What was going on when I was born?

The Accra radio reported tonight that armed so ldiers had rampaged through sections of Ghana's capital looting homes and shops in exuberance over the ouster of the civilian Gove rnment. The radio, monitored in this neighboring West African country, also reported that several associates of Hilla Limann, the former President, had been taken into custody by the new military Government, which calls itself the Provisional National Defense Council. The 47-year-old Mr. Limann, who was ousted Thursday, was reported by Western diplomatic sources here to be held under house arrest at The Castle, the presidential residence in Accra.

Poland's Interior Minister asked the country's security forces today to reject Solidarity's pleas for resistance to military rule. In a New Year's message on the Warsaw radio, Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak warned all law-enforcement personnel not to be swayed by a ''campaign of calumny by internal enemies and their foreign sponsors.'' The Interior Minister's admonition gave credence to reports reaching the West from Warsaw on Thursday that the highest-ranking Solidarity leader still at liberty, Zbigniew Bujak, the 27-year-old leader of the union's Warsaw branch, had managed to circulate a handwritten appeal to soldiers and policemen to ''listen to their conscience'' and not become ''tools in the hands of the criminal authorities waging a war against the nation.'' Price Increases Explained Poland's security police, which are distinct from the army, have been generally assumed to be more loyal and less questioning in carrying out martial law duties. There were no reports today of similar public messages to the army, although earlier reports from Poland have said that efforts are being made to feed troops well and to convince them that their role in the martial law regime is in the interests of the people.

Just up the hill from the isolated Hawkins Point community on this city's southwest side sits a small, fetid pond, sectioned off by a chain-link fence and surrounded by an expanse of barren, slag- like earth. ''There used to be a big, beautiful lake surrounded by trees there when I moved here in 1947,'' said Freddie Blagmon, who lives in a tiny, neat bungalow at the end of the one-street community. ''I used to catch fish in that lake, bass and white perch. No more. Nothing lives there.'' ''There is a smell here that burns your nostrils, although after a while you don't even notice it,'' he went on. ''Some kind of red dust gets on our houses and cars and you can't even wash it off. Nobody is telling us what's in the air and water.''

Dozens of church-sponsored social service programs are scrambling to maintain their activities because of cuts in the Federal support on which they have come to rely. The cuts have come as the number of people asking for help has increased dramatically. The agencies, many of which provide direct services to the needy in their communities, have been partly financed through Federal funds in a church-government partnership that blossomed in the antipoverty campaign of the 1960's. Now, many Federal educational and social se rvice programs of that era have been eliminated in the Reagan Admini stration's efforts to curb domestic spending. President Reagan says he has a popular mandate to cut spending as part of his effort to revitalize the economy.

President Reagan plans to appoint Deputy Secretary of State William P. Clark to replace Richard V. Allen as national security adviser and to upgrade the job, White House officials said today. The two actions, the first major personnel and management changes in Mr. Reagan's Administration, are to be announced within 10 days, the officials said. They added that some details of the structure of the adviser's office remained to be worked out and that Mr. Reagan also wanted to delay his announcement until an internal White House investigation into Mr. Allen's activities in office was completed. Mr. Allen has remained on leave of absence pending completion of the investigation, which is being conducted by Richard A. Hauser, Deputy Counsel to the President. A Justice Department investigation has cleared Mr. Allen of criminal misconduct in his acceptance of $1,000 and two watches from Japanese journalists a year ago, as well as cleared him of inaccuracies in his financial disclosure statements.

Edward Irving Koch took the oath of office yesterday for his secondterm as Mayor of New York, then challenged th e Federal Government andthe state to stand by the city and the rest o f urban America. In an inaugural speech that was more a demand than a plea, Mr. Koch at- Transcript of Koch address, page 20. tacked Washington's ''regressive politics'' and budget cuts but said that even without Federal help, the city would make do on its own. ''New York is the city of the 80's and beyond, the city that will not allow the American dream to go down in defeat,'' the Mayor said. ''Because New York City is more than the American dream - New York is the city that dreamed America.''

Many of the nation's major airlines will raise their fares next Friday by as much as $10 a ticket on many routes. The increases will come against a backdrop of heavily advertised fare cuts on flights between Northeastern and Middle Western citie s and Florida and California, The move, by leading carriers such as Delta, Eastern and United, continues a trend of steadily higher air fares on a systemwide basis since the introduction of airline deregulation in late 1978. In 1981, for example, Delta Air Lines increased its systemwide fares by about 15 percent over 1980 levels. United Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, said it had raised its 1981 fares by an average of 14.7 percent over 1980.

Just past daybreak, when there is enough light for the first river junks to hoist sail and start tacking patiently up the muddy currents of the Huangpu, an impromptu pageant unfolds along the riverfront that foreign residents once named the Bund. Hundreds of people, their high-necked jackets buttoned up against the morning chill, sway and stretch in ranks to the meditative slow motions of tai chi, a system of self-defense. Near the mooring of a rusty freighter, youn g men rehearsing anothermartial art freeze momentarily in imitation o f a crane or a grasshopper, leap and lunge with a cry to str ike an imaginary assailant. Others raise a clatter as they eng age in mock combat with long wooden staves. Oblivious to the mayhem a round him, an old man serenely juggles two sticks along a strand of wire.

A French philosopher held by Czechoslovak authorities on suspicion of drug dealing was released Thursday night, and he left for Paris by train today, French diplomatic sources said in Prague.

Negotiators announced tonight that they had reached an agreement in a dispute over a new clocking device in delivery vans and averted a strike threatened against 13 of Britain's 16 national newspapers. About 2,000 union drivers threatened to halt newspaper distribution Saturday if they did not receive more money for use of the newly installed tachographs, which automatically record speed and the number of hours that the vans spend on the road.

More than 2,100 people died as a result of v iolence in Lebanon in 1981, about 700 more than in the previous year , security sources said today. The dead included more than 500 people killed during violence between Palestinian commandos and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and in Israeli air raids against Beirut last July.

Israel's Chief of Staff said today that the largest Druse village in the Golan Heights was placed under curfew Thursday while Israeli troops searched the homes of pro-Syrian residents.