Sikaman, the rains have come again, and so has the cure. And what a cure it is.
You remember last week I told you about the Buz Stop Boys — six young men with brooms who clean our gutters for free, doing the work nobody pays them for. Well, this week the big people have answered. The government has looked at the flood, looked at the dead Odaw River, looked at the families sleeping on rooftops in Nima, and they have brought us their solution.
A campaign, charley.
NADMO and Zoomlion have launched a 12-week flood awareness campaign to teach the public not to throw rubbish into the gutters. They have called it “No Do No Do.”
No Do No Do. Sikaman, I want you to sit with that name for a moment. Somebody sat in a meeting — a meeting with chairs, with bottled water, with a person taking minutes — and after long thinking, that is the name they brought out. No Do No Do. It is not a road. It is not a drain. It is not a single shovel. It is a slogan. And we are meant to be grateful.
Let me explain what the campaign will do, in case you are confused. It will feature public education, community outreach, stakeholder engagements, and clean-up exercises in flood-prone areas. Now, charley, let me translate those words from government-English into Sikaman-English, because that is my job.
“Public education” means: they will tell us, the people who are currently standing in our own living rooms holding buckets, that water is wet and rubbish blocks gutters. We did not know this. We have only been living it since 1957. Thank you.
“Community outreach” means: a van with a loudspeaker — yes, charley, the same loudspeaker van from my other story — will drive through your area at an unholy hour announcing that you should keep your surroundings clean.
“Stakeholder engagement” means: a meeting. With meat pie. Somebody will give a long speech thanking “all protocols observed.” The real outcome of the meeting will be the meat pie.
And “clean-up exercise” — eii — this is the sweet one. It means that for one Saturday, men in branded T-shirts will appear with brooms, sweep one stretch of gutter while the cameras are rolling, take a group photograph, and then go home. The brooms will not be seen again until next June, when the campaign shall be relaunched under a new name. No Do No Do Two: The Return.
But here is the part that truly catches me, Sikaman. The part I cannot let go.
The campaign is twelve weeks long.
Twelve weeks. Charley, how long is the rainy season? About twelve weeks. So we have been given a flood solution that begins when the rain begins and dies when the rain dies. By the time everybody is properly “aware,” the floods are over, the sun is back, and the campaign quietly packs its banners into a store room until next year. It is the only medicine in the world designed to last exactly as long as the sickness and not one day longer.
And we have seen this film before, my brother. Same script, every June. The rain falls, people die, the country is angry. Then a campaign is launched with a clever name. Then a durbar is held. Then a minister appears in his rolled-up trousers, standing in the water, assessing the situation. Then the rain stops, everyone forgets, and the gutters stay exactly as blocked as they were. We did this in 2015 too — the year 126 Ghanaians died in one flood because the Odaw could not carry the water. Eleven years later, the answer to that same river is a slogan.
Now — let me be fair, because Kokote is always fair. The campaign is not telling lies. The NADMO director said something true: that flooding is not an unavoidable disaster, but a problem we can prevent if we act together. He is correct. He is completely correct. Throwing rubbish in the gutter is a bad habit, and it is ours. We do it. I have seen a well-dressed man step out of a clean car and drop a pure-water sachet into a drain as if the drain was begging for it. So yes — part of this wahala is our own hand. Yɛn ara asɛm. Our own doing.
But Sikaman, here is the thing nobody at the durbar wants to say out loud: Zoomlion is not a volunteer. Zoomlion is paid. For years and years, this company has collected government money to manage our waste and keep our drains clean. So when they now arrive — with cameras — to “teach” us not to dirty the gutters they were already being paid to clean, charley, something is upside down. It is like paying a man to cook your food for ten years, and then one day he calls a press conference to teach you that hunger is bad.
Let me tell you about Aunty Mansah. She sells tomatoes and garden eggs at the market in a low place that floods every single year. Three years running, Aunty Mansah has been invited to a “sensitisation durbar.” Three years she has sat under a canopy, listened to the speeches, collected her meat pie, clapped politely, and gone home. And three years running, the same June rain has come and carried her tomatoes down the same gutter into the same Odaw River. Aunty Mansah does not need more awareness, charley. Aunty Mansah is the most aware woman in Ghana. What Aunty Mansah needs is for somebody to clean the drain behind her stall. One drain. With a real shovel. Not a slogan. Not a T-shirt. Not a meat pie.
So this is my small word, Sikaman — my Kokote Suggestion. Keep the part of the campaign that is true: yes, let us stop throwing borla in the gutter, that one is on us, let us do better. But the other part — the durbars, the T-shirts, the twelve-week banners — let us be honest that it is show. A country does not need to be “made aware” of a flood it is currently standing inside. A country needs the drains cleaned, the buildings moved off the waterways, and the paid people to do the work they are paid for. The Buz Stop Boys understood this with no budget. Surely the big people, with all their meetings, can understand it too.
Onyame mmoa yɛn, Sikaman. God help us. Because the rain is not waiting for our awareness. The rain has never once needed a slogan to find the gutter.
Yours under the same leaking roof, Kobina Kokote Lifetime attendee of sensitisation durbars · Honorary collector of free meat pie · Officially boycotting any flood solution that ends the same week the rain does
P.S. — I have already guessed next year’s campaign name, so nobody should waste a meeting on it. It will be called “Stop Am.” There will be T-shirts. The gutter behind Aunty Mansah’s stall will still be blocked. We move.