The chicken cross wrong roads becuase it cannot read road signs. Sometimes i wonder if human beings are chicken.
THE difference between life and death can be a second. For her, a second was all it took for the driver of an articulated truck to run over her at a zebra crossing at Kwesimintsim, near Takoradi.
One second earlier and she would have continued down the road together with friends to buy lollipop, and onto the bus terminal, for a bus to Agyiba International School campus to attend classes. One second later and she'd slammed on her ‘brakes’ and put nasty dents in both her school uniform and a stranger’s articulated truck.
But on the morning of January 14 this year, time wasn't on Melissa Donkoh’s side. The witnesses who rushed to cradle her broken body didn't know they were nursing her through the final moments of her life. They didn't know of the jokes her friends made of the way she sprawled her belongings across the Agyiba International School library: maths set, books, colour pencils, pencil case etc. Of how she roamed the family home playing maame ne paapa, and piiloloo, serenading her mother with azonto dance. And they didn't know that some months later, her parents and entire family and the nation at large would sit in tears, in the final chapter of their attempt to understand how their beloved child was killed. Still, without even knowing Melissa’s name, the strangers told her that she was much loved; she just had to keep fighting.
But when Melissa took her last breath, she went from being charismatic, talented and loved kid to simple, bleak statistic. And while there are tragic stories behind every road fatality, the greatest loss is felt by those closest to the life lost. The hope of her family that their child would rejoin them was dashed, as Melissa, whose brother and others died on the spot, while her sister and other schoolmates sustained various degrees of injury, passed on in the early hours of the day.
I could not hide my tears as I listened to Joy FM’s documentary on this tragedy—my bed was almost ‘flooded’ with tears as the story unfolds. Mrs. Donkor hasn't been in her kids’ room for nearly eleven months now. "All their things are there packed in suitcases. It looks like they’re either ready to go somewhere or they’ve just come home." Losing a child in any circumstances is tragedy enough; knowing they were killed by a momentary lapse in judgment — a driver not looking properly for children at zebra crossing, not seeing them — only adds salt to the wound.
There had been a succession of horrendous motor accidents: year after year young people, mothers and fathers, innocent babies are being killed. Some people explode — like a thin plastic envelope full of offal which has been hurled against a brick wall (I have been an eye witness to such a terrific scene). Others die intact. Ruptured inside but un-harmed to look at. There may be a thin, trickle of blood from an ear or nostril. Death is not instantaneous. Rather, it comes in a matter of minutes. There is no pain as we know it ... nothing sharp, exquisite, and searing. It is an inner numbness, a bubbling frothing thing and a terrible inability to breathe.
They are winded, punched in the stomach by a ton of metal moving at 60 mph or more, shattering
every bone in the body as a fist would shatter a wine glass wrapped in a rug. They never breathe again.
Men, who were mothers' sons, wives' husbands, girls' lovers, children's fathers — die with their trousers on, which somehow lends them dignity. Women die with their legs apart in a lewd display. Children die most horribly because they are seldom properly seated or braced. They are thrown through jagged windscreens to roll and skid along road surfaces. Or, cradled in their mother’s laps, they are sandwiched between her and the unyielding dashboard. Some people are burned to death. They are not incinerated, as you'd imagine, but tend to bake or char. Their clothes burn off them and the skin bakes into quite a hard rind which makes a hollow sound if you tap it.
Some, the ‘lucky’ ones survive. They make the best of it, but many wish for death. I've seen those with brain damage, whose minds were shaken loose in their skulls. Men with glazed, half-lidded eyes, with neither bowel nor bladder control who lie in bed with no sensation below the shoulders so that bowel obstructions, appendicitis, bladder problems go undetected by the normal warning systems which we know as pain.
I've seen and read things that make me sick to the heart. And I thought you should know. I need you back alive. Your family needs you alive. Ghana needs you to stay alive. Remember ‘road safety’ is a collective responsibility.
So watch before you leap...Drive safe into Christmas and beyond.
(My condolences to the Donkoh family of Takoradi and the many families who lost their loved ones to road accident. May the souls of the departed ones rest in peace…!!!)
by Enoch Ebo-Rhema
