It’s a late Sunday afternoon on September 28th, and Accra hits the brakes to watch.
From a kilometre away, a lone figure begins his challenging walk toward the National Theatre. He’s covered in a rough jutesack, ropes biting into his wrists and ankles. A green fishing net hangs over him. The left side of his face is sharply painted (white, green, and orange), a splintered mask showing a nation fighting itself.
In his hand, a tall staff topped with cowbells slams the hot asphalt. The metallic ring doesn’t just make noise; it booms like the old gong-gong beater, sounding a clear warning across the city: The risk of fighting among ourselves, the heavy price of forgetting we are one. Cars slow down, trotros pause, and people on the pavement fall silent as his steps cut through the daily hustle.
At the theatre forecourt, eleven bowls of water sit waiting in a perfect circle. Each bowl represents a tribe in Ghana, distinct in size, colour, and how full it is. In the very middle is a rusted colonial rifle, a deadly souvenir of a time when outsiders made us fight each other for their own gain.
The figure lifts the rifle, then drops it with a loud clatter. Instead, he faces the bowls. With frantic, desperate energy, he scoops water, explicitly trying to unite the tribes by forcing them to share equally. The water (which is all we have) isn’t being shared fairly: some bowls flood, others run completely dry. Water splashes onto the concrete, wasted and lost because the desperate effort fails. He gets down on his knees, trying to scoop the precious liquid back, but it just soaks into the dust.
The bowls remain unbalanced. The rifle, the old instrument of division, remains. His urgent effort cannot hold.
He walks away, the cowbells’ fading jingle leaving us with a critical question for our generation: If we keep fighting over who gets what, and ignore the roots of our division, how will we ever share the future and achieve true national progress?
