Ever since I was born, I’ve never heard anything like the economy is now better than the past years. It’s always “ahhh things have just become more expensive” or people not affording to eat three times a day. Everyone just keeps on complaining. I don’t think things will get better, we rather have been getting better at adapting. If you used to buy a sachet of water at 10 pesewas about 7 years ago, it’s now 50 pesewas so that means you have been working harder to afford that same thing but you just haven’t paid attention.
What I’ve realized in Ghana is that, most people work so hard, I mean so hard, just to be able to afford food and accommodation. You’ll see a young person wake up every blessed day to go to a 9 - 5 job just to collect salary at the end of the month and it all goes into “rent”. Imagine paying rent of 5000 cedis a year and then earning less than 2000 cedis a month. Let me not bore you with maths but the thing is that, if you take your feeding and transportation expenses from your salary, the rest might not even be enough for that rent.
In terms of economical issues, I just know someway somehow that things won’t even get better. I don’t even know who has been chasing inflation. That thing just keeps on flying to “who even knows where”. Prices of goods? That’s not even funny. You buy something today at 50cedis, the next week it’s 100 cedis. Sometimes the sellers even laugh when they see you coming because they know very well you will be shocked to hear the news they have for you.
Some weeks ago, my mom wanted to buy bags of cement. She actually paid for them but the only mistake she did was that she didn’t specify which brand she wanted. They also didn’t even tell her the prices had increased at that time. According to cement store, they thought she already knew since she was their “customer”. Long story short, when she was ready to go for the cement bags, she had to top up with about 2/3 of the price.
I won’t even blame just the government on this. Imagine retailers just increasing prices anyhow and whenever they feel like. I know some people even wake up and increase the prices of their goods just because they probably slept at the wrong side of their beds. I always say I don’t see things getting better in this economy because I never see any signs of that. We rather get better at adapting. It’s really exhausting but we sometimes have no choice than to do beyond our capabilities just to make sure we survive.
I still believe better days are coming. My only worry is that someone should check up on them. It could be they had an accident on their way or their car broke down because they are taking too long to get here.
Images are mine
