The 10th To 20th Dry Season

Ghanaians experience two types of dry seasons.

The first one has to do with weather patterns which are the alternation between the rain and the period of absence of rainfall.

The second is the metaphor for the monthly cycle of salaried workers in which their pay runs out ten days into the new month.

The first dry season within the context of this report bites the homeless, those whose houses are located in waterways, and persons who ply open-air activities.

The second scenario affects workers in institutions that pay wages far below their needs or are easily and speedily whittled away by the rising cost of living.

In the typical household where the breadwinner earns 2,500ghc, and maybe with a marginal top-up by a housewife who is into petty trading, the couple faces a dire and precarious situation handling 3 or 4 children.  The salary of father pays just one school fee. The complement by the mother or wife might only serve for daily subsistence.

After 10 days in the new month, with 20 more days before the receipt of the next income from the institution of employment or a government, the old and present salary is finished. This defines the plight of workers in Ghana whose meager earnings force them to a place below ordinary lifestyles.

Certainly, families will be swimming in the other water called loans. The vicious cycle begins.

They are susceptible to opportunistic medical conditions, sometimes fatal, under the stress and pressure to eke a mere existence.

The period between the 10th and 20th of every month in Ghana is when you find workers struggling with empty hands, asking each other for pittances to keep going. Whilst school-going children may be knocked out of school, the family is not in the position to buy basics such as soap, toilet rolls, water, food, transport, clothing, pay for the use of electricity, waste disposal, and the almighty rent that pits them with nagging landlords. ”The matter chop hot”, No leisure, please.

It is reported that some workers walk long distances to work. Daavi too has been crediting workers who patronize her food joint for reimbursement at a future date. Asem ooo.

Some cartoonists have squarely depicted this reality with images showing salaries in stunted growth. The charges gnawing at the poor worker looking burly and buoyant.

They are condemned to ”grebuuuuu.” This vulnerable group which absorbs its pain, reminds one of a famous quotation in the name of Henry David Thoreau, a British political thinker of the 18th century. He said, ”The mass of men lives in quiet desperation.”