Loneliness

Prompted by an article in The Guardian about new levels of loneliness including the painful loneliness of loss and bereavement, conversations with  neighbours and work colleagues reveal surprise and shock that in the UK an elderly person may die alone in their home, the body not be discovered for days, even longer.

Partly a feature of lack of transport, of money to buy land or to build, of education and career, but also a deliberate choice of way of life, the pattern of extended families living together in a compound continues for the majority in the Upper East region of Ghana. Those who move away to study, or when directed to take a government post, will be offered shared accommodation, never a single occupancy residence.  Stopping, calling round or phoning to greet and ask after everyone’s health is part of the daily routine, and takes precedence when arriving at work, for example. In Africa, everyone is his brother's keeper.

“Aren’t you lonely?” I am asked, when mentioning that fellow housemates are away for a day or longer.

I say that with a mobile phone and the internet, I keep in touch with family and friends back at home, that there are volunteers nearby plus my Ghanaian friends. I don’t attempt to explain the actual pleasure of periods of time alone, and that this is not the same as loneliness. I choose not to reveal the occasional peering over an edge into a pit of despair, as thankfully these pass.

The children from one family compound- with my friend Fati.

When I then ask, to one who reveals he grew up in a family of ten children, what it was like at home each day, he holds his hands up, recalls constant arguments and noise, and goes on to describe how he saved, bought land and began building his own family home.

A woman sells prepared food by the roadside- washing bowls and pots- while carrying her sleeping baby on her back. Women carry out the household tasks, take  the main responsibility for bringing up the children and perform an estimated 80% of agricultural labouring. 

What is not discussed, but does happen here, as anywhere, is where the celebrated features of extended family living break down, through individuals not taking their share of responsibilities or a dominant individual inflicting misery on others,  but where individuals are trapped within, unable because of poverty,  disability, lack of education and alternatives to escape. And surely this must be a lonely place too?  For women, with restraints associated with poverty, lack of education, compounded by the traditions and religious conventions of male dominance superseding legal rights( for example ownership land), staying within the collective family fold is the only viable option.

Loneliness-and its fellow traveller boredom, are draining inflictions when circumstances entrap.

But for anyone happily free of such ties, they become the impetus for action, for change, for seeking out and finding.