When I was searching for an agent to find an apartment in Accra, it was an extreme sport. A few days ago, I saw on my WhatsApp status a property agent’s post. And this particular agent felt 3000 cedis a month was “too small” an amount for the property she carried. Good riddance, arbi? Clearly, I am not her target market, which means the average Ghanaian is not her target market either.

Anyway, I saw a post for a house priced at about 850,000 Ghana cedis, which is, give or take, 80,000 dollars. Wow! Some people, most people, in Ghana would never see that kind of money in a lifetime. But how does that concern me? It does, in many contradictory ways.

About two decades ago, I could never have imagined seeing that kind of money. Over the span of my adult life, I have made and spent much more than that — but remember, oh, I have been an adult for (begins to count…) legally, 14 years. But I also know where I am from.

I am not the ward of some rich politician or business tycoon who has a monopoly either on public funds or high-level goods. Neither am I the ward of a highly skilled niche professional whose services are in such high demand that money has been thrown at them. My parents did not inherit generational wealth, but what they inherited was a generational sense — to ensure that their children would get a good enough education, in hopes that we could move closer towards being able to possibly… one day… count 85,000 in a sitting. Lol.

All jokes aside. One of the places that shaped me, we went to the river to fetch water. And I remember when the first community pipe was created. At another place, we shared the downstairs flat with the landlord’s daughter. At another, we slept in the boys’ quarters of a bungalow with a shared bathroom and kitchen. And at another… you get the drift.

The average Ghanaian was me and my family — until my immigration to the Western diaspora. And even with that, I cannot count and show you 85,000 dollars.

Anyway, back to the problems we create for ourselves. The house the agent on my WhatsApp status posted was flat-roofed. The entire compound was tiled, with only about a casket-sized space for decorative flowers or plants. The whole house — the entire compound — had not one plant.

I almost lost it! In addition to the foolishness of half-ventilation that is en vogue in the name of sliding windows, I truly wonder why people keep creating tombs and calling them homes. It is sadder that these tombs are priced as such. We live in a tropical climate guys! The sun has been rising hot for the last couple of years to the point that entire agricultural seasons have shifted. White people are calling it global warming, but the farmers who cannot afford irrigation systems say, “The rains are not falling when they are supposed to, so our crops are dying.”

Now, we build a home. No one wants to use reflective zinc or aluminum roofs anymore. No one wants to have slanted roofs anymore. Forgetting that before the white man came with his cement, we built with what was in our environment. Some of the coolest homes you would enter were those built with clay and thatched with grass. Yet somehow, we let western civilization convince us that our traditional forms of architecture were backwards.

Everyone now wants a house made of cement. I get it. It is stronger and more durable. Okay. Build with cement now. So then, what happened to full-fledged windows? That too, we have thrown away in exchange for modern sliding windows that technically give us half the amount of ventilation space. What happened to louvre blades or shutters? Remember those wooden blade-like things we could open and close to let air in? They were very common in the colonial boarding schools most of us might have attended.

So, now we find ourselves in a nation whose electricity is not dependable, in a climate that screams for greenery, and where contractors build tombs — eii, sorry oh — I mean houses, for 85,000 dollars. Houses that require electricity-powered cooling in the name of air conditioners. Air conditioners that will have to be changed in a few years if not sooner because of damage from the unreliable electric grid. An electric grid that might need to have a backup generator if we are to maintain a humane way of living in these tombs — I mean homes. Generators that must be powered by petroleum or diesel. Petroleum or diesel that keeps getting expensive because the world is at war. And even if energy isn’t expensive, it pollutes the atmosphere so the inhabitants of these compounds will be sick. Why? There are no plants to take in these harmful gases and, in turn, give us oxygen.

And now, we buy and build very expensive tombs, get sick, and then spend more money to get better, and eventually die. And we are not even buried in these expensive tombs.

This life, no balance.