Madina, Accra: A Casual Look from 18 years ago
- Dr. Lloyd Amoah | Infoboxdaily
- May 25, 2015
- 2 min read
A report released a few days ago in Accra looks at Ghana’s urbanization. The title is interesting: Rising through Cities in Ghana.
I have been fascinated and numbed by our spatial organization and observed this closely as a citizen. In 1997 I wrote this piece as part of a collection of my private writings that are set for publication. A view of part of Accra from the ground up 18 years ago.
Madina literally dies at night: shockingly it reveals not so little as a single sign of its ebullience so evidently manifest in daylight. Here is an exciting mish mash of habitations: plush but not extraordinarily plush quarters bunched together here; there intertwined and intermingling uncomfortably working class and slum shelters and shacks.
In common with some areas of Accra, Madina has a distinctly commercial and economic pulsating heartbeat. The thumping of this heartbeat exudes principally from the assortment of stores, stalls, and infact markets that line the Old Road. There is a fairly grand market there too.
Recently face-lifted from its rudimentary constitution buildings of concrete and iron have sprung up where heads and pans and wooden (rickety) lots served up the marketable. There is life, abundant life on Old Road. The smells, colour and the maddeningly frenetic pace of things may momentarily overwhelm the first timer. Lawlessness serves as the motor of it all! The golden rule is “Do as you consider advantageous to you. To Hell with the welfare of others.’’
Drivers of especially death dealing commercial vehicles are the most ardent adherents of this tenet of Madina.
Labelling Madina the planner’s nightmare is apropos. Drainage in virtually non-existent. Filth is everywhere. So many people are crammed in a few kilometers squared of space: housing is a nightmare. And there is an M.P. and an assembly in charge of it all. It would be safe I suppose to call Madina a reflection of most suburbs strewn across the capital Accra. Even if your ears are stopped you cannot fail to hear the loud whisper: “Fend for yourself, each man to his or her own”.
I shudder! An Akan was voted M.P. for Madina. Officially he is a Christian too in a Madina, outpost of Islam. The point is simple: the religion and tribes eke out an accommodating existence. The message cannot be clearer!
At night Madina has the tendency to simmer down like a rocket that has spent its fuel. Along the various routes, lamps made locally flicker in their number, their naked flame and smoke dancing.
Food is up for sale. As the night stretches the crowds thin and the lamps dim in number and in intensity. The neighborhoods flock of youths of all shade and social strata are at rest. Serenity rules the roost. That is Madina for you as Accra hobbles towards 2000 AD.
Part 2 follows shortly, looking at Madina today.
Source: Infoboxdaily.com
Dr. Lloyd Amoah
