In July 2018, Kwabena Amikaketo sat in a chair in Terminal 4 of JFK International Airport waiting for the flight to Ghana, his Motherland, to be called. It will take a little over an hour before that call will be made, and he decided to spend the time reflecting on his life over the past forty-five years.
It began in secondary school when, full of life and hope for the future, he held on to one dream: to get to the Promised Land, the Land of Opportunities, the Land of Freedom and the Land of Justice; the Land of the Free for All. He held on to the belief that if he was to be somebody in society, he must go through the United States of America, where all his dreams will be fulfilled.
Kwabena believed so much in the US, much more than he believed in his own country Ghana. He had more shirts, handkerchiefs and shorts with the American colours on than he had with his own national flag, which he hardly flew. He adopted and responded to the name San Francisco.
Of course, no one was surprised when he disappeared from Ghana and was found body, spirit and soul in the U.S of A after he completed his sixth form. His uncle invited him over, and he never wasted that opportunity.
When he landed in the land of his dreams, the freshness of the air and sereneness of the place made him decide that the next best place after America was Heaven. He landed a job in a nearby restaurant and took up another cleaning one in between work. He must work to survive here; more so, he must work to pay his way through the university. It was not too long for him to realise that in this Land of Dreams, you have to work not to sleep for your dreams to come through.
Kwabena Amikaketo’s mind drifted from one thing to the other in contemplation of his life in America. Since he landed in that country almost forty years ago, he had come to the conclusion that the USA was not a land of freedom. In fact, there were lots of things America stood up and enforced in the world, but she always practiced the opposite at home, a big hype one can call it.
Women got paid lower in some states than their male colleagues, and a certain lady, Melissa Nelson, a dentist assistant in Iowa, was dismissed by her boss, Dr James Knight, because she was too beautiful and feared she could wreck his marriage. In September 2013, the matter went to the Iowa Supreme Court, where the dismissal was upheld. In US, good looks can cost some people their jobs.
America is the leading voice in the UN in expressing disgust at child marriages going on in some third world countries, and yet, apart from New Jersey and Delaware, which set minimum marriage age at 18 years, all the other forty-eight states have legalised child marriage at ages below eighteen. And, in most cases, the child’s consent is not required, and yet legal marriage is by consent
And when the US Supreme legalised gay marriages, straight people who decided not to support this by withdrawing their services ended up in court, with some getting jailed or heavily fined or both. The pastor, whose belief did not permit him to officiate same-sex marriage, had his freedom taken away from him.
What disturbed Kwabena most was when his memories recalled the way Blacks were being treated in the States. The leading course of death in the Black youth was through police brutality. According to mappingpolice.org about 104 unarmed Black youth were killed by the police in America in 2015, alone. On February 2, 2012, 18 year old Jamaican Ramarley Graham was shot dead in the Bronx, New York City, New York, when he went to his own bathroom; on March 21, 2012, a 22 year old Black American woman, Rekia Boyd, was shot by the police in Chicago, Illinois for laughing; on November 22, 2014, 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot by the police for playing with a toy gun in the park; on September 16, 2016, 40 year old Terrance Crutcher was shot dead in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for standing by his broken down car; on March 18, 2018, 23 year old Black American Stephon Clark was shot dead in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, California, for holding a mobile phone in his hands, and there were many more of such cases.
In all such cases, none of the police officers involved in these gruesome murder cases were charged with the murder of innocent people.
Kwabena Amikaketo lamented how Blacks were treated in America. This was what informed his decision to relocate back home. Since he came to the USA some thirty-nine years ago, he had visited home only five times, twice to bury his parents, and thrice to see about the progress being made in the construction of his house in Accra.
Had he achieved what he went to the USA for? To him it was debatable. He did not make it rich as he thoughthe would. At least two of his colleagues in secondary school, who have never set foot at the airport before, were a very wealthy farmer and a wealthy trader. The farmer, for example, had put up a small village on his 500 hectares farmland with decent accommodation for his farm hands, and a something close to a mansion for his family and himself.
When Kwabena Amikaketo was invited to stay the weekend, he was given royal treatment. Fresh organic meals and good palm wine. He knew his wealth and vast experience living abroad could not match what his friend had.
On the other hand, his long stay in America had rewarded him with very rich experience and lots of contacts worldwide, after working for a multinational institution for thirty years. He had come back, and with links in high places he was made a consultant on a government project. But that was all, he has been working for the past two years, hoping to make it big and start his own business. He would never have got anywhere near that position if he had stayed in his country all through his life. Here people regarded everything America as the best.
But he had to leave the USA for good, and his when children insisted they would stay in the country of their birth, and would occasionally visit him in Ghana, his wife joined them, so Kwabena Amikaketo was all alone
He was leaving the USA because, to him, this country that had bestowed on itself the policeman of the world, the human rights campaigner, the international anti-terrorist agent and the leading free country in the world is exactly the opposite. It looks more like it is a country as worse as any third world country ruled by a military tyrant or wicked socialist civilian leader.
America was a big disappointment to him. He was there when Obama became president, and even though he was of mixed race, born of a pure East African from Kenya and a White American mother, he looked much blacker than any half-caste, and yet he was more white in thoughts and deeds.
During Obama’s first trip to Africa, he snubbed his father’s country, something very unthinkable in Black African culture. His reason was that Kenya engaged in a political conflict over the results of a general election. It was reported that about 1,500 people died, but, at least, they had reasons to fight against each other, and both sides were armed, even if that fight could have been avoided.
What did Obama do about the surge in police brutality against Blacks in America when he was president? He did not use his executive powers to clamp down on the US police and put them to order, while they continued to kill his fellow Blacks who so much believed in him. Today, what surged up during Obama’s administration continues to surge up under Trump, who is called a racist.
But then what do you call Obama? He watched as the Blacks were being killed; he presided over a nation when the Supreme Court decided in a narrow decision to legalise same-sex relations, something which was a taboo in his ancestral home, Africa; he watched as courts jailed people for their belief in God, which made them refuse to administer services to same sex couples; Obama even went ahead to promote LGBTs and attempted instilling that nonsense into African nations with bribes of very huge financial aid, and today, he still talks about a free world after he went to Libya to overthrow a regime the West defined as ruthless on its own people. Ghadaffi was an enemy to the free world, and he had to die for the world to be free. Yes, he was murdered, but America did worse in a short period to the people of Libya and Iraq than a combination of what Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussien did to their people, when US invaded the two countries without approval from the UN, and yet, George Bush still lives.
Is there freedom in America when Blacks can be killed for alleged or assumed crimes which are never found in criminal law? Someone walks away from the police and gets shot to death (Mario Woods aged 26); someone walks towards the police and gets shot to death (Iaquan McDonald aged 17); someone was walking the stairway to his apartment and gets killed by the police (Akai Gurley, aged 28); someone was wearing a hoodie and gets killed by the police (Trayvon Martin, aged 17).
America could air raid cocaine producing farms and factories in other countries, yet it legalised the drug in some states like Colorado, where children could legally use hard drugs. These things happened when Kwabena Amikaketo was in the USA, and for that reason he decided he had overstayed his visit.
Back home in Ghana, he was embracing the restrictions brought upon society to manage the Covid-19 pandemic, when he had a chilling call from his son who resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at 2 am of May 26, 2020. Kwabena was about to retire to bed after working on some government projects. His son sounded hysterical as he narrated how his colleague’s friend, George Floyd, was killed by suffocation by a White American police officer, assisted by a Chinese officer – lately the Chinese have also exhibited their hatred for Blacks.
It happened about an hour ago and he would send him the video clip of the incident as soon as he got it. What crime did the 46 year old commit? He was told he was suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes, for that he was killed by the police.
When the video arrived earlier in the morning, Kwabena was shocked at the way a mean looking White police officer gladly knelt on George’s neck for nine minutes, ignoring his pleas and repeated cries of “I can’t breathe,” till he passed on from this life. He slumped into his chair, very angry, very disappointed and very sad. America, the land of free for all, is indeed a land of free to kill and terrorise the Black Americans.
USA is a one big terrorist banana republic, in fact, a big hypocrite and pretender, he concluded.
Author: Hon Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s editorial stance
The post The Memoirs of Kwabena Amikaketo (1) US of A: The Land of the Free and Gross Human Rights Abuse appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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