16 Days: Why Do So Many People In Ghana Laugh At Rape?

Thursday, 28 November 2024

By: TB Obwoge

I have been bothered by this question for so long, I will never forget living in Ghana and wondering why men and women alike laughed so much at rape and sexual violence. One of the things that once again reminds me that all the disgusting behavior of MAGA America exists in Ghana but with Black people.

I will forever describe Ghana as being as vile as the United States and the people who don't see it, don't care to open their eyes. Later I will list multiple things that show how much Ghana is like the horrible parts of the U.S. but for now let me explain this laughing stupidity.

Here is a bit of a back story, Tumu Ghana, it is in the Upper West, this small town in the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso. There is a military base there, many people don't know this place or that there is a base there. It at times stuns me how much people in Ghana don't know about their country.

I actually found so many people that don't know that JJ Rawlings has a Scottish father, I was told by more than a dozen Ghanaians that he was fair skin because he came from a tribe of fair skin people. Voltairians are not lighter in skin color at all. The Ewe tribe in Ghana which live in the Volta Region of Ghana often call themselves Votairians.

Any way in this town of Tumu on my first visit there, I was awakened by screams of a child. I thought it was a dream. I had to fully jolt myself out of bed, only to realize it was really happening.

English, I thought to myself why is this child screaming in English? It was possibly a girl but I could not be perfectly sure. However what I heard was clear and I'll forever hear it!

"Stop it hurts, stop it hurts!" The child begged for over 45 minutes. I was infuriated and the screams were not coming from inside of the hotel in which I was sleeping either.

I called my ex who was a soldier in the Ghana Army, I told him what I was hearing. He was awake because he was on watch. Everyone took turns of watching over the barracks and military location throughout the night.

I also found out that the electricity was off as well. This angered him more than the child's screams.

The next day I talked about it, he didn't seem to concerned. I moved to a different hotel when the sun came up because there was still no electricity because the electric had not been paid by the owner.

At the new location I met Dominic. He was from a different area of Ghana and was shifted to Tumu when he was on territory (territory is so odd after high school this is what all Ghanaians were supposed to do as like community service), so he remained because he found this job.

He was the manager of the hotel, I told him what I heard as it was still fresh and made me so angry. With a huge smile on his face, Dominic said to me, "some people here are not very kind to children!"

He was smiling, something I found that most Ghanaians do even when the subject is horrible, sad or serious. So many can say this is why they laugh at rape because they have a totally odd way of interacting with the appriate responses.

In my mind I think that the child was being sexually abused but I asked him without adding that part. Over the next year, I asked several Ghanaians about this, because I did not hear the child being hit or screams that made me think of a beating. Ooh the times of the cries were around 3:30 am by the way.

Whenever I asked questions about this event or sexual violence in Ghana, I was always met with people bursting into laughter. In groups or even when I talked to people one on one, they would always laugh, not just giggle some would laugh hysterically. I even talked about this with a Liberian man that lived in Ghana for over a decade.

I asked this man why would Ghanaians constantly laugh at rape of children or women. His reply which I have in a voice note, "What do you expect them to do?" As he laughed so loudly and hard.

My humanity, I always thank God for my humanity and wonder if I had been born in another country would I still have this same humanity.

I've written about this before on other platforms, I have noticed it all over social media when Ghanaians talk about rape or sexual violence towards women and children, they laugh. I will never understand this and no one seems to care with the exception of very few people.

Above this Ghanaian women saw the laughing and joke about this man in Ghana who had sex with 3 teens. There was so much laughing, jokes and mocking the 3 teenagers, not the grown man who is 39 years old.

She was the only comment I found within the hundreds, it constantly happens in many posts about rape also.

I've tried to talk to many Ghanaians about this, in Ghana not outside of the country, I found only one woman who said, "I think we are laughing because we can't believe what we are hearing!" She also laughed almost uncontrolled about rape as well.

With smiles and laughter they often replied to me about sexual violence and rape against women and children.

This was a question I asked people on Reddit, this is what other people replied about being asked about sexual assault of a child. I had to see if it was normal to laugh at rape from people around the world.

There was a long thread from Twitter, with a conversation about a girl who was raped. Someone who was also a girl or youngadult slipped something in their drinks, they were then raped.

One man said he raped the girl that he knew because she had told him she was already raped before. He seemed to think that since she was raped before that this was perfectly acceptable that he could simply rape her again.

There on Twitter hundreds of Ghanaians thought this was funny, but what happened was several women posted about how they were raped too. I refused to take screenshots of them because they were using their real names and real accounts.

I found out that this was Ghana, a country that to this day still charges women a rape fee to report that they were raped. A country where people know that these fetish priests, clergy, tribal leaders and men have sex with children and even toddlers.

This is someone that I know in real life, that I've slept at his house with his wife and children. He's laughing at a post that I posted about sexual assaults and rape around the world for the 16 Days of activism to end violence against women and children.

He thinks that the video was hilarious, I have yet to ask him why he left this as a comment. But as a Ghanaian man that admitted to raping a woman but didn't call it rape, he did say it was not right, he admitted that he pulled her into a backroom and took sex from her.

But he refused to call it rape!

Lacey's House is an U.S. based nonprofit that deals with women's rights. I have worked in other countries like Kenya and Ghana. I wish to move into Burkina Faso where displaced women and children need the most assistance. Here is a link to buy me a coffee or the many ways you can support my nonprofit in helping women and children.

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