Sex - Key to Knowledge (I)

Inarguably, almost everyone who has attained the age of puberty and beyond has something to say about sex, because we all know a thing or two about the pervasive act which has being with us since the days of Adam. Sex will not leave us anytime soon and anything short of its practice whether on legal, health or moral basis is bound to see the procreation of man come to an end and by extension, extinction of the human race and any living thing that procreates through mating.

For the records, I would like to state that, this piece has a religious underlining and my own conviction which must not necessarily corroborate anyone’s thought or otherwise. I want to be solely responsible for everything herein to avoid the seeing-is-believing bunch of die-hards who will ask me to show them empirical evidence. I am also grateful for the source literature which sparked up the interest to write this piece on sex, but if you ever decide to read beyond this piece, then my article is premised on the Bible in the book of Genesis Chapters 2:16 & 17 and 3:1-20 for your own perusal.

The first time I heard someone relating the famous tree of knowledge of good and evil to sex, I asked him to stop right there because the novice that I was, thought him a blasphemous goon to which I was not going to be a part of and this was in the mid 90’s when I was in Secondary School but some years on, my conviction about the sex theory has grown more than that guy who was probably just saying.

Simply put, the bible which is the embodiment of truth is and cannot be comprehensible to everyone thus the perplexity that comes with its comprehension through generations before us and the ones to follow. The bible in its simple state is as well the most complex of books that has been authored by man. No, men of God! And it explains why the boy retorted to me “were you expecting them to say, they had sex?” Intriguing!

Why is it hard for us to believe that Adam and Eve had sex anymore than we can believe that it was literally a tree named a ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil?  Has the tree become extinct? How come we don’t have any more of those species of trees anymore? 

Either we were told lies or the teachers didn’t know anymore than the students they professed to have been teaching and some of these discoveries which falls outside our syllabi and other accepted ways of doing things make me look back and ponder over our system. Either the conspiracy theory rages on or too many ignorant people are placed in authoritative positions by other ignorant people who misguides and misdirects us. No wonder, my visual representation of apple until recently has always been Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden clad in their loin cloths; Eve extending a bitten apple to Adam.

To the best of my knowledge, sex is the key to knowledge without which, one is considered as innocent. Sex is one of the yardsticks for measuring Knowledge that is why people are considered to have entered a different phase of life when they marry – the ideal time to have sex and it is also worthy to note that sex is primarily for procreation.

Most of us had our perceptions about life changed the first time we had sex. Everything became different and in most cases, we felt afraid, grown and arrived. Well, that is how we started discovering knowledge which mainly constitutes good and evil and admittedly, we also discovered pain, sorrow and sickness.

Hitherto the eating of the fruit of the mythical tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were espoused to be good; the former chasing after animals and naming them and the latter strolling in other parts of the Garden until she met ‘the serpent’, where they exercised their creative functions independently of God’s directive and there and then, they knew instantly that, they were naked and almost aware of their very existence and the emphasis is on Knowledge.

Remember, they were admonished to stay away from that tree, yet they disobeyed God. They thought outside the box and became aware of stellar influences which they were previously unaware of. They have become all knowing soon after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Knowledge seekers already know that knowledge brings us pain and sorrow but also comes with inestimable blessings of emancipation from outside influence and guidance, so it came to pass that, Adam and Eve were cursed which was not necessarily a curse but an expression or a simple statement of the resultant effect of their creative function they exercised.

Is it a curse to tell your Son who is now of age to shoulder responsibilities upon assumption of manly status evidenced by his impregnation of a woman? They are just consequences of your action.

They had sex and even though it was disobedient to God, the generative force brought about childbirth which was followed by God’s curse which was merely the consequences of their thinking outside the box. They probably did not wait for God’s directive to eat of the tree or in plain terms, to have sex but was God going to ask them to eat it someday? Wouldn’t it have been illusive, well, until manifested?

Doesn’t our society punish us for not falling in line? Society chastises anyone who thinks outside the box until something different and sustainable is discovered or unearthed. They come as defiant and labeled as deviants for not heeding to the existing norms but again it is the only way new things are created.  

Just like God told Adam and Eve that the eating from the knowledge tree would result in their death (maybe spiritually) which did not come to pass, it is in same vein society spells to us all kinds of consequences that could befall us should we do something that does not fall within the box. Mostly, the daring ones who go beyond the threshold as we have come to know only discover a new form of beauty.

Had man remained a God-guided automation, he would not have known sickness, pain or death till this day; but would have lacked the brain consciousness and independence which resulted from the enlightenment by the serpent who opened his understanding and taught him to use his then dim vision to gain knowledge of his world which he was already destined to conquer.

You would recall that before man’s enlightenment, he had not known sickness, pain nor death but all resulted from the unwise use of the propagative faculty and its abuse for the gratification of the senses.

Sex is a generative force which if used ignorantly or for other purposes primarily becomes responsible for our pain, sorrow and sicknesses. Sex cannot be used as way of killing boredom neither should it be used as a means of pursuing pleasure. Sex (organs) as a function is designed solely for the perpetration of species and under no circumstances for the gratification of sensual desire.

As higher order primates, we naturally and primarily get most things done wrongly because of our emotions which results in our desires, other than how things should be, as evidenced in our altering of almost everything and now anal sex by gays.

Animals in their wild state are exempt from sickness and pain because their propagation is not influenced by emotions and desires but carried under the care and direction of the wise cosmic spirit at only those times of the year which are propitious to that process just like most women feel for sex before, during or after their menstrual periods. 

Nowadays, people practically arrange to have sex without being on heat or just have sex at will and it is this unwise use of the propagative faculty and its abuse for sensual gratification of the senses that has brought untold hardships on us individuals and the generation as a whole.

It was not unwise of our forefathers to marry their daughters and Sons off in their puberty when their reproductive organs became matured. The older folks knew that, their libidos will be naturally aroused from time to time and failure to satisfy it could just result in sickness, a form of pain, neglect or masochism over a period of time thus the ease and convenience of marrying them off to have sex as and when their heat mechanism is activated.

Ghana Prisons; An asset or a liability?

If you have ever used a phone with an annoying ring tone, then you would have known by now that, the most prudent thing to do under such circumstances is to usually alter the settings to vibration mode or in worst cases, put it on silence, which relieves us and everybody on our timeline, the cacophony of an aching siren which is mistaken as a tone. But do we loathe ourselves should the phone be misplaced afterwards?

The first thing we do when we misplace our phone is to reach out for an alternative phone to call the missing one, just so we can be directed to where the ringing is emanating from, and should your ring tone be set to ‘off’ or to its lowest decibels at the time of missing, then your guess is as good as mine and it is this line of thought where we take actions without recourse to what can happen in the future is what has motivated me to research into the Prison system here in Ghana so that should I find myself being gaoled by any twist of fate, I can find solace in the fact that, I didn’t lower the level of my ring tone.

Prison according to Wikipedia is a place in which people are physically confined and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms the Prison is referred to as is penitentiary also known as pen, correctional facility, remand centre, detention center, jail or gaol and many more as would be discussed in this write-up.

It is however worthy to note that there was a traditional system which saw to it that wrong doers were either banished or ‘cleansed’ by performing rituals and reinstated into society prior to the introduction of the Prisons Systems. The Prison system which abolished the former way of punishing and rehabilitating deviants in society was thus established to give safe custody to Prisoners, ensuring their welfare by protecting their rights to good health, clothing, bedding among other basic requirements and lastly, reforming and rehabilitating them by offering them opportunities to develop a set of skills through trade, training and moral education but the multi-million dollar question which begs to be asked is, are these functions for which these Prisons were built  being  met?

A Prison among other things should have a religious facility, educational facility such as a library, a gym or a place to exercise, a healthcare facility to offer medical care, psychiatric services, dental and a recreational facility which may contain at least a TV and I want to know how far we have gone to address all these requirements as a nation and if not, then what is government doing about it? 

There are currently 45 Prison establishments scattered all over the country with varying levels security such as the closed and open security systems for those who have passed their ‘FLED’ (Full license eligibility date) or those given the ROTL (release on temporary license) to visit home from time to time which is usually a quarter of the way through the Prison sentence but our security system is still nothing to write home about.

Do we have motion sensors to check the wrongful movements of inmates? What about sniffer dogs and roving patrols that will ensure that no stone is left unturned against those who are likely to break jail? What about defensible main gates and armed guard towers where movement from a distance can be monitored?

The Prison system as an extension of the Ministry of Justice aims at punishing and rehabilitating criminals as defined by the law but you realize that the Prison service is mostly interested in only the retributive aspect of their mandate. This is because most of the inmates come out worse than they went inside and you are tempted to ask if they are actually trained to master their acts that sent them there in the first place. 

A Prison system requires that an officer be made responsible for the welfare and supervision of three Prisoners but the ratio in Ghana has risen above six criminals to one officer and counting. Even though the Prison service has been understaffed for a very long time, it is laudable to note that, the quality in the personnel has improved over the years due to the qualification of new recruits.

The Prison service in its effort to upgrade structures to meet the ever demanding and increasing number of criminals however has institutional bottlenecks that continually make lack of funds persistent. They are not granted the right amount of money needed to upgrade facilities which is an indictment to the powers that be and this goes a long way to make the living conditions of the inmates palpable and gross.

Inmates are allowed to sleep, urinate, eat and attend to nature’s calls in their cells and this is an infringement on their rights because they are a part of society and should not be treated inhumanely, not to talk about the diseases they can contract living under such circumstances.

The Prison service in its effort as part of restructuring the rehabilitation and to give a sense of dignity to the inmates has proposed to change their name from Ghana Prisons service to Ghana correctional service since the year 2007, but is yet to be approved by an act of parliament which would in tend give the law a force. As to why the bill is yet to be promulgated into a law after six years and counting is another area we will look at some other time.

Our system has no ‘deferred sentence’ where for one reason or the other, one’s sentence can be deferred until they are ready to serve their terms. Examples can be given of pregnant women who are sentenced to jail terms and allowed to deliver and cater for their new born babies with the scanty resources that are provided to the inmates. Ill-health is also another reason why deferred sentences has to be introduced into our penal system so that inmates can be given special treatments at home until they are fit again to continue serving their terms.

Currently, there are about 14,000 inmates who are sharing resources meant for about 8000 inmates and you can tell that, the situation is purely a matter of the fittest surviving against all odds. Most people are not supposed to be there in the first place and this behooves the justice system to expedite trials on remand Prisoners who in some instances would be acquitted and discharged or imprisoned to ease the pressure off the resources and to also mitigate wrongful punishment of people because justice delayed is justice denied.

Apparently, most of these remand Prisoners mostly are there because they have not been able to afford a lawyer and that is bad. The government has to furnish these people with lawyers on pro bono basis to see to it that justice is dispensed timely, which can go a long way to boost the capacity of the justice system and to help people build confidence in the system.

We can also reduce the number of these remand Prisoners by sentencing them to undertaking community services. The government can make use of these deviants by putting them to work in their communities to help clean the communities or help contribute their quota to the community by doing diligently what they have been tasked to do and this can also go a long way to serve as a deterrent to others, because the idea of the justice system is not necessarily to be retributive but to help people change and become good citizens.

Ghana happens to be one of the destinations that still make use of archaic Prison infrastructures dating as far back as four hundred years e.g. James fort, which was built for only 200 people but now houses about 740 inmates per the data available as at the time of reviewing the available literature.

There are no proper transport systems to convey inmates to and from the field where they sometimes work. Exposing and leaving these inmates on their own can be dangerous to the Prison Guards and society at large, because some hardly reform, as they keep plotting their vengeance, especially, those who were wrongfully incarcerated.

There is no gainsaying that the food given to the inmates is of bad quality and mal-nutritional, but it is probably because, government is not giving them much. Alternatively, i do not think the tax payer’s money should be channeled into feeding Prisoners. Most of these Prisoners could be made to work and keep large acres of farm lands, especially those who are sentenced with hard labor. The state cannot be at their brunt while they were free and still spend its money on them while incarcerated and proper management of this situation can even give the nation a surplus from their produce.

Sadly, most of these inmates only come back into society as hardened criminals because there are no

adequate training and education for them. Recidivism; the act of relapsing into criminal activities, abounds in our society because there are no workshops to train these inmates and where there are, they are not operational and no one seems to care because the crime or neglect being perpetrated is not directly on our doorsteps.

Most of these deviants sifted from the public domain and named as Prisoners ended there in the first place through no fault of theirs but through system failure. A system that sentences an unemployed young man for uprooting a neighbor’s cassava without his consent and tries an employed civil servant forever for embezzling public funds meant for the collective growth of everyone is certainly a failed system. 

These Prisoners must be helped to regain their sense of worth and self-esteem to be able to be re-integrated into society without problem. It will be a step in the right direction if social and civil organizations can come out to help the government to tackle the problems and solutions herein by donating and sponsoring some of the things needed to fully rehabilitate the system and it’s dependents in a bid to making this place a better place for all of us.