Editorial (13th October)
Residents of Anomabo in the Mfantseman District of the Central region were left in a condition of both pity and shock after a high wave washed away a young fellow while he was pooing or defecating in the ocean.
The deceased, believed to be in his 20s, was a stranger in the community who was there to celebrate a festival.
He had disclosed his decision to defecate in the sea, but all efforts to talk him out of doing so proved futile. He reportedly insisted that he always enjoyed defecating in the sea because of the cool breeze.
He proceeded against caution to squat on one of the rocks in the sea to answer nature’s call. While at it, a heavy tidal wave erupted unexpectedly and washed him deep into the sea.
The incident was reported to the Anomabo Police Station for investigation while a search was organized for his body.
Chief Fisherman for the Anomabo Community Nana Kwame Sankah who confirmed the incident said it was not the first time the sea washed away somebody in the area.
His only surprise was how far the young man managed to go into the sea to make himself comfortable on the rock to defecate.
He condemned the attitude of people defecating into the sea, adding that the community would perform some rituals to seek forgiveness from the sea to enable them to retrieve the body of the victim.
In Ghana, a significant proportion of the population prefer to engage in what is called open defecation. This includes relieving themselves in gutters, beaches, rivers, marshes, bushes and any available piece of land apart from places legally and properly designated as places for attending nature’s call.
The practice has led to Ghana being listed as one of the countries where at least 20% of the population engage in open defecation.
We find it unseemly that a complete stranger to a town would decide that he would go to squat on a rock in the sea to attend to nature’s call, when he well knew that he cannot swim, and that the practice is unhealthy and abhorred by local persons.
We regret what has happened to him, and we believe that what happened has no link with what he had set out to do. However, we believe that it is high time people learned to behave responsibly.
We hope that the body would be found, and he would in time be identified and returned to his family. But his fate should serve as a lesson to all of us.
We should all learn to abhor open defecation.
(This article was first published in the column EDITORIAL of the Daily Searchlight of Thursday, 13th October, 2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and PDF versions are available for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
