Cultural Divide - Pressed Into Mortuary Service
by Mortuary Transport Expert ~ July 26th, 2008. Filed under: Death In The News.I suppose we should still be grateful for some of our laws and customs here in America.
This is an excerpt from a story about how the local ‘transit service’ people are punished for parking everywhere at a hospital by being forced to clean the mortuary and clean bodies.
It’s a different world there in Ghana. Makes me wonder…
A couple of weeks ago, the ‘army boys’ up at the 37 Military hospital (home of the infamous bats in the trees above), decided it was time to stop a growing practice that was causing some congestion on the throughway in front of the hospital. The private mini vans which take the place of a formal public transport system, have organized themselves over the years in Ghana, into fairly organized associations and each driver/vehicle belongs to a specific organization, with a specific route and stopping points. The hospital in question has become an unofficial meeting point for the vehicles – ‘tro tros’ to all of us in Ghana. This does create quite a mess, as the drivers pull over ‘en mass’, and chaos ensues, with hundreds of street sellers, shouting, scurrying and touting their wares to those getting into, hanging out the windows of, and transiting the tro tros. Passengers dart around as well, and can be seen dashing out in front of the oncoming traffic… a very unsafe practice and a nuisance to all.
However, methods of dealing with this in other societies might be to:
A) Create a public transport system with designated stations
B) Or at least, create a designated station for the existing associations of tro tros.
C) Add no stopping, no parking signs and have a police patrol in front of the hospitalI doubt that physically dragging the drivers and their ‘mates’ (the guys who hang out the door calling out the destination and collecting money from the passengers), down into the mortuary of the hospital and forcing them into hard labour would be on the list.
Hundreds of drivers over the course of a few days were physically beaten and made to do such things as weed the lawns of the hospital, clean the floors of the mortuary, and even clean and carry corpses within the mortuary.
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