Manners, VAT and H2O in the City of Accra

At an eatery, yesterday, in the city of Accra, this waiter crept out of his hole to take my simple order.

Waiter: Sir, what do you want?

Me: I would like a sinfully-cold Coca Cola, please.

(Waiter lurches off and returns in ten minutes).

Waiter: Your Coke, Sir.

Me: I'm sure Pepsi is just as nice, but that's not what I asked for.

Waiter: But it's the same thing...

(I felt my chest begin to swell with anger, but a more evilly-satisfying plan came to mind).

Me: In that case, I've changed my mind. May I have some H2O?

Waiter: We have run out of stock, Sir.

(The Sun itself rose in my naughty face!)

Me: Well, then, just bring me some water, please.

Waiter: O.K. Sir, what else do you want?

Ignore his unfinished manners for a while. He brought back the H20, maybe from some underground stock. The frigid frown on his rodent face betrayed his lack of grasp, that the joke as all on him. (As for the Pepsi, it certainly appeared to have enough pecadilloes in the arctic department :) The waiter's spoken English told of some education. So, for not knowing what H20 was, he was the more a fool for all that he did not learn when he had a golden chance.

I spent lunch hour and enough time to fill a pregnancy trimester waiting for the food to come. So, I amused myself with the sights and sounds of glutton Accra. A man with a well-appointed face sat with a woman I got to looking at. It took no time for me to realise that something was awfully wrong with the picture in front of me. Then it hit me in the face. The MAN was at least six months pregnant! Yes, the man. And with such a slender, sexy woman, I failed to find answers why he was eating food enough to feed ten hungry hogs. Thankfully, my own food came to rescue me from this porcine parade, for looking around me, there were enough pregnant young men to populate a little nation, with no help from women. So have our men found the secret to the art (or is it the science) of self-fertilisation? ;)

The waiter crept back down his hole and would not come to present the bill. I announced to the head waiter, that the mole could either chase me to my car, or find me in my office. If he had asked me where my office was, I would have been no more surprised than to hear a George W. Bush lecture on Arabic literature.

He finally caught up with my already cruising car. The chicken ink scratches on the bill told me why it had taken so long. He could not calculate the VAT. Now, whose fault was that? It struck me that patrons did not usually ask for the bill. They just asked how much they owed, and then paid minus the VAT. Just my baseless suspicion, but is somebody listening, in the city of Accra?

I Can!!!