The path to the primary school, though visible, was overgrown with many varieties of low-lying green leafy weeds and flourishing wild plants, though not covered enough to make it impossible to tread along. One only needed to watch out for possible snakes looking for lizards, mice and afternoon toads for food. There was a refuse dump not too far away from the school path and one often saw vultures there scavenging for domestic rejects deposited there from the homes of the people living in the town.

A gentle whitish black smoke billowed from the middle of the heap and passers-by always received a sharp greeting on their nostrils from the familiar odour of the decomposing material forming the mountain of debris. It was also common to see a lad depositing his morning contribution of household refuse into the wealth of food leftovers, broken bottles, old cooking utensils, dead animals and whatever was thought to belong there, a terrain with a slightly sinking effect to the feet of those who visited the site. It was equally not impossible to see some other special kind of leftover straight from human bowels, left there by people who had no toilets in their home and so had to go and do their business there under the cover of darkness. Children in particular did not need the cover of darkness for that. These deposits to the great bank, from both children and adults of course not odourless, were kept in a separate open bank account, behind the front desk, and could clearly be distinguished by a sensitive nose from the combined smell of the environment.

The bush path led directly to the primary school football pitch. The school garden was located to the west of the school compound, on the borders of the refuse dump. To the east of the school football park were the classrooms of primary 1 to 3. Adjoining the fenced school farm, to the northern end of the compound was a forest beneath which flowed a gentle stream. Leading to the stream was a slanting footpath descending through plantain trees, cocoyam plants, and solid tropical trees of different heights. Some of the trees had strong branches low enough to be reached by any person of average height.

It was on one of these branches, deep inside the quiet typical West African tropical bush, on one of these strong tree branches, that an old lady had planned to tie one end of her special necklace, not made from gold, copper or diamond, but of from jute. It was a rope meant to be used as a macabre necklace to snuff life out of a human being. You must have seen through the metaphors and euphemisms what sort of necklace the old lady’s rope was.

As Sintim Aboagye, the class one pupil, reached the school compound early that morning, he saw in the middle of the school football park a group of three young strong men restraining an elderly woman in tears, with a strong long rope nicely rolled around her neck and freely hanging onto her chest. The morning assembly time for the primary school was not yet up so some of the pupils had gathered around the lady and the young men. He joined them to listen to what they were saying and what the matter was all about. The woman was bitterly arguing with them in a weak feminine voice and a frail body frame.

She was accusing the young men, his grandchildren, of being hypocrites and ungrateful. They lived together in a typical traditional West African setting in one compound. They gave her absolutely no respect and harassed her every day as if she were insane and not fit anymore to live among them. She needed assistance to walk even the shortest distances around the house for some of her basic natural needs. Her vulnerable condition had on a few occasions given rise to offensive comments from her grand-children, the young men found on the scene at the middle of the school park. They at times went to the extent of saying that she had become a nuisance, completely forgetting how their father told them that she was the one who took excellent care of him during his youth. On one particular day, she decided that enough was enough. Advanced old age had become too much of a burden her.

When she was young, she had surveyed the nature of the vegetation where the stream flowed calmly in the cool temperatures of the forest nearby. She remembered some of the trees had beautiful singing birds in one of the most peaceful environments one could find on earth to be alone. The strong branches of some of the short trees had her pondering over the project of ending her life by reaching up there to hang herself with a rope paradoxically used by the family for giving life not death; at the end of the long and strong rope hung a small bucket used by the large family for drawing water from their family well which had been dug inside the family compound. She had removed it from the bucket and headed for the forest with her plans. They brought her back home that day, she found an alternative another day. She carried her plans through in a different way. That story must not be told. It ended as a tragedy.

There is one important question we need to ask. Why do we pray in our churches to live to a very advanced old age, with some praying to live even beyond 100 years, when we know that these days our cultural setting has the least regard or tolerance for the aged in West Africa? Many superstitious West Africans even accuse old people of being witches and wizards, and the mushrooming and horrible one-man churches are not helping matters.

Another question needs to be made. If you cannot help someone, why condemn the choice the person makes? Why go ahead to even criminalise his or her choice?

What is worse? We always claim to be more mentally sound than those who attempt or actually go ahead to take their own lives, by accusing them of being depressed or mentally ill. Really? It’s all human hypocrisy. There are too many false Sigmund Freuds in the world, fake psychiatrists seeking to give a better image of themselves by pointing accusing or criminalising fingers at their suffering fellow human beings, instead of comforting words and practical solutions, not vain superstitious beliefs false church doctrines.