when calamity strikes. As a country we do not have a reliable social security system.

This is my experience. Growing up, my dad always walked me to school. We lived about 2km from my school and the school did not have a bus to transport its pupils from a collection point to school. Neither did we have a dedicated driver who could take me to and fro school like is a common phenomenon now. So every morning, my dad would get ready, walk me to school and would then continue to work. (Side note: this explains why I walk fast. Cos I had to run most times to keep up with my dad who had a fast pace. Till date, walking slowly bores me). When school closed, an older sibling would come pick all of us kids who lived in the same neighborhood, or another parent who worked close by, would walk us home in safety. On this particular day, after my dad had walked me to school and left, I was asked to go home to collect the remainder of my school fees. It was a day of trade which meant my mum was not at home but in the market and my dad was at work. So I had to walk to the market to collect the money from my mum. The distance from my school to the market was around 3.5km. I cannot remember if an adult had helped me cross the road closest to our school. But I did walk from school to the market unaided. I was in lower primer and may have been around 5 or 6 years, same age as the accident victim in the documentary.

I got to the market and my mum was so furious to see me because she could not believe than an adult had been careless enough to let a 6 year old walk unaided through a busy area. She walked me back to the school and you can trust me, the teacher in question had a fair share of my mum’s anger and criticism. At that age, I did not understand what was going on and may have even thought my mum may have overreacted. But what happened between my mum and the teacher was enough to ensure that the teacher in question did not want to have anything to do with me. Unfortunately, the teacher in question was my class teacher and it was a year of ignoring me and treating me like I did not exist. She made it a point to not acknowledge my presence both in class and on the field, whatever I did, was of no interest to her. For my mum trying to protect her child, the teacher channeled her anger towards me for a year (Yeah , she hated me, and she avoided me like a plaque).

After seeing this documentary, I remember this day vividly and I now understand my mum’s anger towards the teacher in question. She was doing what every mother would have done in her shoes, protecting her child. She was not going to allow anyone put her child in harm’s way because she owed fees. Whatever the case, my parents always ensured that my fees were payed before the term ended.

Running a school is not cheap, even public schools that get support from the government have their own share of hardships, but it would do us a lot of good if we put a human face to every decision we take. Its okay to demand that parents pay the fees of their wards, but do not put the child in harm’s way over failure of a guardian to fulfill their responsibilities. The child is only a victim of the situation. At the end of the day, it is not just numbers, it is human lives, faces behind the numbers.

The statistic is only a number until it hits close to you.

Let’s preserve the lives of our kids. If we kill them all through road crashes, then we are better of not having them because we cannot protect them. It is our duty as a society to protect the vulnerable. It is only a reflection of what we value.

Social norm, Status quo

will we ever win this fight????

Link Leave a comment

Coming from a society with a long held belief that the male child is the only one capable of continuing a family legacy, will the female child ever be enough? Are we really a progressive society or we are still being held back by archaic ideologies and ways of thinking. Is the fight towards helping the girl child achieve her dreams (irrespective of whatever it is) going to be a reality? Or is it just some cheap talk we engage in?

I wrote this article a couple of months ago, but I never finalized it to publish it. I did not think myself ready enough to start a conversation on this. But in the days leading up to today, I have done a lot of engagement on this matter and I believe it is time to share my thoughts.

A couple of months ago, a media outlet broadcasted news of a young couple that had recently been delivered of four female quadruplets. Amazing right? Though not an easy task when it comes to taking care of them, one would say the couple is really blessed. I thought to myself, these folks are lucky. Some people have not had the opportunity to conceive and deliver a baby. But that is the life we live. Its not fair.

One thing that struck me during the discourse was the desire of the couple to have another baby. The reason, I found very abhorring (to say the least) and very disappointing. Not to mention, that the couple were relying on the benevolence of people to cater for the quadruplets since they were not financially capable of doing so by themselves.

The reason for this couple’s intent to have another baby, was their desire to have a male child. Having four girls wasn’t enough, definitely not. Because the family legacy could only be continued by a male child. I’d dare say, a sick male child would be much preferred over a healthy female child.

Right there, the fate of the girls had been set. They were not enough and will never be enough. And the single question that came to mind was, does the sex of a person place a limitation on their mental and physical capabilities? What makes a male child desirous over a female child? Aren’t we supposed to raise our kids to be human, rather than being boys or girls?

Will the fight to alleviate the undermining of the girl child ever be achieved, if right from birth she is told she is not enough? I leave it to us to decide….

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Companionship, Friends, Love, Peace

MOURNING THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE

Link Leave a comment

MOURNING THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONEundefined

So you see my brother that life is so short, it passes so quickly and soon its gone. You just have one life to live on earth so remember your creator while you have breath. –Bernice Offei (Ghanaian gospel musician)

Life is fleeting: Like the wind, one moment its here, the next its gone. Like a flower that buds and blooms, it dries up and dies. The demise of a loved one always serves as a reminder of how fleeting our life is.

In a couple of weeks, it will be exactly 3 years since I lost a very close friend. He was the yang to my yin, the crazy to my often too serious self. The one thought that kept coming to me during that time was that he was forever going to be out of reach. No matter how much time passed, I would never be able to pick up the phone and text him to pick up from where we left off. He was gone forever. It did hurt and I buried myself in work so I did not have to spend to much alone time. I worried I would forget him as time went by. Truth was, I never wanted to forget him.

I am reminded today of how I felt when he passed away because I confront the death of someone I only knew from afar but admired. I can’t help but think of the friends who have to come to terms with his departure. Families have each other. They will stay together. They will support and comfort each other. All prayers and well wishes will go to them.

What about the friends left broken? How do they deal with the pain? They shared close ties with the loved one, ties that weren’t created by blood, but by life choices. All too often, the friends left behind need to find solace in each other. Every other and majority of the support goes to the immediate family and we forget about the friends who had close ties with the departed. A deep connection existed between these people, that wasn’t borne out of a necessity because they had no choice, but because they were formed over time.

Navigating that terrain isn’t easy. But like everything else, time heals the pain. The loss of my friend hurts less now. I do miss him, but the friends he left behind, we keep each other strong.

To the friends out there mourning the loss of a friend, keep each other strong. The bond you shared with the departed will keep you together as you chart this new course. Living without the departed will become the new normal. To us all, let’s be supportive of each other, loving one another and being grateful for everyone in our life. After all, we are on this life journey together.

This world is not my home I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore. -Jim Reeves

Ben-Isaac Nyameche, you are sown but never lost. Damirifa due. Due ne amanehunu……………..

Gratitude, Happiness, Peace

being grateful through the storm

Link Leave a comment

“In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” 1st Thessalonians 5:18

Life can be hard. And yes, it is hard. For every phase of life we are at, there comes its troubles and difficulties. To make it worse, there’s no recipe on how to live life void of all the troubles.

Life has taught me that, it is very easy to focus on the negatives that I lose sight of the little things that make life worth it. But it is usually not about the grandeur stuff that can change our perspective on how beautiful our life is. Instead, it is the little things that really matter. Like the stranger on the bus who smiles at you, like someone offering to let you go in front of them in the queue at the supermarket, like having a job to complain about, like being accepted into a program that requires a lot of discipline from you. We all are struggling with something in our life, but if for a moment, we can forget about ourselves and make someone else’s life easier, isn’t it worth being joyful?

I have some good days and an equal share of bad days. Days where I simply want to throw in the towel. Days I ask myself, is this really worth it? In those days, I have had friends come to my rescue and assure me that it gets better. But like the ingrate I can be sometimes, I take these friends for granted. I get selfish and think about myself and forget that these people are fighting battles of their own, but they still make me a priority.

With time, it gets better. The bad days make me appreciate the good days when they come. they make me shift the focus off myself, but instead onto someone greater, God.

So, I am grateful for my family, even if its a dysfunctional one. I am grateful for the friends who put away their troubles to help me through mine. I am grateful for the days when I can have some quiet when my life gets chaotic. I am grateful for the good and the bad days. I am grateful that even on bad days, I can still manage to put a smile on someone’s face. I am grateful that I can still be grateful through it all.

What in your life are you grateful for?

#BeGrateful #MakeGratitudeanAttitude

Love, Peace

Beautiful mosaic

Link Leave a comment

Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26:3

How much resistance can you put up until you get to the tipping point when you break? How long will you try to stay strong until you can no more , that you simply give up? How long will you go on until you finally admit, its enough? I can’t do this anymore.

We go through so much daily and there are many thoughts we suppress instead of bring to the fore to deal with. That mental battle you keep fighting is draining you. Physically, you may look alright, but mentally, you are worn out. Its lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on you. One day, its going to hit you in the face, knocking you off balance. The breakdown you had been avoiding so much will come rushing at you like a dam whose gates have been opened. And nothing would hold it back. At this point, you’d have no option than to face it head on or however you want – ignore it. But its not going away by itself. You’ll have to deal with it – one way or the other.

How high can you mount your defenses? You cannot resist all the storms of your life every time. Something is going to break you at some point. But when the storm clears, pick yourself up. Gather the pieces together and reconstruct your life. It will take time, but you will surely fit the pieces together. And in the end, you can be something as beautiful as a mosaic.

Social anxiety

When being in a new environment unravels something, you did not know about yourself

Link 1 Comment

Moving to Germany was an all-new experience for me. For the first time in my life, I was moving very far away from home, from my family and friends, from a familiar environment. In fact, I was entering an unknown territory. One could say, I was leaving my comfort zone.

It wasn’t all glamour, it had its gloomy days. But my social interaction skills were not questionable. Socially, I thought I was okay. I wouldn’t approach you for a conversation, but when you did, I indulged. I easily connected with other beneficiaries of the same scholarship I was on, and we had our fun. But on certain occasions, I bailed out on events to meet new people. I thought I had valid reasons for not attending those events, yes, I did.

Then, I moved to a new city, to begin with my studies and that was when I realized I was becoming “socially awkward”. Each time there was an event to meet outside the class to hang out with my course mates, I freaked out. I got extremely anxious, thinking of all the things that could go wrong at the hangout. And when I did go, I was less myself. After a couple of tries, I told myself, enough of the torture. I decided to end it all and I stopped attending any gathering of any sort. In as much as I enjoyed the time spent with my course mates, I couldn’t get over the inner battle I had to fight each time. No more anxiety to battle with. I chose the comfort of my bed and laptop over social interaction.

And now, two months after successfully completing my studies (Yes! I did it. Thanks be to God), I have noticed some changes. I no longer turn down invitations to go out with friends (new people I met during my work on my master thesis). I still do get anxious about going out with them, but I look at it from the point of hanging out with colleagues to have some fun. I must admit though, that sometimes I am tempted to bail out. I may still turn down invitations, but I do accept some. I am not a party freak and I have never been, but in the last month, I have had so much fun with these people.

It had never occurred to me that I had social anxiety. I wasn’t a frequenter of events when I was in Ghana, but the few times I went out with friends, it never crossed my mind about getting anxious. I describe myself as a shy person, but my close circle of friends will tell you otherwise. I am sure they’d equate me to a parrot if you asked them. Being in an unfamiliar and new environment, I have experienced new emotions and learned something about myself I never thought.

I still do get anxious, but I make an extra effort to not let my anxiety weigh me down and have fun. It’s not been easy for me dealing with my anxiety, but I am trying my best to keep it under control.

Depression, Love

After everything is said and done, I am my own hero

Link Leave a comment

Maybe friendship is overrated, maybe you would never find the perfect friend in someone. But what better friend can you have than yourself? When there is no one around to help you with your mental illness, you can decide to do something for yourself. I call it self-help.
Living with depression comes with struggles, ups and downs, good days and bad days, and you may not want to go through your struggle alone, but when no one seems to be there, the best you can do is to be there for yourself. Accepting and taking charge of your condition is the first step towards recovery.
I recommend these self-help tips

  • Keep a log of your day

Keep track of what you are able or not able to do daily, either in writing or by voice notes. Record your feelings, ask yourself questions about the progress you have made, and the drawbacks you’ve had.

  • Don’t be hard on yourself

Good days and bad days will come. The good days will give you the hope that you are a survivor and can make it. Knowing your good days will help you identify the things that made it good and how to achieve more of them. From bad days, you will learn about what should be improved and help you identify triggers to bad days.

  • Set little but achievable daily goals for yourself

Although daily chores may be hard for you to carry through, you can set them as targets for yourself. Little things like making your bed and brushing your teeth give you back some control over your life. At the end of the day, all you care about is you could achieve something, you weren’t that hopeless.

  • Be spontaneous

Even though you may feel comfortable and would want to stick to your routine, do something out of the blue occasionally. Do something you haven’t done in a long while. Allowing some variation in your life would boost your morale and give a sense of hopefulness, you are not a lost cause after all.

  • Give yourself time to recover

Recovery, be it being able to get out of bed or getting back to your life or being able to carry out tasks you used to perform in the past, takes time. Whiles taking your medication and availing yourself for psychotherapy be patient with yourself. Results don’t spring up overnight. The little efforts you make each day contribute to the bigger picture of your recovery.

Above all, remember to take each day at a time. There is no need to be in a rush to figure out how tomorrow will unfold. Concentrate on getting out of today alive. Tomorrow will take care of itself when it comes. But for now, it is today that matters. And when things don’t always go as you’d have wanted, forgive yourself. You will have another day to try again.
Keep living. You are not alone and when you can, talk to someone about how you feel.

 

Depression, Love

Everything but physical pain

Link Leave a comment

How would you explain the fact that you are sick, to someone when you have no physical evidence to show? It is easy for people to understand that you are hurting and having pains from a toothache, but hurting from depression? It is almost impossible to explain if the person you are talking to has never been there.

The absence of physical pain is a driving factor and may go on to explain why depressed people would mutilate themselves to provide evidence of their illness to doubters. In his accounts of his experiences with depression, Andrew Solomon recounts how he tried to infect himself with HIV so he could kill himself with it as an excuse. Although I find it crude and extreme, he explains, “I needed something I believed in, something to show so that everyone would understand how desperate I was. I had to give up the invisible impediment for a manifest one”. This wish for self-harm, I have come to learn is a common occurrence for depressives who resort to physical harm to bring the physical state in line with the mental. They often do not care which form it takes, be overdosing on drugs, injuring themselves or in extremes, attempting suicide, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do about it.

This is what you could do:

  • Keep a log of your depressed mood shifts, what’s going on around you at the time, and what your thoughts and feelings were.
  • Learn to identify triggers, and develop some control because then you can strategize how to avoid or respond differently to things that make you feel bad and want to self-destruct.

This helps you gain some awareness; the fact that there are explanations for your mood shifts and the realization that your depressive episodes are not isolated events but may be linked to some triggers.
Depression may not be a physical illness, but it is a mentally and emotionally painful illness that can rid you of your will to live and affect every area of your life. When you feel like hurting yourself to prove to others the extremity of your pain, remember you can always talk to someone.

 

Love

A new dawn

Link Leave a comment

It is a new year, a new dawn and a new beginning for some of us. Many are the aspirations and resolutions. Many are the hopes of reaching the targets we have set for ourselves. The dreams of yesteryears, which we were unable to achieve, we are more determined to achieve. Others are empowered to build on the achievements and successes they chalked up.

Our expectations are high, the pressure to achieve them will mount and our anxieties will rise. But every new dawn presents us with opportunities to make amends, to right the wrongs and to move a step closer to our goals. So, let’s remember to take each day at a time and never lose hope. When we fall, let’s remember to rise and keep going. The journey won’t be easy, but step by step, we will reach there.

After all is said and done, ask for guidance and counsel when the need be. Someone has been where you are before and there will be someone to take your place when you leave. Like the adage in my mother tongue goes, “the one who asks for directions doesn’t get lost”. Talk to someone, Seek help.

Happy and a prosperous new year. May we never give up and strive to be better versions of ourselves.

Your team at your service, #LTD #Let’s Talk Depression

Depression, Love

Depression is ruining my Christmas

Link 1 Comment

It’s the festive season and there is so much merry. Everyone seems to be happy, except me. Everyone is making plans, visiting and inviting family over. People are shopping, buying stuff for themselves and others. Gifts are being exchanged. People who haven’t spoken to each other in a long while reach out. Yet, here I am, locked up in my head and struggling to go about my daily routine.

And I ask myself, can I just be this way or do I need to pretend to also be merry. Am I allowed to be depressed during this time or should I fake happiness? Do I have to reach out to people who I haven’t spoken to in a long while, or keep thinking this festive season is overrated? Can I just not care about anyone but myself?

But then, this is the depressed me talking because deep down I’d love to be with the people I love and care about. I’d love to be with family and friends. So when I am this way, please be patient with me and permit me the space to be depressed. But don’t take your love away from me. You are family and I value our relationship.

Your love and care will help me heal. So before I get on your nerves and push you away, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a supportive 2018 with less drama.