allAfrica.com: Ghana: 'Parellels' (Page 1 of 1)

I heard of a man called Nelson Mandela, for the very first time, when I was in secondary school, and that was in the early third of the sixties.

Patrice Lumumba, the first President of the Congo, later to be called Zaire under Sese Seku Mobutu, had been assassinated, with his colleague, Antoine Gizenga, an event that unleashed "The Congo Crisis", which was to take the life of the Swedish United Nations Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, in an air-crash in Congo-air-space. Nelson Mandela and a couple of his associates, all members of the then proscribed ANC, had been sentenced to life-imprisonment on Robin Island. The whole world got to know about the 27 years of incarceration under hard labor, and he and his colleagues were never forgotten. The tail-end of it though is a parallel, which might meet the taste of some of our citizens, presently. Nelson Mandela was finally freed through a chain of processes, in the hands of a South African Head of State, who could no longer contain the over-heated world-anger. "Free Mandela!" This was the hit you heard not only in Discothèques, but at the waiting rooms of all Railway stations in Europe, the Far East, and in the mighty USA as well. Mrs. Thatcher, then Prime Minister of Gt. Britain, had been adamant with a tacit support only, for movements that would neutralize Apartheid in South Africa. In that kind of situation, a street in a Scottish city was to be named after Princess Ann, second child of Her Majesty, the Queen Elizabeth II, of Britain, in the early eighties. The idea had fallen into some controversy, so it was debated, as well as voted upon in the Scottish Parliament. More people favored naming the street after Nelson Mandela instead. Guess what! The Street in Scotland is called "Nelson Mandela Street", today. In the same way, there is a Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Str. in Germany. Renowned historians believe that, G.W. Bush, Jr. President of the USA, since seven years, will be judged in future, in a manner nobody knows, who is alive today. His approval rating has run a helter-skelter course since he took office in 2001, the same year our own President J.A. Kufuor was inaugurated. In the beginning, he got a rating of 61 by his own people. Nine months later, the Twin-Towers, America's business nerve-center, in New York and the Pentagon, were demolished by "aero plane-bombs." Altogether, some 4 000 lives were lost, not to forget the three Trillion US Dollars of lost business.

G. W. Bush, the US President, sprang up, like a Tiger, and swore to get Osama bin Ladin, the ostracized Saudi Tycoon, believed to have been behind the dastardly act. At this point, eighty-five out of every one hundred Americans supported him. Magnificent! Then he went to Afghanistan, and overthrew the Taliban, but he failed to catch Bin Ladin, or even the Afghan Leader, Omar. There was hardly a pause for the boys at the Pentagon, and he was ready for Saddam Hussein, (ex-President of Iraq). His approval rating cannot be followed closely anymore, because, it changes by the second.

As I write, his rating is at 31%, but by the time you may be reading this article, it could be anybody's guess. Some say, he is a good man for the West, others say, for the entire World, but yet a third group has it that, Iraq was a damnable mistake for President Bush, as regards his foreign policy. American soldiers die by their numbers, and by the day. Their remains are brought home in plastic bags, the same way as in the Vietnam War, a generation previously, where America lost 50 000 young lives altogether, and brought in 250 000 wounded young men, and untold number of drug-addicted, from the battle-field. War!!!!!

In the year 1099, the French Pope, Urban II, pronounced an appeal, (in Islam, they would call it Fatwa), for Christian young men, to march on Jerusalem, and reaching there, just kill any non-Christians they would encounter. This happened indeed, and history named the 2nd Crusade. How is Pope Urban II's approval rating in the 21st Century? I doubt if many people would bother themselves lately on matters like that. My admiration for G.W. Bush as a man, and as world leader, is in how he manages to differ and stand firm on many critical issues. He is convinced that the price of Freedom is high. He believes that, had the world stood against Hitler earlier than we did, (1939-1945), less people would have perished, and the world-refugee palaver would have been non-existent, or much less in magnitude. Maybe his analysis is right, only we cannot know right now. Time will tell.

Many books are already written about him, and a lot more are going to be written for sure. People who write these books are the men and women, who have studied the subject called Geopolitics, and they understand it best, and I am sure of that. But they are not infallible.

Their analysis and advice may influence how the big political players handle world affairs. The way the leaders act does affect the way we ordinary people lead our lives. We need to travel, locally and internationally. Oil prices affect how much we pay to get a lot of services in our day-to-day activities. There is no other way.

It was not different at the time of Julius Caesar, only we could not fly then, and there was no CNN, or Al Jazeera. We did not hear it the moment it took place, and we did not see pictures of the battles. Talented artists gave us their impression of battles that took place, years later. That was then.

If the Scots could honor an African by "street-naming" him, what is so adverse in calling a road in Ghana, "G.W. Bush Road? Perhaps, we should honor our hard working sons and daughters as well, by erecting edifices, and naming our deserving citizen after them.

About 130 years ago, a male child was born in Japan. He was named Hideyo Noguchi, (1876-1928), after Nippon traditions. Destiny would take him to America, after entering medical school in Japan, where his wish was to become a Surgeon, and join the Army, to serve his Majesty, the Japanese Emperor thereafter. There were problems though. He was born with deformities of his limbs, (a condition called dysmelia in developmental medicine), whereby in his case, the hands were most grotesquely affected. His biography narrates that he went through 22 surgical procedures, before he was able to move any fingers at all, and hence being able to lead an independent life. He had to dump his ambition of becoming a Surgeon, but his love for medicine remained supreme all the same. Noguchi graduated as a Doctor of Medicine, and majored in Microbiology in the United States of America, and he married an American lady from influential circles. He came to Ghana under sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation, to carry out research into Yellow Fever. It may be of interest to add that, Hideyo Noguchi also owns the credit of having identified the spirochetes that cause Syphilis. He died of Yellow Fever at Korle-Bu in 1928. Specimens of his liver were taken to Japan recently, where confirmation was ascertained of the diagnosis, YELLOW FEVER!

I encountered his Bronze-Monument in front of the Medical Block at Korle-Bu the time I was chasing doctors like a mad dog at Korle-Bu, to get a "medical examination" done, in order to be able to fly.

This was a ceremony those days, "if you were going to fly." I cannot tell you how many times I paced to and fro, each time with my eyes on a Japanese/American Doctor, who once worked in Ghana, and died in Ghana. Medical examinations were then not easy to get, and I understand almost fifty years later, nothing has changed in our Land.

On a visit to Japan for a conference the very first time in 1985, my Japanese colleagues advised me, to tell the children, who daily, and curiously inquired about my job, to answer them, "I do the same thing as Dr. Noguchi." Of course, I did not do the same thing as Dr. Noguchi, but I am convinced the kids were satisfied with hearing I was a Doctor too. I can't count how many autographs I must have penned out on that visit. I never had the time, out of six visits on the whole, to pay tribute to the birthplace of a man, who must have loved my nation, (and mankind too). The place is enshrined, and every Japanese child, and I am convinced adults as well, know something about Hideyo Noguchi's birthplace. The Japanese Government has pumped a lot of Yen into the Noguchi Medical Research Center in our country. It is one of the pillars that bolster good relations with the Japanese people, and us, Ghanaians. As legacy, I am sure, whichever side you may stand on the political divide, you may have heard from the man himself, (Kwame Nkrumah), something dubbed "Africa High Command." If we had it, would we be having situations like in The Chad, and Sudan Bugging us today?

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