In some worlds, money loses its solidness, nobody speaks about it in definite terms anymore. They don’t say “I have 100 cedis in my bank account” or “I earn 50 cedis every week” or any such language of specificities. They talk about money as one recounts a hazy dream; an apparition that half manifested, a mystery they can’t fathom. I wasn’t aware such a world existed until I was recently commissioned by UNICEF to do a story on Inequality in Ghana.

Ideally, a nation would have its super-wealthy few, and its miserably poor few, and the masses somewhere in between. Inequality is when the numbers at the extremes grow whilst the numbers in the middle shrink. There is no omen of impending doom more accurate than that widening gap. Like Cassandra, clairvoyants like us, can through our mediums- photography, writing and videos, draw the nation and the world’s attention to this phenomenon but the demigods who rule down here get to call the shots. We can only hope that they’ll hearken to the omen and save our Troy from burning.

To avoid the obvious trap of juxtaposing poverty porn and opulence, I decided to tow the middle path; drive around the country, speak to regular folk, see for myself and hear their stories from their own lips.