We Have One Ghana! We Don't Want To Be Refugees!

Ms. Joyce Ohenewaa Kwapong advocating
 for peace at St Thomas Aquinas SHS

WE HAVE ONE GHANA!! WE DON'T WANT TO BE REFUGEES!!

You and I may not know the value of peace until we have been handed guns to shoot our own mothers and fathers.

We may not know the worth of being peaceful until we see our young girls, our little sisters, the children of tomorrow, our future leaders, being "war raped" and forcefully impregnated, with Sexually Transmitted Diseases on the rampant and death tolls reaching a crescendo.

We may not know what peace really is, until we starve as food and thirst as water.

We may not see the need to be peaceful until an entire family who once had more than enough to eat and waste, can no more afford a cup of rice nor piece of bread to nibble.

Oh yes! Not until hunger becomes the children's bread and tears their water, we may not see the essence of being peaceful.

Today, we may overlook what it means to be a peaceful nation, because we may not have seen human arms being slain in the name of "short and long sleeves"

We may not value peace today because we have not experienced gruesome moments where individuals have to trample upon dead bodies of family members, as they flee for their dear lives.

We have never encountered the trauma underlying leaving one's place of abode to a lone man's land as refugees running from the rains of bullets and from the comfort of one's bed to live under tents.

Many countries, with the likes of Rwanda, South Sudan, Liberia, Somalia, Angola, Burundi, have had an eyesore encounter of war, deaths, destruction, disabilities, pollution, psychological stress related to war, to mention but few.

Team of speakers for the peace-advocacy
 campaign tour

These great countries were once as peaceful as Ghana, but today, they are being used as cautionary tales.

Why???

This question is left to you and I to answer.

If today, Ghana is enjoying peace and tranquility, we ought to see it as a privilege which we must fearfully and jealously protect.

We must task ourselves with the responsibility of maintaining the peace we have as a nation.

We must use our positive strengths to maintain the peace of our land than to spend it in salvaging the leftovers after the nation is plunged in war.

Let us not wait to ran out of our own land seeking for refuge, like animals being frightened and chased away whilst grazing on another man's land.

It is for the peace of this nation and the desire not to see Ghana encounter such atrocities, that a team of student leaders and activists have come together to go on a peace-advocacy campaign tour dubbed "The need for violent free election"

A campaign tour spearheaded by the Face of GUPS; Shemimah Dapilah and assisted by various student leaders and activists in the persons of Barrack Dodoo, E.K.D Oppong, Tunde Awosika, and myself, Joyce Ohenewaa Kwapong.

As an activist for women and children, I cannot keep silent but to advocate for the peace of Ghana because when a nation is "peace wrecked", women and children suffer most.

The peace of Ghana is my peace, your peace and the peace of generations unborn.

We have One Ghana! We don't want to be refugees!

Ghana needs peace and not to be left in pieces.

Be a peace magnet!

    Be an agent of peace!