Building Back to the Past

I have to wake up at 4.30 am everyday. At that time, I would have slept for only three and a half hours. I wake up that early because my bed is too hard. With all the time before first light, I do not even have ten minutes to wash my car, Maxine. At that early hour, I want to be "alone" in the world, to own it, to love it, to think about life.

I am all alone, except for the long line of neighbours I can see up and down the street. I have not asked them, but I bet their beds are hard too. Even the little ones are zombieing into the cars, and I know why!

At 5.30, we are already queuing up on the Spintex Road. There must be a spectacle at the end of it. Some breathtaking beauty which will be gone before sane men wake up. Six streets or so terminate in a little roundabout we have named for a cocoa smuggler who is a national hero. A huge, windowless mall slows down the traffic some more so that we can all savour the nostalgia of the linear beauty and cool breeze of the trees that used to line up the street some twenty years ago. But I admit I like that mall once I am inside it. There, we do not only pick up essential commodities.

In that small roundabout and the mall, somebody was playing a game (excuse the pun) with our intelligence, health and productivity. Just for the pleasure of seeing the benighted roundabout and the floodlit car park of the mall, I stay late at work. I get home late, savour my private time, sleep late. And as I sleep, I cannot wait for the next morning's breathtaking sights on Accra's most scenic route.

We spent a lot of money building to the past. Why did we not build a Mayan or Egyptian pyramid?

I Can!!!