A Country of Beggars

I really hope Ghana will develop the country in the not too distant future, but in my prediction it won’t happen in the next 100 year unless they acquire the sense of shame. I am a dreamer but I am not an idealist. As far as I’ve seen Ghana so far, I can’t find the light for future in people around me. I would say that Ghanaians are beggars. I know you would get me wrong but I must say it in order to encourage and inspire people in developing countries. What I mean is that Ghanaians are very “dependent”; even if Ghana has got the first independence in Africa in 1957, the independence would never bring up the sprits of modernization and change habits of people automatically. As long as people are dependent, Ghana won’t develop the country by the hands of Ghanaians in future.

I talked about difference between countries and societies and manner is also included in it. There are cultural manners and social ones; the former means local rules and the latter means universal etiquette in the world. In Ghana, when you hand on money to someone, you must use right hand because left hand is regarded as unclean. Since it doesn’t happen in my country, this is cultural manner. And as I mentioned before, when we Japanese are walking on streets, some Ghanaians say, “Chin, chon, chan”, mimicking Chinese language, in order to make fun of us or become friendly?! Whatever reasons are, this sort of behavior is not acceptable in any society in the world, namely this is out of universal manner. But why can some Ghanaians do it? I’ve never heard the words, rude or impolite in Ghana, and when I asked colleagues about the sign language for it, they didn’t know it. This shows that in Ghana people don’t care about rudeness. It’s a matter of sense of shame.

In psychology human emotions are categorized into the 1^st emotions, pleasure, anger, sad, happy, fear etc. and 2^nd ones, shame, honor, pride, respect, humility etc. And animals like dogs, cats, monkeys, seem to have the 1^st feeling, but not the 2^nd ones. So if you don’t feel ashamed at all, you might be closer to animals. In Ghana people, from children to any adults, don’t feel ashamed to beg things and money. On my way to Savelugu town, children always scream to me “Buy toffee!”; some unknown adults say at first time, “Give me a computer”, “I want to go to Japan, please take me!”; even a school staff said about a broken school car the other day, “You pay to repair it”. I know they say it as a joke, but the problem is the mentality they don’t feel shame at the act of “begging”. This act is still socially accepted in Ghana, so they should bring up social manners to develop country. By contrast, begging is the most shameful act in Japan, so even the homeless never beg on streets. And whenever financial issues occur at school, teachers always seek for donation, as if it were human rights, and never think to make money by themselves. I say to my students, “Don’t expect donation but you make if you want it”. Without righteous spirits, Ghana would stay the same for 100 years.

At the dawn of the modernization in Japan, Eiichi Shibusawa, who is regarded as the father of Japanese economy, grieved about mean attitude of people without the sense of shame; people in Edo period were used to being mean. And he considered “Pride” was the essential spirit of economy thus educated people with “pride and the sense of money”. He meant the pride was the sense of fairness, justice, and honesty in economical activities; lie, deceit and betrayal meant no shame and no pride. And today this spirits are inherited to Japanese business men who sustain the Japanese economy. By the way, if you can lie, it means you have no shame, so you’re closer to animals, however if you’re good at Politics, you’re surely human beings because hypocrisy is part of the 2^nd human emotion too.