Sense of Community

Today was a route day - when we travel our route to collect used batteries and replenish our agents' supply of freshly charged batteries, and reconcile the agents' new sales, renewals, cancelations, and inventory. However, when we arrived at one agent's house, he said he only had time to exchange, not to reconcile.

A young man in the neighborhood had been cutting a bamboo stalk to use as a support for an aerial antenna for his radio. This is very typical here, as shown in this photo.

Unfortunately, when this man cut the bamboo, it fell on a high tension wire (ironic because while the high tension wires cut across rural Ghana to take power from the hydroelectric plants to the cities, most of the rural people have no power). Not thinking - or not realizing the amount of electricity traveling through a high tension wire, or not realizing that so much power will conduct through almost anything, including bamboo - he attempted to push the stalk off the wire.

At the time we arrived at Borbor's house (a nickname pronounced Bobo), this had just happened and the body was still out in the bush where the accident occurred. As we sat with Borbor for no more than 10 minutes, a parade of people worked its way down the street and by the time we were leaving, at least 50, perhaps 100, people from the neighborhood had gathered to go out to the bush in a community processional to carry the body home. Borbor and his wife and family were joining them as we left.

I've written before about death and the cultural differences in response to it here in Ghana. It is both mourned and seen as a transition to be honored. But in a case where the individual is so young (about 18, Borbor said) and the death is sudden and completely unforeseen, I have to think it takes a while for anyone to think of it as an honored transition.

In any case, it was this sense of community - within minutes the news had spread throughout the community and within half an hour, everyone had gathered - that struck me as something westerners simply cannot touch. There was perhaps a time - and there are still some pockets of this sense of community, I am sure - but for the most part it is gone - and well worth mourning.
XO